rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Policy Research Working Paper 6957

# **Abstract**

This report investigates the environmental impacts of Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. A 10-region, 30-sector model of the Russian economy is developed. The model is innovative and more accurate empirically in that it contains foreign direct investment, imperfectly competitive sectors, and endogenous productivity effects triggered by World Trade Organization accession along with environmental emissions data in Russia for seven pollutants that are tracked for all 30 sectors in each of the 10 regions. The decomposition analysis shows that despite the fact that World Trade Organization accession allows Russia to import better technologies and reduce pollution from the “technique effect,” on balance World Trade Organization accession alone will increase environmental pollution in Russia through a shift toward dirty industries (the “composition effect”) and the expansion of output with its associated increase in pollution (“scale effect”). The paper assesses the costs of three types of environmental regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent. The paper simultaneously implements a central case scenario with each of the carbon dioxide emission reduction policy initiatives. The analysis finds that the welfare gains of World Trade Organization accession are large enough to pay for the costs of any of the three environmental abatement policies, while leaving a net welfare gain. But the political economy implications are that the non-market-based policies are more costly and the command and control policy, which is not well targeted, is very costly. Based on a constant returns to scale model, the estimated welfare gains are insufficient to finance the costs of environmental regulation.

This paper is a product of the Sustainable Development Department, Europe and Central Asia Region. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors may be contacted at dgtarr@gmail.com.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
Policy Research Working Paper 9957

# **Abstract**

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’ character and another based on mindfulness principles, results show that the latter improves violent behaviors while reducing school dropout.

This paper is a product of the Development Research Group, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at ldinartediaz@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
with liquidity constraints.<sup>1</sup> In contrast to short-term capital flows, long-term foreign investment is much more likely to be valuable to host economies, in particular if the investment takes the form of new or expanding production plants.

Moreover, foreign investment inflows are generally accepted as a means to incorporate new knowledge from abroad. The theory of the multinational firm proposes that multinational corporations have a technological advantage over local firms that outweighs the cost of doing business in external markets (Caves 1996, Markusen 2002). The inflow of new knowledge may benefit domestic firms through imitation and learning (Findlay 1978, Mansfield and Romeo 1980, Blomström 1986), increasing competition in local markets, facilitating human capital mobility among firms (Fosfuri et al. 2001, Glass and Saggi 2002) and vertical linkages (Rodríguez-Clare 1996, Markusen and Venables 1999), thereby increasing the productivity level and sustaining a higher growth rate.

Despite the fact that the economic benefits of increasing FDI inflows are well established in the theoretical literature, the evidence on technology spillovers is far from conclusive in both firm-level and country-level data.<sup>2</sup> For example, Aitken and Harrison (1999) could not establish any evidence of a positive technology spillover from multinationals to domestic firms in Venezuela in the 1980s. On the other hand, Görg and Hijzen (2004) find that imitation and learning can take place when local firms are geographically close to multinationals and have enough absorptive capacity. Using firm-level data for Lithuania, Javorcik (2004) discovers that spillovers may occur through backward linkages between multinationals and their local suppliers. Another finding is that labor turnover might act as an important channel. As multinationals train the workforce in their operations abroad to use new technologies, technology diffusion might also occur due to a labor turnover from multinationals to domestic firms or if locals establish their own business (Djankov and Hoekman 2000).

Unlike most of the microeconomic evidence, studies using aggregated FDI data found questionable support that FDI in itself significantly boosts growth rates in all recipient

> 1 Much of the earlier literature has emphasised differences in capital abundance and returns on capital as the main driving force for capital flows across countries. See Caves (1996) for a literature survey. 2 De Mello (1997) and Li and Liu (2005) provide surveys of the literature. See also Görg and Greenaway (2004) for a review of the empirical literature on multinationals and productivity spillovers.

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# **_Table A4.6e Relationship between Task Team Leader (TTL) turnover and IEG outcome rating, IBRD/IDA results_**

