rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Biogas : clean energy access with
            low-cost mitigation of climate change
With data from the nearly 6,000
            households in the Nepal Living Standards Survey of 2010–11,
            this paper finds that the mean reduction in household
            firewood collection associated with use of a biogas plant
            for cooking is about 1,100 kilograms per year from a mean of
            about 2,400 kilograms per year. This estimate is derived by
            comparing only households with and without biogas in the
            same village, thus effectively removing the influence of
            many potential confounders.  Further controls for important
            determinants of firewood collection, such as household size,
            per capita consumption expenditure, cattle ownership, and
            unemployment are used to identify the effect of biogas
            adoption on firewood collection. Bounds on omitted variable
            bias are derived with the proportional selection assumption.
            The central estimate is much smaller than those in the
            previous literature, but is still large enough for the cost
            of adopting biogas to be significantly reduced via carbon
            offsets at a modest carbon price of $10 per ton of CO2e when
            using central estimates of emission factors and global
            warming potentials of pollutants taken from the scientific literature.
Quantifying through ex post
            assessments the micro-level impacts of sovereign disaster
            risk financing and insurance programs
Uninsured natural disasters can have
            devastating effects on human welfare and economic growth,
            particularly in developing countries where large segments of
            the population are in poverty and government resources and
            capacity to assist in relief, recovery, and reconstruction
            are limited. Therefore there is interest in exploring how
            these countries can design and implement disaster relief
            financing and insurance programs. This paper discusses four
            aspects of the microeconomics of disaster relief financing
            and insurance programs that are important for the ex post
            impact evaluation of such programs: (1) use of game setups
            to analyze the private willingness-to-pay for disaster
            protection through risk transfer or risk retention
            instruments; (2) use of ex post analysis of existing
            disaster relief financing and insurance schemes (such as
            Mexico’s programs) to analyze the willingness to provide
            political support to such schemes; (3) use of ex post
            analysis of existing schemes to analyze not only ex post
            coping with shock, but also the ex ante risk management
            impact of disaster relief financing and insurance schemes,
            with the expectation that the latter can have a large
            effects on growth; and (4) use of mainly global data to do
            ex post impact analysis of natural disasters and the
            resilience-enhancing value of disaster relief financing and
            insurance schemes (examples exist for the disaster-impact
            relationship that can be extended to the role of disaster
            relief financing and insurance in risk reduction, coping
            with shock, and risk management). The paper proposes
            concrete research projects to pursue the analysis of these
            four dimensions of micro-level impacts of disaster relief
            financing and insurance.
Use of catastrophe risk models in
            assessing sovereign food security for risk transfer
This paper discusses how catastrophe
            crop risk models can be used to assess food security needs
            at the sovereign level for the purpose of risk transfer. The
            rationale for a system to evaluate food security needs at
            the national level is discussed. The role of technology and
            remote sensing data availability as an enabler of
            catastrophe crop risk models is discussed followed by a
            description of the framework of catastrophe crop models for
            droughts, representing the peril for which catastrophe
            models have had the most success. The integration of the
            output of catastrophe crop models with a food security
            vulnerability assessment model is described next. Recent
            advances in analytical modeling of various types of shocks
            in assessing food security are described but the operational
            use of these analytical models in the development of food
            security assessment for risk transfer is seen to be limited
            for now because of the complexity of these analytical
            models. The food security vulnerability modeling in the
            African Risk Capacity, ARC, model is then described as
            showing a practical solution to the complex problem of
            assessing food security via a model. Lastly, the challenges
            faced in risk transfer of sovereign food security risks are discussed.
