rafmacalaba/data-use-mentions-extended huggingface dataset:
# **5. Conclusion**

This paper analyzes the impact of improving the efficiency of the government investment program on growth and employment in the Republic of Congo. The middle-income country disposes of a large amount of resources, mostly stemming from oil, but faces serious developmental challenges. One of the main constraints is the lack of provision of reliable infrastructure by the government. The authorities have, therefore, embarked on an ambitious investment plan to improve basic service provision, particularly targeting the transport and energy sectors. However, the capacity of the government to implement these infrastructure projects efficiently can be called into question, especially in the light of the recent very low ranking of the Republic of Congo in the Public Investment Management Index.

The results of the analysis show that the management of public investments is critical to maximize the impact of using the resource wealth of the Republic of Congo. Different scenarios have been developed to compare the effect of scaled-up infrastructure investments on employment and growth, depending on their timing and efficiency. By ensuring higher efficiency while slightly delaying investments, an increase in average annual growth rates by up to 1.3 percent can be realized.

A second set of simulations addresses the question in which sector resources that are freed by increased government efficiency should be invested. The results of the MAMS demonstrate the linkages and synergies between the different sectors. However, trade-offs between higher growth and improved social indicators need to be taken into account when considering spending on social sectors versus spending on infrastructure.

Recent efforts by the Congolese government to improve public finance management including procurement are steps in the right direction. However, in order to use the country's resources effectively and efficiently, public investment management needs to be improved in all areas of the project cycle.

14
- In the _Czech Republic,_ the minimum wage has been increased with the aim to reduce under-declaration of wages. This policy appears to have not achieved its objective.

- In _Slovakia_ , the increase in the minimum wage may have acted as an incentive for undeclared work, particularly in small firms and low-wage sectors, although there is no clear empirical evidence for such an impact.

- In _Estonia, Lithuania, and Slovenia_ , there appears to be no evidence for a major impact of the minimum wage on undeclared work; in these countries the minimum wage is relatively low and relatively few workers are on the minimum wage.

- In _Bulgaria_ , minimum wage earners are exempt from social insurance  contributions. While this reduces the costs of transition from informal to formal work, it provides incentives to underdeclare wages in order to benefit from this exemption.

- In _Romania_ , the minimum wage is regarded as helpful in reducing under-declaration of earnings. A higher minimum wage has been introduced for workers with high educational attainment. This measure is aimed to reduce under-declaration of earnings by higher skilled workers.

# **13.3 Regulatory burden for doing business**

101. Countries that are reforming their tax systems with the aim to combat undeclared work are unlikely to be successful if at the same time the regulatory burden and administrative costs on business remain high and the quality of government institutions remains poor. Strict regulations on business activity, such as barriers to entrepreneurship including administrative burdens on start-ups and restrictive labor codes, constrain job creation in the formal sector and push firms and workers into informality. The new EU member countries have made much progress in improving conditions for doing business. For example, Estonia has reduced administrative burdens with the help of e-services for taxpayers. In Slovakia, the procedures for starting new business have been simplified. According to the 2009 World Bank ́s Doing Business report, which covers 10 indicator sets in 181 countries, the regulatory environment for business is - among our country group - most favorable in Estonia, Lithuania, and
only represents the wage of those who make the bare legal minimum: it also provides the "floor" for the salary grids negotiated between trade unions and employers. However, none of these two predictions holds true in the cases of C6te d'Ivoire and Senegal, which are the two biggest economies in the region and also, arguably, the ones with the most distorted labor markets.

The conventional wisdom is rejected based on data from the consumer price indexes of Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal. While the BDFs of these two countries provide information on average labor costs in their formal sectors, there is indeed no similar, readily-available source for labor earnings in the informal sector. But the consumption bundles used to calculate consumer price indexes include a few personal services whose production involves little more than labor. To the extent that these services are provided by individuals or micro-enterprises, they are not likely to be directly affected by labor market regulations. Fluctuations in their prices can therefore be expected to follow closely those of labor earnings in the informal sector.

