rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Financing Low-Carbon Transitions
            through Carbon Pricing and Green Bonds
To finance the transition to low-carbon
            economies required to mitigate climate change, countries are
            increasingly using a combination of carbon pricing and green
            bonds. This paper studies the reasoning behind such policy
            mixes and the economic interaction effects that result from
            these different policy instruments. The paper models these
            interactions using an inter-temporal model that proposes
            burden sharing between current and future generations. The
            issuance of green bonds helps to enable immediate investment
            in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the bonds
            would be repaid by future generations in such a way that
            those who benefit from reduced future environmental damage
            share in the burden of financing the mitigation efforts
            undertaken today. The paper examines the effects of
            combining green bonds and carbon pricing in a three-phase
            model and uses a numerical solution procedure that allows
            for finite-horizon solutions and phase changes. The paper
            shows that green bonds perform better when they are combined
            with carbon pricing. The proposed policy option appears to
            be politically more feasible than a green transition based
            only on carbon pricing, and it is more prudent for debt
            sustainability than a green transition that relies overly on
            green bonds.
Socioeconomic Resilience in Sri
            Lanka: Natural Disaster Poverty and Wellbeing Impact Assessment
Traditional risk assessments use asset
            losses as the main metric to measure the severity of a
            disaster. This paper proposes an expanded risk assessment
            based on a framework that adds socioeconomic resilience and
            uses wellbeing losses as the main measure of disaster
            severity. Using an agent-based model that represents
            explicitly the recovery and reconstruction process at the
            household level, this risk assessment provides new insights
            into disaster risks in Sri Lanka. The analysis indicates
            that regular flooding events can move tens of thousands of
            Sri Lankans into transient poverty at once, hindering the
            country's recent progress on poverty eradication and
            shared prosperity. As metrics of disaster impacts, poverty
            incidence and well-being losses facilitate quantification of
            the benefits of interventions like rapid post-disaster
            support and adaptive social protection systems. Such
            investments efficiently reduce wellbeing losses by making
            exposed and vulnerable populations more resilient.
            Nationally and on average, the bottom income quintile
            suffers only 7 percent of the total asset losses but 32
            percent of the total wellbeing losses. Average annual
            wellbeing losses due to fluvial flooding in Sri Lanka are
            estimated at US$119 million per year, more than double the
            asset losses of US$78 million. Asset losses are reported to
            be highly concentrated in Colombo district, and wellbeing
            losses are more widely distributed throughout the country.
            Finally, the paper applies the socioeconomic resilience
            framework to a cost-benefit analysis of prospective adaptive
            social protection systems, based on enrollment in Samurdhi,
            the main social support system in Sri Lanka.
Magnitude and Distribution of
            Electricity and Water Subsidies for Households in Addis
            Ababa, Ethiopia
In Addis Ababa, an increasing block
            tariff has been used to calculate households' monthly
            bills for electricity and water services. This study
            estimates the magnitudes of the combined water and
            electricity subsidies received by households with private
            connections to the electricity grid and piped water network
            in 2016, and it evaluates the distribution of these
            subsidies among wealth groups. Customer billing data
            supplied by utility companies are matched with socioeconomic
            information collected through a household survey. It is the
            first detailed analysis of the combined effects of
            increasing block tariffs for electricity and water in an
            urban area in a developing country. The results show that
            the combined subsidies are large. The average household
            receives a subsidy of US$26 per month, about 6 percent of
            household income. The findings also show that electricity
            and water subsidies under the increasing block tariff
            disproportionately accrue to richer households, with even
            less targeting when both sectors are considered jointly. The
            poorest quintile receives 12 percent of the total subsidies
            for electricity and water services, while the richest
            quintile receives 31 percent. The water increasing block
            tariff's targeting of subsidies was somewhat worse than
            that of the electricity increasing block tariff.
