rafmacalaba/data-use-mentions-extended huggingface dataset:
self-discipline to enforce rules; and lack of coherence between sector specific rules and global rules in countries.

# **4.1. The design and practical effect of constitutional rules**

The functioning of democracy and separation of powers in a country are essential to understand the relationship between accountability and sector performance. Horizontal checks and balances—how the parliament should control the executive, for example—are fundamental principles of constitutional design and to a large extent, underestimated drivers of sector performance. Vertically, the control is manifested in election rules, a free press, access to information laws, and access to education. Countries have budget procedures that involve several governance institutions to secure consistency between development plans and actual spending. When these mechanisms are interfered with—for example if access to information about political decisions is blocked—the incumbent politicians can bias their sector decisions in line with their private agendas more easily.

There is striking variation across countries when it comes to political control procedures, how powers are separated between institutions, the clarity of the rules, and the enforcement of them.<sup>50</sup> Constitutional protection of human rights and control on political powers are not more than a façade in some countries. Other countries focus on constitutional weaknesses just to highlight the fact that it is their own rules that make it difficult to enforce democratic principles. Constitutional weaknesses may themselves be the result of private agendas. Torvik and Robinson (2008) explain presidentialism as endogenous by pointing at the incentives of incumbents in a parliamentarian system to move toward a more presidential system. Over the last decades many countries have tended to concentrate political power in the executive. Constitutional reforms have removed constraints on reelection of individual politicians, while fiscal reforms have provided the national level with relatively more authority on spending decisions compared

> 50 See the Open Budget Index <u>(http://www.openbudgetindex.org) for variation in control and transparency of budget</u> procedures.

18
Gerald Helleiner's chapter 27 discusses the role of multinationals, which have accounted for a large share of foreign private investment into developing countries. He highlights high transaction costs stemming from protracted and ultimately futile haggling over transfer prices, and efforts by developing countries to "unpackage" such choice tidbits as high technology know-how from the investment, countered by the efforts of multinationals to avoid commitment of their own money to the target country because this would weaken their bargaining position should their partner try to modify the original contract by threatening to make the investment unviable. This guerrilla war has been interspersed with truces as one or the other party made promises that it often did not keep; a climate of constant disputes has been more effective in generating bribes than in promoting development. Hopefully, the climate will improve.

The largely theoretical chapter by Squire discusses the project appraisal methodology which should guide public funds to the most fruitful uses; 24 out of 27 countries that were surveyed by the World Bank questionnaire had an office or offices charged with the evaluation of projects, but Little and Mirrlees39, cited in Jimenez's chapter, are probably right in stating that the sophisticated project evaluation method which they, Squire, and others have developed is little used; Jimenez acknowledges this as he concludes that "agencies such as the World Bank should make every effort to encourage developing countries to discount future net benefits and to use border prices for tradables40." Rodrik and Jimenez41 cite Kaufmann's re-estimate of rates of returns from 1,200 World Bank projects in 58 countries, which show that those returns are correlated with indicators of the quality of macro management. Whether the relation is causal is discussed below.

Anne Krueger highlights in chapter 40 the extremely poor record of investment in public enterprises, which have accounted for a large fraction of capital investments in many countries. Citing Bardhan, she mentions that "In India, for example, 62.1 percent of total "productive" capital and 26.7 percent of total labor in industry was in the
(MINUSMA).<sup>9</sup> Reaching an accord with so many players and interests at stake can be challenging and concessions need to be made that may lead to a narrow representation of elite interests at the expense of those of the population.

The 2011 World Development Report argues that elite pacts can provide short-term security but that violence often recurs unless the pact broadens and is accompanied by institutional transformation.<sup>10</sup> Thus distinctions have been drawn between inclusive and exclusive elite bargains, depending on the degree of integration of broad coalitions of key elites versus narrow coalitions in terms of access to state structures (e.g. jobs in the government and the army).<sup>11</sup> Elite pacts and peace agreements can bring an end to conflict and violence in the short-term, but if such horizontal pacts are not accompanied by inclusiveness and responsiveness along a more vertical dimension, societies remain vulnerable to the same tensions that brought about violence and instability in the first place.<sup>12</sup> Using household level data collected in northern Mali in August and September 2015, we explore whether the content of the 2015 Peace Accord is inclusive, i.e. whether it reflects the concerns and priorities of the people of the north or whether it is an agreement between elites who fail to represent the interests of the population at large. We look at how the actions outlined in the Peace Accord align with the priorities of local leaders and citizens in the north. We also explore whether the financing priorities reflected in the report of the Joint Assessment Mission (Mission d’évaluation conjointe, MIEC), which operationalizes the Peace Accord, align with priorities identified by households and their leaders.