||**Depen**<br>|**dent variable: I**<br>**By lendin**<br>|**EG 1-6 outcome**<br> **g source**<br>|**rating**<br>|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||**IBRD**|**IBRD**|**IBRD**|**IBRD**|
|Dummy for preparation TTL change|-0.0573|||-0.005|
|in the 1st or 2nd ISR|(0.085)|||(0.087)|
|TTL turnover during first half (Number of||-0.682**||-0.495*|
|TTLs/Number of ISRs)||(0.258)||(0.263)|
|TTL turnover during second half (Number of|||-1.047***|-1.028***|
|TTLs/Number of ISRs)|||(0.273)|(0.277)|
|Constant|3.924***|4.525***|3.083***|3.355***|
||(0.504)|(0.416)|(0.452)|(0.470)|
|Observations|1,235|1,235|1,230|1,229|
|Adjusted R-squared|0.106|0.112|0.124|0.126|
||**Depen**|**dent variable: I**<br>|**EG 1-6 outcome**<br>|**rating**|
|||**By lendi**|**g source**||
||**IDA**|**IDA**|**IDA**|**IDA**|
|Dummy for preparation TTL change|-0.069|||-0.053|
|in the 1st or 2nd ISR|(0.053)|||(0.053)|
|TTL turnover during first half (Number of||-0.173||-0.116|
|TTLs/Number of ISRs)||(0.210)||(0.217)|
|TTL turnover during second half (Number of|||-0.167|-0.189|
|TTLs/Number of ISRs)|||(0.264)|(0.240)|
|Constant|3.924***|4.525***|3.083***|2.119***|
||(0.504)|(0.416)|(0.452)|(0.501)|
|Observations|1,528|1,527|1,527|1,537|
|Adjusted R-squared|0.093|0.092|0.086|0.059|

Note: Robust standard errors clustered at the country level are reported in parentheses (***p<0.01,

**p<0.05, *p<0.10). All regressions are estimated using OLS, and controlling for region, sector,  original commitment amount of project, original length of project and IEG evaluator fixed effects.

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78. Tollbooth s-ffer from being land intensive, labor intensive (due to the hiring of toll operators) and time intensive (due to the queuing delay to motorists), and are not ideal for congestion charging in and of themselves. The process of stopping and paying disrupts taffic flow and lengthens queues, defeating the ultimate goal of alleviating congestion. However, cordon prcing as in the Bergen Toll Ring could serve as an effective instrument of charging for congestion since half the toll lanes are reserved for the use of seasonal pass holders who travel through the pricing points at regular highway speeds. Enforcement of those driving on reserved lanes is carried out by periodic videographs of vehicle license plates, just as radar technology is a socially acceptable tool to catch speedsters. The are licensing scheme (AU) requires that vehicles entering the central business district during peak hours display a monthy or daily license prominently, with enforcement being underta at gantry points by traffic wardens who perform visual checks on the nonstop trffic. Enforcement of ALS would be prohibitively costly when carried out at motorway speeds but would likely involve relatively low cost in a standard congested urban environment with Limited entry and exit points. As a measure of the technical efficiency of a system, consider the long-run cost of opeating a congestion charging mechanism, which includes amorfized capital and operating costs. Based on a variant of cost-effectiveness analysis, the cost per transaction is then used as an index of comparison among technologies: i indicates that supplementary licensing is the lowest, even lower than that of cordon pricing as in Bergen. The Oslo Toll Ring is designed for the purpose of eJonic _and_ manual MU *-3i=ion, and the construction of large toll plazas accommodatig both involves relatively high capital cost. (Note also that a flat rate, 24-hour toll used by a (standard) manual and electronic toll collection system such as Oslo's is not welfare enhancing. The use of such a system would improve social welfare if a differential pricing stategy were adopted by simply implementing a crude peak period toll). However, merely retrofitting an isting toll plaz setting with electronic toll equipment would not involve high capital cost, as the Crescent City Connection case clearly demonstrates. By the same token, electonic road yiing .3RP) is thus electronic toll collection _wrt large_ and made obligatory on vehicle owners within a jurisdiction. Even though the cost of the electronic equipment for standard AVI basea on a one-way communication link is not considered trivial, the benefits are a multiple of the cost. As the sensitivity analysis performed on the Hong Kong ERP Scheme clearly demontates, even after excluding time
Our first outcome was whether a student (who had started high school in October 2011) had dropped out by May 2012. To identify dropouts, our enumerators filled in a student-tracking form for each class during the endline survey. This form contained a list of all the students who completed our baseline survey. Our enumerators marked each student on the baseline list as present, absent, transferred, on leave, or dropped out, according to information provided by class monitors. Moreover, after the field survey was over, our enumerators called the parents or guardians of the students to further ascertain whether the students marked as dropped out on our tracking form had in fact dropped out.