Global liquidity and external bond
            issuance in emerging markets and developing economies
Using the universe of all externally
            issued bonds by corporates and sovereigns in emerging and
            developing economies during 2000-14, this paper analyzes
            various issuance trends, including the unprecedented
            post-crisis surge. The paper focuses on external issuance at
            the country-industry and individual bond levels and finds
            that global factors matter greatly for emerging and
            developing economies issuance. A decrease in U.S. expected
            equity market (or interest rate) volatility, U.S. corporate
            credit spreads, and U.S. interbank funding costs and an
            increase in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet (i) raise
            the odds that the monthly issuance volume of a
            country-industry is above its historical average; (ii)
            decrease individual bond yields and spreads; and (iii) raise
            bond maturities, after controlling for country pull factors,
            bond characteristics (for example, type of issuer, industry,
            and riskiness). Additionally, we document support that the
            risk-taking channel of exchange rate appreciation also
            operates for external bond issuance. Moreover, while the
            paper finds that country pull factors affect the impact of
            global factors, it does not find consistent evidence for
            this across the board. This result suggests that, during
            loose global funding conditions, flows are mostly driven by
            push factors and do not systematically discriminate between
            emerging and developing economies. Taken together, the
            findings suggest that although issuers might be able to
            benefit from benign international funding conditions, the
            large issuance volumes, currency risks, and high exposure to
            global factors could pose external and domestic challenges
            for policy makers, particularly when global cycles reverse.
Promoting democracy in fragile
            states : insights from a field experiment in Liberia
A field experiment in rural Liberia is
            used to study democratic participation in fragile states.
            Fragile states are marked by political fragmentation, local
            patronage systems, and voter vulnerability. To understand
            the effects of such conditions on democratic expression
            through elections, the experiment introduced new forms of
            interaction between rural citizens and third-party actors:
            (i) civic education and town hall workshops directed by
            non-governmental organizations in communities over nine
            months and (ii) security committees that brought rural
            community representatives into monthly exchange with United
            Nations peacekeepers. Civic education workshops increased
            enthusiasm for electoral participation, produced a
            coordinated shift from parochial to national candidates, and
            increased willingness to report on manipulation. A program
            combining the two interactions had similar effects. The
            security committees had negligible effects. Barriers to
            political information and voter coordination appear to be
            important but resolvable problems for elections in fragile states.
Diversification, growth, and
            volatility in Asia
Economic development critically involves
            diversification and structural transformation—that is, the
            continued, dynamic reallocation of resources from less
            productive to more productive sectors and activities. This
            paper documents that, over an extended period, developing
            Asia has on average been particularly successful in
            diversifying its exports, particularly in comparison with
            Sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the progress has occurred
            through diversification along the ‘extensive margin,’ that
            is, through entry into completely new products. In addition,
            developing Asia has on average benefited significantly from
            quality upgrading, helping it capitalize on already existing
            comparative advantages. Yet, agricultural and natural
            resources tend to have lower potential for quality upgrading
            than manufactures. Therefore, for lower-income “frontier”
            countries, diversification into products with longer
            “quality ladders” may be a necessary first step before large
            gains from quality improvement can be reaped.
Self-help groups, savings and social
            capital : evidence from a field experiment in Cambodia
This paper studies how self-help
            groups—village-based organizations designed to encourage
            savings, household production and social cohesion among the
            poor—can promote economic and social capital. The paper uses
            survey data and a wide array of social capital measures to
            assess the impact of a pilot program that was randomly
            rolled out in rural villages in Cambodia. The study finds
            that the program encouraged savings and associations via
            self-help groups. However it did not improve social capital
            measured by household and network surveys and lab activities
            that gauge trust, trustworthiness and the willingness to
            contribute to public goods. The findings contradict recent
            work that has found significant positive impacts of such
            groups on social capital. This paper evaluates
            community-wide impacts while most previous studies focus on
            program participants. In addition, the empirical strategy is
            based on a broader array of social capital measures,
            including behavioral indicators, suggesting that finding
            impacts of such programs on social capital is sensitive to
            the measurement strategy.
