rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Trends in nontariff barriers of
            developed countries : 1966-1986
While major concerns have been expressed
            about the spread of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in developing
            countries, the lack of empirical information on the
            dimensions of the increase has affected the related policy
            debates. Using inventories of NTBs in developed countries
            compiled for 1966 and 1986, this study develops quantitative
            information on the major expansions of NTBs that occurred
            over this 20 year period. The paper finds that in 1966 NTBs
            affected 25 percent of developed countries imports, while in
            1986 this share has increased to 48 percent. A second major
            point documented in the study is that the spread of NTBs has
            been uneven across countries and industrial sectors. Third,
            this study shows that the increased resort to discriminatory
            NTBs like "voluntary" export restraints
            (particularly in the U.S.) caused a significantly higher
            share of trade to be "affected" by NTBs than
            suggested by commonly used trade coverage ratios. The
            findings concerning the extent that NTBs have proliferated
            in some sectors (and countries) also increases the
            importance of establishing effective procedures for
            liberalization of these measures in multilateral trade
            negotiations like the Uruguay Round.
Export supply, capacity, and
            relative prices
In the neoclassical approach to
            specifying an export supply equation, relative prices and
            capacity are assumed to play a crucial role in domestic
            firms' decisions to supply exports. In the Keynesian
            approach, the willingness of domestic firms to supply
            foreign markets is considered to be largely a function of
            domestic demand pressure. Keynesian analyses do not allow
            for the impact of relative prices. This paper blends the two
            approaches in a model, in which a firm is assumed to choose,
            first, the level of productive capacity and, then, one
            period later, to determine production and allocation between
            foreign and domestic markets on the basis of realized
            prices, demand conditions, and installed capacity. The
            conclusion: both prices and capacity are significant
            determinants of export supply.
Industrial portfolio responses to
            macroeconomic shocks : an econometric model for developing countries
This study identifies the macro
            conditions under which industrial growth and financial
            stability are most likely, and those conditions which are
            most prone to create disaster. The paper models interest
            rates, exchange rates, and aggregate demand conditions as
            affecting industrial growth and financial risk through two
            channels. First, because these variables affect firms'
            income, they affect firms net worth expansion. Second,
            because the link between macro variables and income depends
            upon the proportions in which firms hold fixed capital,
            inventories, financial assets, and debts, changes in macro
            variables also induce portfolio adjustments. The paper then
            develops an empirical model which allows one to calibrate
            the strength and timing of each effect. The paper is
            composed of two sections; one to develop the model, and one
            to report an application to Uruguayan data. There is also a
            brief summary section.
Export quota allocations, export
            earnings and market diversifications
Non-tariff barriers (NTBs) present a
            growing threat to a liberal world-trading system and slow
            the reallocation of production of mature industries from
            developed to developing countries. Among NTBs, voluntary
            export restraints (VERs) are proliferating and constitute a
            major element of the "new protectionism". It has
            been repeatedly observed that export markets which are not
            currently part of the VER agreement often follow suit and
            enter into a VER agreement. Exporting countries may then
            wish to prepare themselves for this eventuality by actively
            promoting export diversification towards non-restricted
            countries as a precautionary measure against future
            restrictions. Section II of this paper briefly describes how
            export diversification is typically achieved. In Section
            III, a simple model is set up that analyzes the implications
            of the two tier quota allocation rule. Section IV briefly
            examines alternative instruments and motivations for
            achieving export diversification. Implications are also
            drawn for policy actions by nonrestricted countries and the
            suggestion made that the recent increase in anti-dumping
            cases may be linked to this two-tier quota allocation practice.
Reaching people at the periphery -
            Can the World Bank's population, health and nutrition
            operations do better
Many population, health and nutrition
            (PHN) programs are designed to elicit behaviour changes in
            poor people living at the geographic and social peripheries.
