rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
FDI spillovers and high-growth firms
            in developing countries
This paper evaluates the heterogeneous
            impact of spillovers from multinational corporations (MNCs)
            to domestic enterprises in the developing world. It
            empirically investigates two transmission channels of
            knowledge spillovers. First, direct contractual linkages
            between indigenous firms and MNCs. Second, indirect
            demonstration effects accrued by domestic firms by imitating
            foreign technologies either through observation or by hiring
            workers trained by MNCs. The paper focuses on the impact of
            spillovers on high-growth firms, which are enterprises with
            high job creation rates and, therefore, assumed to have high
            absorptive capacities. The paper also evaluates spillovers
            stemming from MNCs with different motivations to invest in
            developing countries. Employing a survey of around 71,000
            firms across 50 sectors in 122 developing countries, the
            paper shows that high-growth firms internalize spillovers
            through both avenues and that contractual linkages are the
            most powerful transmission channel. FDI embedded in global
            value chains generates larger spillovers to high-growth
            domestic firms than investment that seeks to serve the host
            economy. There is no evidence that natural resource-seeking
            FDI generates spillovers. The results have important
            implications for policy design, as public funding in
            developing countries is often directed to support programs
            that seek to connect domestic suppliers with MNCs.
Macroeconomic implications of
            financial imperfections : a survey
This paper surveys the theoretical and
            empirical literature on the macroeconomic implications of
            financial imperfections. It focuses on two major channels
            through which financial imperfections can affect
            macroeconomic outcomes. The first channel, which operates
            through the demand side of finance and is captured by
            financial accelerator-type mechanisms, describes how changes
            in borrowers' balance sheets can affect their access to
            finance and thereby amplify and propagate economic and
            financial shocks. The second channel, which is associated
            with the supply side of finance, emphasises the implications
            of changes in financial intermediaries' balance sheets
            for the supply of credit, liquidity and asset prices, and,
            consequently, for macroeconomic outcomes. These channels
            have been shown to be important in explaining the linkages
            between the real economy and the financial sector. That
            said, many questions remain.
Double for nothing experimental
            evidence on an unconditional teacher salary increase in Indonesia
How does a large unconditional increase
            in salary affect the performance of incumbent employees in
            the public sector? This paper presents experimental evidence
            on this question in the context of a policy change in
            Indonesia that led to a permanent doubling of teachers'
            base salaries. The analysis uses a large-scale, randomized
            experiment across a representative sample of Indonesian
            schools that accelerated this pay increase for teachers in
            treated schools. The findings show that the large pay
            increase significantly improved teachers' satisfaction
            with their income, reduced the incidence of teachers holding
            outside jobs, and reduced self-reported financial stress.
            Nevertheless, after two and three years, the increase in pay
            led to no improvement in student learning outcomes. The
            effects are precisely estimated, making it possible to rule
            out even modest positive impacts on test scores. The results
            suggest that unconditional pay increases are unlikely to be
            an effective policy option for improving the effort and
            productivity of incumbent employees in public sector settings.
Capital and labor : the factor
            income composition of top incomes in the United States, 1962-2006
This paper finds that capital and labor
            incomes in the United States have become more closely
            associated since the 1980s. This contributed to the
            well-known increase in the top 1 percent's share of
            total income, exacerbating rising inequality in capital
            incomes and earnings. The paper shows that the trend in the
            association is U-shaped, as the recent increase contrasts
            with a tendency toward a weakening association until the
            1980s. The paper uses data derived from tax records, studies
            the asymmetries in the association, tests for robustness to
            alternative income definitions, and discusses the potential
            role of declining top marginal tax rates.