To minimize the possibility of a measurement bias, the focus of the empirical analysis is on services whose prices are defined based on output units, rather than on the corresponding labor inputs. When labor units are used, there is a risk that the statistical offices report the SMIG or some specific minimum wage set in collective agreements, rather than the actual labor cost, as the relevant information source. This is what happens in practice with the prices of domestic service and cooking in the consumer price index of Cote d'Ivoire. Moreover, even if the statistical offices did gather the data from the actual providers of these services, the latter could declare fake wages to hide non-compliance with labor regulations. But there should be no such biases when the unit of measurement is the price of a hair-cut, or the cost of a laundry for a double-bed sheet. To the extent that no legal minimum price exists for these services, there are no incentives to report fake prices either. These
# **Figure 6 Ratio of liquid liabilities to GDP in six middle‐income countries, 2000–15**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 160%<br>140%<br>120%<br>Egypts<br>100%<br>South Africa<br>80%<br>Turkey<br>60% Morocco<br>40% Malaysia<br>20% Thailand<br>0%<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Source:_ Data from the World Bank’s Financial Structure Database (2017).

# _Competitiveness of the Egyptian banking sector_

The spread between the lending and deposit rates fluctuated by about 5 percentage points in Egypt over the last four decades (figure 7). The largest spread was 8.3 percent, in 1992; the smallest was 3.7 percent, in 1998. These figures suggest that despite reforms and the liberalization of the banking sector, the sector’s competitiveness has remained steady.

# **Figure 7 Net interest rate spread in Egypt, 1976–2016**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 25%<br>20%<br>15%<br>10%<br>5%<br>0%<br>Deposit interest rate (%)<br>Lending interest rate (%)<br>Net interest rate spread % (Lending interest rate ‐ Deposit interest rate)<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Source_ : Data from IFS (2017).

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period as Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz and Guerrero all move closer to the vertical line at 1 in the X axis. This causes an extension of the kernel toward the vertical that suggests convergence in income. Nevertheless, we still observe the presence of clear outliers and the alignment along the 45 degree line of the majority of the central states indicating a high degree of spatial independence overall.

The kernel using distance to the US (not shown) is similar to that using the bands but the results are less clearly delineated. This arises mainly because the south is split in two leaving the poor states of Chiapas and Oaxaca associated with the far richer states of Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo and Yucatan.

In sum, the convergence clubs suggested in figures 3a and 3b partially map into border and southern regions of Mexico. However, there are no other obvious other patterns of spatial association or clustering in the rest of the country. For any of our definitions of space, northern and central states mostly align along the 45 degree line showing little resemblance with their neighborhoods.

_Parametric measures of spatial dependence_ To establish whether the patterns suggested by the spatially conditioned kernels are statistically significant we turn to the Moran statistics. Figure 5 plots Moran’s I normal standardized values for the period 1970-2002 for the three different definitions of space considered, as well as the standard deviation of the GDP per capita for the same period as a measure of sigma convergence. What is immediately clear is that, viewing Mexico as a whole, spatial dependence in income levels has increased along with the sigma divergence after a period when both had fallen. The contiguity based neighborhood most closely track the standard deviation (with a correlation coefficient of 0.85), but the other neighborhoods arguably also follow a similar pattern, albeit, less clearly. The relatively subtle indications of spatial dependence suggested in the kernels emerge as statistically significant in the Moran test, most notably, consistent with the kernels above, in the bands measure that most clearly captures the border and southern
# 1 Introduction

Both fertility and HIV prevalence rates in Malawi are among the highest in the world, with the total fertility rate at 5.7 births per woman and the HIV prevalence rate at 10.6 percent.<sup>1</sup> Malawian women make fertility decisions in an environment characterized by high adult and child mortality, exacerbated by mother-to-child HIV transmission. Out of a population of about 15 million, it is estimated that 68,000 die annually from AIDS and that 560,000 children under the age of 17 have lost at least one parent to the disease.<sup>2</sup> There are many policy interventions aimed at reducing HIV in Malawi and other SubSaharan African countries. These include HIV testing programs, information campaigns, and antiviral distribution programs. Evaluating the eects of such policies on outcomes such as number of births, child mortality, and orphan-hood requires an understanding of how women's fertility decisions are aected by the presence of HIV.

