rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Natural resources, physical capital
            and institutions : evidence from Eurasia
Natural resource abundance can lead to
            strong economic growth if resource rents are well invested
            in physical assets and other forms of productive capital.
            This paper focuses on the case of the resource-abundant
            economies in Eurasia, which has been less documented in the
            literature on natural resource-led development than other
            parts of the world. The analysis shows that the stock of
            productive physical assets is relatively low, contrary to
            common perceptions about the Soviet system. The
            infrastructure that was inherited from the Soviet system
            primarily serves to meet basic human needs; few assets
            support the development of competitive and sustainable
            economies. At a deeper level, the paper documents that low
            accumulation of physical capital over the past two decades
            has been driven by weak institutions and economic policies
            associated with the presence of resource rents, along with a
            poor public investment management process. This paper
            complements existing empirical studies by presenting
            evidence on the mechanisms through which natural resources
            and physical capital have interacted in setting Eurasian
            economies on a fragile development path.
Institutional and structural
            determinants of investment worldwide
This paper considers institutional and
            structural factors associated with investment activity in a
            panel of up to 129 developed and developing countries. It
            introduces these factors to a standard neoclassical
            investment function for open economies, and find that
            financial development and institutional quality are
            reasonably robust determinants of cross-country capital
            formation, with latter displaying more stability in the sign
            and significance of its coefficient. Indeed, when
            endogeneity concerns are addressed more explicitly using
            external instruments, and both interactions and subsamples
            are considered, institutional quality tends to survive as
            the causal determinant of investment.
Behavioral economics and public
            sector reform : an accidental experiment and lessons from Cameroon
Starting with the hypothesis that
            behaviors are the critical (and often overlooked) factor in
            public sector performance, this paper explores the notion of
            how behavioral change (and thus institutional change) might
            be better motivated in the public sector. The basis for this
            study is "an accidental experiment" resulting from
            the World Bank's operational engagement in Cameroon. In
            2008, World Bank staff successfully concluded preparation on
            a project to support the Government of Cameroon to improve
            transparency, efficiency, and accountability of public
            finance management. The US$15 million project supported a
            number of ministries to strengthen a broad range of
            management systems and capacities. Independently and
            concurrently, other Bank staff initiated a low-profile,
            technical assistance project to improve performance in
            Cameroon's Customs, supported by a small trade
            facilitation grant of approximately US$300,000. One approach
            appears to have succeeded in initiating change while the
            other has signally failed. The two projects of different
            scale, scope and design in the same  governance environment
            offer a very interesting natural experiment (unplanned but
            accidental for that reason) that allows insights into the
            nature of institutional change and the role of behavior and
            incentives and approaches that offer greater prospects for
            making reform possible. The paper confirms the value of
            using ideas from behavioral economics, both to design
            institutional reforms and to critically assess the approach
            to institutional reform taken by development agencies such
            as the World Bank.
When competition corrupts : a
            theoretical analysis of market structure and the incidence
            of corruption
The paper develops a simple model to
            demonstrate that, paradoxically, greater competition may
            exacerbate the problem of corruption. Market participants
            engaging in corrupt practices enjoy lower production costs
            -- maybe because they pay a bribe to avoid installing the
            environmental safeguards required by law -- such that honest
            players are driven out of the market when the market becomes
            sufficiently competitive.
Russian volatility : obstacle to
            firm survival and diversification
The need for economic diversification
            receives a great deal of attention in Russia. This paper
            looks at a way to improve it that is essential but largely
            ignored: how to help diversifying firms better survive
            economic cycles. By definition, economic diversification
            means doing new things in new sectors and/or in new markets.
            The fate of emerging firms, therefore, should be of great
            concern to policy makers. This paper indicates that the ups
            and downs -- the volatility -- of Russian economic growth
            are key to that fate. Volatility of growth is higher in
            Russia than in comparable economies because its slumps are
            both longer and deeper. They go beyond the cleansing effects
            of eliminating the least efficient firms; relatively
            efficient ones get swept away as well. In fact, an
            incumbency advantage improves a firm's chances of
            weathering the ups and downs of the economy, regardless of a
            firm's relative efficiency. Finally, firms in sectors
            where competition is less intense are less likely to exit
            the market, regardless of their relative efficiency. Two
            policy conclusions emerge from these findings -- one
            macroeconomic and one microeconomic. First, the importance
            of countercyclical policies is heightened to include
            efficiency elements. Second, strengthening competition and
            other factors that support the survival of new, emerging and
            efficient firms will promote economic diversification.
            Efforts to help small and medium enterprises may be better
            spent on removing the obstacles that young, infant firms
            face as they attempt to enter, survive and grow.
