rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
What Explains Boys’ Educational
            Underachievement in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ?
This paper examines the factors that are
            associated with boys&#x2019; underachievement in
            mathematics and science in Saudi Arabia, where students
            attend gender-segregated schools from grade 1 onward, as
            well as student achievement in these two subjects in grades
            4 and 8 more generally. The paper employs data from two
            recent large-scale assessments of education: Trends in
            International Mathematics and Science Study 2019 and Saudi
            Arabia&#x2019;s National Assessment of Learning Outcomes
            2018. The results suggest that in grade 4, school climate
            was more strongly associated with boys' compared with
            girls' achievement in both mathematics and science,
            with boys attending schools of poorer school climate having
            a considerably lower performance compared with girls
            attending such schools. The findings also indicate that
            although greater literacy and numeracy readiness was linked
            with higher science achievement among boys and girls, grade
            4 boys tended to benefit more from this readiness than
            girls. In addition, the results show that student
            absenteeism in grade 4 is particularly strongly associated
            with decreases in mathematics achievement among boys. In
            grade 8, interactions between student gender and
            students&#x2019; confidence in science, the degree of
            schools&#x2019; emphasis on academic success, and
            teachers&#x2019; age are observed. The paper concludes
            by discussing some of the implications of these findings for
            educators and policy makers in Saudi Arabia.
Infrastructure and Structural Change
            in the Lake Chad Region
Access to infrastructure supports
            economic development through structural transformation. This
            paper investigates the links between investments in
            electricity, Internet, and transport infrastructure, in
            isolation and bundled, and economic development in the Lake
            Chad Region. Using data on the expansion of the paved road,
            electricity, and Internet networks over the past two decades
            and two instruments, it provides reduced-form estimates of
            the impacts of infrastructure investments on the sectoral
            composition of employment. Bundled infrastructure
            investments cause different patterns of structural
            transformation than isolated infrastructure investments.
            Bundled paved road and electricity investments is found to
            have reduced the agricultural employment share by 22
            percentage points and increased the share of employment
            mostly in services. The paper then uses a spatial general
            equilibrium model to quantify the impacts of future regional
            transport investments, bundled with a large rural
            electrification program and trade facilitation measures to
            reduce border delays, on economic development in Nigeria,
            Cameroon, and Chad.
Demand and Supply Shocks : Evidence
            from Corporate Earning Calls
This paper quantifies global demand,
            supply, and uncertainty shocks and compares two major global
            recessions: the 2008–09 Great Recession and the COVID-19
            pandemic. Two alternative approaches are used to decompose
            economic shocks: text mining techniques on earning call
            transcripts and a structural Bayesian vector autoregression
            model. The results highlight sharp contrast in the size of
            supply and demand shocks over time and across sectors. While
            the Great Recession was characterized by demand shocks,
            COVID-19 caused sizable disruptions to both demand and
            supply. These shocks were broad-based with varying relative
            importance across major sectors. Furthermore, certain
            sub-sectors, such as professional and business services,
            internet retail, and grocery/department stores, fared better
            than others during the pandemic. The results imply that both
            targeted policies and conventional countercyclical fiscal
            and monetary policy can accelerate the economic recovery.
            Large demand shocks highlight an environment of deficient
            demand with countercyclical policy calibrated to the size of
            these shocks.
When Promising Interventions Fail :
            Personalized Coaching for Teachers in a Middle-Income Country
Children in developing countries have
            deep deficits in math and language. Personalized coaching
            for teachers has been proposed as a way of raising teacher
            quality and child achievement. The authors designed a
            coaching program that focused on one aspect of teacher
            quality—teacher-child interactions—that researchers in
            education and psychology have argued is critical for child
            development and learning. The coaching program was
            implemented in Ecuador, with 100 1st grade teachers randomly
            assigned to treatment and 100 to control. Coaching improved
            the quality of teacher-child interactions but reduced child
            achievement. These results underline the importance of
            evaluating new forms of professional development for
            teachers, even those that follow best practice, before these
            interventions are taken to scale.
