rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Measurements of poverty in Indonesia
            - 1996, 1999, and beyond
Indonesia's economic crisis has
            caused a consumption expenditures deterioration in the
            welfare of Indonesians. Focusing on only one dimension of
            individual, and family welfare - consumption expenditures -
            the authors analyze two issues associated with the
            measurement of poverty. The first issue is how to produce
            regionally consistent poverty lines - that is, how to define
            a level of spending for each region that produces the same
            material standard of living. Without comparable data on
            prices, there is a problem of circularity. Choosing the
            reference population is important for defining the price
            level by which to deflate money expenditures to reach the
            same welfare level, but one needs to know the price level to
            define the reference population as a group with the same
            real expenditures. To address the problem of circularity,
            the authors use an iterative approach to defining poverty,
            one that produces consistent results across regions. They
            then use those poverty lines to examine the common
            "poverty profiles" (by location, sector, and so
            on). The second issue is more conceptual: how to expand the
            narrow measure of poverty, based on spending for
            consumption, with extensions that expand how welfare is
            measured, and allow more consistent comparisons of different
            individuals' welfare levels.
The evolution of poverty during the
            crisis in Indonesia, 1996-99
Poverty is intrinsically a complex
            social construct, and even when it is narrowly defined by a
            deficit of consumption spending, many thorny issues arise in
            setting an appropriate "poverty line". The authors
            limit themselves to examining how poverty - defined on a
            consistent, welfare-comparable basis - changed in Indonesia
            during a series of crises that began in august 1997. Using
            various data sets and studies, they develop a consistent
            series on poverty's evolution from February 1996 to
            August 1999. Specifically, they study the appropriate method
            for comparing changes in poverty between the February 1996
            and February 1999 Susenas surveys. To set a poverty line for
            1999 that is conceptually comparable to that for 1996
            involves a standard issue of price deflation: How much would
            it cost in 1999 to purchase a bundle of goods that would
            produce the same level of material welfare as the money
            spent at the poverty line in 1996? Empirically, given major
            changes in the relative prices of food, the key issue is the
            weight given food prices in the price index. Using different
            deflators produces a range of plausible estimates, but they
            produce a range of plausible estimates, but they produce two
            "base cases": one working forward from 1996, and
            one working backward from 1999. If one accepts the official
            figure of 11.34 percent for February 1996, poverty increased
            from the immediate pre-crisis rate of about 7-8 percent in
            the second half of 1997, to the post-crisis rate of about
            18-20 percent by September 1998, and 18.9 percent in
            February 1999. If one begins from the best estimate of the
            poverty rate in February 1999 (27.1 percent), poverty rose
            by 9.6 percentage points from 17.5 percent in February 1996.
            Since February 1999, poverty appears to have subsided
            considerably but - two years after the crisis started - is
            still substantially higher than it was immediately before
            the crisis.
Enterprise isolation programs in
            transition economies : evidence from Romania
How should countries in transition to
            market economies handle the losses of large loss-making
            enterprises?  Over the past six years several governments in
            transition economies have implemented isolation programs
            that combine features of reorganization under bankruptcy (as
            in industrial countries) with severance payments for
            employees and assistance with labor deployment.  The author
            analyzes isolation programs for financially distressed firms
            in transition economies based on empirical evidence from
            Romania, the program that had the greatest coverage.  The
            results indicate that Romania's isolation program
            fulfilled none of its intentions.  Despite substantial
            costs, it neither delivered tangible improvements in
            operational performance nor improved the process of
            privatization or liquidation of large loss-making
            enterprises.  Worse still, the program may have delayed
            restructuring by not imposing hard budget constraints.
            Firms included in the program faced softer budget
            constraints than their counterparts outside the program.
            Loss makers were not selected through objective criteria,
            and the agency in charge was not sheltered from political
            pressure in enforcing hard budget constraints. The author
            therefore questions the feasibility of creating special
            programs for enterprise restructuring under government
            auspices, with government agencies choosing beneficiaries
            and deciding on the scope of activity.  His conclusion
            supports the insistence of international donor organizations
            that governments in transition economies privatize rapidly,
            without attempting first to restructure enterprises.
