rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Education and earnings in a
            transition economy (Vietnam)
The transition from a centrally planned
            to a market economy is likely to have a strong impact on the
            labor market, on relative earnings, and on returns to
            education. Major economic reforms in Vietnam since 1986 (the
            policy known as "Doi Moi") have included a number
            of measures to liberalize the labor market. It is too soon
            to assess the full impact of these reforms, but the authors
            analyze the returns to education, on the basis of earnings
            in 1992-93 (collected in the first Vietnam Living Standards
            Survey). This represents one of the first country-wide
            analyses of the monetary benefits of schooling in Vietnam at
            a time when the labor market was in transition. On average,
            the estimated rates of returns are still relatively low,
            which is to be expected, since salary reforms were not
            introduced until 1993. Average private rates of return to
            primary education (13 percent) and university education (11
            percent) are higher than those to secondary and vocational
            education (only 4 to 5 percent). Returns to higher education
            are slightly higher for women (12 percent) than for men (10
            percent). Evidence from other transition economies suggests
            that returns are likely to increase as reforms in the labor
            market take full effect. The results support this
            hypothesis: Returns for younger Vietnamese workers (14
            percent) are considerably higher than for older workers
            (only 4 percent). Implications for policymaking: 1) it is
            important to monitor future earnings and trends in the labor
            market, as updates of this analysis could provide more
            robust estimates of the transition's effects on
            earnings and returns to education. 2) At a time when the
            Vietnamese government is reassessing its pricing policy, the
            fact that private rates of return to higher education are
            relatively high suggests the potential for greater cost
            recovery. 3) Efforts to improve efficiency in secondary and
            higher education could increase the rate of return by
            lowering costs.
NAFTA, capital mobility, and
            Mexico's financial system
Typically the impact of the North
            American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is analyzed from a
            macroeconomic perspective, to examine the implications for
            capital market flows or for the aggregate degree of
            financial integration. This analysis often involves
            examining whether certain conditions of arbitrage or
            efficiency tend to hold, given greater integration of
            financial markets. Alternatively, other work examines only
            the effects of greater financial integration for the
            efficiency with which financial services are provided
            microeconomically. The two approaches are rarely combined,
            nor are the effects of integration considered within such a
            combined framework. The authors combine the two approaches
            to examine how NAFTA will affect capital flows and the
            efficiency with which financial services are provided in
            Mexico. They also call attention to domestic financial
            systems and monetary and exchange rate policy issues that
            Mexico must address if greater financial integration is not
            to result in increased risk for the domestic financial
            system or greater macroeconomic instability.
Pensions in Germany
Germany's pension system was
            originally designed as a scaled premium system. It formally
            became a pay-as-you-go system in 1957. Participation in the
            system is mandatory for all dependent employees and only
            some groups of self-employed. The system is greatly
            fragmented in terms of institutions, coverage,
            contributions, and benefit levels. A discrepancy has emerged
            between the system dependency ratio and the demographic
            old-age dependency ratio. This has been caused by the use of
            early retirement and disability pensions as a means of
            tackling high unemployment, especially in Germany's 5
            new states. Except for the high incidence of early
            retirement and disability pensions the system does not
            suffer from the problems that have afflicted other pension
            systems (e.g. evasion). The expected demographic aging poses
            major challenge. The contribution rate cannot be increased
            so benefits will have to be cut, most likely through an
            increase in the normal retirement age and tighter rules for
            disability pensions and early retirement. Germany's
            system is not overly generous, compared with other OECD
            countries. Intragenerational redistribution in the pension
            system is quite limited. Germany does not have a tilted
            benefit formula to redistribute income from higher to lower
            income groups. Means-tested social assistance is used to
            support the old poor.