Man vs. machine in predicting
            successful entrepreneurs : evidence from a business plan
            competition in Nigeria
This paper compares the relative
            performance of man and machine in being able to predict
            outcomes for entrants in a business plan competition in
            Nigeria. The first human predictions are business plan
            scores from judges, and the second are simple ad hoc
            prediction models used by researchers. The paper compares
            these (out-of-sample) performances with those of three
            machine learning approaches. The results show that (i)
            business plan scores from judges are uncorrelated with
            business survival, employment, sales, or profits three years
            later; (ii) a few key characteristics of entrepreneurs such
            as gender, age, ability, and business sector do have some
            predictive power for future outcomes; (iii) modern machine
            learning methods do not offer noticeable improvements; (iv)
            the overall predictive power of all approaches is very low,
            highlighting the fundamental difficulty of picking winners;
            and (v) the models do twice as well as random selection in
            identifying firms in the top tail of performance.
Micro-level analysis of Mexican
            retail markets and their response to changes in market
            structure and competition policies
This paper develops the following price
            indicators to measure the relative efficiency (functioning)
            of markets: (a) price dispersion, (b) price volatility, and
            (c) price transmission (speed, completeness, and symmetry).
            The paper uses these indicators to study trends and
            conditions of the outlet level in retail prices for common
            commodities sold throughout Mexico. The analysis examines
            price patterns for each indicator across commodities,
            regions, and time. The descriptive results indicate that
            although there is (expected) heterogeneity in the behavior
            of these indicators across commodities, location variables
            explain the most variation in the indicators. There are
            clear and persistent regional- and commodity-specific
            effects. Thus, the study concludes that Mexico is not one,
            well-integrated national market. The study tested whether
            changes in these indicators (increased efficiency) have the
            expected correlation with measures affecting the functioning
            of markets. It considered changes in competition and entry
            of large retail stores in the local retail market. These
            changes affect market efficiency in the way theory would
            predict. The results suggest that these indicators are good
            measures of the relative efficiency (functioning) of
            markets. The findings also suggest that efforts to monitor
            markets using these indicators may be useful. For example,
            for policy makers who are concerned about the distributional
            effects of liberalizing trade, the indicators may predict
            where price impacts will be felt the most and by whom. In
            addition, the indicators provide preliminary information
            about relative competition levels, which may be helpful in
            saving the time and effort of the competition authorities
            and possibly making them more effective.
A primer on human capital
This note summarizes some of the key
            contributions in the macro- and micro- economic literature
            on the pathways linking human capital and income growth.
            Rather than completeness, the objective of this work is to
            distill some of the most relevant threads in the evolution
            of these literatures using a human capital lens, with a view
            to provide a useful yet parsimonious conceptual framework
            and an update on empirical results. The note first describes
            the human capital model (section 1). It then outlines the
            main theoretical elements of growth theory and presents
            empirical results from the cross-country regressions and
            development accounting literature to gauge to what extent
            human capital affects growth at the aggregate level
            (sections 2, 3 and 4). The note then reviews the micro
            empirical literature estimating labor income returns of
            human capital investments (sections 5 and 6). The conclusion
            draws comparisons between the two empirical approaches and
            provides a brief critical assessment on how to interpret the
            empirical results. Investing in human capital is a promising
            strategy to attain stable and positive growth. The magnitude
            of the effects is country-specific and varies depending on
            the population of interest, the policy under consideration,
            and the human capital component considered.
Winners never quit, quitters never
            grow : using text mining to measure policy volatility and
            its link with long-term growth in Latin America
Although there is wide recognition of
            the negative consequences of policy volatility for
            countries' long-term economic growth, there is limited
            empirical work on this subject. One of the reasons is the
            difficulty of measuring policy volatility over long periods
            of time, especially in developing countries. This paper
            contributes to this literature by constructing a proxy for
            policy volatility that exploits the information content of
            the priorities conveyed in presidential speeches. The study
            creates a policy volatility measure using a Latent Dirichlet
            Allocation algorithm on a novel data set of 953 presidential
            speeches in 10 Latin American countries and Spain. The paper
            shows that the proxy for policy volatility is negatively
            correlated with long-term growth over 1940-2010. The results
            are robust to a large set of changes in the construction of
            the proxy for policy volatility.
Lessons from reforming financial
            management information systems : a review of the evidence
Financial management information systems
            are a sine qua non in public financial management and play a
            foundational role in the execution of the budget.
