rafmacalaba/data-use-mentions-extended huggingface dataset:
Policy Research Working Paper 9241

# **Abstract**

The spread of COVID-19 and implementation of “social distancing” policies around the world have raised the question of how many jobs can be done at home. This paper uses skills surveys from 53 countries at varying levels of economic development to estimate jobs’ amenability to working from home. The paper considers jobs’ characteristics and uses internet access at home as an important determinant of working from home. The findings indicate that the amenability of jobs to working from home increases with the level of economic development of the country. This is driven by jobs in poor countries being more intensive in physical/manual tasks, using less information and communications technology, and having poorer internet connectivity at home. Women, college graduates, and salaried and formal workers have jobs that are more amenable to working from home than the average worker. The opposite holds for workers in hotels and restaurants, construction, agriculture, and commerce. The paper finds that the crisis may exacerbate inequities between and within countries. It also finds that occupations explain less than half of the variability in the working-from-home indexes within countries, which highlights the importance of using individual-level data to assess jobs’ amenability to working from home.

This paper is a product of the Social Protection and Jobs 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 hwinkler@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
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we discuss how we can use data from field experiments such as WTP surveys to estimate uptake of piped water connections. Section 3 provides a brief overview of the data collection in Southwest Sri Lanka and a profile of our sample. Section 4 presents the quantitative findings from regression models of WTP. We then use the model to evaluate uptake of piped water (house) connections under various scenarios. Section 5 concludes.

# **2. Gauging Demand for Improved Piped Water Service**

## **_General Framework for Demand Assessment_**

WTP surveys can be used to gauge household demand for improved network water and sanitation services by presenting consumers with a contingent scenario in which they can obtain the described service. It is a technique originally and most widely used in the area of environmental economics to estimate the public’s WTP for improvements in environmental quality (Cummings, Brookshire, and Shulze, 1986; Mitchell and Carson, 1989). Over the last decade, Contingent Valuation (CV) has been used increasingly in developing countries for improvements in WSS services. However, applying CV in developing countries requires careful adaptation of the method to account for local conditions and cultural differences (Whittington, 1998). Households can be asked to consider attributes of the service, including monthly user‐ charges and one‐time connection costs, and to choose between scenarios that present different combinations of service levels, charges, and costs. WTP data from CV surveys measure the amount of monthly income that the household could give up after obtaining the improved network service and be just as well off as in a situation without an improvement in water supply or sanitation. Thus, it is a measure of the households’ economic value. Maximum WTP and the survey response data define household values, underlie their demand for service improvements, and, therefore, inform tariff design.

Because of these features, WTP surveys represent a type of field experiment where the analyst balances control and relevance
184|
|P5: Apr 25 - May 7|0.008|254|0.080|0.018|0.098|0.100|
|P6: May 8-22|0.009|184|0.080|0.018|0.098|0.101|
|P7: May 23 - Jun 3|0.014|286|0.080|0.018|0.098|0.103|
|P8: Jun 4-18|0.011|272|0.080|0.018|0.098|0.101|
|_Total P1 - P8_|0.048|614|0.123|0.106|0.179|0.187|

_Note:_ The sample comprises 10,125 Village Councils (VCs) that were under Ukrainian control in 2015 (i.e. excluding Crimea and areas occupied in 2014) that have a positive area cultivated with winter crops in 2019-2022. _Source:_ Own computation from satellite images (col. 1-2) and open source data <u>https://novy.tv/ru/news/2022/06/02/karta-bojovyhdij-v-ukrayini/</u> and https://liveuamap.com/ru/time (col. 3-5) 15
Policy Research Working Paper 10986

# **Abstract**

The design of the power market determines how the sector can address complex economic, social, environmental, and engineering challenges to deliver sustainable and reliable electricity at least cost to consumers. This is no simple task, as supply and demand must be balanced every second, multiple resource and network constraints must be satisfied, and the market must send the correct price signals to motivate efficient generation and investment in the sector over time. There is significant heterogeneity in the electricity market designs adopted by countries globally. No “one-type-fits-all” blueprint exists, and for any design to function well, the country, political, and economic context matters. At this juncture, the experimentation continues. This paper takes stock of the global patterns and trends in the adoption of different power market design options, utilizing a unique new Global Power Market Structures Database (Akcura 2024) covering 230 economies for the period 1989 to 2024. The paths these countries have taken in structuring their power markets provide valuable lessons on the multiple models that can support the development of the power sector in different country contexts. The paper draws on global experience to shed light on promising design options for the future.

This paper is a product of the International Finance Corporation. 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 eakcura@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.
,500), but do not include personnel in paramilitary units, i.e., the National Police (60,000), the Coast Guards (600), and the Rondas Campesinas (2,000, est), which is a peasant self-defense force deployed mainly in emergency zone.

