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This paper finds that a 1 percent reduction in the cost of exporting or the cost of international transport is associated with an export diversification gain of 0.3 percent or 0.4 percent respectively. Lower domestic market entry costs can also promote diversification, but the elasticity is weaker (-0.1). To obtain these results, the authors construct new measures of export diversification for 118 developing countries using highly detailed 8-digit mirror data from the European Union. The analysis also incorporates new export cost data from the World Bank's Doing Business database, covering document preparation, inland transport, administrative fees, and port/customs charges. Findings are highly robust, including to the use of geography and colonial history as instruments for trade and entry costs. Both the signs and relative magnitudes of these effects are consistent with predictions from a heterogeneous firms model of trade with asymmetric costs.

CDI --- Communities & Human Settlements --- DIO --- Disclosure --- Economic development --- Housing and Human Habitats --- ID --- International Bank --- JA --- MT --- RCD --- Trade facilitation

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The author uses a new database of EU product standards in the textiles, clothing, and footwear sectors to present the first empirical evidence that international standards harmonization is associated with increased partner country export variety. A 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of internationally harmonized standards is associated with a 0.2 percent increase in partner country export variety, whereas a 10 percent increase in the total number of standards is associated with a nearly 6 percent decrease in product variety. Although small, the harmonization elasticity is statistically significant, and proves highly robust to sample changes and instrumental variables estimation using instruments motivated by political economy considerations. Moreover, it is found to be around 50 percent higher for low income countries, which suggests that they may be particularly constrained in adapting products to meet multiple standards. Numerical simulations show that these findings are consistent with a heterogeneous firms model of trade in which harmonization is beneficial at the extensive margin provided that any increases in compliance costs are not too large.

CDI --- Communities & Human Settlements --- DIO --- Economic Development --- Housing and Human Habitats --- ID --- International Bank --- International Standards --- JA --- MT --- RCD --- Trade Facilitation

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Recognition of the potentially deleterious implications of inequality in opportunity originating in a skewed asset distribution has spawned considerable interest in land reforms. However, little attention has been devoted to fact that, in the longer term, the measures used to implement land reforms could negatively affect productivity. Use of state level data on rental restrictions, together with a nationally representative survey from India, suggests that, contrary to original intentions, rental restrictions negatively affect productivity and equity. The restrictions reduce the scope for efficiency-enhancing rental transactions that benefit poor producers. Simulations suggest that, by doubling the number of producers with access to land through rental, from about 15 million currently, liberalization of rental markets could have far-reaching impacts.

Access to information --- Agricultural development --- Agricultural production --- Agriculture --- Climate Change --- Communities & Human Settlements --- Environment --- Farmers --- Gender --- Housing --- Housing and Human Habitats --- Land reform --- Livestock --- Municipal Housing and Land --- Real Estate Development --- Rural development --- Rural Development Knowledge and Information Systems

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This paper provides evidence of the effects of a large-scale intervention that focuses on the quality of nutritional and child care inputs during the early stages of life. The empirical strategy uses a combination of double-difference and weighting estimators in a longitudinal survey to address the purposive placement of participating communities and estimate the effect of the availability of the program at the community level on nutritional outcomes. The authors find that the program helped 0-5 year old children in the participating communities to bridge the gap in weight for age z-scores and the incidence of underweight. The program also had significant effects in protecting long-term nutritional outcomes (height for age z-scores and incidence of stunting) against an underlying negative trend in the absence of the program. Importantly, the effect of the program exhibits substantial heterogeneity: gains in nutritional outcomes are larger for more educated mothers and for villages with better infrastructure. The program enables the analysis to isolate responsiveness to information provision and disentangle the effect of knowledge in the education effect on nutritional outcomes. The results are suggestive of important complementarities among child care, maternal education, and community infrastructure.

Breastfeeding --- Child Development --- Child Nutrition --- Communities & Human Settlements --- Early Child and Children's Health --- Health Monitoring and Evaluation --- Health Outcomes --- Health Services --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Housing and Human Habitats --- Hygiene --- Intervention --- Nutrition --- Nutritional Status --- Population Policies --- Public Health

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This study explored how poor households respond to changes in economic circumstances and labor market conditions, id est how the impact has been felt on the ground." It looked at how poor households adjust to a deteriorating situation, what strategies they adopt to limit the impact of shocks and generate additional resources, and what constraints impede their actions. This case study presents the main findings from the community of Commonwealth in Metro Manila (Philippines); other volumes focus on Chawama, in Lusaka, Zambia; Cisne Dos, in Guayaquil, Ecuador; and Angyalfold, in Budapest, Hungary. The results show that the four communities cope in remarkably similar (and dissimilar) ways. Three features distinguish this study from other poverty studies: a micro-level approach combining households and communities as the main units of analysis, an unusually long period of observation for some communities and households, and a comparative framework offering four cases with very different economic levels and institutional contexts. The study used income measures, recognizing its multifaceted nature, as well as socio-psychological factors, incorporated in the concept of "vulnerability," the insecurity of the well-being of individuals, households, or communities in the face of a changing environment. Analyzing this concept involves identifying not only the threat, but also the "resilience" in exploiting opportunities and in resisting or recovering from the negative effects of the changing environment. As in the other research communities, the labor market was a major source of vulnerability in Commonwealth. Households responded to declining income by mobilizing the labor of additional household members. Access to both labor and human capital was central to households' capacity to endure economic change without irreversibly damaging their asset base. However resourceful and innovative individuals, households, and communities have been, these mechanisms have often been insufficient to offset the erosion of their asset base.

Access to Finance --- Banks and Banking Reform --- Communities & Human Settlements --- Environment --- Environmental Economics and Policies --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Housing and Human Habitats --- Population Policies