rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Powering up developing countries
            through integration
Power market integration is analyzed in
            a two-country model with nationally regulated firms and
            costly public funds. If the generation costs between the two
            countries are too similar, negative business stealing
            outweighs efficiency gains so that the subsequent
            integration welfare decreases in both regions. Integration
            is welfare enhancing when the cost difference between two
            regions is large enough. The benefits from export profits
            increase the total welfare in the exporting country, whereas
            the importing country benefits from lower prices. In this
            case, market integration also improves incentives to invest
            compared to autarky. The investment levels remain
            inefficient, however, especially for transportation
            facilities. Free riding reduces incentives to invest in
            these public-good components of the network, whereas
            business stealing tends to decrease the capacity to finance
            new investment.
Macroeconomic and distributional
            impacts of jatropha-based biodiesel in Mali
Mali, a landlocked West African nation
            at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, has introduced a
            program to produce biodiesel using jatropha curcas, a
            non-edible shrub widely available throughout the country by
            farmers for generations as a living fence for their gardens.
            The aim of the program is to partially substitute diesel,
            which is entirely supplied through imports, with domestic
            biodiesel produced from a feedstock that does not have any
            commercial value otherwise and thus has zero opportunity
            cost. This paper uses a computable general equilibrium model
            to investigate economy-wide and distributional impacts of
            large-scale jatropha production on different types of lands,
            and conversion of jatropha oil to biodiesel for domestic
            consumption. It assesses impacts on agricultural and other
            commodity markets, resource and factor markets, and
            international trade. The results are fed into a detailed
            household survey-based micro-simulation model to assess
            impacts on poverty and income distribution. The study finds
            that the expansion of jatropha farming would be beneficial
            in terms of both macroeconomic and distributional impacts as
            long as idle lands, which have been neither used for
            agriculture nor protected as forests, are utilized. However,
            if jatropha plantation is carried out on existing
            agriculture lands, the economy-wide impacts would be
            negative although it would still help reduce rural poverty.
Addressing additionality in REDD
            contracts when formal enforcement is absent
The success of reducing carbon emissions
            from deforestation and forest degradation depends on the
            design of an effective financial mechanism that provides
            landholders sufficient incentives to participate and provide
            additional and permanent carbon offsets. This paper proposes
            self-enforcing contracts as a potential solution for the
            constraints in formal contract enforcement derived from the
            stylized facts of reducing emissions from deforestation and
            forest degradation implementation in developing countries.
            It characterizes the optimal self-enforcing contract and
            provides the parameters under which private enforcement is
            sustainable when the seller type that is, the opportunity
            cost of the land, is private information. The optimal
            contract suggests that the seller with low opportunity cost
            receives a positive enforceable payment equivalent to the
            information rents required for self-selection, in contrast
            to when the buyer knows the seller type in which case all
            payments should be made contingent on additional forest
            conservation. When the buyer does not know the seller type,
            a first-best self-enforcing contract can be implemented if
            forest conservation is sufficiently productive. If the gains
            from forest conservation are small, self-enforcing contracts
            may induce some carbon sequestration by some or all seller
            types, depending on the value of the shared gains of the relationship.
Designing contracts for reducing
            emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
Reduction of carbon emissions from
            deforestation and forest degradation has been identified as
            a cost effective element of the post-Kyoto strategy to
            achieve long-term climate objectives. Its success depends
            primarily on the design and implementation of a financial
            mechanism that provides land-holders sufficient incentives
            to participate in such scheme. This paper proposes
            self-enforcing contracts (relational contracts) as a
            potential solution for the constraints in formal contract
            enforcement derived from the stylized facts of the
            implementation because relational contracting relies upon
            mutual private self-enforcement in a repeated transaction
            framework. The paper derives an opportunity cost function
            for land use and characterizes the optimal self-enforcing
            contract as well as provide the parameters under which
            private enforcement is sustainable. The optimal payment
            scheme suggests that all payments should be made contingent
            on the carbon offsets delivered, that is, at the end of the
            contracting period. Thus, the optimal contract does not
            observe any ex ante payment. Self-enforcement is more
            difficult to sustain the higher the opportunity cost of
            forest conservation is relative to the value of the carbon
            offsets from the contract. Necessary extensions to the
            relational contracting model are also discussed.