Regulatory structure and risk and
            infrastructure firms : an international comparison
Evidence about how choice of regulatory
            regimes affects the level of shareholder risk for the
            regulated company has traditionally focused on studies in
            the United Kingdom and the United States. Broad comparisons
            of price-cap based regimes (as practiced in the UK) with
            rate-of-return regulation (as practiced in the US) show
            price-cap based regimes to be associated with higher levels
            of shareholder risk (as measured by the beta value) than
            rate-of-return regulation is. But so few countries were
            compared that it was suspected that other factors could be
            at work. The authors broaden the investigation by studying
            more countries (including regulated utilities in Canada,
            Europe,, and Latin America), doing a sectoral comparison to
            control for some risks related to factors other than the
            regulatory regime, and use narrower classifications for the
            regulatory regime. They also look at such recent evidence as
            the move from relatively pure price caps in the UK
            electricity sector to a mixed-revenue/price-cap based
            system. The authors find results aligned with earlier
            research, namely that investors bear the greatest
            nondiversifiable risk with price caps and the least
            nondiversifiable risk with rate-of-return regulation.
Future inequality in Carbon Dioxide
            emissions and the projected impact of abatement proposals
The authors analyze inequality in future
            carbon emissions using a group decomposition of the Gini
            index. Business-as-usual projections to the year 2100 for
            135 countries show inequality in per capita emissions
            declining, but slowly. They also measure the impact on
            emissions levels and inequality of the Kyoto Protocol and
            other abatement proposals for Annex II (non-Eastern European
            high income) countries in 2010, focusing on their gap
            narrowing and reranking effects. Per capita emissions of
            Annex II and non-Annex II countries will probably not be
            substantially reranked unless the Annex II countries reduce
            their emissions by at least half (from 1990 levels) and
            emissions from non-Annex II countries continue growing unabated.
Expropriation of minority
            shareholders : evidence from East Asia
As many East Asian countries plunged
            into economic decline, the structure of concentrated
            ownership and associated corporate governance, along with
            weak corporate performance, have been blamed for the crisis.
            There is little empirical evidence, however, of the nature
            of ownership structures in East Asia and their relationship
            to corporate performance in the typical East Asian
            environment (where inefficient judicial systems, and weak
            property and shareholder rights are common). The authors
            examine evidence of the expropriation of minority
            shareholders for 2,658 corporations in nine East Asian
            countries in 1996. They distinguish control from cash-flow
            rights. They also distinguish between various types of
            ultimate owners, including family, state, widely held
            corporations, and widely held financial institutions. Higher
            cash-flow rights are associated with higher market values,
            consistent with Jensen and Meckling (1976). In contrast,
            deviations of control from cash-flow rights - through the
            use of dual-class shares, pyramiding, and cross-holdings -
            are associated with lower market values. This is especially
            true for corporations under family control and, in Japan,
            under the control of widely held financial institutions.
            They conclude that the risk of expropriation is the major
            principal-agent problem for large corporations, as suggested
            by La Porta and colleagues (1999). The degree to which
            certain ownership structures are associated with
            expropriation depends on country-specific circumstances.
            These may include the quality of banking systems, the legal
            and judicial protection of individual shareholders, and the
            degree of financial disclosures required.
Growth, poverty, and inequality : a
            regional panel for Bangladesh
Most empirical work on how growth
            affects poverty and inequality has been based on
            international panel data sets. Panels can also be used
            within a country, if the analysis is carried out at the
            regional level. The author does this for Bangladesh, where
            regional panel estimates indicate that growth reduces
            poverty in both urban and rural areas. Growth is associated
            with rising inequality only in urban areas. Simulations
            based on these estimates indicate how much poverty reduction
            could increase in the next 10 years if growth were promoted
            in rural areas rather than urban areas.
Agriculture and the macroeconomy
Based on an economy-wide perspective,
            this paper begins with a discussion of the bias against
            exports and agriculture that characterized the economic
            literature and the development strategies in many developing
            countries after World War II. This is followed by an
            analysis of how the macroeconomic environment affects
            agricultural structural price incentives. Specifically, the
            paper discusses how early policies concerning industrial
            protection, exchange rates, and interest rates and other
            fiscal policies can strongly influence the economic
            incentives for agriculture compared with other sectors,
            identifying the most relevant literature and alternative
            approaches used on this issue. It then proceeds to examine
            how the real exchange rate can be affected by exogenous
            shocks, such as the foreign terms of trade, with emphases on
            the Dutch Disease phenomenon and agriculture. The paper next
            examines the influence of interest rates on incentives in
            agriculture, arguing that, surprisingly, this has been a
            neglected area in the literature. The paper explores the
            effects on agriculture of structural adjustment programs
            implemented since the early 1980s in developing countries.
