rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Promoting intellectual property
            monetization in developing countries : a review of issues
            and strategies to support knowledge-driven growth
This paper outlines and evaluates
            several intellectual property monetization strategies
            available to patent holders in developing countries that
            help generate domestic innovation and knowledge-driven
            growth by promoting more active technology markets. Based on
            a review of World Intellectual Property Report indicators,
            the patent ownership gap between a sample of developed and
            developing countries has narrowed gradually for more
            technologically-sophisticated developing countries. However,
            based on complementary International Monetary Fund Balance
            of Payments data, the patent commercialization divide (as
            indicated by licensing income) has been widening. The paper
            argues that patents, and all forms of intellectual property,
            are an enabling mechanism rather than a defensive right: an
            intangible asset class that can be proactively nurtured and
            managed for greater value extraction to stimulate
            knowledge-based entrepreneurship and growth in developing
            countries. The paper presents multiple case studies of
            alternative monetization strategies to address the
            commercialization divide. These strategies range from
            private, market-driven options to those requiring a greater
            amount of public policy support: from patent securitization
            and patent exchanges (focusing on the United
            States-initiated Intellectual Property Exchange
            International and the Shanghai Silicon Intellectual Property
            Exchange), to the strengthening of technology transfer and
            commercialization infrastructure (focusing on the experience
            of the Association of University Technology Managers and
            Taiwan, China's Intellectual Property Rights
            Institute), to patent litigation support (including South
            Korea's support of patent infringement lawsuit costs
            for small and medium enterprises). The paper also highlights
            areas where further policy research would be helpful.
Job creation through infrastructure
            investment in the Middle East and North Africa
In the next 10 years or so, the
            infrastructure sector has the potential to generate
            significant employment. This paper estimates annual job
            creation of about 2.0 million in direct jobs and 2.5 million
            in direct, indirect and induced infrastructure-related jobs
            just by meeting the infrastructure investment needs of about
            6.9 percent of gross domestic product (about US$106 billion)
            for the Middle East and North Africa region on average. The
            breakdown in expected needs is 11 percent in developing oil
            exporters, 6 percent in oil importing countries, and 5
            percent in the Gulf Cooperation Council oil exporters. Needs
            are particularly high in electricity and roads. While
            important, infrastructure job creation will not resolve the
            region's unemployment problem alone and its job
            creation potential varies greatly across countries.
            Moreover, the current ability to finance and hence meet the
            infrastructure needs varies significantly across countries.
            Oil importers are likely to fall short under business as
            usual scenarios. In a region in which the public sector is
            the main source of infrastructure financing, fiscal choices
            will thus matter to job creation through infrastructure. But
            there are more challenges, including the governance of job
            creation, and the proper targeting and costing of subsidies
            for job creation and the (re)training programs needed.
            Managing expectations will also matter, as infrastructure
            jobs will help but will not solve the region's
            unemployment and underemployment problems.
Making public sector reforms work :
            political and economic contexts, incentives, and strategies
Supporting effective public sector
            reform is a major challenge that the World Bank and other
            agencies and stakeholders have been grappling with. It is
            increasingly recognized that political economy factors play
            a crucial role. However, beyond this broad proposition,
            specific questions arise: What country contexts are
            more/less propitious for public sector reforms and what
            reforms are likely to succeed where? And can more explicitly
            taking political economy challenges into account help to
            pursue public sector reforms even in less propitious
            contexts? This paper addresses these issues in two ways:
            first, it draws on the existing literature to identify key
            propositions about factors that can trigger or facilitate
            public sector reforms, and those that tend to work against
            (successful) reforms. Second, it investigates the experience
            of World Bank public sector operations over the decade
            2000-2010. It finds that governments in many developing
            countries face incentives to initiate public sector reforms,
            but that at the implementation stage, political costs
            frequently outweigh potential gains; and hence reforms are
            abandoned or left to wither. Real breakthroughs have been
            achieved in countries experiencing major structural shifts
            and those having political leadership committed to
            higher-level goals. The review of operations shows that
            successful projects are significantly more widespread than
            the literature would lead to assume. Furthermore, it
            provides tentative evidence that investing in understanding
            political economy drivers has been associated with better
            project performance. Key implications are the need to
            differentiate between country contexts more clearly ex ante,
            concentrate more on reform implementation during windows of
            opportunity that are typically of limited duration, and
            design reforms with a clear plan of engagement with
            stakeholder incentives.