Estimating the Economic and
            Distributional Impacts of the Regional Comprehensive
            Economic Partnership
This paper applies a top-down,
            macro-micro modeling framework that links a computable
            general equilibrium model with the survey-based global
            income distribution dynamics model to assess the economic
            and distributional effects of the implementation of the
            Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
            Reductions of tariffs and non-tariff measures,
            implementation of a rule of origin, together with
            productivity gains stemming from trade cost reductions can
            strengthen regional trade and value chains among Regional
            Comprehensive Economic Partnership members. The results of
            the analysis indicate that in an already deeply integrated
            region, tariff liberalization alone brings little benefit,
            with estimated real income gains of 0.21 percent relative to
            the baseline (without the RCEP) in 2035. With liberal rules
            of origin, the gains in real income could double to 0.49
            percent. The biggest benefits accrue when the productivity
            gains are considered, increasing real income by as much as
            2.5 percent for the trade bloc. In this scenario, trade
            among RCEP members increases by 12.3 percent in 2035
            relative to the baseline. The RCEP also has the potential to
            lift 27 million additional people to middle-class status by
            2035. It will also boost wages, with faster gains in sectors
            that employ larger shares of women. The aggregate effects
            mask large variety of outcomes across countries, with
            Vietnam expected to register the highest trade and income
            gains. Implementation of the RCEP help partially mitigate
            the negative economic impacts of COVID-19 in the East Asia
            and the Pacific region.
How to Cope with a Refugee Shock
            Evidence from Uganda
Sub-Saharan Africa hosts a large
            proportion of the world’s refugees, raising concerns about
            the consequences of hosting refugees. This paper focuses on
            Uganda, which is the largest refugee hosting country in
            Africa and is praised for its progressive refugee policy.
            The paper analyzes the effects of hosting refugees, relying
            on longitudinal data and an instrumental variable approach.
            The results indicate that Ugandan households benefit from
            living close to the refugee settlements. In contrast with
            the existing literature, the analysis finds that those
            initially involved in subsistence agriculture benefit the
            most. The effect seems to be driven by the few households
            able to move from subsistence agriculture to commercial
            farming and to some extent, to wage employment.
Current Benefits of Wildfire Smoke
            for Yields in the US Midwest May Dissipate by 2050
Wildfires throughout western North
            America produce smoke plumes that can stretch across the
            agricultural regions of the American Midwest. Climate change
            is likely to increase the number and size of these fires and
            subsequent smoke plumes. These smoke plumes change direct,
            diffuse, and total sunlight during the crop growing season
            and consequently influence yields of both corn and soybeans.
            The analysis in this paper uses a twelve-year panel of
            county-level yields from all counties east of the 100th
            meridian combined with measures of exposure to smoke plumes
            of low and high density during the growing season. It shows
            that low-density plumes enhance yields, likely by increasing
            in the fraction of diffuse light, while high-density plumes
            decrease yields. Because there are more low-density plumes
            today, the net effect is a slight increase in yields on
            average. As climate change makes wildfires larger and more
            frequent, the overall impact of smoke on yields is expected
            to be substantially more negative.
When Emotion Regulation Matters :
            The Efficacy of Socio-Emotional Learning to Address
            School-Based Violence in Central America
After-school programs (ASP) that keep
            youth protected while engaging them in socio-emotional
            learning might address school-based violent behaviors. This
            paper experimentally studies the socio-emotional-learning
            component of an ASP targeted to teenagers in public schools
            in the most violent neighborhoods of El Salvador, Honduras,
            and Guatemala. Participant schools were randomly assigned to
            different ASP variations, some of them including
            psychology-based interventions, which constitutes the ASP
            socio-emotional-learning component. Results indicate that
            including psychology-based activities as part of the ASP
            increases by 23 percent-age points the probability that
            students are well-behaved at school. The effect is driven by
            the most at-risk students. Using data gathered from
            task-based games and AI-powered emotion-detection
            algorithms, this paper shows that improvement in emotion
            regulation is likely driving the effect. When comparing a
            psychology-based curriculum aiming to strengthen
            participants&#x2019; character and another based on
            mindfulness principles, results show that the latter
            improves violent behaviors while reducing school dropout.
