rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
# **When Promising Interventions Fail: Personalized Coaching for Teachers in a Middle-Income Country**<sup>**1**</sup>

Pedro Carneiro* Yyannu Cruz-Aguayo† Ruthy Intriago‡ Juan Ponce‡ Norbert Schady° Sarah Schodt°° <u>Keywords: teachers, coaching, education quality JEL codes: I24, I25, I28</u>

# <u>Author affiliations:</u>

- University College London, CEMMAP, IFS, and FAIR-NHH

- Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, D.C.

- FLACSO, Quito, Ecuador

- ° World Bank, Washington, D.C.

- °° Independent consultant, Washington, D.C.

> 1 We thank Alejandra Campos and Carolina Echeverri for outstanding research assistance, and Jennifer LoCasaleCrouch, Bob Pianta, Hiro Yoshikawa, two referees and the editor for very helpful comments. Carneiro gratefully acknowledges the support of the ESRC for CEMMAP (ES/P008909/1) and the ERC through grant ERC-2015-CoG682349.
Crivelli, P. and J. Gröschl (2012), “The Impact of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures on Market Entry and Trade Flows”, Ifo Working Paper No. 136 Disdier, A-C, L. Fontagné and M. Mimouni (2008), “The Impact of Regulations on Agricultural Trade: Evidence from the SPS and TBT Agreements”, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 90 (2), pp 336-350 Fischer, R. and Serra, P. (2000), “Standards and Protection”, Journal of International Economics, 52(2), pp 377–400 Fontagné, L., M. Mimouni and J-M Pasteels (2005), “Estimating the Impact of Environmental SPS and TBT on International Trade”, Integration and Trade Journal, 22, pp 7-37 Ganslandt, M. and J. Markusen (2001), “Standards and Related Regulations in International Trade: A Modeling Approach”, NBER Working Paper 8346, National Bureau of Economic Research Gordillo D. M., A. Stokenberga, and J. Schwartz (2010), “Understanding the Benefits of Regional Integration to Trade: The Application of a Gravity Model to the Case of Central America”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5506 Gourdon, J. and A. Nicita (2012), “NTMs: Interpreting the New Data”, in Non-Tariff Measures. A Fresh Look at Trade Policy’s New Frontier (eds) Cadot O. and M. Malouche, The World Bank Henson S., R. Loader, A. Swinbank, M. Bredahl, and N. Lux (2000), “Impact of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures on Developing Countries”, Centre for Food Economics Research, University of Reading, April INCAE Business School (2013), “Registros Sanitarios de Alimentos y Bebidas en Centroamérica” mimeo Kee, H., A. Nicita and M. Olarreaga (2009), “Estimating Trade Restrictiveness Indices”, Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, 119(534), pp 172-199, 01 Kono, D. (2006), “Optimal Obfuscation: Democracy and Trade Policy Transparency”, American Political Science Review, 100(3), pp 369-384 Porto, G. (2010), “International Market Access and Poverty in Argentina”, Review of International Economics, 18(2), pp 396-407 Portugal-Perez, A. J-D Reyes and J. Wilson (2010), “Beyond the Information Technology Agreement: Harmonization of Standards and Trade in Electronics”, The World Economy, 33(12), pp. 1870-1897 Reyes, J-D (2011), “International Harmonization of Product Standards and Firm Heterogeneity in International Trade” World Bank Working Paper 5677 Reyes, J-D (2012), “The Pro-Competitive Effect of International Harmonization of Product Standards” in Non-Tariff Measures. A Fresh Look at Trade Policy’s New Frontier (eds) Cadot, O. and M. Malouche, The World Bank 33
either for children slightly older than the children we study here nor for women who are mothers of children of the age group we study. Finally, we return to the ASER-like tests in the IHDS that were introduced in section 2. Using data on children in the same districts as our main sample but a few years too old to have been importantly exposed to the TSC, we find no association between within-district trends in TSC implementation and trends in these children’s cognitive test scores.

# **4.5 Mechanism checks**

It is more plausible that the association we report reflects a causal effect if it appears to reflect mechanisms known from the literature to connect disease to cognitive achievement. In particular, there are critical early-life periods of neural development (Doyle et al., 2009), so our findings may be more plausible if the sanitation-cognition gradient we find is steepest for exposure in the first year of life. There is evidence in the literature that sanitation exposure matters for health very early in life: studying the same sanitation program as we do and using the same government records as the independent variable, Spears (2012a) finds an effect on mortality in the first year of life, and finds an effect of exposure in the first year of life on subsequent height.