The doing business indicators,
            economic growth and regulatory reform
Improving the investment climate is
            among the top priorities in development. The World Bank
            Group's Doing Business reports have become an important
            guide and benchmark to inform regulatory reforms aimed at
            unleashing the potential of the private sector. This paper
            discusses the potential role of the Doing Business
            Indicators in the reform process. Generally, the Doing
            Business studies are constrained in their prescriptive power
            for policy making. However, governments that nonetheless
            choose to use the Doing Business reports for guidance in the
            reform process can aim to improve their Doing Business
            ranking to enhance the visibility of their general reform
            efforts; or they can aim at maximizing the impact of reform
            on economic growth. In this case, the evidence suggests that
            focusing on indicators relating to credit and the
            enforcement of contracts is the most important. Indicators
            related to cost have the largest potential for fostering growth.
Are international food price spikes
            the source of Egypt's high inflation
This paper examines whether domestic
            inflation spikes in Egypt during 2001-2011 were primarily
            the result of external food price shocks. To estimate the
            pass-through of international food price inflation to
            domestic price inflation, two different methodologies are
            used: a two-step regression model estimates the pass-through
            in the long run, and a vector autoregression model provides
            the short-run estimates. The empirical evidence confirms
            that pass-through is high in the short term, but not in the
            long run. More precisely, the results show that (i) long-run
            pass-through to domestic food inflation is relatively low,
            lying between 13 and 16 percent, while the long-term
            spill-over from domestic food inflation to core inflation is
            moderate, lying around 60 percent; (ii) in the short term,
            pass-through is relatively high, estimated around 29 percent
            after 6 months and around two-thirds after a year, but the
            spill-over effect to core inflation is limited; (iii)
            international food price shocks explain only a small portion
            of domestic inflation shocks in both the short and long
            terms; and (iv) international price inflation has asymmetric
            effects on domestic prices.
MTEFs and fiscal performance: panel
            data evidence
In the last two decades more than 120
            countries have adopted a version of a Medium-Term
            Expenditure Framework (MTEF). These are budget institutions
            whose rationale it is to enable the central government to
            make credible multi-year fiscal commitments. This paper
            analyzes a newly-collected dataset of worldwide MTEF
            adoptions during 1990-2008. It exploits within-country
            variation in MTEF adoption in a dynamic panel framework to
            estimate their impacts. The analysis finds that MTEFs
            strongly improve fiscal discipline, with more advanced MTEF
            phases having a larger impact. Higher-phase MTEFs also
            improve allocative efficiency. Only top-phase MTEFs have a
            significantly positive effect on technical efficiency.
Trade policy and wage inequality : a
            structural analysis with occupational and sectoral mobility
A number of authors have argued that a
            worker's occupation of employment is at least as
            important as the worker's industry of employment in
            determining whether the worker will be hurt or helped by
            international trade. This paper investigates the role of
            occupational mobility on the effects of trade shocks on wage
            inequality in a dynamic, structural econometric model of
            worker adjustment. Each worker in the model can switch
            either industry, occupation, or both, paying a time-varying
            cost to do so in a rational-expectations optimizing
            environment. The authors find that the costs of switching
            industry and occupation are both high, and of similar
            magnitude, but in simulations they find that a worker's
            industry of employment is much more important than either
            the worker's occupation or skill class in determining
            whether he or she is harmed by a trade shock.
Facilitating international
            production networks : the role of trade logistics
This paper shows that networked trade in
            parts and components is more sensitive to the importing
            country's logistics performance than is trade in final
            goods. In the baseline specification, the difference between
            the two trade semi-elasticities is around 45 percent, which
            suggests that the effect is quantitatively important. In
            addition, the analysis finds that logistics performance is
            particularly important for trade in the Asia-Pacific region,
            which is exactly where the emergence of international
            production networks has been most pronounced over recent
            years. The results suggest that policymakers can support the
            development of international production networks by helping
            improve trade logistics performance.