            Few programs specifically target the disadvantaged, however,
            and research about clients focuses mainly on routine
            statistics rather than on whether education and services do
            or will meet clients needs. This paper looks at the
            Bank's past and present PHN work to see whether the
            approaches being used are likely to be effective in reaching
            clients at the periphery, and to suggest some directions for
            the future. The focus is on design and management of direct
            efforts to deliver services and education aimed at
            behavioral change, and hence on the interface between worker
            and client.
External balance, fiscal policy, and
            growth in Turkey
Turkey has, alone among the high debt
            countries, managed to maintain a high growth rate after
            rescheduling its debt. This paper discusses two issues this
            experience raises. One, how did Turkey translate the extra
            breathing space that continued access to foreign financing
            gave it, into sustained high real growth? Second, what are
            the prospects for a repeat performance? In Section II of the
            paper, the analytical structure of the model is presented,
            and the link between private and public investment and the
            growth rate of real GDP is econometrically established.
            Section III uses this model to assess the public
            sector's role in Turkey's macroeconomic
            achievements since 1980. whilst Section IV makes use of the
            model to focus upon the future.
Intergovernmental grants in
            developing countries
A country's grant system is the
            product of its political environment. Such systems tend to
            develop over time in response to prevailing political needs
            and then become institutionalized. Since they have developed
            in a haphazard fashion over time, grant "systems"
            commonly are not systems at all. Hard pressed government
            ministries seldom undertake any thorough analysis of these
            arrangements; hence their overall impact is unknown in spite
            of the importance of this use of resources.
The World Bank's population
            lending and sector review
The objective of this paper is to review
            the historical experience of the Bank's lending and
            sector activities in the population field, and to evaluate
            the Bank's strengths and weaknesses in this field.
            Based on analysis of Bank documents, interviews and field
            visits, the review concludes that the Bank's overall
            performance in the population field has been commendable and
            its efforts to differentiate its activities in the various
            part of the world laudable. PHN's work in establishing
            policy dialogue with governments on population is identified
            as the area in which the Bank's impact has been
            greatest. The Bank has been particularly effective with
            development of policy in countries with new programs rather
            than in those with established programs. The Bank's
            ability to deal with high level policy issues and to
            establish inter-sectoral linkages is seen as strong and
            effective. The greatest weaknesses in Bank projects are
            identified as the lack of diversity in project format, the
            organizational structure through which projects are
            implemented and the manner in which projects are supervised.
The private sector and family
            planning in developing countries
While a private sector exists in every
            society, the nature of its involvement in family planning
            service delivery varies widely across countries. This paper
            reviews the role of the private sector in family planning
            and discusses how much more of the demand for contraception
            can be met through the private sector, thereby reducing
            government's subsidies for contraception. Following the
            introduction, section 2 discusses the characteristics of
            private sector supply, with a strong emphasis on for-profit
            producers and distributors of contraceptives. Section 3
            describes the distribution of users across sources and
            addresses the issue of pricing at public, for-profit and NGO
            sources of family planning services. In section 4 the
            experience to date with private sector approaches is
            outlined to provide a sense of what has been and is
            currently going on in public and and donor efforts to
            harness and collaborate with the private sector. Section 5
            presents alternative means for government and donors to
            promote private sector activity in family planning, and
            suggests some of the costs of a greater private sector role.
            The final section summarizes and concludes the paper.
Taxation and output growth in Africa
This paper presents a framework for
            measuring how the structure of taxation and government
            spending affect output growth. It is shown that when
            countries are not following a steady-state growth path,
            static and dynamic distortions will affect output growth. In
            particular, taxes can affect output by; (1) reducing the
            marginal productivity of capital and labour, and (2)
            reducing the supply of capital and labour. The paper
            indicates that differences in tax policy can explain a
            substantial degree of variation in output growth among
            African countries. While measurement error and the potential
            for excluded variables suggest that the regression results
            be interpreted cautiously, the results imply that the
            structure, and not simply the level, of taxation can play an
            important role for encouraging growth in developing countries.