Toward a conceptual framework for
            the knowledge bank
This paper proposes some basic elements
            of a conceptual framework to help organize the thinking
            about policies that can strengthen the knowledge mission of
            the World Bank. It first argues that the Bank occupies a
            unique and prominent subset of the social and economic
            development "knowledge space" that ranges from
            abstract basic research to codified knowledge solutions. The
            fact that this niche centrally includes the provision of
            public good-intensive knowledge weakens organizational
            analogies between the Bank and private consulting firms. The
            range of products coupled with an increasing emphasis on
            just-in-time advisory services dictate the need for not more
            generalists, but rather an increased range and depth of very
            specific and high quality human capital. However, this
            increased specialization in turn creates the need for
            "hinge" actors who can communicate and operate
            well across different knowledge communities -- academics,
            policy makers, practitioners, etc. The necessary changes in
            human resource and incentive policies, in particular the
            critical development of better means of ensuring the quality
            of knowledge production, are an essential complement to any
            organizational restructuring.
Telecommunications externality on
            migration : evidence from Chinese Villages
This paper uses a unique natural
            experiment in Chinese villages to investigate whether access
            to telecommunications-- in particular, landline phones --
            increases the likelihood of outmigration. By using regional
            and time variations in the installation of landline phones,
            the difference-in-differences estimation shows that access
            to landline phones increases the ratio of out-migrant
            workers by 2 percentage points, or about 50 percent of the
            sample mean in China. The results remain robust to a battery
            of validity checks. Furthermore, landline phones affect
            outmigration through two channels: information access to job
            opportunities and timely contact with left-behind family
            members. The findings underscore the positive migration
            externality of expanding telecommunications access in rural
            areas, especially in places where migration potential is large.
Sovereign ratings in the post-crisis
            world : an analysis of actual, shadow and relative risk ratings
This paper analyzes the evolution of
            sovereign credit ratings in the wake of the global financial
            crisis by studying changes in actual, shadow, and relative
            ratings between 2008 and 2012. For countries that do not
            have a rating from the major rating agencies, shadow ratings
            are estimated as a function of macroeconomic, structural,
            and governance variables. The shadow rating exercise
            confirms earlier findings in the literature that even after
            the financial crisis, many unrated countries appear to be
            more creditworthy than previously believed and can access
            international capital markets. The paper also develops a new
            rating scale called the "relative risk rating,"
            which ranks countries according to their actual or shadow
            ratings after controlling for changes in the world weighted
            average rating. When relative ratings in 2012 are compared
            with the first half of 2008, the world average rating is
            found to be weaker because of the financial crisis. The
            relative rating improved in developing economies such as
            Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and the
            Philippines, whereas it deteriorated in crisis-affected
            high-income countries such as Cyprus, Greece, Spain,
            Portugal, Ireland, and Egypt. Interestingly, India, Jordan,
            Poland, and the United Kingdom had their rating outlook
            downgraded by the rating agencies, but their relative rating
            actually improved as other countries suffered even worse
            downgrades. A regression model is used to analyze the
            relative contributions of different variables to rating
            changes during 2008-2012, a helpful feature for policy
            makers interested in improving sovereign ratings.
The quality of budget execution and
            its correlates
What determines the quality of budget
            execution around the world, measured in terms of a
            government's ability to accurately hit its own revenue
            and expenditure targets? The answers could be relevant to
            the topics of macroeconomic stability, national development,
            public service delivery, and political reputation. This
            paper takes a step toward finding answers through the
            exploration of a new database of budgets and budget outcomes
            and potential cross-country correlates of budget execution
            in levels and in composition. Few countries within the data
            sample execute their budgets well, in levels or in
            composition. Expenditure deviations are positively but
            rather loosely correlated with revenue deviations. Within
            this broad tendency, there is considerable variation in
            behavior not only across countries, but also across time
            within countries. In explaining the cross-country
            variations, the data confirm traditional drivers for common
            pool behavior while also supporting constructive roles for
            political institutions and the technical capacity for public
            financial management. This is good news for reform minded governments.
Effects of early-life exposure to
            sanitation on childhood cognitive skills : evidence from
            India's total sanitation campaign
Early life health and net nutrition
            shape childhood and adult cognitive skills and human
            capital. In poor countries -- and especially in South Asia
            -- widespread open defecation without making use of a toilet
            or latrine is an important source of childhood disease. This
            paper studies the effects on childhood cognitive achievement
            of early life exposure to India's Total Sanitation
            Campaign, a large government program that encouraged local
            governments to build and promote use of inexpensive pit
            latrines. In the early years of the program studied here,
            the TSC caused six-year-olds exposed to it in their first
            year of life to be more likely to recognize letters and
            simple numbers. The results suggest both that open
            defecation is an important threat to the human capital of
            the Indian labor force, and that a program feasible to low
            capacity governments in developing countries could improve
            average cognitive skills.