Crypto-Assets Activity around the
            World : Evolution and Macro-Financial Drivers
On-chain crypto-assets transaction
            volumes have grown rapidly, particularly during the COVID-19
            pandemic. Crypto-assets activity appears to be a global
            phenomenon, although it still remains modest relative to
            gross domestic product for most countries. Panel regressions
            across more than 130 countries show that the variation in
            countries’ monthly crypto volumes is mostly driven by
            globally relevant factors such as real U.S. longer-term
            inflation expectations, U.S. real Treasury yields, and gold
            and crypto-asset prices, rather than recent country-level
            macroeconomic developments. Cross-sectional regressions
            offer tentative evidence that crypto activity is higher in
            countries with higher information and communications
            technology adoption and higher reliance on remittances.
            Taken together, the findings shed new light on the drivers
            behind crypto activity and offer support to the notions that
            crypto-assets are perceived as a risk asset, a potential
            macro hedge, and a potential tool to support cross-border
            transactions. However, the results come with caveats: a
            significant portion of the sample period includes
            extraordinarily loose global financial conditions; the
            crypto volume data have a short history, rely on important
            limiting assumptions, and do not represent all crypto
            activity; and crypto-assets represent a fast-evolving,
            increasingly diverse asset class and industry.
Proximity without Productivity :
            Agglomeration Effects with Plant-Level Output and Price Data
Recent literature suggests that the
            positive impact of population density on wages, the
            canonical measure of agglomeration effects, is multiples
            higher in developing countries than in advanced economies.
            This poses an urban productivity puzzle because
            on-the-ground observations do not suggest that cities in
            developing countries function especially well or are
            conducive to enhanced productivity. This paper uses
            manufacturing censuses from four countries at differing
            levels of income that allow separating plant output quantity
            from prices. It shows that higher wage elasticities with
            respect to density are due to higher marginal costs, and
            agglomeration elasticities of efficiency, physical total
            factor productivity, are in fact far lower in developing
            countries. Further, congestion costs decrease with country
            income. Both are consistent with often low rates of
            structural transformation that make cities in developing
            countries so-called “sterile agglomerations,” which are
            populous but not efficient.
An Empirical Investigation of Trade
            Diversion and Global Value Chains
This paper uses data on directional
            trade flows and Regional Trade Agreements (RTA) to i)
            estimate the effects of RTA on trade flows and ii) assess
            the importance of Global Value Chains for these effects.
            Based on a Difference-in- Difference identification
            strategy, we find that RTAs are associated with: (1) an
            increase in trade within the region, (2) a decrease in
            inflows to the region, and (3) an increase in outflows from
            the region. The first two findings can be understood as
            trade creation and trade diversion due to a shift in demand
            associated with the lower trade barriers within the region
            and Rules of Origin as an implicit trade barrier for imports
            from the rest of the world. Global Value Chains are most
            relevant to understand the third finding on the increase in
            outflows from the region. The key determinant of the
            increase in outflows is the importance of the Regional Value
            Chains for imports of intermediates by members of the region.
Using Labor Supply Elasticities to
            Learn about Income Inequality : The Role of Productivities
            versus Preferences
This paper argues that labor supply
            elasticities encode information about the determinants of
            income inequality. In the theoretical framework, individuals
            choose labor supply conditional on productivities and
            preferences for consumption relative to leisure. The paper
            shows that reduced-form labor supply elasticities allow one
            to isolate the components of income due to productivities
            versus preferences. The paper then investigates what labor
            supply elasticities imply about the importance of
            productivities versus preferences in the United States.
            Estimates from the literature imply productivities drive
            most of income inequality. Larger income effects and larger
            differences between income and hours worked elasticities
            imply preferences play an increasingly important role.
The Spillovers of Employment
            Guarantee Programs on Child Labor and Education
Many developing countries use employment
            guarantee programs to combat poverty. This paper examines
            the consequences of such employment guarantee programs for
            the human capital accumulation of children. It exploits the
            phased roll-out of India's flagship Mahatma Gandhi
            National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) to
            study the effects on enrollment in schools and child labor.
            Introduction of MGNREGA results in lower relative school
            enrollment in treated districts. The authors find that the
            drop in enrollment is driven by primary school children.