> 9 Reeve, Richard (2015): Devils in the Detail: Implementing Mali’s New Peace Accord, Oxford Research Group, p. 3.

> 10 World Bank (2011) World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development, Washington
traveled along these various types of roads on that path were weighted with the associated costs.<sup>34</sup> Next, the fastest of all possible paths between two districts (the “accumulated least cost distance”) was computed using Dijkstra’s algorithm (Dijkstra (2022)). For this calculation, the centroid of the subdistrict with the highest population density within a district was chosen as the starting/ending point of that district.<sup>35</sup> Note that the resulting unit of this minimum travel time is not in hour, or minutes, but a km based measure.

We validated this method using Bing Maps travel time, comparing our 2011 estimate of the minimum travel time with the current travel time according to Bing Maps. Our method accounts for 95.7% of the variation in travel times of Bing maps using a random sample of 100 district pairs. Note that this method is similar to what Allen and Atkin (2022) use to link to location of highways to trade costs. It is likely to be an improvement over the more commonly used as-the-crow-flies distance (for example, in Madhok et al. (2024)) as it accounts for the variation in road connectivity within India.

We use the matrix of minimum travel time (in our weighted km unit) between districts in the construction of the instrumental variable.

> 34While the use of raster data allows us to do these tasks in a time-efficient manner; the method can result in district combinations which are not connected, that is, which have gaps in the roads. When computing the travel time we allowed for “jumps” assuming that our digitization/ process is imperfect.

> 35Using the centroid of the district was less satisfactory as it would often be separated from the road network by some distance.

57
, it is the first study to analyze the effect of political budget cycles on the size and composition of social protection expenditures in the COVID-19 stimulus. Our analysis shows that the predictions of the political budget cycles theory apply even during systemic shocks like a pandemic. Also, our study relies on cross-country, exogenous variation in the electoral cycle, a strategy that has not been used in the literature so far. The large and highly granular cross-country data sets on which the paper is based allow us to analyze compositional changes in the stimulus budget.

The paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the literature on the causes and main drivers of political budget cycles. Section 3 discusses the sources of data and presents descriptive 3
For enrollment, we first measure the number of pupils enrolled in _katchi –_ pre-primary – and Grade 1, according to school enrollment records at both baseline and endline. To measure the retention of students into upper grades, we also measure the number of pupils enrolled in the ensuing grades 2-5, using the same records.

For school infrastructure, we measure change in the number of classrooms, and whether a school has any of four key facilities that are important for a safe, secure and comfortable school environment: toilets, electricity, drinking water, and a boundary wall.<sup>31</sup> For availability of teachers, we first measure the average number of teachers registered at schools at endline. In addition, in recognition of the fact that the large number of one-teacher schools appears to be a central driver of school closures in Sindh, we also present the share of schools which have only one registered teacher. For teacher attendance, we measure the number of teachers present at schools during unannounced visits at baseline and endline<sup>32</sup> ; as well as the share of teachers absent during these visits, in comparison to the number registered at the school.

For learning outcomes, we measure IRT scores in Mathematics and English, based on the standardized tests described above.<sup>33</sup> We report findings from tests administered to children

> 31 Electricity, sanitation and water are particularly important given the prevalence of high temperatures in Pakistan, where temperatures during summer term periods can often reach upwards of 40°C, while a wall is important for student safety and to support student attendance (Andrabi et al., 2007).

> 32 Teacher presence and absence was measured at both surprise and announced visits; data from the unannounced visit were used except in 29 cases where the school was closed at the unannounced visit but open at the announced visit. The results are robust if restricted to the unannounced sample only.

> 33 The Sindhi test has a large number
the effect of corruption on their firm performance.

_Government Protection–safety_ . Foreign-owned firms appear to be much more sensitive to physical safety. When the Global Competitiveness Police System score is lower—that is, when the host country’s physical safety is worse—foreign-owned firms increase their security costs significantly more: 33 percent more (that is, -0.004 versus -0.003). This is consistent with the notion that because the return to physical safety is higher for foreign-owned firms (as demonstrated by a higher return from reducing Security Costs for foreign firms for log labor productivity, LP), they increase their investment in safety more when the local environment is worse.