New Approaches to the Identification
            of Low-Frequency Drivers : An Application to Technology Shocks
This paper addresses the identification
            of low-frequency macroeconomic shocks, such as technology,
            in Structural Vector Autoregressions. Whilst identification
            issues with long-run restricted VARs are well documented,
            the recent attempt to overcome said issues using the
            Max-Share approach of Francis et al. (2014) and Barsky and
            Sims (2011) has its own shortcomings, primarily that they
            are vulnerable to bias from confounding non-technology
            shocks. A modification to the Max-Share approach and two
            further spectral methods are proposed to improve empirical
            identification. Performance directly hinges on whether these
            confounding shocks are of high or low frequency. Applied to
            US and emerging market data, spectral identifications are
            most robust across specifications, and non-technology shocks
            appear to be biasing traditional methods of identifying
            technology shocks. These findings also extend to the SVAR
            identification of dominant business-cycle shocks, which are
            shown will be a variance-weighted combination of shocks
            rather than a single structural driver.
Household Impacts of Tariffs : Data
            and Results from Agricultural Trade Protection
How do trade reforms impact households
            in different parts of the income distribution? This paper
            presents a new database, the Household Impacts of Tariffs
            data set, which contains harmonized household survey and
            tariff data for 54 low- and lower-middle income countries.
            The data cover highly disaggregated information on household
            budget and income shares for 53 agricultural products, wage
            labor income, nonfarm enterprise sales and transfers, as
            well as spending on manufacturing and services. Using a
            stylized model of the first-order impacts of import tariffs
            on household real income, this paper quantifies the welfare
            implications of agricultural trade protection. On average,
            unilateral elimination of agricultural tariffs would
            increase household incomes by 2.50 percentage points. Import
            tariffs have highly heterogeneous effects across countries
            and within countries across households, consumers, and
            income earners; the average standard deviation of the gains
            from trade within a country is 1.01 percentage points.
Markups, Market Imperfections, and
            Trade Openness : Evidence from Ghana
This paper investigates the impact of
            Ghana's World Trade Organization (WTO) accession on
            firm-level product and labor market imperfections. The paper
            exploits a rich dataset of firm-level information to
            estimate both markups and the degree of monopsony power
            enjoyed by manufacturing firms. The results indicate that
            price-cost margins declined while the degree of monopsony
            power increased in the wake of WTO accession. These
            diverging dynamics suggest that firms compress real wages to
            offset loss of market power in the product market due to
            increased international competition. This gives rise to an
            increase in the market imperfection gap, which gradually
            erodes the pro-competitive gains from trade. The paper
            contributes to the literature by identifying channels
            through which allocative inefficiencies and misallocation
            can persist even after trade liberalization.
Documenting Myanmar's social
            transformation : insights from six rounds of research on
            livelihoods and social change in rural communities
This paper presents the initial findings
            from six rounds of research conducted between 2012 and 2016
            on livelihoods and social change in rural Myanmar,
            undertaken as part of the Qualitative Social and Economic
            Monitoring initiative. These data provide unique insights
            into the ways in which broad processes of democratization
            and globalization -- put into effect following
            Myanmar's historic reforms beginning in 2011 -- are
            experienced at the village level. The analysis focuses on
            three key aspects of the "social contract": local
            governance mechanisms, shifting expectations of the state,
            and changes in the types of networks connecting villagers to
            regional and global markets. Remarkable social progress has
            been made in Myanmar since 2012, yet there are no grounds
            for complacency. Managing ongoing transformations in these
            three domains, in ways perceived to be locally legitimate
            and effective, will be crucial if the initial gains are to
            be consolidated and expanded.