Tools for assessing the costs and
            benefits of green growth : the U.S. and Mexico
This paper examines the processes used
            in the United States and Mexico to assess the economic costs
            and benefits of environmental improvement, the kinds of
            information obtained from these procedures, and the
            additional knowledge that is needed about both elements to
            improve understanding of the problems and prospects of
            advancing a green growth agenda. Because environmental and
            other development needs are large and resources are limited,
            it is important to choose the best projects, those with the
            highest returns on both public investments and private
            resources harnessed by regulation. The United States is
            well-established as a world leader in the use of
            quantitative methods to evaluate options for environmental
            regulation and policy. Mexico represents a case where a
            developing country has made clear advances in reforming its
            economy and in introducing transparency in its regulatory
            processes for environmental and other policy areas.
Drivers of entrepreneurship and
            post-entry performance : microeconomic evidence from
            advanced and developing countries
The aim of this study is to provide a
            microeconomic investigation of the concept of
            entrepreneurship; in particular, it discusses the following
            issues: 1) the alternative ways of looking at
            entrepreneurship, distinguishing "creative
            destruction" from simple "turbulence"; 2) the
            different microeconomic determinants of new firm formation,
            distinguishing "progressive" from
            "regressive" drivers; 3) the relationship between
            ex-ante characteristics (of the founder) and post-entry
            performance (of the new firm); and 4) the possible scope for
            an economic policy aimed at maximizing the impact of
            entrepreneurship on economic growth. Where possible and
            appropriate, the paper devotes particular attention to the
            specific features characterizing entrepreneurship in
            developing countries.
Correcting real exchange rate
            misalignment : conceptual and practical issues
This paper studies the issue of real
            exchange rate misalignment and the difficulties in settling
            international real exchange rate disputes. The authors show
            theoretically that determining when a country should be
            sanctioned for real exchange rate "manipulations"
            is difficult: in some situations a country's real
            exchange rate targeting can be beneficial to other
            countries, while in others it is not. Regardless, it is
            difficult to establish whether a misaligned real exchange
            rate is intentionally manipulated rather than
            unintentionally caused by other policies or by various
            distortions in the economy. The paper continues by
            illustrating the difficulty in measuring real exchange rate
            misalignment, and provides a critical assessment of existing
            methodologies. It concludes by proposing a new method for
            measuring real exchange rate misalignment based on
            differences in marginal products between producers of
            tradable and non-tradable goods.
School quality, labor markets and
            human capital investments : long-term impacts of an early
            stage education intervention in the Philippines
This paper examines the long-term
            impacts of improved school quality at the elementary school
            stage on subsequent schooling investments and labor market
            outcomes using unique data from a recent survey that tracked
            students in the Philippines. The empirical results, which
            are based on a comparison of students who graduated from
            schools located in adjacent treatment and control areas
            before and after a school intervention, show significant
            differences in subsequent schooling investments, migration,
            and labor market earnings between females and males. That
            is, females study more (relative to males) and tend to
            migrate and earn more if they receive high-quality
            educational investments at an early stage. The above results
            are consistent with females' greater incentives to
            study, driven by their higher returns to schooling,
            especially after high school completion, observed in the
            labor market.
Global income inequality by the
            numbers : in history and now --an overview--
The paper presents an overview of
            calculations of global inequality, recently and over the
            long-run as well as main controversies and political and
            philosophical implications of the findings. It focuses in
            particular on the winners and losers of the most recent
            episode of globalization, from 1988 to 2008. It suggests
            that the period might have witnessed the first decline in
            global inequality between world citizens since the
            Industrial Revolution. The decline however can be sustained
            only if countries' mean incomes continue to converge
            (as they have been doing during the past ten years) and if
            internal (within-country) inequalities, which are already
            high, are kept in check. Mean-income convergence would also
            reduce the huge "citizenship premium" that is
            enjoyed today by the citizens of rich countries.