An important aspect of the environment in Malawi is that women are typically uncertain regarding their own HIV status. An infected person can live for many years with no symptoms, and testing was not widely available until relatively recently. The median survival time after infection, without treatment, is about 10.4 years.<sup>3</sup> During most of this time, an infected person is in a clinical latency stage and experiences few or no symptoms.<sup>4</sup> In addition to being uncertain about own HIV status, women often express beliefs about HIV risk that dier substantially from actual risk. Studies using the Malawi Diusion and Ideational Change Project data show that individuals in rural Malawi tend to overestimate both the probability of being HIV-infected (Anglewicz and Kohler, 2009) and the HIV prevalence in their community (Anglewicz, 2007). Anglewicz and Kohler (2009) attribute these high risk assessments to overestimated probabilities of transmission. More than 95 percent
|Week|ly Working|Hours|
||(1)|(2)|(3)|(1)|(2)|(3)|
|Treat _×_ Post2007|-0.111<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|-0.115<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|-0.097<sup>_∗∗∗_</sup>|-0.731|-0.654|-0.734|
||(0.037)|(0.032)|(0.030)|(0.782)|(0.804)|(0.745)|
|R-squared|0.204|0.403|0.429|0.218|0.230|0.271|
|Observations|9,951|9,951|9,951|9,951|9,951|9,951|
|Demographic controls|No|Yes|Yes|No|Yes|Yes|
|Year FE|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Province & Industry FE|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Province _×_ Year|No|No|Yes|No|No|Yes|

_Source_ : Iranian Households Income and Expenditures Surveys (HIES). Note: The table presents estimated coefficients of _T reat × P ost_ 2007 ( _γ_ in equation (1)) for household income, wage rates, and weekly working hours for the respective model specification. Dependent variables (total income, labor income, and wage rates) are log transformed and deflated by consumer price index (CPI) which equals 100 in year 2011. The time period for household income (total and labor income) is 1995â2013. The time period for wage rates and weekly working hours is 2006â2013 because weekly working hours are not
(potentially temporary) reductions in labor. This cost makes the employment protection program valuable to firms.

Competitive banks price loans at zero profit based on a common cost of capital, an intermediation cost also capturing banks’ willingness to lend, and default risk. Default is costly, which entails the loss of a fraction _μ_ of firm revenues. Thus, priced competitively, interest rates reflect _ex ante_ default risks and therefore vary by debt, equity, expected revenue productivity, the labor endowment of the firm, and revenue productivity risk, _σε_<sup>2.Inthe</sup> baseline, banks are constrained by a regulatory cap of 20% on annual interest rates.<sup>70</sup> To quantify aggregate outcomes, we assume that firm-level heterogeneity in equity, labor, productivity, and risk follows a joint log normal distribution, with productivity, equity, and labor positively correlated. We calibrate the key technological and distributional parameters to match pre-COVID data, disciplining 11 parameters to fit 12 empirical moments related to interest rates, default rates, the distributions of sales, debt over sales, debt over equity, labor growth, and labor over equity, as detailed in Appendix D.

> 67We abstract from informational frictions and follow the literature on firm finance with endogenous default (e.g., Cooley and Quadrini, 2001; Covas and Den Haan, 2012; Gilchrist et al., 2014). Given the suddenness of the pandemic, we model a static problem with firm equity and labor stocks taken as given.

> 68We use the term equity in the model to be consistent with the existing literature of firm finance with endogenous default. But equity is equivalent to net worth (i.e., assets minus debt), as used in the empirical part of the paper.

> 69The fixed proportions assumption is natural given the short-term, unexpected nature of our analysis and is also simplifying, yielding ∆ _l_ = _ψ_ ( _e_ + _b_ ) _− l_ . We abstract from explicit
intensity. GVC participation measures to date are only available at the sector or firm level for a given country. However, recent work has introduced new measures of income and job activities in exports where activity is defined as a sector-occupation pair (Kruse et al., 2023).