            The final section surveys the literature on agriculture and
            the macro-economy in industrial countries, focusing on the
            impact of the exchange rate on export competitiveness in the
            United States, the cost of agricultural protection for the
            overall economy in Europe and Japan, and the increased
            importance of fluctuations in money markets for the farm
            sector and the additional instability they generate
The optimality of being efficient :
            designing auctions
A cornerstone of the auction literature
            is the theory of "optimal auctions."' This
            theory uses mechanism design techniques to characterize, in
            general settings, the auction that maximizes the
            seller's expected revenues. One feature of the solution
            is that typically there is a conflict between the goals of
            revenue maximization and efficiency. The revenue-optimizing
            seller often either places goods in hands other than those
            who value them the most or withholds goods entirely from the
            market. However, the conclusion that the seller gains by
            assigning goods inefficiently depends critically on two
            strong assumptions: (1) the seller can prevent resale among
            bidders from occurring after the auction; and (2) the seller
            can commit to not sell the withheld goods after the auction.
            In this paper, the authors examine how the optimal auction
            problem changes when one or both of these assumptions are
            relaxed. This paper is organized as follows. In section 2,
            the authors establish the seller's general incentive to
            misassign goods and they identify settings where the optimal
            auction is efficient. In section 3, they solve two
            variations on the optimal auction, which recognize the
            possibility of resale. Section 4 proves that perfect resale
            destroys the seller's incentive to misassign goods.
            Section 5 establishes that with perfect resale, any
            misassignment of goods results in strictly lower seller
            revenues than the best efficient assignment. In section 6,
            the paper shows that the Vickrey auction is not distorted by
            the possibility of resale.
Debt management in Brazil :
            evaluation of the Real Plan and challenges ahead
Brazil's domestic debt has posed
            two challenges to policymakers: it has grown very fast and,
            despite progress, remains extremely short in maturity. The
            authors analyze Brazil's experience with domestic
            public debt management, searching for policy prescriptions
            for the next few years. After briefly reviewing the recent
            history of the country's domestic debt, they decompose
            the large rise in federal bonded debt in 1995-98, searching
            for its macroeconomic causes. The main explanations:
            extremely high interest payments (caused by Brazil's
            weak fiscal stance and quasi-fixed exchange rate regime) and
            the accumulation of assets (especially obligations of
            Brazil's states). Simulations of the net debt path for
            the near future underscore the importance of a tighter
            fiscal stance to prevent the debt-to-GDP ratio from growing
            further. The authors' main policy advice is to foster
            and rely more on inflation-linked bonds--the least harmful
            way to lengthen debt maturity.
Labor redundancy, retraining, and
            outplacement during privatization : the experience of
            Brazil's Federal Railway
One of the most complex challenges of
            infrastructure privatization is its impact on employment.
            Often (but not always) private operators' main approach
            to cost-cutting is labor reduction. Private operators cannot
            afford the low levels of labor productivity typical in
            public companies if they are to be competitive and to
            deliver on their contractual obligations to provide cheaper,
            more reliable infrastructure services. But labor issues are
            so sensitive that government's early, direct
            involvement is seen as a way to address what potential
            investors see as a risk of privatization as well as to
            address the social concerns of the population, including the
            workers. When Brazil's Federal Railway was privatized,
            the team in charge of privatization made a significant
            effort to complement the incentive for voluntary reduction
            with an elaborate menu of training options. The authors
            describe this experience in dealing with labor redundancy
            problems. They discuss the design of the program, highlight
            the connections between its components, and assess the
            program's achievements. All things considered, they
            conclude, this staff reduction program was reasonably
            successful. The aimed-for improvements in productivity were
            achieved without major problems through a
            government-stimulated and -sponsored combination of early
            retirement and voluntary retrenchment. The concessionaire
            was willing to make quick decisions about the number of
            involuntary retrenchments it wanted to make, which helped
            sustain the momentum created by the government's prompt
            implementation of its own decisions and the fair treatment
            of workers. The main problems came from the underestimate of
            time needed to agree on the strategy for implementing the
            training and outplacement programs. Informal evidence
            suggests that most workers found new jobs before many of the
            training programs were available. And the strategy adopted
            gave workers a good incentive (one month's pay) to sign
            up for the courses but provided little incentive for workers
            to show up, since they were paid up front.
