rafmacalaba/data-use-mentions-extended huggingface dataset:
in wealth-poor households are quite strongly positively correlated with GDP per capita (r=0.77 for the poorest 20% and r=0.67 for 40%), but this is not the case for underweight women (r=-0.01 and r=-0.17 respectively) or wasted children (r=-0.20 and r=-0.21 respectively). All six measures of the shares of nutritionally vulnerable women and children are positively correlated with the female literacy rate, though not all are statistically significant; r=0.31 and 0.30 for underweight women and the poorest 20% and 40% respectively, while r=0.42 and 0.34 for stunted children and r=0.20 and 0.15 for wasted children. There are no significant correlations with access to water and sanitation. Nor did the regressions reveal any sign of significant partial correlations

> 29 This is also evident in the data for stunting in Africa assembled by Bredenkamp et al. (2014) (see the Africa data points in their Figure 1), although across all developing countries Bredenkamp et al. find that inequalities in stunting are greater in countries where stunting is more prevalent. Evidently Africa is different in this respect, though the reason is unclear. 30 For the shares of underweight women and stunted children in the poorest 20% the partial correlations are only significant at about the 10% level, while they are significant at the 5% level in all other cases.

19
20 get more or less allocations), and budget implementation (whether the allocations translated into better services or outcomes) appears to be almost entirely missing.

There _is_ evidence on a specific type of budget information which was pioneered in the education sector in Uganda. Purposefully designed survey instruments—named the Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS)—were used to measure discrepancies between budget allocations to schools in Uganda, and what actually reached the schools (Reinikka and Svensson, 2004). One study argues that the publication in mass media of estimated “leakage” in the flow of funds led to dramatic improvements, with most of the intended funds reaching the schools subsequent to the information campaign (Reinikka and Svensson, 2005). In this argument, accountability for the flow of funds improved because of addressing information gaps among parents in schools, and thus enabling them to exercise their client power _vis a vis_ district authorities responsible for transferring funds to schools.

Following the celebrated success of the Uganda case there has been a proliferation of PETS activities, and external investments in strengthening the capacity of civil society organizations to undertake such surveys to uncover and publicize “leakage” and thereby stem it. More qualitative evaluations of these efforts suggest that they can be frequently successful in getting the funds to reach the intended destinations, although to a lesser degree than the estimates in Uganda (McGee and Gaventa, 2010).

However, alternate arguments about the drivers of success in the Uganda case indicate that the client-power channel was only part of the story. Hubbard (2007) examines larger changes in school funding policies in the Ugandan Ministry of Education, and suggests that the information that activated client-power may have been only one element in increasing the amount of resources available in schools; that other, perhaps larger, elements consisted of strengthening of the compact between the Ministry and the districts following President Museveni’s 1996 election campaign in which free and universal primary education was a prominent agenda. This argument thus suggests that pressures working through the politics relationship led to a
# **1 Introduction**

Emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) increasingly attract interest from private equity investors seeking high returns. However, data on returns to these investments remain underexplored, especially sector-specific performance, owing to data limitations. Using data from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) over the past 60 years, our paper is the first to present sectoral equity returns across EMDEs, including finance, technology, and resource-intensive industries such as mining. Although previous research on EMDEs has predominantly focused on overall private equity performance, this study explores sectoral returns and examines key macroeconomic drivers, such as economic growth and the real exchange rate.

Since Kaplan and Schoar (2005), the private equity returns literature has commonly used the S&P 500 index as a benchmark against public markets, using metrics like the Public Market Equivalent (PME), for evaluating private equity performance. Building on Cole et al. (2024), this paper expands on that framework by exploring how private equity returns in EMDEs compare to public market indices. In this study, we apply the PME to compare performance against the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which permits a comparison of returns on private equities versus publicly listed companies in the same country.<sup>1</sup> Our exploration of returns across different sectors finds that some industries, such as technology and finance, exhibited particularly strong performance during the sample period. These results add depth to our understanding of sectoral dynamics within EMDEs by providing a more granular view of private equity returns in these markets. Enhancing the transparency of private equity data in EMDEs also offers investors and policy makers a clearer understanding of equity returns across different sectors within these economies.