> 4 Reijnders and de Vries (2018) combine input-output data to decompose changes in occupational labor demand along the value chain, but their methodology does not allow differentiation between intensities of GVC participation.

> 5 Other strands of literature relating globalization to the demand for workers in routine jobs study the effects of global trade (Autor et al., 2015), the China trade shock on local labor markets (Aghelmaleki et al., 2022; Autor et al., 2013, 2016), as well as offshoring (Autor et al., 2016; Baumgarten et al., 2013; Ebenstein et al., 2014; Goos et al., 2014; Hanson, 2017).

3
20 a standard multi-country, multi-sector model to show that the new GVC measures better predict the impact of trade shocks on output than traditional openness indicators. Section S4.2 documents a positive correlation between GVC participation and per capita income growth, with the new measures containing more informational content than existing ones.

# **Methodology and Empirical Estimation Details**

Our objective is to quantify how different dimensions of GVC participation affect the output response to demand-side fluctuations. The empirical deliberately builds on well-established empirical frameworks. It comprises three steps.

**_Step 1:_** _Estimating Exogenous Demand Innovations._ We estimate innovations in countrylevel demand using global Input-Output (I-O) data via a fixed effects model adapted from Alfaro et al. (2021) and Kramarz et al. (2020). Specifically we estimate:

Here, ∆ _yij,t_<sup>_r_indicatethechangeinfinalsalesfromcountry</sup><sup>_i_tocountry</sup><sup>_j_insector</sup><sup>_r_,</sup> expressed in percentage terms. The term _ηj,t_ captures the demand innovations in the importing country _j_ at time _t_ , while _γi,t_<sup>_r_accountsforexportingcountry-sector-timeeffects.16</sup> We interpret _ηj,t_ as a residual innovation in final demand that reflects both unexpected fluctuations and persistent shifts. Although our terminology refers to ”shocks,” these innovations may also include trend-like movements. Our interest lies in understanding the implications of exposure to such changes—regardless of whether they are transitory or structural—for output volatility.

**_Step 2:_** _Constructing Direct and Indirect Demand Shocks._ Using a shift-share instrument approach that builds on Ferrari (2023), we aggregate _ηj,t_ into sector- and country-specific shocks based on observed trade patterns:

- The _direct foreign demand shock_ for country _i_ , sector _r_ , at time _t_ , is:

where _φ_<sup>_r_</sup> _ij,t−_ 1<sup>isthelaggedshareoffinalsalesfrom</sup><
While the panel models in columns (1) and (2) of Tables 4 and 5 control for unobserved differences between municipalities in which incumbents won/lost a narrow election, a remaining concern is that the two groups of municipalities were on non-parallel time trends. To explore this possibility, controls for group-specific linear and quadratic time-trends are added to the model. The estimates in columns (3) and (4) of Table 4 are robust to controlling for group-specific trends. While the estimate in column (3) of Table 5 is only marginally significant, the results controlling for quadratic time trends in column (4) are similar to those in columns (2) and are statistically significant at the 5 percent level. Specifically, the results indicate that an incumbent victory is associated with 0.126 additional casualties per month (or 1.51 additional casualties per year) and 0.045 additional violent incidents (or 0.54 additional casualties per year).

# **3.3 Heterogeneous Effects and Sources of Violence**

This section examines different margins of heterogeneity to better understand the relationship between narrow incumbent victories and post-election violence. First, the paper estimates the relationship between incumbent victories and post-election conflict-related casualties in poor and rich municipalities (measured using the 2006 municipal-level poverty estimates provided by the Philippine Statistics Authority as described in Section 3.1). The results in columns 2 and 3 of Table 1 provided evidence that narrow incumbent victories were concentrated in poor municipalities. If narrow incumbent victories are associated with increased civil conflict, it would be expected that post-election violence to be highest in these municipalities. The RD estimates in column (1) and (2) of Table 6 suggest that an incumbent victory in a poor municipality was, on average, associated with 1.65 additional casualties and 0.56 additional violent incidents during the 12 months after the election (Panel C). By contrast, the estimates in columns (3) and (4) provide little evidence that incumbent 27
18 months, depending on negotiations with the landlord. These negotiations were one source of variation in how the subsidies were spent: some landlords agreed to participate in the rental subsidy program for 12 months while others agreed to a shorter or longer period. The program was provided to refugees in their existing rental arrangements, building on established tenant-landlord relationships.