Revenue-productive income tax
            structures and tax reforms in emerging market economies -
            evidence from Bulgaria
Using a household budget survey for
            1992, The author shows the poor revenue performance and
            distributional impact of Bulgaria's personal income tax
            system.  He explores the implications for revenue and income
            distribution of two alternative tax systems - a flat tax and
            a progressive but simpler three-brackets tax system.  He
            demonstrates that simpler tax structures with lower tax
            rates could achieve at least equal revenue and
            distributional objectives and are superior in terms of
            efficiency and equity. (The findings are robust when
            Bulgaria's significant tax evasion is included).  But
            tax changes since 1992 have, if anything, moved Bulgaria
            even further from a simple income tax system: the number of
            rates and brackets increased from 7 to 10, and the levels of
            exemption remain unchanged.  (Complex, higher rates
            complicate administration and enforcement and provide
            incentives for tax evasions.  And in the alternative systems
            the author explores, the poor are protected with higher
            exemptions.)  Fortunately, the country's personal
            income tax structure began to move toward less nominal
            progressivity after Bulgaria's 1997 tax reform program.
            The tax rate in the top income bracket was reduced from 52
            percent to 40 percent, the number of tax brackets was
            halved, and the exemption level was increased 20 percent
            (reducing tax burdens on the poor).
WTO accession for countries in transition
Countries in transition have considered
            membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) an
            important step toward integration in the international
            economic system. After several years of negotiations, five
            members of the former Soviet Union (FSU) - Armenia, the
            three Baltic countries, and the Kygryz Republic - may become
            members in 1998. It will probably take longer for Russia,
            Ukraine, and some others. It takes four to five years to
            process applications for FSU countries - which is close to
            average for recent applicants. The five countries expected
            to accede to the WTO this year are among the more liberal
            member of the FSU. With those five processed, there will be
            a backlog of another 26 application, most of them countries
            in transition, including China and Russia. At the current
            rate of processing, it will take five to six years to
            process them - and a decade or more for the 25 or so
            developing and transition economies that have yet to apply.
            Processing is tine-consuming because: legislative
            requirements needed for accession are time-consuming;
            candidate countries are weak institutionally and unfamiliar
            with the economic and legal issues to be addressed; the fact
            finding process is unnecessarily cumbersome and
            time-consuming; technical assistance to applicants in
            meeting the requirements for WTO accession is not
            effectively coordinated; and addressing the commercial
            interests of all members requires protracted negotiations.
            Governments seeking accession must coordinate the
            legislative and regulatory changes needed in their foreign
            trade regimes, adopt liberal trade policies, and identify
            areas of institutional weakness that require delays in
            implementation of WTO provisions and seek agreement on such
            delays. WTO members, for their part, should expedite the
            process, as universal membership is in everyone s best
            interest. They should: agree to suitable, time-bound
            extensions to allow acceding governments to address
            institutional weaknesses; provide coordinated assistance to
            acceding countries to strengthen their institutional
            capacity; and streamline the fact finding aspects of the
            accession process and give the WTO secretariat the budgetary
            resources it needs to work with applicant governments for
            this purpose.