_Human Capital_ . Similarly, foreign-owned and domestic firms do not differ significantly in their perception of skill obstacles (the Enterprise Survey’s Skill Obstacle mesure) when facing 20
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or renewal policies in selected areas. A more efficient risk sharing procedure would allow the capital markets to spread the risk among large numbers of investors to whom this exposure is a very small portion of their total risk exposure" (Goldman Sachs: Fixed Income Research Series on Insurance Linked Securities).

Professor Kenneth Froot of Harvard University, similarly points out some aspects of these market inefficiencies and why catastrophe risk is distributed inefficiently: "Another reason institutional arrangements may be inefficient is that the lack of objective information acts as a kind of barrier to entry. When objective information is costly to assemble, a greater investment is required to get into the underwriting business. Indeed, when objective information is in short supply, markets tend to be organized around relationships and reputation. By contrast, when objective information is plentiful, markets tend to be organized around transactions, with the players being more interchangeable. Because newcomers are discouraged from entering the market, the incumbents who specialize in underwriting cat risks, such as cat-risk reinsurers, can more easily charge high prices" (The Market for Catastrophic Risk: A Clinical Examination, August 1999).

However, information can be improved through institutional strengthening to increase the collection and dissemination of critical information. In the U.S. for example, the Insurance Services Office enables insurers to achieve and share economies of scale in the collection and analysis of data. Such institutions contribute to improved underwriting and pricing decisions on the part of individual insurers by making pooled data and analyses of pooled data widely available.

# **Global Reinsurance Capacity and the Caribbean Market**

1999 was the third highest loss year in terms of insured losses from catastrophes ($18 billion) with associated economic losses of $80 billion. Similarly, 1998 was the fourth highest loss year in terms of catastrophes causing global insured losses amounting to $15 billion and overall economic losses of $94 billion. This compares to catastrophe insured losses of approximately $27 billion in 1992 and $18.4 billion in 1994
entrepreneurial activities by increasing both the ongoing costs of doing business and the uncertainty in the future (Djankov et al., 2004).<sup>8</sup> Based on firm-level studies, the effective corporate tax rate has a large adverse impact on entrepreneurial activities (Djankov et al. 2010), the perception of high taxes has a negative effect on the growth expectations of small firms in Lithuania (Aidis and Mickiewicz 2006)), and corruption has a significantly negative impact on firm productivity for Chinese firms (Cai et al. 2011).

Third, since the political connections of firms are a natural consequence of strong government power, to capture government power (and likely government expropriation), we also measure political connections and consider their determinants and likely effects. To overcome the obstacles introduced by institutional imperfections, entrepreneurs in developing countries actively cultivate political connections with the government and local officials, which helps them secure favorable regulatory conditions (Faccio 2005) and gain access to resources such as bank loans (Khwaja and Mian 2005; Li et al., 2008; Cull et al. 2014). However, if using political connections to do business is routinized by local entrepreneurs, it will create additional barriers for local institutions to evolve from relation-based governance to rule-based governance, as those connected entrepreneurs benefitting from the status quo would become vested interest groups of the current governance system and have the incentive to maintain or even further strengthen their positions (Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson, 2005). Furthermore, with sufficient support from connected entrepreneurs, and with abundant rents to share under this system, the central government would have few incentives to reform the _de jure_ property rights protection system.

As a result, we expect the progress in property rights institutions and in restraining government expropriation to be slow, and that the prevalence of political connections may worsen the adverse effects of government expropriation and regulation discussed above. Thus, we have the following hypotheses:

**Hypothesis 1.** The overall BE for Chinese firms has
that seven utilities used IBTs, one used geographically defined tariffs with IBTs, one used a uniform volumetric tariff, and three used means-tested discounts. For the electricity sector, four of 12 cases</mark>

> 5 We were able to nearly match all our observations of electricity private connections to the electricity utility database. In addition, we were able to match 70% of our observations of private water connections to the water utility database; for the remaining 30%, we relied on customer self-reports and back-calculations.

7
into the potential heterogeneities across the six regions, Figure 12 shows in addition to the rural-urban divide a north-south divide at a regional level. The highest share of children not in school, hence, the lowest school enrollment rates are observed for rural children of any age groups in the North-East and the North-West, with the shares comparing the third GHS wave and the MICS data being relatively close. Moreover, similar to the rural-urban observations discussed in relation to the national level findings, children in the North-East and North-West seem to start attending school at a later age but not facing such a surge in non-attendance in the older age categories at the children in South. Besides, school dropout rates from the middle to the oldest age category appear to rise faster in the rural areas than in the urban areas in the North East and North-West, whereas the reverse seems to hold in the North-Central and South-West, and to a lesser extent also in the South-East and South-South where there is a surge in non-enrollment rates in the urban areas for the oldest children. Further research may want 25
br>-5<br>-10<br>Burkina Faso Cote d'Ivoire Liberia Mali Senegal<br>improved water improved sanitation<br>% change<br><!-- End of picture text --> Source: WHO–Joint Monitoring Programme 2010, from Demographic and Health Surveys.