A multi-step procedure was used to ensure that the computing and math tests were valid (and represented the types of skills that students were expected to acquire in high schools in China). First, we collected a pool of over 200 computer and math exam items (questions) from official sources.<sup>6</sup> Because the test items were based on national standards, they are (according to policy) supposed to be reflected in the content actually taught in school. Second, to further verify the content validity of the items, we asked vocational high school teachers to ensure that the items were relevant to what computer majors would actually be learning in vocational high school. Third, after piloting the large pool of exam items with more than 300 students, we designed vertically scaled (equated) baseline and endline exams using item response theory (IRT). By using the IRT procedure suggested by Kolen and Brennan (2004), we were able to

> 6 Specifically, the computer exam items were taken from the previous year’s National Computer Rank Examination and the National Applied Information Technology Certificate exams. The math exam items were provided by the National Examination Center and closely matched the current curricular requirements of high school students in China.
set of projects to finance through the World Bank. This choice may involve 'cream skimming" --governments seeking Bank financing for projects with very high expected ERRs--or 'laggard dumping"--governmnents offering the Bank the most problematic projects. To the extent that the mechanism whereby the government and the Bank agree on which projects will be fimanced differs across countries, the average return across countries cannot be interpreted as reflecting government performance.

The most worrisome fact against an interpretation of ERRs as an indicator of government efficacy is their lack of correlation with other measures of government efficacy. The Business Environmental Risk Intelligence (BERI) and International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) data rank countries by various characteristics that indicate their attractiveness for foreign investment--e.g., red tape encountered, corruption, and bureaucratic delay. These various measures are not significantly correlated with the ERRs in our data set: they are not good measures of the same thing. It is possible that these private sector ratings are flawed indicators of government effectiveness; they are designed for foreign investors, and governments that are not attractive to foreign investors may be reasonably effective in implementing their own projects. Nevertheless, the lack of correlation of project performance with other indicators of government efficacy does raise questions.

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# **2. Deposit insurance and bank failure resolution across countries**

This section introduces several indicators of deposit insurers’ involvement in bank failure resolution and the financial safety net in a broader sense. These indicators are constructed from raw data in Barth, Caprio and Levine (2004) and Demirguc-Kunt, Kane, Karacaovali and Laeven (2005). Table 1 presents the variables for the 57 countries in our sample, all countries with explicit deposit insurance schemes, and the Appendix describes the exact definition and source of all variables. We discuss cross-country differences in the institutional set-up of bank failure resolution schemes, especially with respect to deposit insurers’ involvement and illustrate with a short discussion of some specific countries.

## **2.1 Indicators of deposit insurance and bank failure resolution**

One of the most important institutional questions in bank failure resolution is the responsibility for intervening failing banks. Here we focus on the question whether in countries with explicit deposit insurance the deposit insurer has the authority and responsibility to intervene in a bank ( **DI Intervention** ). In ten out of the 57 countries, the deposit insurer has such responsibility; this is the case in such diverse countries as Algeria, Hungary, and the United States.

Almost as significant as the authority to intervene banks is the possibility to revoke membership of banks in the deposit insurance scheme. Does the deposit insurance authority have the legal power to cancel or revoke deposit insurance for any participating bank ( **DI Power to Revoke** )? While revoking membership is certainly not the same as intervening and potentially withdrawing a banking license, the practical effect can be the same, especially if the deposit 7
Table 4: Results on Employment for Power Plants

||(1)|(2)|(3)|(4)|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Phase 1 Participation|0.546***|0.0792*|-0.0277|-0.176|
||(4.01)|(1.80)|(-0.46)|(-0.92)|
|Phase 2 Participation|0.372***|0.125**|-0.0198|-0.326|
||(2.80)|(1.96)|(-0.23)|(-1.45)|
|Phase 1×Log(Surrendered)||||0.0268<br>(1.55)|
|Phase 2×Log(Surrendered)||||0.0944***<br>(3.19)|
|Phase 1×Log(Allocated)||||-0.0153<br>(-0.82)|
|Phase 2×Log(Allocated)||||-0.0696***<br>(-2.67)|
|Plant Fixed Effects|No|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|Country-by-Year Fixed Effects|No|No|Yes|Yes|
|Observations|3262|3262|3262|3262|
|Adjusted_R_<sup>_2_</sup>|0.012|0.003|0.066|0.070|

Note: Dependent variable is the logarithm of number of employees. Standard errors are clustered at the firm level and t statistics are shown in the respective parentheses. *, **, and *** indicate significance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent levels.