Cooperation and reciprocity in
            carbon sequestration contracts
This paper studies the role of
            cooperation and reciprocity on the structure of
            self-enforcing carbon sequestration contracts. The optimal
            contract is derived as a result of the optimizing actions of
            purely self-interested agents, and agents that act according
            to social or egoistic preferences. The analysis finds that
            buyers' preferences do not affect contract structure
            unless the buyer is averse to inequality. In contrast, the
            optimal payment rule is directly related to the
            seller's preferences as the payment must motivate the
            seller to comply with forest conservation. It also finds
            that the presence of altruistic or warm glow preferences
            increases the likelihood of cooperation in the long-term
            relationship relative to the case of selfish parties. These
            results imply that agencies or organizations that are not
            only concerned about carbon sequestration but also have
            objectives related to the economic development of small land
            holders may be more successful in the implementation
            contracts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
Gender inequality in
            multidimensional welfare deprivation in west Africa : the
            case of Burkina Faso and Togo
The importance of gender equality is
            reflected not only in the Millennium Development Goals, but
            also in the World Bank's Gender Action Plan launched in
            2007 as well as in other treaties and actions undertaken at
            regional and international levels. Unlike other work on
            gender and poverty, which is mostly based on monetary
            measurement, the present study makes use of a counting
            approach to examine gender issues in Burkina Faso and Togo
            using household surveys. Focusing on six dimensions
            (housing, basic utilities, assets, education, employment,
            and access to credit) largely recognized as Millennium
            Development Goal targets, the main findings of the study
            indicate that overall individuals are the most deprived in
            education in Burkina Faso, while the reverse situation is
            true in Togo. Gender inequality is observed in all
            dimensions since women always seem to be more deprived than
            men. The situation is also marked by regional disparities.
            Moreover, the assessment of dimensional contributions shows
            different patterns for each country. While employment proves
            to be the main contributor of gender inequality in Burkina
            Faso, three dimensions (assets, access to credit, and
            employment) account together for most of the total
            contribution to gender inequality in Togo. There is also a
            positive correlation between multidimensional deprivation
            and women's age in Burkina Faso, whereas both measures
            seem to be uncorrelated in Togo.
Gender inequality in
            multidimensional welfare deprivation in west Africa : the
            case of Burkina Faso and Togo
WPS6522 Policy Research Working Paper 6522 Gender Inequality in Multidimensional Welfare Deprivation in West Africa The Case of Burkina Faso and Togo _Akoété Ega Agbodji Yélé Maweki Batana Dénis Ouedraogo_ The World Bank Africa Region Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Unit June 2013
Long-term impacts of household
            electrification in rural India
India's huge expansion in rural
            electrification in the 1980s and 1990s offers lessons for
            other countries today. The paper examines the long-term
            effects of household electrification on consumption, labor
            supply, and schooling in rural India over 1982-99. It finds
            that household electrification brought significant gains to
            consumption and earnings, the latter through changes in
            market labor supply. It finds positive effects on schooling
            for girls but not for boys. External effects are also
            evident, whereby households without electricity benefit from
            village electrification. Wage rates were unaffected.
            Methodologically, the results suggest sizeable upward biases
            in past estimates of the gains from electrification
            associated with how past analyses dealt with geographic effects.
The impact of government support on
            firm R&D investments : a meta-analysis
This paper applies meta-analysis
            techniques to a sample of 37 studies published during
            2004-2011. These papers assess the impact of direct
            subsidies on business research and development. The results
            show that the effect of public investment on research and
            development is predominantly positive and significant.