We also examine the relative importance of firm-specific, sector, and country factors. Firmspecific factors account for the largest share of variation of returns, far surpassing the influences of country and sectoral aspects. Indeed, the role of idiosyncratic firm factors is greater than in studies for publicly listed equities. Using data from 12 European countries
Policy Research Working Paper 10903

# **Abstract**

The Syrian Civil War in 2011 led to a substantial influx of refugees into Jordan, with more than 660,000 Syrians arriving by 2015. More than half of these refugees were of working age. This study shows that Syrian refugees have less education than their Jordanian counterparts, and policies attempted to help them to assimilate into manufacturing. The study tests two hypotheses related to refugee assimilation. The first hypothesis examines the 2016 Jordan Compact with the European Union, which aimed to integrate Syrian refugees and improve Jordan’s export profile with simplified rules of origin for certain industries. If the Jordan Compact was effective, a relative increase in exports to the European Union, compared to other regions, would be expected. The second hypothesis suggests that the successful integration of Syrian workers into the manufacturing sector contributed to a boost in manufacturing exports to all destinations relative to other exports. The study conducts a gravity difference-in-differences analysis to evaluate these two hypotheses. The findings show little, if any, evidence supporting the first hypothesis but strong support for the second. These findings suggest that although the simplified rules of origin had limited impact on exports to the European Union, the Jordanian government effectively integrated Syrian workers into the manufacturing sector. Labor force surveys indicate that a skill mismatch impeded the integration of Syrian workers into the industries targeted by the Jordan Compact, but refugees were successfully assimilated into the manufacturing industry.

This paper is a product of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at gacevedo@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings
Although empirical studies on the relationship between civil and political rights and economic development are far from conclusive, many of them find that freedom in all its economic, civil and political dimensions tends to favor economic growth and stability. Burkhart and Lewis-Black (1994) provide support to Lipset (1959)’s hypothesis that increasing income rises the probability of a country choosing a democratic system. The mechanism of this linkage is through a growing middle class and social mobility created by economic growth, which in turn leads to growing demand for political rights and civil liberties. Calderón (2000) shows that improvements in the institutional framework have a positive influence on economic growth, especially in poor countries. Sah (1991) observes that authoritarian regimes exhibit a larger variance in economic performance than democracies, while Isham and others (1997) find that substantial violations of civil and political rights are related to lower economic growth. More recently, Blume and Voigt (2005), using a comprehensive set of human rights data, show that high levels of economic freedom and civil and political rights are significantly conducive to economic growth and welfare. None of the four groups of rights they use is ever found to have a significant negative impact on their various economic variables: basic human rights and property rights are conducive to investment, while property rights, civil rights and emancipatory rights are found to have a discernible impact on productivity gains. In their survey on economic freedom, Hanke and Walters (1997) conclude that while both economic freedom and civil and political freedom contribute significantly to prosperity, gains in economic freedom have a “prosperity dividend” that is three to six times greater than that which would be obtained from comparable gains in civil and political freedom. In their more recent empirical survey, de Haan, Lundström and Sturm (2006) note that political liberalization is often found to enhance economic liberalization, whereas there is less evidence for causality running in the other direction.

Looking more directly at the effect of democratization, Barro (1997) observes that democracy has
Policy Research Working Paper 6028

# **Abstract**

Procurement packaging has important effects on not only the bidders’ bidding behavior, but also contractors’ performance. By changing the size of public contracts, procurers can encourage (or discourage) market competition and improve contract performance, avoiding unnecessary cost overruns and project delays. In practice, there is no single solution about how to package public contracts. With procurement data from road projects in Nepal, this paper examines the optimal size of road contracts in rural areas. The optimum varies depending on policy objectives. To maximize the bidder participation, the length of road should be about 11 kilometers. To minimize cost overruns and delays, the contracts should be much larger at 17 and 21 kilometers, respectively. Compared with the current procurement practices, the findings suggest that procurers take more advantage of enlarging road packages, although contracts that are too large may increase the risk of discouraging firms from participating in public tenders.

This paper is a product of the Office of the Chief Economist, Sustainable Development Network; and Transport Unit, South Asia Region It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http:// econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at aiimi@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they
PD = Domestic price of sugarcane RR = Sugar recovery rate per quintal of sugarcane

**PM** = Reference price of molasses

PD= Domestic price of molasses a = Molasses recovery per quintal of sugar = 0.48 in UP, 0.35 in Maharashtra, 0.43 in Tamil Nadu.