Depreciations without exports global
            value chains and the exchange rate elasticity of exports
This paper analyzes how the exchange
            rate elasticity of exports has changed over time and across
            countries and sectors, and how the formation of global value
            chains has affected this relationship. The analysis uses a
            panel framework covering 46 countries over the period
            1996-2012, and first finds evidence that the elasticity of
            manufacturing export volumes to the real effective exchange
            rate has decreased over time. The paper then examines
            whether the formation of supply chains has affected this
            elasticity using different measures of global value chain
            integration. Intuitively, as countries are more integrated
            in global production processes, a currency depreciation only
            improves the competitiveness of a fraction of the value of
            final goods exports. In line with this intuition, the
            analysis finds evidence that the rise of participation in
            global value chains explains on average 40 percent of the
            fall in the elasticity, and that corrections of the real
            effective exchange rate for participation in global value
            chains do not present the same decreasing pattern in elasticity.
The impact of vocational schooling
            on human capital development in developing countries :
            evidence from China
A number of developing countries are
            currently promoting vocational education and training (VET)
            as a way to build human capital and strengthen economic
            growth. The primary aim of this study is to understand
            whether VET at the high school level contributes to human
            capital development in one of those countries—China. To
            fulfill this aim, a longitudinal data on more than 10,000
            students in vocational high school (in the most popular
            major, computing) and academic high school from two
            provinces of China are used. First, estimates from
            instrumental variables and matching analyses show that
            attending vocational high school (relative to academic high
            school) substantially reduces math skills and does not
            improve computing skills. Second, heterogeneous effect
            estimates also show that attending vocational high school
            increases dropout, especially among disadvantaged
            (low-income or low-ability) students. Third, vertically
            scaled (equated) baseline and follow-up test scores are used
            to measure gains in math and computing skills among the
            students. The results show that students who attend
            vocational high school experience absolute reductions in
            math skills. Taken together, the findings suggest that the
            rapid expansion of vocational schooling as a substitute for
            academic schooling can have detrimental consequences for
            building human capital in developing countries such as China.
Export promotion and firm entry into
            and survival in export markets
Surveys of export promotion agencies
            suggest that that they tend to focus on helping firms become
            exporters as a means to stimulate aggregate export growth.
            But the existing empirical evidence has paid little
            attention to the role of export promotion agencies in
            helping entry into exporting. This paper fills this gap with
            a panel of exporting and non-exporting firms from seven
            Latin American countries during the period 2006-2010. The
            results suggest that export promotion encourages exports
            mainly by helping firms enter into and survive in export
            markets. The impact on the intensive margin of exporting
            firms is not robust. This finding is consistent with export
            promotion helping reduce fixed rather than variable costs of
            exporting, which is to be expected if export promotion
            agencies help correct for market failures associated with
            information externalities.
The impact of private sector
            internship and training on urban youth in Kenya
This study uses a randomized experiment
            to evaluate the impacts of the training and internship
            program piloted in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu counties by
            the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and the Government of
            Kenya with support from the World Bank’s Kenya Youth
            Empowerment Project. The program provided three months of
            classroom-based technical training coupled with three months
            of internships in private firms to vulnerable youths between
            ages 15 and 29 years, with vulnerable being defined as those
            out of school and/or with no permanent job. The analysis in
            this paper is based on survey data collected before the
            program started (July 2012) and 15 months after the program
            ended (July 2014). The results of the impact evaluation show
            that the program has been successful in placing youths in
            paid jobs and has contributed to an increase of 15 percent
            in current employment among male participants. The
            evaluation also found that the program has had positive
            effects on wage earnings, especially those of females and
            among older males, with wages increasing by about K Sh 5,000
            for males and by K Sh 7,500 for females. With a total unit
            cost of K Sh 97,000 per beneficiary, an estimated K Sh 6,768
            monthly wage for males and K Sh 9,623 monthly wage for
            females, the program’s benefits exceeded the costs for males
            and females. The program also encouraged youths to
            participate in either (certified) skills training or an
            internship program, and helped to increase the probability
            of participants’ opening a bank account and accumulating
            savings (for females).