Studies that examine heterogeneity in the ages at which children change environments have demonstrated that very early life is the most sensitive period for later cognitive and overall development. For example, Beckett et al. (2006) study cognitive outcomes at age 11 of 131 children adopted from Romania in the 1980s to the U.K. They find that children who moved before they were six months old were able to catch up with a sample of U.K.-born adoptees, but children who moved after they were six months old did not. In a randomized, controlled trial, Nelson et al. (2007) study abandoned children in Bucharest who were moved from institutions to foster care; children moved before they are 18 months old score better in subsequent years than children moved later, especially compared with children moved after 30 months. A similar study reflecting the Indian context of this paper is by Proos 16
to statutory property rights. A key feature of the model is that land tenure is risky and brokers who purchase land from customary owners have the capacity to formalize tenure and reduce insecurity. Information on tenure insecurity and on the ease of formalization may be symmetric or asymmetric across customary land sellers and brokers. Under symmetric information, brokers perfectly evaluate the idiosyncratic formalization probability of each land plot. As a result, we show that the share of customary land smoothly decreases with distance from the city center. Under asymmetric information, brokers are unable to evaluate these risks. As a result, there may be a failure in the land transformation market so that land transformation abruptly ceases at some distance from the city center. The paper then checks the predictions about tenure conversions using a geo-referenced survey of land plots in Bamako, Mali and its peri-urban area. The empirical analysis conrms the main features of the model and concludes that intermediaries may have asymmetric information on the plot that they purchase. Our conclusion regarding the existence of information asymmetry is even clearer for the left bank of Bamako and at a distance from paved roads, suggesting broker heterogeneity across locations.

To our knowledge, our paper is the rst to study the conversion of land use and land tenure in the light of an urban theoretical framework. Although we are able to provide an indirect but conclusive empirical test of the model using the limited available data for one particular city, there is a clear need for additional empirical studies to further describe, collect relevant data on, and analyze the ongoing process of urban expansion in Sub-Saharan African cities. Such studies will be necessary to understand in more detail the barriers associated with land use transactions and land tenure transformation, and, in line with our model, the specic informational barriers and information asymmetries that can aect the process. In this respect, improving information on risks and tenure conversion processes would help improve the eciency of the process. Equity issues regarding asymmetric bargaining power in land transactions, dispossession of customary owners through distressed sales, abuse of power by village chiefs selling co-villagers' land, and the potentially poverty enhancing aspect of land use conversion should also be studied in the future. These are important aspects that policies will need to take into account in conjunction with measures to reduce the cost of registration in order to ensure that cities can grow in more ecient and equitable ways.

Acknowledgments. The authors are grateful to J. Zhang, J. Wrona and J. Van Ommeren as well as to participants to the 13th Meetings of the Urban Economics Association and to the Tinbergen Institute seminar for useful comments. The data used in this paper were collected under funding from the Multi Donor Trust Fund for Sustainable Urban Development.

30
31 where _βi_ is the estimated coefficient of knowledge economy variable _i._ Similarly, by combining Equations (4) and (5), we obtain our estimating equation for the specification for the growth rate of real GDP per worker: Simple averages over the relevant time periods were taken for each of the independent and dependent variables, resulting in each country having at most one observation in the cross-section regression. For example, annual observations for real GDP growth for a specific country were averaged over the years 1960 to 2000 to produce one observation for the 1960-2000 cross-section regressions.

The regressions are estimated with White robust standard errors to account for the possibility of heteroskedasticity.

# **6. Other Factors of Economic Growth Rates of Countries**

## **Growth Rate of Capital / Growth Rate of Capital Per Worker**

It can be seen from equations (7) and (8) that we are employing a semi-structural regression specification by estimating the parameters of the assumed economy-wide aggregate production function, and we therefore include the growth rate of capital and labor as regressors. Estimating this semi-structural or semi reduced-form growth regression follows the estimation methodology of several recent studies such as Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), and Bosworth and Collins (2003).

Traditional empirical growth studies employ complete or fully reduced form regression specifications with the level of investment as a proxy for the growth rate of capital. One key reason for our choice of using the semi-structural specification is the intuitive appeal of linking our estimating equations to the theoretical model of the economy that was derived in Section 2. This results in the specifications of our
**Figure 9:** Evolution of the resolution of ambiguous countries’ trajectories, 1990-2019

<!-- Start of picture text --> 80<br>60<br>% 40<br>20<br>0<br>1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020<br>Year<br>Share of ambiguous comparisons<br>Minimal share of ambiguous comparisons solved with PALE<br><!-- End of picture text --> Reading: in the 1995, 35% of countries’ trajectories was ambiguous. Among these, 29% can be assessed with PALE.

in the two dimensions and the difference between their life-cycle utility and that of non-poor individuals increases.