            Children in higher grades are just as likely to attend
            school under MGNREGA, but their school performance
            deteriorates. Using nationally representative employment
            data, they find evidence indicating an increase in child
            labor highlighting the unintentional perverse effects of the
            employment guarantee schemes for Human capital.
Assessing Deprivation with an
            Ordinal Variable : Theory and Application to Sanitation
            Deprivation in Bangladesh
The challenges associated with poverty
            measurement with a cardinal variable have received due
            attention during the last four decades, but there is a
            dearth of literature studying how to meaningfully assess
            poverty with an ordinal variable. This paper first proposes
            a class of simple, intuitive and policy-relevant poverty
            measures for ordinal variables. These measures are sensitive
            to depth of deprivations, unlike the headcount ratio.
            Moreover, under appropriate restrictions, the measures
            ensure that priority is given to the poorest among the poor
            while targeting, monitoring and evaluating poverty
            alleviation programs. To assess the robustness of poverty
            comparisons to alternative choices of parameters, various
            stochastic dominance tests are developed (some of which are
            themselves novel contributions to the stochastic dominance
            literature). The empirical illustration documenting changes
            in sanitation deprivation in Bangladesh showcases the
            measures' ability to identify instances in which
            overall sanitation deprivation improved while leaving the
            poorest behind.
Inflation and Public Debt Reversals
            in Advanced Economies
This paper quantitatively assesses the
            effects of inflation shocks on the public debt-to-GDP ratio
            in 19 advanced economies using simulation and estimation
            approaches. The simulations based on the debt dynamics
            equation and estimations of impulse responses by local
            projections both suggest that a 1 percentage point shock to
            the inflation rate reduces the debt-to-GDP ratio by about
            0.5 to 1 percentage points. The results also suggest that
            the impact is larger and more persistent when the debt
            maturity is longer, but the difference from the benchmark
            case is not significant. These results imply that modestly
            higher inflation, even if accompanied by some financial
            repression, could reduce the public debt burden only
            marginally in many advanced economies.
Taxing Tobacco in Georgia : Welfare
            and Distributional Gains of Smoking Cessation
This paper analyzes the welfare and
            distributional impacts of increasing taxes on cigarettes in
            Georgia. Increasing taxes on tobacco is an effective measure
            to reduce smoking. According to some estimates, increasing
            tobacco taxes could save more than GEL 3.6 billion and 53
            thousand lives over a 15-year period. However, concerns over
            potentially regressive effects on the poor are often raised.
            An Extended Cost Benefit Analysis (ECBA) is applied to
            simulate the welfare and distributional impacts of raising
            prices on cigarettes. Decile-specific price elasticities of
            demand are estimated to account for heterogenous behavioral
            responses of different income groups. Empirical estimations
            confirm that poorer households in Georgia tend to reduce
            consumption more intensely when faced with higher tobacco
            prices. The estimated magnitude and distribution of
            elasticities are comparable to peer countries. The
            simulations based on household survey data suggest that the
            long-term net distributional effects of increasing taxes on
            cigarettes in Georgia are likely progressive. Incorporating
            the indirect benefits of reduced smoking -- reductions in
            medical expenses and earnings from adverted premature deaths
            -- could bring small, albeit positive, income gains for
            large sectors of the population. The magnitude of those
            benefits is most significant among lower-income households,
            potentially contributing to lift them out of poverty.
The Power of Believing You Can Get
            Smarter : The Impact of a Growth-Mindset Intervention on
            Academic Achievement in Peru
This paper evaluates the academic impact
            of a growth-mindset intervention on students starting the
            secondary level in public schools in urban Peru. ¡Expande tu
            Mente! is a 90-minute school session aimed at instilling the
            notion that a person's own intelligence is malleable.
            Students in schools randomly assigned to treatment showed a
            small improvement in math test scores and educational
            expectations, with a large and sustained impact in test
            scores among students outside the capital city. At a cost of
            $0.20 per pupil, ¡Expande tu Mente! was highly
            cost-effective. The results show the potential that brief
            growth-mindset interventions have for developing countries.