Suriname Data on paid employment in non-agricultural activities are taken from the ILO's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and are for 1993. Unemployment data are taken from the ILO's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and refer to 1993 and source **I:** _Labor force sample surveys_ and _General household sample surveys._

# Trinidad and Tobago

Data on paid employment in non-agricultural activities are taken from the ILO's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and are for 1993. Unemployment data are taken from the ILO's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and refer to 1993 and source l: _Labor force sample surveys_ and _General household sample surveys._ Data on military employment do not include personnel in paramilitary units, i.e. the Police force (4,800). Employment in State-owned enterprises is taken from IMF Staff Country Report No. 96/50 - Statistical Appendix of June 1996 and relates to 1993.

Uruguay Unemployment data are drawn from CIA Factbook 1995 and relate to 1994. Data on paid employment in nonagricultural activities are taken from the ILO's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and are for 1994. Central Government, Non Central Govemment, Education and Health employment data are from information made available by Uruguay Country Economist and relate to 1993. Employment in State -owned enterprise is from the same source and relates to 1993 as well. Data on wages in manufacturing (monthly basis) is taken from the International Labor Office's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and refers to 1993.

Venezuela Unemployment data are taken from the ILO's Yearbook of Labor Statistics 1995 and refer to 1993 and source **I:** _Labor force sample surveys_ and _General household sample surveys._ Data on paid
certain leading short-term economic indicators, such as payroll figures, retail sales, and core inflation data<sup>7</sup> .

A second weakness of the existing literature is the lack of attention paid to the non-linearity in the relationship between US interest rates and emerging market spreads. Indeed, the spread incorporates a default probability in a non-linear way, and the effect of higher world interest rates itself affects the default probability non-linearly. For instance, at low rates of interest and in periods of favorable economic activity and low debt in developing countries, a rise in US interest rates may have little effect on investors’ estimates of the probability of repaying—and indeed, on the objective likelihood of that repayment. In contrast, when the emerging market borrower is at the borderline of its ability to repay, a given increase in US rates may push the borrower over the edge, sharply increasing the probability of default. Such a scenario may have occurred, for instance, in 1982 and 1994.

A further aspect of that non-linearity is that sharp shifts of expectations of default probabilities may be self-fulfilling, and correspond to jumps between multiple equilibria. Indeed, those expectations can be rational because higher interest rates will increase the likelihood that countries cannot meet their debt service obligations. While models with sunspot equilibria are sometimes criticized as just adding an extra indeterminacy because what triggers the jumps between equilibria is not explained, in international capital markets, that role may be assumed by global liquidity conditions and the “appetite for risk.” In our estimation, we divide the sample into crisis and non-crisis periods. We also

> 7 This accords with the view and assessment of key market practitioners.  A credit market strategist was quoted by Credit (2004) as saying, “it is not the rate hikes that matter, but what is happening to the economy”.

3
to 11.372 million USD. It is owned by the Ministry of the Economy and is a grand contributor to government public finances, its mission being to “realize stakeholders’ needs through enhanced financial intermediation globally and supporting national development priorities”.<sup>10</sup> In fact, after the NBE and the Development Bank of Ethiopia, it is the largest bank holding government bonds, with 3% of the total; as a reference, all other banks combined hold less than 1% (Ministry of Finance and Economic Development 2012).

From the CBE balance sheet for July 2012, we can see that the CBE holds no NBE bills, but

> 8Refer to the Central Bank of Kenya Treasury Bills Average Rates at https://www.centralbank.go.ke/index.php/treasury-bill/91-days.

> 9Refer to the Results of the Treasury Bills Auctions by the Bank of Uganda https://www.bou.or.ug/bou/collateral/tbill ~~s f~~ orms/2014/Jun/resultstbil ~~l 9~~ 22.html.

> 10Refer to the CBE web site for more information, http://www.combanketh.et/AboutUs/CompanyProfile.aspx

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To counter the welfare shock from the COVID-19 crisis, some households resorted to adverse coping strategies. These are captured in the HFPS using questions about whether the household used emergency savings to cover necessities, reduced the consumption of goods, or sold assets such as property. A large share of households adopted some type of negative coping strategy, including in HICs (Table A6.23, Table A6.24 and Table A6.25). In particular, the sale of assets was more pronounced among households with lower access to education and those in rural areas. While the share of households resorting to adverse measures fell over time in most instances, even the temporary adoption of such negative coping mechanisms can have longer term implications as they could represent damages to human capital (for example, if reduced consumption leads to suboptimal nutrition levels) and reductions in productive capital (in the case of selling assets) that can impact future poverty and inequality if left unmitigated.