Accounting for the distribution of lifecycle utilities requires data that are typically not available. The necessary data include not only information on the correlation between poverty and premature mortality, but also information on mobility in and out of poverty. When such data is not available, _PALEθ_ and _EDθa_ ˆ can be used as a second-best solution, as they improve over the widespread practice of entirely ignoring the impact of mortality on longevity. This is particularly relevant for societies in which premature mortality is highly selective, affecting disproportionately poorer individuals. In particular, the premature mortality term of _EDθa_ ˆ essentially captures these negative outcomes.

If one cares about the distribution of life-cycle utilities and the necessary data is available, our indicators would need to be adjusted. Let us define as “life-cycle poor” the individuals whose life-cycle utility is smaller than that of a reference life, e.g., a life characterized by a lifespan of 40 years with no period of poverty. One index combining mortality and poverty that would account for the distribution of life-cycle utilities is the expected fraction of newborns who will be “life-cycle poor”, again assuming constant poverty and mortality.<sup>27</sup> Our paper calls for future research on the value that the normative parameter _θ_ should take. Its mathematical expression based on social welfare a la Harsanyi allows calibrating its value, as we show in Appendix C. However, the calibrated

> 27Note that the indicators proposed in the literature on the mortality paradox are typically not appropriate to capture the distribution of life-cycle utilities, as they do not attribute an intrinsic value to the quantity of life. The may therefore miss improvements when the lifecycle utility of all individuals increase, for instance if the lifespan of all individuals is multiplied by a common factor.

21
Summarizing, theory does not provide clear answers whether and how the business orientation, cost efficiency, asset quality and stability differ between conventional and Islamic banks. This ambiguity is exacerbated by lack of clarity whether the products of Islamic banks follow Sharia in form or in content. We therefore turn to empirical analysis to explore differences between the two bank groups.

# **3. Data and Methodology**

We use data from Bankscope to construct and compare indicators of business orientation, efficiency, asset quality, and stability of both conventional and Islamic banks.<sup>3</sup> We only include banks with at least two observations and countries with data on at least four banks. We restrict our sample to the largest 100 banks in terms of assets within a country so that our sample is not dominated by a specific country. Finally, we eliminate outliers in all variables by winsorizing at the 1<sup>st</sup> and 99<sup>th</sup> percentiles. We also double check the categorization of Islamic banks in Bankscope with information from Islamic Banking Associations and country-specific sources.

In our main analysis, we use two different samples, both over the period 1995 to 2007 and thus both pre-dating the recent global financial crisis. In the next section, we compare preand post-crisis performance of Islamic and conventional banks. The larger sample comprises 141 countries and 2,956 banks, out of which 99 are Islamic banks. Individual regressions, however, have significantly fewer observations, depending on the availability of specific variables. These samples include countries with (i) only conventional, (ii) only Islamic and (iii) both conventional and Islamic banks. Another, smaller, sample comprises only countries with both conventional and Islamic banks, which allows us to control for any unobserved time-invariant effect by introducing country dummies. This smaller sample includes 486 banks across 20 countries, out of which 89 are Islamic banks.

In Table 1, we present data on 22 countries with both conventional and Islamic banks.<sup>4</sup> Specifically, we present the number of Islamic and total banks as well as the share of Islamic banks’ assets in total banking assets, all for 2007, the latest year in our pre-crisis sample. Further, we report the number of listed banks, for both Islamic and conventional banks. On average,

> 3 We use unconsolidated data when available and consolidated if unconsolidated is not available, in order to not double count subsidiaries of international banks.

> 4 Two countries are part of the crisis sample and are used in the analysis in Section 5.

9
4 (CMEA). At the same time, there was weakening of state control over state enterprises, in the presence of perverse incentives, which contributed to a dramatic deteroration in the financial position of many state enterpriscs. As a result, the profits tax base -- surpluses of - state enterprises and the associated government revenues plummeted. The percentage of revenues from profits tax, the key tax instrument, dropped from over 17% of GDP in 1991, to about 5% in 1993 (Table 1).