            Furthermore, public funds do not crowd out but incentivize
            firms to revert funds into research and development. The
            coefficient of additionality impacts on research and
            development ranges from 0.166 to 0.252, with reasonable
            confidence intervals at the 95 percent level. The results
            are highly sensitive to the method used. The high
            heterogeneity of precision is explained by the wide variety
            of methodologies used to estimate the impacts and paper characteristics.
An expansion of a global data set on
            educational quality : a focus on achievement in developing countries
This paper assembles a panel data set
            that measures cognitive achievement for 128 countries around
            the world from 1965 to 2010 in 5-year intervals. The data
            set is constructed from international achievement tests,
            such as the Programme for International Student Assessment
            and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science
            Study, which have become increasingly available since the
            late 1990s. These international assessments are linked to
            regional ones, such as the South and Eastern African
            Consortium for Monitoring of Educational Quality, the
            Programme d'Analyse des Systemes Educatifs de la
            Confemen, and the Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluacion
            de la Calidad de la Educacion, in order to produce one of
            the first globally comparable data sets on student
            achievement. In particular, the data set is one of the first
            to include achievement in developing countries, including 29
            African countries and 19 Latin American countries. The paper
            also provides a first attempt at using the data set to
            identify causal factors that boost achievement. The results
            show that key drivers of global achievement are civil rights
            and economic freedom across all countries, and democracy and
            economic freedom in a subset of African and Latin American countries.
Criss-crossing migration
The current perspective on the flow of
            people is almost exclusively focused on permanent migration
            from poorer to richer countries and on immigration policies
            in industrial countries. But international mobility of
            people should no longer be seen as a one-time event or
            one-way flow from South to North. The economic crisis has
            accentuated the longer-term shift in location incentives for
            people in industrial countries. As consumers, they could
            obtain better and cheaper access to key services -- such as
            care for the elderly, health, and education -- whose costs
            at home are projected to increase in the future, threatening
            standards of living. As workers, they could benefit from new
            opportunities created by the shift in economic dynamism from
            industrial to emerging countries. But subtle incentives to
            stay at home, such as lack of portability of health
            insurance and non-recognition of qualifications obtained
            abroad, inhibit North-South mobility and need to be
            addressed. Furthermore, if beneficiaries of movement abroad
            exert countervailing power against those who support
            immigration barriers at home, then that could lead to
            greater inflows of people, boosting innovation and growth in
            the North. Eventually, growing two-way flows of people could
            create the possibility of a grand bargain to reduce
            impediments to the movement of people at every stage in all
            countries and help realize the full benefits of globalization.
Welfare and poverty impacts of
            India's national rural employment guarantee scheme :
            evidence from Andhra Pradesh
This paper uses a three-round
            4,000-household panel from Andhra Pradesh together with
            administrative data to explore short and medium-term poverty
            and welfare effects of the National Rural Employment
            Guarantee Scheme. Triple difference estimates suggest that
            participants significantly increase consumption (protein and
            energy intake) in the short run and accumulate more
            nonfinancial assets in the medium term. Direct benefits
            exceed program-related transfers and are most pronounced for
            scheduled castes and tribes and households supplying casual
            labor. Asset creation via program-induced land improvements
            is consistent with a medium-term increase in assets by
            nonparticipants and increases in wage income in excess of
            program cost.
Are mega-farms the future of global
            agriculture exploring the farm size-productivity relationship
With farms cultivating tens or hundreds
            of thousands of hectares, Ukraine is often used to
            demonstrate the existence of economies of scale in modern
            grain production. Panel data analysis for all the
            country's farms with more than 200 hectares in
            2001-2011 suggests that higher yields and profits are due to
            unobserved factors at rayon (district) and farm level rather
            than economies of scale. Productivity growth was driven not
            by farm expansion but by exit of unproductive and entry of
            more efficient farms. Higher initial shares of area under
            farms with more than 3,000 or 5,000 hectares at the rayon
            level significantly reduce subsequent exit, suggesting that
            land concentration reduces productivity growth. The paper
            draws implications for global evolution of farm structures.