# Power

# **Achievements**

Mali’s installed generation capacity is almost evenly split between hydropower and oil. It was dominated by oil generation (60 percent) until the start of operation of the dam in Manantali in 2002, after which hydropower accounted for the majority of generation. As demand has increased since 2004, 24
Figure A6: Predicted mobility around transit stations in countries not covered by Google trends.

<!-- Start of picture text --> DZA TUN<br>100 20 100 20<br>80 80<br>0 0<br>60 60<br>-20 -20<br>40 40<br>-40 -40<br>20 20<br>0 -60 0 -60<br>01/01 01/03 01/05 01/07 01/01 01/03 01/05 01/07<br>Stringency of lockdown restrictions<br>Predicted mobility around transit stations<br>Stringency of lockdown measures Google mobility index (baseline = 0) Stringency of lockdown measures Google mobility index (baseline = 0)<br><!-- End of picture text --> 47
The increase of RES in total generation could be caused by higher utilization of existing capacity as well as the addition of new capacity. Figure A. 5 suggests that installed capacity does not change much during our study period. Wind and solar capacity have slightly increased in all regions. Figure A. 4 displays histograms of the RES share of daily generation in the two-year periods before and since the beginning of the pandemic. All regions except for Brazil see a shift to the right in the distribution, implying that RES accounts for more electricity generation in the post-pandemic era. This effect could be due to COVID stimulus or recovery packages, pre-existing trends, or market forces. The decrease in Brazil’s RES share can be explained by the severe drought of 2021, when Brazil received the lowest rainfall in the last 91 years.

# _2.2 COVID severity_

We considered a total of four candidate indicators that capture the severity of the pandemic. The first is a simple time dummy denoting the pre-pandemic era and the pandemic era. This time dummy takes on a value of 0 before March 15, 2020, and 1 thereafter. Two additional indicators are new cases per million and new deaths per million, obtained from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). The average number of cases per million was 67, with a maximum of 3,197, while the average number of deaths per million was 1.2 in our sample. However, economic activity is more directly impacted by mitigation measures than by COVID-19 cases or mortality. Many countries adopted partial or total lockdowns, including travel bans, since the first wave of the pandemic. The time when these restrictions were subsequently lifted varies across the countries.

Our study captures these attributes through stringency indices developed by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, which documents and compares worldwide government policy responses to the coronavirus using well-defined and consistent criteria across countries and over time. The stringency index is a composite index that combines different indicators of a
- In **Somalia** , the Mogadishu Household Survey covered both residential areas and IDP camps, collecting data on expenditures, demographics and living conditions [survey completed; analysis forthcoming]. As part of the Somalia Knowledge for Operations and Political Economy (SKOPE) initiative, the Puntland Household Survey will also cover both residential and IDP populations [ongoing].

- An IDP study in **South Sudan** [ongoing] aims to assess the economic needs of IDPs and host communities in urban areas, covering livelihoods, water and sanitation, infrastructure as well as intentions and conditions to return. Basic information about education, employment and general health variables will also be collected.

- The **Iraq** Crisis Response Study [ongoing] will assess the impact of the Islamic State and oil price-related crises on IDPs and households left behind in IS controlled areas. The study will conduct an ex-ante microsimulation using pre-crisis household data (IHSES 2012) and macroeconomic projections for 2014 to gauge the distributional impact of the crises across groups (e.g. individuals and/or households, sectors, IDPs and host communities) and space (e.g. urban/rural, governorates).

- The Economic and Social Impact Assessment for **Kurdistan Region of Iraq** [completed in 2015] provides an analysis of the impact of displaced people on access to and quality of service delivery across several sectors.

- The **Lebanon** Economic and Social Impact Assessment of the Syria Conflict [completed in 2013] provides an analysis of the impact of displaced people on access to and quality of service delivery across several sectors.

- The Bank and UNHCR undertook a welfare assessment of Syrian refugees living in **Jordan and Lebanon** [completed in 2016] focusing on welfare, poverty and vulnerability. The study: (i) compares the socioeconomic profile of refugees with that of the Syrian population before the crisis and with the hosting populations of Jordan and Lebanon; (ii) provides a welfare and