Interaction of infant mortality and
            fertility and the effectiveness of health and family
            planning programs
The interaction of fertility and infant
            mortality is well established. Lower infant mortality can
            lead to lower fertility by reducing the need for replacement
            births. Conversely, birth spacing improves the chances of
            child survival. To find out how these programs reinforce
            each other, a study done in Indonesia estimated the effects
            that family planning programs have on infant mortality and
            the effects of reduced infant mortality on fertility. The
            research compared the cost-effectiveness of health and
            family planning programs and looked at whether the
            interaction of infant mortality and fertility influenced
            estimates of the costs of both programs. The results
            demonstrate a substantial spillover effect, confirming that
            the interaction does raise the cost-effectiveness of both
            programs. These findings are sufficiently consistent that
            policymakers should consider the mortality-fertility
            interaction as a regular part of the appraisal of health and
            population projects. Integrated programs offer lower costs
            and more effective promotion. They also improve efforts to
            assure infant survival and achieve birth prevention objectives.
The optimal currency composition of
            external debt
The increased volatility of exchange
            rates, interest rates and goods prices has focused fresh
            attention on the importance for developing countries of
            reducing their risks in these markets. Although, these
            countries generally cannot use such conventional hedging
            instruments as currency and commodity futures, they can use
            the currency composition of their external debt to hedge
            against exchange rates and commodity prices. In this line,
            this paper uses findings from the literature on optimal
            portfolio theory to discuss the optimal currency composition
            of external debt. The analysis considers a small open
            economy facing a perfect world capital market and a large
            number of perfect commodity markets. The paper derives the
            optimal currency composition of the country's aggregate
            assets and external liabilities and describes the necessary
            estimations and computations, including how to take into
            account the currency composition of existing external liabilities.
Stimulating agricultural growth and
            rural development in sub-Saharan Africa
Economic growth in sub - Saharan Africa
            depends on reducing the regions deterioration in
            agricultural performance. But efforts to restore
            agricultural growth are hampered by the ecology of the
            region, undermined by policies that jeopardize agricultural
            and rural development, and complicated by sluggish global
            economic growth as well as agricultural policies in
            industrial countries. Given the region's necessary
            transition from a land-extensive to a land-intensive farming
            system, attempts to improve agricultural production and to
            lay the groundwork for sustained rural development will
            depend on the correct choice of policies. Equally crucial to
            Africa's agricultural development will be parallel
            efforts to remove policy barriers that have undercut
            agricultural production or hurt agricultural productivity.
            In addition to policy reform, long-term improvement in
            African agriculture will require developing and extending
            new production technologies. It will also require creating
            institutional structures to strengthen national research
            capabilities, and designing policies and investment
            strategies to improve the links between the farm and
            non-farm sectors in rural areas.
Understanding the Requirements for
            Surveys to Support Satellite-Based Crop Type Mapping :
            Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
With the surge in publicly available
            high-resolution satellite imagery, satellite-based
            monitoring of smallholder agricultural outcomes is gaining
            momentum. This paper provides recommendations on how
            large-scale household surveys should be conducted to
            generate the data needed to train models for satellite-based
            crop type mapping in smallholder farming systems. The
            analysis focuses on maize cultivation in Malawi and
            Ethiopia, and leverages rich, georeferenced plot-level data
            from national household surveys that were conducted in
            2018–20 and that are integrated with Sentinel-2 satellite
            imagery and complementary geospatial data. To identify the
            approach to survey data collection that yields optimal data
            for training remote sensing models, 26,250 in silico
            experiments are simulated within a machine learning
            framework. The best model is then applied to map seasonal
            maize cultivation from 2016 to 2019 at 10-meter resolution
            in both countries. The analysis reveals that smallholder
            plots with maize cultivation can be identified with up to 75
            percent accuracy. However, the predictive accuracy varies
            with the approach to georeferencing plot locations and the
            number of observations in the training data. Collecting full
            plot boundaries or complete plot corner points provides the
            best quality of information for model training.