# **6 Concluding remarks**

This paper analyzed the welfare impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic using the latest available harmonized global database of the World Bank’s high-frequency phone surveys from 80 countries—the largest known source of data on households during the pandemic. Focusing on the scarring effects of the pandemic, we show that, while there have been some improvements in employment, the labor market impacts continue to be felt over two years into the pandemic. The dynamics of labor market outcomes suggest that the initial disparities that were observed early in the COVID-19 pandemic narrowed rather slowly over time and sometimes not at all, while women and the less educated continued to report a higher incidence of work stoppages than men and better educated groups.

Another contribution of this paper is on the findings related to broader labor market impacts, beyond adjustments at the extensive margin. Analysis of job transitions throughout the pandemic show significant churning in the labor market, including significant shifts from wage employment to self-employment and from non-agriculture sectors to agriculture, likely reflecting a rise in informal and more precarious employment accompanied
where barriers for women are lower in comparison to Jordan. We explore the case of Chile where more than half of working age women have been participating in the labor market since 2000 (CEDLAS and The World Bank (2019)). This figure differs greatly from Jordan’s statistics that showed that women’s labor force participation was below 30% during 2010-2016 (Table 1).

We use individual longitudinal data from the Chilean Panel CASEN for the period 200613
/handle/10986/14101</u>

- Desiere, Sam and Dean Jolliffe. 2018. “Land Productivity and Plot Size: Is Measurement Error Driving the Inverse Relationship?” _Journal of Development Economics_ 130 (January): 84– 98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2017.10.002.

- Dudel, Christian, Garbuszus, Jan Marvin, and Julian Schmied. 2021. “Assessing differences in household needs: a comparison of approaches for the estimation of equivalence scales using German expenditure data.” _Empirical Economics_ , 60 (4), 1629–1659. <u>https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-020-01822-6.</u>

- Haggblade, Steven, Peter Hazell, and Thomas Reardon. 2010. “The Rural Non-Farm Economy: Prospects for Growth and Poverty Reduction.” _World Development_ 38 (10): 1429–41.

- Ferreira, Francisco, Shaohua Chen, Andrew Dabalen, Yuri Dikhanov, Nada Hamadeh, Dean Jolliffe, Ambar Narayan, et al. 2016. “A Global Count of the Extreme Poor in 2012 : Data Issues, Methodology and Initial Results.” _The Journal of Economic Inequality_ 14 (2): 141– 72.

- Filmer, Deon and Lant Pritchett. 2001. “Estimating Wealth Effects without Expenditure Data-or Tears: An Application to Educational Enrollments in States of India”. _Demography_ 38(1): 115–132. <u>https://doi.org/10.2307/3088292</u>

- Filmer, Deon, and Kinnon Scott. 2008. “Assessing Asset Indices”. Policy Research Working Papers, no. 4605. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. doi:10.1596/1813-9450-4605.

- Harttgen, Kenneth, and Sebastian Vollmer. 2013. “Using an Asset Index to Simulate Household Income.” _Economics Letters_ 121(2): 257–262. doi:
into victimization within regions and varying intensity of conflict across regions. These could be potential sources of bias in the estimated causal effect.

The causal inferences on the impact of war can also be affected if education itself worked as a catalyzer of war. Moreover, there were reasons other than the conflict that could produce a detrimental effect on the educational performances (for example deaths of teachers from HIV/AIDS). The NGO-run primary and secondary schools, which stepped in to fill the education gap in the North during and after the war, might create a downward bias in the estimated impact of war on education. As a second identification strategy, we use a set of victimization indicators to measure the potential effect of war and estimate a counterfactual comparison group based on 3
storyline did not focus on these issues. However, there may have been indirect impacts on these measures as a result of improved financial behavior elsewhere. Our results do not find significant differences except in feeling confident about solving financial problems.

The non result on savings is, in fact, encouraging as it provides some evidence against survey bias – that individuals were not simply providing answers that please the surveyors, else we would have seen a positive treatment effect here also.

# _6.5 Seeking Financial Advice_

Finally, we turn to an important feature of the soap opera – a public call to action through the National Debt Mediation Association (NDMA). As explained in previous sections, the NDMA was highlighted prominently in the storyline and their toll free number was broadcast at the end of each episode which featured an NDMA representative helping the main soap character.

We examine quantitative outcomes in two separate ways. First, we obtained daily call volume data from the NDMA call centers and observe a huge spike in incoming calls immediately following the episode where the NDMA was introduced into the soap storyline. Figure 2 plots the daily call volume, with the red vertical line representing the date of the soap feature. The call volume immediately jumped from an average of 120 calls per day to over 500, a more than 300 percent increase.