I= Cost of intermediate inputs in reference prices PR = Cost of intermediate inputs in domestic prices In order to estimate the cost of tradable inputs in sugar milling, Goldar and Gulati used state-wise cost data for sugar factories for the year 1983-84 published in the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI). They then estimated the weighted average nominal protection of twelve items that accounted for the dominant part of the intermediate input cost. These are: coal, coke, motor spirit, diesel oil, fuel oil, lubricating oil, lime, limestone, sulfur, and gunny bags. Price indices and other information were then used to separately estimate the cost of these tradeable inputs and their nominal protection in each of the three states for each of the years 1981 to 1989. However, the total cost of tradable inputs was only around 10 percent of the total processing margin in most years, and for the long term estimates we simply projected Goldar and Gulati's results for 1984 forwards and backwards using the wholesale price index and assuming the same NPC (1.22) in every year over the entire period as they estimated for 1984. This is clearly not accurate but the resulting errors in the reference processing margin are too small to justify more detailed research When Goldar and Gulati used the above formula to compute the reference prices of sugar cane, during the period of very low world prices between 1985 and 1987, under the exportable hypothesis they turned out to be very low or even negative. If the prices of sugarcane were to fall to these very low levels farmers would not grow it at all, and there would be no counterfactual price against which protection could be measured. To avoid this, Goldar and Gulati (p
income gap but maintains a decreasing trend over time (Table 4). Interestingly, in 2020-2021, the gap turned favorable to women. This difference can be explained by the growth of the men CEO effect, capturing a gap component outside the common support. Furthermore, the unexplained gap experiences a 1- percentage-point reduction between 2019 and 2021, contributing to gap narrowing. The common support remains around 60% in each period, a significant proportion that supports the exercise in calculating gaps between comparable populations.

While estimates of hourly labor income are standard in the literature, capturing the returns of the production process unaffected by part-time work, we also examined the dynamics of the gap with monthly earnings. The Oaxaca-Blinder monthly estimates reveal a substantial growth in the gap compared to hourly estimations (29.3% on average, 2019-2021), primarily driven by the unexplained component (Figure 34). This gap consistently decreased since 2015, even during the pandemic. Notably, the reduction in the gap has been mainly due to a decrease in men's labor income rather than favorable reasons. Reviewing differences in coefficients, a significant gap estimated for the number of hours worked closes over time, aligning with the overall gap narrowing. In terms of the explained component (Table 5), it is evident that hours worked is an endowment favoring the gap for men (19% in 2015, 14% in 2021), while for women, education,

> 9 Changing social norms may not effectively address gender bias. Research by Tribin et al. (2022) using Colombian data shows that 70% believe women are suited for domestic work, despite women spending more time on caregiving. Improved working conditions, education, and income correlate with greater autonomy for women.
Villages**|**Difference between control**<br>**and treatment villages**|
|---|---|---|---|

> 15 High-value crops are all crops except cereals and millets.

> 16According to Census (2011), the Work Participation Rate is defined as the ratio of the total number of workers in the workforce (who have worked in the reference period of the last 12 months) to the total population. Due to the limitations in the survey tool, we cannot report on the often discussed labor force participation rate (LFPR).

> 17 In fact, the rate was slightly lower in treatment areas.

> 18 This table is only for illustrative purpose to explain the results and provide the policy context. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the data we cannot estimate the standard error of the difference in WPR between Census 2011 and household survey 201617

16
# **6. Concluding Remarks**

Following the end of the Cold War, multidimensional peacekeeping operations have been implemented to facilitate the transition from war to peace in Africa. Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs have been an essential component of this process. These programs aim at “disarming combatants, removing them from military structures, and socially and economically integrating them into society” (World Bank 2009).

Burundi is recovering from a civil war that lasted more than a decade. The armed conflict ended in 2009 with the voluntary demobilization of the last Hutu rebel group, the PalipehutuFNL. In exchange for laying down their arms, ex-combatants received reinsertion allowances equivalent to an 18-month salary in the army. Four years before, another Hutu rebel group, the CNDD-FDD, benefited from the same allocations, and additionally received in-kind payments.

In this paper, we assessed the impact of this disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program by analyzing a panel dataset collected in 2006 and 2010 in three rural provinces heavily affected by the conflict. Our objectives were to assess the short- and long-run impacts of the demobilization program on ex-combatants economic outcomes but also to capture the spillovers to civilian households.