Socioeconomic inequalities in child
            malnutrition in the developing world
Among the conclusions the authors reach
            about malnutrition rates, among different economic groups:
            1) inequalities in malnutrition almost disfavor the poor; 2)
            it's not just that the poor have higher rates of
            malnutrition. The rate of malnutrition declines continuously
            with rising living standards; 3) the tendency of poorer
            children to have higher rates of stunting, and underweight,
            is not due to chance, or sampling variability. Inequalities
            in stunting, and underweight, as measured by the
            concentration index, are statistically significant in almost
            countries; 4) inequalities in underweight tend to be larger
            than inequalities in stunting, which tend to be larger than
            inequalities in wasting; 5) in most cases, whatever the
            malnutrition indicator, differences in inequality between
            countries are not statistically significant; 6) even if
            attention is restricted to the cross-country differences in
            inequality that are statistically significant, interesting
            conclusions emerge, Egypt, and Vietnam have the most equal
            distributions of malnutrition, and Nicaragua, Peru, and, to
            a lesser extent, Morocco, have highly unequal distributions;
            7) some countries (such as Egypt and Romania) do well in
            terms of both the average (the prevalence of malnutrition)
            and the distribution (equality). Others do badly on both
            counts. Peru, for example, has a higher average level of
            stunting than Egypt, and higher poor-non-poor inequality.
            But many countries do well on one count, and badly on the
            other. Brazil, for example, has a far lower (less than 20
            percent) stunting rate overall, than Bangladesh (more than
            50 percent), but has four times as much inequality (as
            measured by the concentration index); 8) use of an
            achievement index that captures both the average level, and
            the inequality of malnutrition, leads to some interesting
            rank reversals in the country league table. With stunting,
            for example, focusing on the achievement index moves Egypt
            (a low-inequality country) from sixth position to fourth,
            higher than Brazil and Russia (two countries with high inequality).
Contractual savings or stock market
            development - Which leads
The authors study the relationship
            between the development of contractual savings (assets of
            pension funds, and life insurance companies) and non-life
            insurance, and, the development of stock markets (market
            capitalization and value traded). Their contribution lies in
            providing time-series evidence on a hypothesis that is very
            popular - but had not been substantiated - among supporters
            of fully funded pension systems in which funds invest large
            shares of their portfolios in tradable securities (equities,
            bonds). The literature is not clear on its assumption
            regarding causality between contractual savings, and capital
            market development. A one-way or two-way relationship is
            assumed, usually inter-changeably; the authors address the
            questions of which leads empirically. They present the
            evidence, including descriptive statistics, and the results
            of Granger causality tests, for OECD countries, and such
            countries as Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and
            Thailand. They do not present a theoretical framework, but
            do explain how the growth of the contractual savings sector,
            is thought to promote financial development. The authors
            find evidence in the data that causality between
            institutions, and markets either does not exist, or, if it
            exists, runs predominantly from institutions to markets. To
            a lesser extent, there is simultaneous causality between
            institutions, and markets. Furthermore, there is limited
            evidence that causality runs only from markets to
            institutions (the only exception seems to be for non-life
            insurance in developing countries). Results seem to support
            the idea that the development of institutional investors, is
            likely to promote the growth of market capitalization, more
            than that of value traded. In developing countries, there
            seems to be no causality from pension funds to growth in
            value traded, while there is causality from life, and
            non-life insurance.