Pay and grade differentials at the
            World Bank
Large international organizations such
            as the World Bank pursue many objectives in hiring policies,
            including reduced costs, cultural diversity, and the
            avoidance of discrimination. There can be sharp tradeoffs
            between these objectives.  Diversity is enhanced by
            recruiting from an international labor market, for example,
            but international organizations face unusually large
            differences in reservation wages for staff capable of doing
            the same work. One way to reduce costs would be to pay
            employees their reservation wages, which implies unequal pay
            for equal work, or discrimination. The authors show how
            these tradeoffs are resolved in the World Bank's hiring
            processes. They estimate disparities in salary and grades
            between men and women and by country of origin that cannot
            be attributed to differences in the productive
            characteristics of workers. The results indicate that about
            half the salary and grade differentials between men and
            women and staff from high- and low-income countries are
            attributable to differences in worker characteristics. They
            explore a number of alternative explanations for the rest of
            the salary and grade differentials, including
            omitted-variable bias, quotas imposed to ensure diversity,
            and discrimination in hiring and promoting.  They argue that
            neither omitted-variable bias nor quotas are compelling
            explanations for disparities, and that discrimination
            probably exists, although certainly less than would be
            implied by a cost-minimizing hiring policy. A shift seems to
            be occurring in the hiring process of the Bank, possibly
            because 1) the application pool, including women and Part II
            nationals (from developing countries) has significantly
            improved in quality; 2) information gathering during hiring
            has intensified, decreasing guesswork; 3) there is more
            incentive to staff from minority groups; and 4) the
            Bank's increasing diversity in terms of gender and
            nationality groups is more conducive to high performance by
            the people against whom there may previously have been bias.
Taxing capital income in Hungary and
            the European Union
Countries seeking membership in the
            European Union (EU) cannot look to the EU for a blueprint
            for reforming their system for taxing capital income.
            Indeed, it is hard to generalize about tax systems in the
            EU.  Most member states apply fairly low tax rates to
            interest payments and discriminate against profit
            distributions.  But tax rates, exemption levels, and methods
            of tax integration differ greatly within and across
            countries, and there is almost no harmonization of methods
            for taxing capital income.  Approaches to taxing capital
            gains vary greatly, and distortions arise from the treatment
            of various sources of capital income.  In 1993, when the EU
            began efforts to integrate capital markets, member countries
            proposed various ways to harmonize capital income taxes,
            including a proposal to introduce a withholding tax on
            interest income of residents of member states, with a
            minimum rate of 15 percent (revised to 10 percent).  Under
            this scheme all interest on bank deposits and government and
            private bonds would be taxed and there might also be a final
            withholding tax on residents  interest income.  But the
            proposal was not accepted and the EU Commission decided to
            maintain the status quo, not to pressure member countries to
            harmonize company taxes. But Hungary could look for models
            in the Nordic countries (especially Norway and Sweden),
            Austria, and Finland, which have undertaken far-reaching
            reforms of capital income taxation.  In most EU countries
            capital gains are either not (directly) taxed or are not
            taxed systematically.  In Finland and Norway identical tax
            rates are applied to all types of capital income, including
            capital gains.  The centerpiece of the "Scandinavian
            model" is a dual income tax, combining a progressive
            tax on personal income with a flat-rate tax on all types of
            capital income.  The "Scandinavian model"
            contrasts sharply with the "comprehensive income
            taxation" model, under which a single (progressive) tax
            schedule is applied to income from all sources.  In Austria
            the treatment of different types of capital income is
            relatively uniform but the composite tax burden on capital
            income resembles the highest personal income tax rate rather
            than a reduced rate.  Austria's rate of tax evasion was
            high, but a 10 percent withholding tax applied to all
            interest-bearing assets has reduced discrimination against
            honest taxpayers.
Gender disparity in South Asia :
            comparisons between and within countries
Using data assembled from the
            Demographic Health Surveys of over 50 countries and from the
            National Family Health Surveys of individual states in
            India, the authors create a new data set of comparable
            indicators of gender disparity. They establish three
            findings: 1) As is by now well-known, the level of gender
            disparities in health and education outcomes for girls in
            South Asia is the highest in the world. 2) Even within South
            Asia, and within India or Pakistan, there are huge
            variations in gender disparity. Differences in gender
            disparity among Indian states or among provinces in Pakistan
            are typically greater than those among the world's
            nations. The ratio of female to male child mortality in one
            Indian state (Haryana) is worse than in any country in the
            world, although in another state (Tamil Nadu) it is lower
            than in all but three countries. 3) Across and within the
            set of developing nations, gender disparity is not only a
            phenomenon of poverty. There is almost no correlation
            between per capita income and the gender disparities in
            health and education outcomes. So although absolute levels
            of health and education outcomes for girls are strongly
            related to economic conditions, the disparities between
            outcomes for girls and boys are not. Understanding what
            causes such great gender disparity within South Asia is the
            next pressing question for researchers.