The cost structure of the clean
            development mechanism
This paper examines the cost of
            producing emission reduction credits under the Clean
            Development Mechanism. Using project-specific data, cost
            functions are estimated using alternative functional forms.
            The results show that, in general, the distribution of
            projects in the pipeline does not correspond exclusively to
            the cost of generating anticipated credits. Rather,
            investment choices appear to be influenced by location and
            project type considerations in a way that is consistent with
            variable transaction costs and investor preferences among
            hosts and classes of projects. This implies that comparative
            advantage based on the marginal cost of abatement is only
            one of several factors driving Clean Development Mechanism
            investments. This is significant since much of the
            conceptual and applied numerical literature concerning
            greenhouse gas mitigation policies relies on presumptions
            about relative abatement costs. The authors also find that
            Clean Development Mechanism projects generally exhibit
            constant or increasing returns to scale. In contrast, they
            find variations among classes of projects concerning
            economies of time.
Foreign firm characteristics,
            absorptive capacity and the institutional framework : the
            role of mediating factors for FDI spillovers in low- and
            middle-income countries
Using a cross-section of more than
            25,000 domestic manufacturing firms in 78 low and
            middle-income countries from the World Bank's
            Enterprise Surveys, this paper assesses how mediating
            factors influence intra-industry productivity spillovers to
            domestic firms from foreign direct investment. It identifies
            three types of mediating factors: (i) foreign direct
            investment spillover potential, (ii) domestic firm
            absorptive capacity, and (iii) the host country's
            institutional framework. It finds that all three affect the
            extent and direction of foreign direct investment spillovers
            on domestic firm productivity. However, the impact of
            mediating factors depends significantly on the level of
            domestic firms' productivity and the structure of
            foreign ownership.
Infrastructure policy : basic design options
The paper lays out basic design options
            for infrastructure policy. It first sketches mechanisms to
            asses demand. Then it sets out a hierarchy of issues
            starting with choice of market structure followed by conduct
            regulation. Ownership options are largely a function of
            market structure choices. The implications for finance --
            the topic of much day-to-day discussion in infrastructure
            policy-making -- follow from these various prior choices.
            The discussion naturally circumscribes the role for
            so-called public-private partnerships -- their uses and
            pitfalls. Annexes provide checklists for choices of market
            structure and for diagnosing and benchmarking policies.
Stuck in the middle human capital
            development and economic growth in Malaysia and Thailand
The challenge of sustaining economic
            growth over the long term is one that only a few countries
            have been able to surmount. Slowing momentum in countries
            like Malaysia and Thailand has led analysts and policy
            makers to consider what it would take to lift them out of
            middle-income status, where other countries have arguably
            become stuck. The paper examines the role of human capital
            formation in the quest to sustain economic growth in these
            two countries. It argues that a good education system is
            fundamental to equip workers with marketable skills.
            Malaysia and Thailand have successfully expanded access to
            schooling, but the quality of education remains an issue.
            Modern education systems should aim to provide
            universally-available quality education using the following
            policies: prioritize budgets to deliver quality and
            universally-available basic education before expanding
            higher levels of schooling; provide appropriate incentives
            and rewards to teachers; permit school autonomy and ensure
            accountability for results; invest in early childhood
            development; and consider implementing income-contingent
            loan financing schemes to expand higher education.
Foreign investment in local currency
            bonds -- considerations for emerging market public debt managers
Foreign investors are increasingly
            important participants in the local currency sovereign bond
            markets of developing countries. This note provides context
            on the overall growth of local currency sovereign debt
            markets in emerging markets and the growth of foreign
            investor participation in these markets, a short review of
            the relevant academic literature, and a summary of the
            sources of foreign demand. The note concludes with a
            discussion of the implications of growing foreign investor
            participation for the managers of public domestic debt in
            developing countries. The aim of the note is to provide a
            useful, practically-oriented primer for debt managers
            beginning to engage on this issue, and in particular to
            facilitate moving the dialogue beyond overly simple
            categorizations of countries as "emerging markets"
            and of investors as a homogeneous source of "hot money".