Multidimensional poverty in Ethiopia
            : changes in overlapping deprivations
This paper presents trends in monetary
            and nonmonetary dimensions of wellbeing in Ethiopia using
            data from the Household Consumption and Expenditure and
            Welfare Monitoring surveys implemented in 2000, 2005, and
            2011. The paper provides evidence on changes in overlapping
            deprivations using a non-index approach to multidimensional
            poverty. It assesses the performance of various dimensions
            in education, health, and living standards, taking one
            indicator at a time. It then examines the overlap between
            different dimensions of poverty and examines how this has
            changed over time in Ethiopia and across rural and urban
            areas.  It highlights that although Ethiopia’s
            multidimensional poverty index is very high, there have been
            improvements in overlapping deprivations and, as a result,
            the number of individuals deprived in multiple dimensions
            has fallen.
Changing wage structure in India in
            the post-reform era : 1993-2011
This paper documents the changing
            structure of wages in India over the post-reform era, the
            roughly two-decade period since 1993. To investigate the
            factors underlying these changes, a supply-demand framework
            is applied at the level of the Indian state. While real
            wages have risen across India over the past two decades, the
            increase has been greater in rural areas and, especially,
            for unskilled workers. The analysis finds that, in rural
            areas, the changing wage structure has been driven largely
            by relative supply factors, such as increased overall
            education levels and falling female labor force
            participation. Relative wage changes between rural and urban
            areas have been driven largely by shifts in employment,
            notably into unskilled-intensive sectors like construction.
Dismal science, accounting and
            Newton’s second law : identifying force and rigidity in
            public expenditure analysis
This paper proposes a new measure of
            public expenditure force that policy makers and budget
            analysts should track in detail over time in routine fiscal
            monitoring. The paper suggests that adopting the measure
            will not only warn policy makers of possible impending
            fiscal pressures, but will help them to differentiate
            between those budgetary pressures that are temporary and
            those that may require reforms. The main utility of the
            expenditure force measure will be in country fiscal
            analysis. Measuring force across the entire budget allows
            practitioners to monitor and decompose the micro drivers of
            public spending pressure, watch out for rapidly expanding
            spending lines, and identify priorities for reform before
            these pressures lead to macro fiscal problems. Yet by its
            construct, spending force is internationally comparable, and
            independent of expenditure levels or spending types. This
            could allow global monitoring comparisons and global
            research into the drivers of public spending force across
            particular types of country characteristics and economic
            conditions. In time, and as more data become available,
            researchers can use the force measure to compare and
            contrast the dynamics of expenditure types across countries.
            For example the measure can be used to explore what gives
            some spending types an initial impulse; whether underlying
            factors cause different public spending categories to grow
            faster than average, or to accelerate over time; and what
            successful countries have done to manage rising force
            without damaging public services. Since force seems to be a
            decent predictor of fiscal episodes, it is suggested that
            “speed limits” for spending might be a feasible component of
            fiscal rules.
The impact of China’s slowdown on
            the Asia Pacific region : an application of the GVAR model
An export-oriented development strategy
            fostered the Asia Paciﬁc region’s economic success, making
            it the fastest growing region in the world. In recent years,
            despite waning demand from the crisis-hit Western economies,
            the accelerating demand from China boosted intraregional
            trade in Asia. Although China’s Asian trading partners
            beneﬁt from increasing exports to China, this stronger
            linkage with China has made them more vulnerable to the risk
            of a Chinese slowdown. This paper examines the impact of a
            negative Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) shock on Asian
            economies by employing the Global Vector Autoregressive
            (GVAR) model, using the dataset through the third quarter of
            2014 for 33 countries. The analysis finds that a negative
            Chinese GDP shock impacts commodity exporters, such as
            Indonesia, to the greatest extent, reﬂecting both demand and
            terms of trade shocks. Export-dependent countries in the
            East Asian production cycle, such as Japan, Malaysia,
            Singapore and Thailand, are also severely aﬀected. The
            analysis also finds that a negative shock to China’s real
            GDP would not only have an adverse eﬀect on the price of
            crude oil, as some previous studies have also shown, but
            also on the prices of metals and agricultural products. The
            study also investigates the impact of a potential negative
            shock to the real GDP of the United States on Asian
            countries, and determines that although the U.S. economy has
            a larger inﬂuence on Asian economies than China’s economy,
            the Asian countries are more exposed to China than ever
            through increased economic ties.