Leasing to support small businesses
            and microenterprises
In most developing countries, capital
            markets are relatively undeveloped and banks are often
            unable or unwilling to undertake term lending.  And banks
            prefer to lend to larger, established business with
            well-developed balance sheets and credit histories.
            Operations in microenterprises and small businesses are
            cash-flow-oriented but rarely have organized historical
            financial records or the assets needed for collateral for
            conventional bank financing.  The author explores the
            potential of leasing as an option to expand small
            businesses' access to medium-term financing for capital
            equipment and new technology.  In a lease-financing
            contract, the lessor-financier retains ownership of the
            asset, lease payments can be tailored to fit the cash-flow
            generation patterns of the lessee-borrower's business,
            and the security deposit is smaller than the equity stake
            required in conventional bank financing.  Different types of
            small businesses require different financial services.  It
            would be worthwhile to encourage development of a range of
            institutions using special methods to service particular
            market niches.  Most small businesses that generate extra
            income for a household or employ nonfamily members need
            simple access to financing to augment their working capital
            needs.  Microfinance appropriate to their needs will feature
            short cycles of repayment and borrowing. Other small
            businesses require medium-term financing to acquire the
            tools and equipment needed to support production growth and
            expansion.  For these businesses, leasing is an attractive
            new financing option.  The author examines and compares the
            Bank's experience:  1) Lease financing was used to
            promote the development of small businesses in Pakistan, as
            part of a microenterprise development loan project.  2) For
            a Bank-supported alternative-energy project in Indonesia, a
            variant of lease financing -- the hire-purchase contract --
            is being used in marketing and distribution by private
            distributors of photovoltaic solar home systems.  3) Lease
            financing was used by Grameen Trust in Bangladesh to finance
            the purchase of small tools and equipment and in other
            countries to promote the growth of alternative energy systems.
Pension reform and private pension
            funds in Peru and Colombia
The author examines the performance of
            the new private pension systems in Peru and Colombia during
            their first years of existence.  Peru and Colombia were the
            second and third Latin American countries to implement a
            systemic reform of their pension systems.  The reforms
            experienced difficulties in both countries, partly because
            of deficiencies in the design of the new systems and partly
            because of shortcomings in implementation.  Both countries,
            especially Peru, took several additional measures to rectify
            the design problems of their reform programs.  The systems
            now in place differ in several important respects from the
            systems initially introduced.  This shared experience
            suggests that athough flawed reform programs incur
            inefficiencies, the flaws can be removed and the reform
            programs significantly strengthened--if the authorities have
            a strong long-term commitment to a successful systemic
            pension reform.  Peru's private pension funds suffered
            unfair competition with its public pillars, which required
            lower contribution rates and lower retirement ages.  They
            suffered poor financial results partly because of low salary
            levels and partly because they were not given permission to
            defer their high start-up costs, resulting in substantial
            capital losses.  Private pension funds in Peru have become
            increasingly diversified, with 25 percent of assets invested
            in equities by the end of 1996.  But a big share of
            investments is in the banking sector and other financial
            institutions, giving the funds significant exposure to a
            sector that in most countries is highly leveraged and
            exposed to financial crises.  Those investments should be
            more diversified sectorally.  Development of Colombia's
            private pension system was also limited because it coexisted
            with the public system.  Competition with the public system
            was not as unfair as in Peru, but the slow pace of reform in
            the public system and the disincentives for older workers to
            join the new system were a significant obstacle to faster
            growth.  Despite using a preexisting fund management
            infrastructure, Colombia's private pensions funds
            incurred high start-up costs and suffered heavy losses.
            Although Colombia's financial sector was far more
            developed than Peru's when reform started,
            Colombia's portfolio has been much slower to diversify
            than Peru's--mostly because of high returns on
            fixed-income securities in Colombia and low trading in the
            stock market.  The author discusses the public pension
            systems only in terms of their relationship with and impact
            on the private systems' functioning.