            Recognizing their potential contribution to fiscal
            discipline, the strategic allocation of resources, and
            operational efficiency, significant time and resources have
            been invested by the World Bank and other development
            institutions into such systems across the world. However,
            the reform of financial management information systems tends
            to be complex, and the evidence base of causal effects and
            mechanisms is thin. This study develops a framework that
            outlines the various steps involved in reform that
            illustrate how change is expected to happen. Three major
            dimensions were identified: (1) diagnostic phase, (2)
            systems development lifecycle, and (3) coverage and
            utilization. The paper argues that reaching the financial
            management information systems production frontier requires
            optimization across these dimensions, and that a
            programmatically coherent approach is required to realize
            fully the expected improvements in budget management. The
            study identifies a set of lessons on the various stages that
            are mapped against the framework by triangulating findings
            from a systematic review of the financial management
            information systems literature, field-based project-level
            evaluations and protocol based case studies, and a
            comprehensive desk review of the World Bank financial
            management information systems project documentation.
Regional carbon pricing for
            international maritime transport : challenges and
            opportunities for global geographical coverage
Although the existing literature
            identifies a fuel levy imposed by means of a global
            agreement as the most efficient policy for carbon pricing in
            the maritime sector, scholars and policy makers debate the
            possibility for regional measures to be introduced in case a
            global agreement cannot be achieved. This debate has
            highlighted several economic, legal, and political
            challenges that the implementation of an efficient and
            effective regional scheme would have to face. This paper
            compares the relative performance of various regional
            measures for carbon pricing based on the following criteria:
            jurisdictional basis, data availability, environmental
            effectiveness and avoidance strategies, impact on
            competitiveness, differentiation for developing countries,
            and incentives for reaching a global agreement. The main
            finding is that, if carefully designed, a cargo-based
            measure that covers the emissions released throughout the
            whole voyage to the cargo destination presents various
            advantages compared with other carbon pricing schemes. These
            advantages have been largely ignored in the literature.
Using satellite imagery to assess
            impacts of soil and water conservation measures : evidence
            from Ethiopia's Tana-Beles Watershed
Although efforts at soil and water
            conservation are routinely viewed as instrumental in
            reducing vulnerability to climate change, their impact has
            rarely been quantified. Combining data on the timing and
            intensity of soil and water conservation interventions in
            select Ethiopian watersheds from 2009 to 2016 with a
            pixel-level panel of vegetative cover and soil moisture data
            derived from satellite imagery makes it possible to assess
            the biophysical impacts of such measures using a
            difference-in-differences specification. The results point
            toward significant effects overall that vary by season, and
            that tree planting and other soil and water conservation
            activities are more effective on degraded than cultivated
            land. The results are consistent with before-after
            regressions for daily sediment load and stream flows in a
            subset of micro-watersheds. It thus appears that satellite
            imagery can improve the design and near-real-time monitoring
            of sustainable land management interventions for watersheds
            and landscape.
Using satellite imagery to assess
            impacts of soil and water conservation measures : evidence
            from Ethiopia's Tana-Beles Watershed
WPS8321 Policy Research Working Paper 8321 Using Satellite Imagery to Assess Impacts of Soil and Water Conservation Measures Evidence from Ethiopia’s Tana-Beles Watershed _Daniel Ayalew Ali Klaus Deininger Daniel Monchuk_ Development Research Group Agriculture and Rural Development Team January 2018
Informal sector heterogeneity and
            income inequality : evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo
This paper uses 1-2-3 survey data on the
            Democratic Republic of Congo to analyze heterogeneity in the
            informal sector. It empirically identifies three types of
            entrepreneurs in the sector. The first group of
            entrepreneurs—top performers -- is growth oriented and
            enjoys greater access to capital. The second
            group—constrained gazelles -- includes entrepreneurs who
            share many characteristics, especially management skills,
            with the top performers, but operate with less capital. The
            third group—survivalists—comprises firms struggling to grow.