Energy prices and international
            trade : incorporating input-output linkages
This paper examines the effect of energy
            costs on industry export competitiveness. Most studies in
            the literature use direct energy consumption (energy
            consumption at the final stage of production) and domestic
            energy prices to compute energy costs faced by domestic
            industries. Using multi-country input-output information,
            this study measures the effect of aggregate energy costs on
            export performance, where aggregate energy costs include not
            only direct energy costs, but also indirect energy costs
            passed on through the upstream supply chain. This study
            develops a theoretical trade model that incorporates
            tradable intermediate goods to inform its empirical
            strategy. It then estimates a reduced-form model using a
            panel data for 10 manufacturing sectors in 43 countries from
            1991 to 2012. The analysis finds that ignoring input-output
            relationships can lead to significant over- or
            underestimates of the effect of energy price shocks on
            exports, depending on intermediate factor intensities and
            trade relationships. Using estimated trade elasticities, the
            study simulates the economic consequences of energy
            cross-subsidies and carbon taxes. The results show that
            energy cross-subsidies that raise energy tariffs on industry
            to support lower rates for households and farmers in India
            could reduce the country's net manufacturing exports by
            $6.1 billion a year. Similarly, a carbon tax that
            unilaterally increases energy prices by 10 percent in the
            European Union could reduce European Union-wide net
            manufacturing exports by 1.9 percent annually.
Information technology and provision
            of national identification cards by the Bolivian police :
            evidence from two randomized natural field experiments
This paper investigates the potential of
            information technology to improve public service delivery
            and empower citizens. The investigation uses two randomized
            natural experiments in the renewal of national
            identification cards by the Bolivian Police. The first
            experiment arises from the random assignment of police
            officers and applicants to a manual or digital renewal
            process, which is identical in all other aspects. The second
            experiment arises from technical failures in the digital
            renewal process, which allow police officers to change from
            the digital to the manual renewal process randomly across
            renewal days. The efficiency of public service delivery is
            measured in renewal success rates (which average to a
            strikingly low rate of 72 percent in the sample) and the
            time it takes to renew an identification card. The findings
            show that applicants who were randomly assigned to the
            digital renewal process were on average 12 percentage points
            more likely to complete it, compared with those who were
            randomly assigned to the manual process. Further, successful
            applicants who were randomly assigned to the digital process
            took on average 31 percent less time to complete the
            process, compared with those who were randomly assigned to
            the manual process. The investigation finds that information
            technology significantly lowers barriers to accessing
            national identification cards, and promotes more equitable
            provision across the population. The findings suggest that
            information technology might achieve these goals by
            introducing efficiencies (such as reducing administrative
            shortcomings and transaction costs) and limiting the
            exercise of discretion by police officers in the renewal process.
Colombo : exposure, vulnerability,
            and ability to respond to floods
This paper examines the exposure,
            vulnerability, and ability of households in Colombo, Sri
            Lanka, to respond to floods, and brings out significant
            policy implications. The study used detailed
            questionnaire-based surveys to obtain data on households, to
            understand the vulnerability and impacts of the severe
            floods of November 2010 and recurrent floods since then.
            Households that were selected for the surveys were located
            in and around flooding spots in the city. The study finds
            that the floods have imposed a significant burden on poor
            households. Poor and nonpoor households have suffered
            damages to the structure of their houses, household assets
            and appliances, and vehicles. With recurrent floods, they
            continue to bear the cost of damages as well as short-term
            measures to cope with floods. For poor families, these costs
            are borne through very limited resources and borrowing from
            informal sources, compared with the nonpoor who have more
            savings in financial form and greater access to formal
            sources of credit. Poor families tend to invest all their
            earnings in their home, furniture, and utensils, which
            suffer the most during floods. In addition, households
            suffer indirect impacts due to non-availability of
            transport, power, drinking water, food, and essential
            supplies. They also tend to lose workdays, which leads to
            loss of income and productivity. Many poor families have
            considered relocation to flood-free areas, but they lack the
            financial resources for the move. If the government offers
            such a scheme, many would be willing to take it up, if
            factors like job opportunities, clean surroundings, access
            to medical facilities, transportation, and good social
            networks are ensured in the new locations.