Nevertheless, both effects are not statistically significantly different from zero. The last specification interacts the program participation dummy variables with allowances surrendered and allocated. The results suggest that there is no heterogeneous effect across firms with different levels of allowance usage and allocation during the first phase. Under the second phase, a larger allowance usage is associated with a larger employment while a larger allocation is associated with fewer employees. The number of allowance surrendered is likely affected by unobserved idiosyncratic factors at the plant level that affect production and hence emissions. So we abstain from interpreting these coefficients as causal effects.

Table 5 presents estimated effects on material costs, a large proportion of which is fuel costs. The first three specifications all suggest a positive impact on material costs from program participation. The third specification with firm fixed effects and country-year fixed effects provides the smallest estimates: about 5 percent increase in phase one and 8 percent increase in phase two. The increase in material costs could reflect fuel switching (e.g., coal to natural gas) in 14
women’s employment and earnings are helpful to fight against poverty (UNICEF, 1999). Increasing employment for women could generate several societal benefits, although in some cases, where women are less educated or younger at first marriage, it may be possible to observe a positive correlation between work and domestic violence (Heath, 2012). Evidence shows that women are generally disadvantaged in labor markets in terms of labor force participation and employment (Kolev and Sirven, 2010). For analyzing employment as one of the important dimensions of poverty and wellbeing, Lugo (2007) suggests a short list of internationally comparable indicators for describing employment in developing countries. The aspects considered are related to protection against adverse situations inherent in the job, income level, occupational hazards (injuries and diseases), and occupational time.

The female labor force is crucial. For instance, in 2010 it was 45.7% of the total labor force in the whole Sub-Saharan African region, while it represented 47.6% and 50.5% respectively in Burkina Faso and Togo (see Table 3). However, there is gender inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa since the employment ratios are 57.6% and 70.4%, respectively for women and men. Inequality also seems to be present in Burkina Faso, where the ratio for women is 75.7% against 86.7% for men. By contrast, the situation seems to be more equal in Togo, with a ratio approaching 75% for both sexes. It is clear that taking into account the quality of employment deepens gender inequality.

<u>Table 3: Employment by gender in Burkina Faso and Togo in 2010</u>

||Female labor force in %<br>of total labor force|Employment to<br>population ratio for +15<br>women|Employment to<br>population ratio for +15<br>men|
|---|---|---|---|
|Burkina Faso|47.6|75.7|86.7|
|Togo|50.5|74.2|75|
|Sub-Saharan Africa|45.7|57.6|70.4|

<u>Source: World Development Indicators</u>

# **_2.6 Access to credit_**

As shown by OECD (2010), the third MDG is not comprehensive enough since it ignores many gender-related dimensions. In fact, other issues including access to credit could be 11
_Comprehension_ , and _History, Economics, and Geography_ , respectively. Consistent with previous findings, no impact is observed in the _metropolitan_ sample.<sup>21</sup>

# _<u>Mechanisms</u>_

The administrative data available do not allow us to fully uncover the mechanisms through which the intervention had an impact on students’ test scores, however, there is some information available on the self-administered questionnaire that students assessed by MINEDU have to answer. In **Table 8** we provide evidence of the impact of the intervention on educational expectations (in the short and medium term), as well as on students’ self-perception of their own abilities in math and reading comprehension (in the short-term). In the short-term, students in schools assigned to receive the ‘GYM package’ improved their expectation to attend university by 1.1 p.p. Consistent with previous findings, the ITT impact on expectations is virtually zero in the _metropolitan_ sample, and approximately 1.8 p.p. in the _regional_ sample. Results are very similar in the medium-term estimates, albeit marginally insignificant. Finally, our results do not suggest the intervention had an impact on students’ beliefs about their own abilities in the short-term. It is possible that the intervention might have had an impact on this domain in the medium-term, once students realized they had improved their performance on both subjects—potentially thanks to an increased academic effort. Unfortunately, this hypothesis cannot be tested because the scales used to measure these self-perceptions were discontinued from the MINEDU questionnaire.

> 21 By 2016, the research team knew the intervention had had an impact in the _regional_ sample and not in the _metropolitan_ sample. Because of this, we decided to randomly allocate half the schools from the _regional_ sample to receive the ‘GYM package’ so that they could repeat the session at approximately the same month of the year. The instruments and protocols were identical, and the same monitoring procedure was put in place. The only difference was that, in this case, the letter to the head teacher and tutor teachers gave emphasis to the idea that the ‘GYM session’ should be repeated. Our analysis shows no additional impact from being assigned to repeat the ‘GYM session’.

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