            Classification performance peaks with slightly less than 60
            percent of the training data. Seemingly small erosion in
            accuracy under less preferable approaches to georeferencing
            plots results in total area under maize cultivation being
            overestimated by 0.16 to 0.47 million hectares (8 to 24
            percent) in Malawi.
Understanding the Requirements for
            Surveys to Support Satellite-Based Crop Type Mapping :
            Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
Policy Research Working Paper 9609 50x2030 Data-Smart Agriculture Series Understanding the Requirements for Surveys to Support Satellite-Based Crop Type Mapping Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa _George Azzari Shruti Jain Graham Jeffries Talip Kilic Siobhan Murray_ Development Economics Development Data Group April 2021
A Map of the Poor or a Poor Map
This paper evaluates the performance of
            different small area estimation methods using model and
            design-based simulation experiments. Design-based simulation
            experiments are carried out using the Mexican Intra Censal
            survey as a census of roughly 3.9 million households from
            which 500 samples are drawn using a two-stage selection
            procedure similar to that of Living Standards Measurement
            Study surveys. Several unit-level methods are considered as
            well as a method that combines unit and area level
            information, which has been proposed as an alternative when
            the available census data is outdated. The findings show the
            importance of selecting a proper model and data
            transformation so that the model assumptions hold. A proper
            data transformation can lead to a considerable improvement
            in mean squared errors. The results from design-based
            validation show that all small area estimation methods
            represent an improvement, in terms of mean squared errors,
            over direct estimates. However, methods that model unit
            level welfare using only area level information suffer from
            considerable bias. Because the magnitude and direction of
            the bias are unknown ex ante, methods that rely only on
            aggregated covariates should be used with caution, but they
            may be an alternative to traditional area level models when
            these are not applicable.
Inclusive Statistics : Human
            Development and Disability Indicators in Low- and
            Middle-Income Countries
This paper disaggregates human
            development indicators across disability status to assess
            the situation of persons and households with disabilities.
            The paper uses 24 censuses and general household surveys
            from 21 low- and middle-income countries. Disability status
            is measured through self-reports of functional difficulties
            (for example, seeing or hearing). There are several findings
            of interest. First, disability is not rare in low- and
            middle-income countries. The median prevalence stands at 10
            percent among adults ages 15 and older, and at 23 percent
            among households. There are consistent inequalities
            associated with disability and, in particular, with respect
            to educational attainment, work outcomes, poverty, food
            security, exposure to shocks, living conditions, and assets.
            At the same time, not all persons with functional
            difficulties experience deprivations. There is a gradient in
            inequalities associated with the degree of functional
            difficulty: persons with at least a lot of difficulty tend
            to be worse off than persons with some difficulty, who
            themselves tend to be worse off than persons with no
            difficulty. The results in this paper on the prevalence of
            functional difficulties and their association with
            socioeconomic deprivations show that disability should be
            central to human development policy, data, and research.
            More work is needed to curb the inequalities associated with disability.
Social Transfer Multipliers in
            Developed and Emerging Countries : The Role of Hand-to-Mouth Consumers
This paper estimates the macroeconomic
            effects of social transfer payments to individuals for a
            sample of 23 developed and Latin American countries. The
            findings show that the social transfer multiplier is 0.3 in
            developed countries, but 0.9 in Latin American economies.
            The paper studies the role of hand-to-mouth consumers, who
            have no access to financial markets and a high marginal
            propensity to consume, as a first order factor to explain
            the heterogeneity in the size of social transfer
            multipliers. Using survey-based data from the Global Findex
            dataset, the paper finds that the average share of the
            population living hand-to-mouth is 23 percent in developed
            economies versus 60 percent in Latin American countries.
            This evidence is interpreted with a two-agent New Keynesian
            model. The findings show that the difference in the share of
            hand-to-mouth consumers explains 80 to 90 percent of the
            difference in the estimated social transfer multipliers. The
            paper also documents that the share of hand-to-mouth
            individuals in emerging countries is in general 47 percent
            which suggests that a larger social transfer multiplier may
            be expected for this type of economy.