Our empirical analysis highlighted the positive and significant impact of the demobilization program on ex-combatant households in the short run. The large amounts of money that were introduced in the local economy through the demobilization program generated an economic boom in the short run. As a result, households that did not participate actively in the conflict also indirectly gained from the demobilization program. In the long run, however, the positive impact of the DDR on beneficiaries and the positive externalities on nonbeneficiaries seem to have vanished as the money received by demobilized ex-combatants ran low.

The conclusions of our empirical analysis should be considered by policymakers while implementing DDR processes in other regions. In the short run, the positive direct effect of the DDR program shows that the program indeed provides a safety net to ex-combatants. The positive spillovers further show that the program does not only benefit beneficiaries but
Figure A.2: Validation with SICONFI data: verification phase, by function <!-- Start of picture text --> CE MG<br>10000 100000<br>7500 75000<br>5000 50000<br>2500 25000<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25> <-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>PB PR<br>30000<br>8000<br>6000 20000<br>4000<br>10000<br>2000<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25> <-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>RS SP<br>30000 60000<br>20000 40000<br>10000 20000<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25> <-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>% difference from SICONFI data % difference from SICONFI data<br>Frequency<br>Frequency Frequency<br>Frequency<br><!-- End of picture text -->

**Notes:** This figure presents the percentage difference of verification data from the budget execution dataset in relation to data on verified expenses from SICONFI, as described in Section 3.

Figure A.3: Validation with SICONFI data: payment phase, by function <!-- Start of picture text --> CE MG<br>6000 80000<br>60000<br>4000<br>40000<br>2000<br>20000<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25
Figure 4: Validation with SICONFI data - verification <!-- Start of picture text --> CE MG<br>4000<br>1000<br>3000<br>2000<br>500<br>1000<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25> <-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>PB PE<br>1000 600<br>750<br>400<br>500<br>200<br>250<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25> <-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>PR RS<br>800 1500<br>600<br>1000<br>400<br>200 500<br>0 0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25> <-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>SP % difference from SICONFI data<br>6000<br>4000<br>2000<br>0<br><-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25><br>% difference from SICONFI data<br>Frequency<br>Frequency<br>Frequency<br>Frequency<br><!-- End of picture text -->

**Notes:** This figure presents the percentage deviation in total amount of budget verifications, at the municipality-year level, between our dataset and SICONFI, the public finance dataset of the Brazilian Treasury. Values are positive whenever the total amount in our dataset, aggregated from individual verifications, is larger than that of SICONFI. See Table 1
the grid.

# **6.1 – Areas for Future Work**

An important area of future work is to establish the likelihood of future disruptions to power systems from region specific threats. In particular, electrical distribution grids were found to be generally vulnerable to many natural hazards, but wind in particular. Historical wind data is available at high spatial and temporal resolution for much of the world. This can be used to identify regions where electrical grids would be at significant risk and to advise building and maintenance standards to ensure their resiliency. Climatological predictions for future rainfall and temperature also available and can be used to inform where cooling water might become limited. Similarly, historical data on wildfires can be used to identify regions at particular risk for these events. These predictive data can be used to design better systems, and to inform ‘build back better’ efforts.

Additional case studies on geography specific natural hazard events should also be undertaken. Several cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and South America cite aging, failing or inadequate energy infrastructure as ongoing considerations. Additional case study work for these locations could help inform the best techno-economic approach to increasing resilience. Appendix F contains information on some developing regions of the world that are of interest for future work. This includes a list of severe natural hazard events (Table F-1) and a list of geographic regions with regions of interest for case study work based on hazard exposure and an infrastructure gap (Table F-2). As an example, Lagos, Nigeria has over 20 million persons, lacks critical power, and other, infrastructure and is prone to natural hazard events including flooding and sea level rise (Gandhi 2018; Soleye 2015; Business Journal 2017; 100 Resilient Cities 2018b; Busari and Osman 2017). Kigali, Rwanda cites similar issues regarding infrastructure, energy shortages, and exposure to flood, droughts, and severe storms (Byumvuhore 2018; May and Kamurase 2009; 100 Resilient Cities 2018a; Al Jazeera 2018; Davis 2017).

29