Tax reform necessitated by the move to a market economy resulted in significant changes in the tax structure. The pre-reform Bulgarian tax structure was dominated by the extremely high rate of 50% on "accounting profits" of state enterprises2 , an archaic final-sale turnover tax structure with many rates, and non-transparent social security contributions. These three taxes accounted for over two thirds of all government revenues. Administrative effort required to collect those revenues was modest. For the managers of a relatively small number of state enterprises (around 6,000) directly controlled by the state-party apparatus, the costs of non-compliance were high.

2/ The base for this tax had little to do with economic profits. Subsidies were counted as revenues, while important expenditure items including wages and salaries, interest payments and insurance were not counted as costs. Therefore, "accounting profits" were much higher than economic profits. Additional problem in making sense of the pre-reform profits of state enterprises was the fact that both input and output prices were typically controlled, thus further distorting the picture of true financial position of these enterprises. For more thorough discussions of the pre-reform tax system in Bulgaria, see Bogetid and Hillman (1994) and World Bank (1991), chapter one.
**Figure 5. LVAX share in exports, by income group, in 2011**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 0.45<br>0.40<br>0.35<br>0.30<br>indirect unskilled<br>0.25<br>indirect skilled<br>0.20<br>direct unskilled<br>0.15<br>0.10 direct skilled<br>0.05<br>0.00<br>High Middle Low World<br>income income income<br><!-- End of picture text --> Note: Income group is defined according to the World Bank country group 2011 classification.

The export-weighted world average LVAX share suggests that unskilled labor is more important than skilled labor for either direct or indirect export production, and that unskilled labor is more important for direct exports than indirect exports. These findings are consistent across all income levels, though to a varying degree:

- In the high-income group the _skilled_ direct and indirect components are the same while the _unskilled_ share is higher for the direct value added than for the indirect value added. This suggests that unskilled workers are relatively more important in the export industries than in the industries that supply them with intermediate inputs.

- In the middle-income group the direct _skilled_ and _unskilled_ labor share is smaller than the indirect one. Nevertheless the proportion of unskilled to skilled is higher in the indirect part of the labor value added in exports than in the direct part. Thus unskilled labor is slightly more important in direct export industries than in the rest of the economy that supplies them.

- The direct and indirect shares of the _skilled_ labor value added are the same in low-income countries as they are in the middle-income group. However, the _unskilled_ direct component is larger than the unskilled indirect component. Therefore, the higher proportion of unskilled labor in export industries compared to their suppliers is much more pronounced than in the middle-income group.

These differences in LVAX shares across income countries do not necessarily extend to domestic production. The share of labor value added in domestic output, as for exports, continues to be the highest in high-income countries. However, unlike for exports, the labor value added share of domestic output is equal in middle- and low-income countries, with similarities in the skilled vs. unskilled and direct vs. indirect splits (Figure 6). As such, we argue that understanding these differences in the LVAX shares across countries is informative about how exports support labor in countries.

13
**-35.**

followed by South **Asi** with 17%, LAC with 15%, East Asia with 13%, and EMENA with 10.5%.

Other Indicators of service quality are either not available or require further analysis before any conclusions can be drawn. The need for load shedding because of Insufficient generating capacity cannot be Inferred directly frT the available data, for example, on the basis of system load factor or the ratio of peak demand to Installed capacity. Load factors could Increase either due to load shedding or changes In demand characteristics. The ratio of peak cemand to Installed capacity Is an Indicator of the level of reserve margin available and therefore the ability to meet peak demand with allowance for both scheduled and forced outages. The peak demand to total Installed capacity ratio was analyzed using the PPAR basic data sheets and was found to lie In the range of 40-100% at the time of project appraisal. For utilities at the high end of the range, generation additlons were clearly required. For utilities with an Implied reserve margin of around 50%, i cannot be concluded Immediately that there is excess generating capacity because of the varying technical characterlstics of the systems. In countries where maintenance Is Inadequate due to lack of skilled staff and available spares, a higher reserve margin would be required to achieve a reasonable level of service as measured by Loss of Load Probability (LOLP).

The Qptimum level of LOLP will depend on the economic cost of outages such that more Industrialized countries In EMENA, LAC, and increasingly In East Asia Regions would require a lower LOLP and, hence, higher reserve margin. The optimal reserve margin requirement 13 also a function of the nature of the sys!em, Its mix of plant, the seasonal firm power available In hydro based and mixed systems, and the extent of derating of older thermal plants. In short, the optimal reserve margin requirement varies depending on circumstance, so that the maxlmum peak demand to Installed capacity figure would show significant variation before taking Into consideration other factors such as lumpiness of Investment, the point In the planning cycle such as just before (or after) starting (or completing) a large generating plant, the utility's capacity to carry out the