The labor market effects of
            financial crises : the role of temporary contracts in
            central and western Europe
This paper examines how the 2008-09
            financial crisis affected labor markets in Central and
            Western Europe, and how this impact depended on employment
            protections laws. Using a differences-in-differences
            approach that compares industries with varying degrees of
            inherent dependence on external financing, the analysis
            finds that the crisis had significant negative impacts on
            employment, particularly on temporary, less skilled, and
            younger workers. These impacts on the level and composition
            of employment were significantly stronger in countries with
            stronger legal protection of permanent workers from
            dismissal. This finding suggests that, given regulatory
            inflexibility in adjusting the permanent workforce, firms
            responded to tightening financial constraints by
            disproportionately laying off temporary workers (who tend to
            be younger and less skilled than permanent workers).
Prices, Engel curves, and time-space
            deflation : impacts on poverty and inequality in Vietnam
Many developing countries lack spatially
            disaggregated price data. Some analysts use
            "no-price" methods by using a food Engel curve to
            derive the deflator as that needed for nominally similar
            households to have equal food shares in all regions and time
            periods. This method cannot be tested in countries where it
            is used as a spatial deflator since they lack suitable price
            data. In this paper, data from Vietnam are used to test this
            method against benchmarks provided by multilateral price
            indexes calculated from repeated spatial price surveys.
            Deflators from a food Engel curve appear to be a poor proxy
            for deflators obtained from multilateral price indexes. To
            the extent that such price indexes reliably compare real
            living standards over time and space, these results suggest
            that estimates of the level, location, and change in poverty
            and inequality would be distorted if the Engel method
            deflator was used in their stead.
Bureaucratic blockages : water,
            civil servants, and community in Tanzania
How do civil servants in district water
            and sanitation departments address problems of water access
            in rural communities in Tanzania? What are the bureaucratic
            procedures they follow? How do the bureaucratic procedures
            around formulating budgets, managing money, and interacting
            with communities impede or enhance their ability to manage
            water projects? This report addresses these and related
            questions by examining the social, economic, and political
            contexts in which Tanzanian civil servants in the water
            sector work. This research focuses on civil servants
            employed by water and sanitation departments in district
            offices, where infrastructure projects are initiated and
            managed by engineers and technicians in coordination with
            the private sector and community organizations. Using
            qualitative research from two of these water and sanitation
            departments, this report shows that the institutional and
            bureaucratic contexts in which civil servants work redirect
            their attention away from maintaining existing
            infrastructure and towards building new water projects. The
            focus on new projects corresponds to their efforts to answer
            the objectives of higher levels of government. Improving
            water access depends on the shared efforts of civil servants
            and community groups to maintain existing projects. Civil
            servants' focus on new projects therefore poses a
            problem to ensuring that they work community organizations
            and maintain existing water projects.
Cyclicality of fiscal policy in
            Sub-Saharan Africa : magnitude and evolution
This paper studies the cyclical aspects
            of fiscal policy in Sub-Saharan Africa countries during
            1970–2014. It compares the cyclical properties of real
            government consumption in the region with those in other
            developing regions and high-income countries, and examines
            whether there has been a change in the cyclical nature of
            fiscal policy in recent years. The analysis finds that
            government consumption is procyclical in Sub-Saharan African
            countries, more so than in other regions, and that
            accounting for endogeneity increases the degree of
            cyclicality. The cyclical properties of government spending
            vary along the business cycle, with the level of cyclicality
            being larger when the level of real economic activity is
            above the trend relative to when it is below the trend.
            Mirroring the pattern in other developing regions, the
            degree of cyclicality has changed since 2002 in Sub-Saharan
            Africa, with incipient signs of a shift toward acyclical or
            more countercyclical policies. The evidence does not suggest
            that resource wealth or fragility increases the
            procyclicality of government consumption in Sub-Saharan
            Africa. Official development assistance is found to
            exacerbate the procyclical stance of fiscal policy in the
            region, but the result depends on the relative size of
            foreign aid received.