The program offered several secondary benefits in addition to direct rental payment. For instance, the implementing partner paid for physical housing improvements, such as door and lock installation, roof and wall construction, and mold removal. The program thus benefited not just the Syrian refugee tenants but also their Jordanian landlords, as well as the overall Jordanian housing stock. Together, the rental assistance plus the construction improvements were valued at USD $2,200 per unit on average, a considerable sum in this context, where per capita income was roughly USD $4,100 in 2019.<sup>6</sup> The program also formalized refugees’ tenancy agreements: Jordanian landlords and Syrian refugees signed standard tenancy agreements in line with Jordanian law, and the implementing partner and the landlord entered into a contract for the construction work on the property. Finally, the program required landlords to not raise rent for an additional year following the end of assistance, possibly generating further housing savings for treatment households.

# **3 Experimental Design and Data**

This study employs a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) with 2,870 Syrian refugee households, and surveys of 2,146 neighboring host-community households, to evaluate the direct impacts of the housing subsidy program on refugees as well as the spillover effects onto host community neighbors. The study additionally assesses the accuracy of forecasts of program impacts of the program from research experts and policymakers gathered via the Social Science Prediction Platform. The

> 6This is according to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

9
1126/science.aaf7894

- Jerven, P. (2013). _Poor numbers_ . Cornell University Press.

- Karlan, D., Lowe, M., Osei, R., Osei-Akoto, I., Roth, B., & Udry, C. (2021). _Cash transfers as covid-19 relief: Evidence from ghana._ `https://www.theigc.org/blog/cash-transfers -as-covid-19-relief-evidence-from-ghana/` .

- Karlan, D., & Thuysbaert, B. (2019). Targeting ultra-poor households in Honduras and Peru. _The World Bank Economic Review_ , _33_ (1), 63-94.

- Lindert, K., Karippacheril, T. G., Caillava, I. R., & Ch ́avez, K. N. (2020). _Sourcebook on the foundations of social protection delivery systems_ . World Bank Publications.

- Milusheva, S., Lewin, A., Gomez, T. B., Matekenya, D., & Reid, K. (2021). Challenges and opportunities in accessing mobile phone data for covid-19 response in developing countries. _Data & Policy_ , _3_ .

- Oliver, N., Lepri, B., Sterly, H., Lambiotte, R., Deletaille, S., De Nadai, M., . . . others (2020). _Mobile phone data for informing public health actions across the covid-19 pandemic life cycle_ (Vol. 6) (No. 23). American Association for the Advancement of Science.

22
.<sup>7</sup> Taking the maritime transport case as an example,<sup>8</sup> the first step is the arrival of the vessel at the port of entry. At this stage, congestion at port terminals can lead to berthing delays with vessels waiting hours or sometimes even days in the queue, and with delays being charged by the shipping company to the importer through higher shipping rates. After berthing, port operators unload the vessel and place its cargo in a shipyard or warehouse while the importing firm or its representative, the Customs broker, verifies the cargo content (e.g., looking for possible inconsistencies); and prepares Customs documents, import licenses, Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) certificates and permits if applicable,<sup>9</sup> filled in electronic or paper form depending on Customs and other border control agencies’ use of Information Technology (IT) systems. In many countries, SPS agencies and Customs require separate declarations, with significant data gathering and task duplication for the importer or its delegate that can be a source of delays. Insufficient container placement capacity or gantry cranes, poor efficiency of port operators during cargo movement or the low celerity with which the importer or the Customs broker

> 7 See for instance the Colombia time release study.

> 8The import process remains similar for other transport modes.

> 9Import licenses are required for goods subject to import quotas, import prohibition (e.g. arms, chemicals) or sanitary and phytosanitary measures (e.g., agricultural goods, food, forestry, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, etc.).

5