            Based on logit and fixed effect ordinary least squares
            models, the results presented in this paper show that
            poverty and income inequality are more common among
            constrained gazelles and survivalists. The paper also shows
            that income inequality is explained mainly by educational
            disparities and lack of credit access among entrepreneurs.
            Additionally, the outcomes of a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition
            show that the performance of firms is a key factor in
            explaining differences in income. Examining the drivers of
            performance, the paper finds that human capital and
            managerial skills are important engines of performance.
India's internal labor
            migration paradox : the statistical and the real
Internal labor migration rates in India
            have been largely static and low in recent times compared
            with those in other countries. This is a cause for concern
            because internal migration for economic reasons can promote
            the agglomeration of economic activity in more productive
            locations and directly contribute to reducing poverty
            through remittances. New evidence based on the India Human
            Development Survey, which provides a more recent source of
            data compared with the Census and other household surveys,
            shows that labor mobility is higher than previously
            estimated -- the stock of labor migrants increased from 16
            million in 2004-05 to 60 million in 2011–12. The absolute
            number of circular migrants, at more than 200 million in
            2011-12, is also much higher than previously documented
            estimates. Tracking the same households between 2004–05 and
            2011-12, empirical analysis based on the India Human
            Development Survey highlights several socioeconomic factors
            associated with the migration decision: household income,
            the availability of information, as well as community
            networks in source and destination areas. There is also a
            possible administrative dimension to interstate migration
            barriers, owing to domicile provisions for work and study,
            lack of portability of social benefits, and legal and other
            entitlements upon relocation.
Size-dependent tax enforcement and
            compliance : global evidence and aggregate implications
This paper studies the prevalence and
            consequences of size-dependent tax enforcement and
            compliance. The identification strategy uses the ranking of
            industries' average firm size in the United States as
            an instrument for the size ranking of the same industries in
            developing countries. Data on 125,000 firms in 140 countries
            show that tax enforcement and compliance increase with size.
            Size-dependence is more prevalent in low-income countries,
            and concentrated at the top of the size distribution. When
            quantified in a general equilibrium model, removing size
            dependent enforcement leads to gains in Total Factor
            Productivity of up to 0.8 percent.
The distributional impact of the
            fiscal system in Albania
In a context of fiscal consolidation and
            the need to deliver on a structural reform agenda, policy
            makers in Albania must not lose sight of the critical
            redistributive role of the fiscal system, particularly its
            impact on poverty and inequality. Using household survey
            data, this paper estimates the redistributive effect of
            fiscal policy on income distribution and poverty in Albania,
            assessing the individual and combined effects of taxes and
            public social spending. The findings show that the fiscal
            system in Albania plays a positive role in reducing
            inequality. Yet, it has a moderate poverty-increasing
            effect. Specifically, taxes and social protection
            contributions have a poverty-increasing effect; indirect
            taxes, particularly the value-added tax, account for the
            largest increases in poverty. This effect is somewhat
            compensated by direct government transfers, which are
            pro-poor and equalizing, but are not large enough to offset
            fully the negative impact on the taxation side. Ongoing
            reforms aimed at improving the efficiency and targeting of
            social assistance can contribute to enhancing the pro-poor
            impact of the fiscal system.
What investors want : perceptions
            and experiences of multinational corporations in developing countries
This paper discusses the results of a
            survey of multinational corporations with affiliates in
            developing countries. The paper explores corporate
            perspectives and decision making across the stages of the
            investment cycle: attraction, entry and establishment,
            operations and expansion, linkages with the local economy,
            and, in some cases, divestment and exit. Through interviews
            with 754 executives, the survey finds that political
            stability and a business-friendly regulatory environment are
            the top two factors influencing multinational
            corporations' investment decisions in developing
            countries. Investors seek predictable, transparent, and
            efficient conduct of public agencies. The survey results
            also show that investors are heterogeneous, and their
            perceptions vary with motivation and size. Multinational
            corporations that are involved in efficiency-seeking
            investment are more selective than investors motivated by
            other considerations, and that relatively smaller
            multinational corporations are more sensitive to host
            country characteristics and investment climate factors than
            large firms.