Unfortunately, we cannot classify and match callers to our sample and hence can only present a before-after picture. However, our second intermediate survey, conducted just a short while later included a question on consumer awareness of financial advice outlets. The regression analysis confirms a significant increase in awareness of formal avenues for financial advice (such as the NDMA). Specifically, as shown in column 1 of Table 9, compared to an average of 69% in the control group, nearly 80% respondents in the treatment group stated that they would seek financial advice from a formal source such as the NDMA if it was needed.

Surprisingly, however, this effect dissipated in the long run. Columns 2-4 of Table 9
# **_Market regulation_**

This is an unweighted average of the credit market and labor market regulation indexes provided by the Economic Freedom of the World’s Annual Report.<sup>16</sup> The credit market regulation captures issues such as the percentage of deposits held in privately owned banks, the degree of competition from foreign banks, the extension of credit to private sector and the interest rate controls. The labor market regulation index comprises the impact of minimum wages, hiring and firing practices, union coverage and the effect of unemployment benefits on the incentives to work. Please keep in mind that the Economic Freedom of the World indexes are constructed from hard data and survey data (such as the Global competitiveness Report). Hence there is room for subjective interpretations.

# **_Quality of the legal system_**

This variable results from the multiplication of the World Bank’s objective information on the efficiency of the courts in enforcing contracts and the subjective evaluation of the 2003 Economic Freedom of the World of the independence from the government, impartiality and integrity of the judicial system.

The World Bank’s database “Doing Business” has information on issues related to enforcing contracts derived from questionnaires answered by attorneys at private law firms. The questionnaires cover the step-by-step evolution of a debt recovery case before local courts in the country’s most populous city. It covers issues such as the number of procedures required, duration and cost of process as well as an index of the procedural complexity of contract enforcement. We have summarized the four dimensions related to contract enforcement (procedures, duration, cost and complexity) in a unique index following the same methodology as before, that is, assigning a 10 to the best country, a 0 to the worst and then taking the average.

# **_Size of the government_**

The size of government is approximated by the output supplied by State-operatedEnterprises and government investment as a percentage of GDP. The hard data come from the Economic Freedom of the World 2003
Table A.11: Trends in son preference by firstborn sex

||Outcome variable:|Ideal fraction of sons|
|---|---|---|
|**A. By survey round**|(1)|(2)|
|Round 2|-0.0169***|-0.0134**|
||(0.00586)|(0.00635)|
|Round 2 _×_ Firstborn girl|0.00374<br>(0.00720)|0.00407<br>(0.00733)|
|Round 3|-0.0441***|-0.0381***|
||(0.00763)|(0.00771)|
|Round 3 _×_ Firstborn girl|0.00770<br>(0.00774)|0.00881<br>(0.00756)|
|**B. By ultrasound availability**|(1)|(2)|
|Post2|-0.0288***|-0.0226***|
||(0.00560)|(0.00617)|
|Post2 _×_ Firstborn girl|0.00510|0.00605|
||(0.00638)|(0.00641)|
|N|10,160|10,160|
|Firstborn girl|x|x|
|State FE|x|x|
|Households controls||x|

NOTES: The data pools the three waves of the NFHS, conducted in 1991/2, 1998/9 and 2005/6. For each survey round, we keep women who had their first birth within a calendar year from their survey data, so that their preferences at the survey date reflect their preferences around the birth of their first child. We then compare mother’s reported son preference between firstborn-girl and firstborn-boy
rural residents are far more likely to be employed well after the mandatory retirement ages faced by urban residents. From the China Health and Retirement

> 5We define a long-term urban resident as an urban dweller with an urban (non-agricultural) residential registration ( _hukou_ ) status. While considerable efforts have been made recently to extend social insurance benefits to migrants living in the city, migrants are much less likely to have employment contracts and to have employers who are making mandated contributions to pension, health and disability insurance programs (Giles, Park and Wang, 2011). 6Additional descriptive statistics on sources of support from the 2005 one percent population subsample are reported in Cai et al (2011) and Giles, Wang and Zhao (2010).

> 7In defining “employment” in this paper, we include wage employment in the informal sector, casual work, selfemployed activities and unpaid work in family run enterprises, all of which may be important for older workers in these economies. We focus on employment as opposed to labor force participation, per se, for two reasons. Job search is often not well-documented, and where it is (e.g., the CHARLS data for China) there are a vanishingly small number of respondents (five in CHARLS) over age 45 who are not employed but report active searches for work. We have no doubt that a search process exists for older workers who wish to work, but it is difficult to capture, and this is particularly true when large shares of older workers are self-employed.

4