The effects of country risk and
            conflict on infrastructure PPPs
Through an empirical analysis of the
            relationship between private participation in infrastructure
            and country risk, the paper shows that country risk ratings
            are a reliable predictor of infrastructure investment levels
            in developing countries. The results suggest that a
            difference of one standard deviation in a country's
            sovereign risk score is associated with a 27 percent
            increase in the probability of having a private
            participation in infrastructure commitment, and a 41 percent
            higher level of investment in dollar terms. The predictive
            ability of country risk ratings exists for all sectors of
            infrastructure and for both greenfield and concessions. On
            average, energy investments exhibit a higher sensitivity to
            country risk than transport, telecommunications, and water
            investments. Concessions are more sensitive than greenfield
            investments to country risk, although country risk is a good
            predictor of investment levels for both contractual forms.
            Although foreign direct investment is found to be sensitive
            to country risk, the causal relationship is not nearly as
            sensitive as it is with private participation in
            infrastructure. Finally, an analysis of private
            participation in infrastructure patterns for those countries
            emerging from conflict reveals that conflict-affected
            countries typically require six to seven years to attract
            significant levels or forms of private investments in
            infrastructure from the day that the conflict is officially
            resolved. Private investments in sectors where assets are
            more difficult to secure--such as water, power distribution,
            or roads--are slower to appear or simply never materialize.
Growth and volatility analysis using wavelets
The magnitude and persistence of growth
            in gross domestic product are topics of intense scrutiny by
            economists. Although the existing techniques provide a range
            of tools to study the nature of growth and volatility time
            series, these usually come with shortcomings, including the
            need to arbitrarily define acceleration spells, and focus on
            a particular frequency at a time. This paper explores the
            application of "wavelet-based" techniques to study
            the time-varying nature of growth and volatility. These
            techniques lend themselves to a more robust analysis of
            short-term and long-term determinants of growth and
            volatility than the traditional decomposition techniques, as
            demonstrated on a small sample of countries. In addition to
            having desirable technical advantages, such as localization
            in time and frequency and the ability to work with
            non-stationary series, these techniques also make it
            possible to accurately decompose the association between
            growth trajectories of different countries over different
            time horizons. Such "co-movement" analysis can
            provide policy makers with important insights on regional
            integration, growth poles, and how short and long term
            developments in other countries affect their domestic economy.
Fiscal sustainability in Burundi :
            baseline projections, stochastic simulations, and policy scenarios
This paper analyzes Burundi's
            medium-term fiscal sustainability in the light of the
            country's vulnerability to various shocks. Earlier
            studies have highlighted the country's vulnerability to
            exogenous shocks related to commodity exports, rain-fed
            agriculture, and volatile foreign aid. Internally,
            uncertainty about the implementation of the
            government's fiscal reforms is a key risk. The earlier
            studies, however, did not quantify the size and impact of
            the risks on the country's fiscal sustainability.
            Drawing initially on the standard inter-temporal
            sustainability framework, the baseline analysis shows that
            Burundi's ongoing fiscal policy strategy is not
            sustainable, even with a gradually improving external
            environment and relatively strong growth. Stochastic
            simulations show that adverse shocks to rainfall or coffee
            prices could increase the country's debt-to-gross
            domestic product ratio by 5 to 7 percentage points above the
            projected baseline ratio. Aid shocks could have an even
            larger impact but the estimates are less statistically
            reliable because of the short time series and because
            historical volatility in part reflects endogenous shocks
            (such as reform implementation) as well as exogenous shocks
            (donors' behavior). The policy scenario analysis shows
            that future fiscal sustainability will hinge on the
            government's ability to stick to its plans to broaden
            the tax base, streamline generous tax incentives and
            exemptions, and control civil service wages and short-run
            expenditure pressures -- risks that need to be monitored
            closely over the political cycle in the country.