Input usage and productivity in
            Indian manufacturing plants
This paper analyzes the scale and
            productivity consequences of varied input use in Indian
            manufacturing using detailed plant-level data. Counts of
            distinct material inputs are higher in urban settings than
            in rural locations, unconditionally and conditional on plant
            size, and they are also higher in the organized sector than
            in the unorganized sector. At the district level, higher
            input usage in the organized sector is generally observed in
            wealthier districts and those with greater literacy rates.
            If looking within states, the usage is more closely
            associated with electricity access, population density, and
            closer spatial proximity to one of India's largest
            cities. Plants in the organized sector utilizing a greater
            variety of inputs display higher productivity, with the
            effects mostly concentrated among smaller plants with fewer
            than 50 employees. For the unorganized sector, there is
            little correlation of input counts and local conditions, for
            better or for worse, and a more modest link to productivity outcomes.
Firm competitiveness and the
            European union emissions trading scheme
The European Union Emissions Trading
            Scheme is the first international cap-and-trade program for
            carbon dioxide and the largest carbon pricing regime in the
            world. A significant concern over the Emissions Trading
            Scheme has been the potential impact on the competitiveness
            of industry. Using data on 5,873 firms in ten European
            countries during 2001-2009, this paper assesses the impact
            on three variables through which the effects on firm
            competitiveness may manifest -- unit material costs,
            employment and revenue. The analysis focuses on the three
            most heavily-emitting industries under the program -- power,
            cement, and iron and steel. Empirical results indicate that
            the Emissions Trading Scheme has had different impacts
            across these three sectors. Although no impacts are found on
            any of the three variables in the cement and iron and steel
            industries, a positive effect is found on both material
            costs and revenue in the power sector. The effect on
            material costs likely reflects fuel-switching to reduce
            carbon dioxide emissions, while that on revenue may be
            partly due to cost pass-through to consumers in a market
            that is less exposed to competition outside the Europen
            Union. Overall the findings do not substantiate concerns
            over carbon leakage, job loss or industry competitiveness
            during the study period.
Inventory of public land in
            Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India
This paper pilots an approach to
            identifying, categorizing, and mapping public land owned by
            the central, state, and local government in urban developed
            areas of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. The methodology uses
            information on plot sizes, location, and ownership that is
            publicly available for all areas covered by town planning
            schemes. The study examines the extent of unutilized and
            underutilized public land, which excludes all cemeteries,
            parks and gardens, heritage buildings, slums, utilities,
            infrastructure land, and industrial estates. Unused land
            already earmarked for public purposes were also excluded
            from the valuation exercise. The potentially marketable land
            so identified was valued at both official rates and
            estimated market rates. The value of potentially marketable
            excess land is significant -- in per capita terms, the
            high-value scenario substantially exceeds the estimate of
            total infrastructure investment needs for the next 20 years
            prepared by an expert committee of the Ministry of Urban
            Development of the Government of India.
Dynamic climate policy with both
            strategic and non-strategic agents : taxes versus quantities
This paper studies a dynamic game where
            each of two large blocs, of fossil fuel importers and
            exporters respectively, sets either taxes or quotas to
            exercise power in fossil-fuel markets. The main novel
            feature is the inclusion of a "fringe" of non-
            strategic (emerging and developing) countries which both
            consume and produce fossil fuels. Cumulated emissions over
            time from global fossil fuel consumption create climate
            damages which are considered by both the strategic importer
            and the non-strategic countries. Markov perfect equilibria
            are examined under the four combinations of trade policies
            and compared with the corresponding static games where
            climate damages are given (not stock-related). The main
            results are that taxes always dominate quota policies for
            both the strategic importer and exporter and that
            "fringe"countries bene?t from a tax policy as
            compared with a quota policy for the strategic importer, as
            the import fuel price then is lower, and the strategic
            importer's fuel consumption is also lower, thus causing
            fewer climate damages.
A conceptual model of incomplete
            markets and the consequences for technology adoption
            policies in Ethiopia
In Africa, farmers have been reluctant
            to take up new varieties of staple crops developed to boost
            smallholder yields and rural incomes. Low fertilizer use is
            often mentioned as a proximate cause, but some believe the
            problem originates with incomplete input markets. As a
            remedy, African governments have introduced technology
            adoption programs with fertilizer subsidies as a core
            component. Still, the links between market performance and
            choices about using fertilizer are poorly articulated in
            empirical studies and policy discussions, making it
            difficult to judge whether the programs are expected to
            generate lasting benefits or to simply offset high
            fertilizer prices. This paper develops a conceptual model to
            show how choices made by agents supplying input services
            combine with household livelihood settings to generate
            heterogeneous decisions about fertilizer use. An applied
            model is estimated with data from a panel survey in rural
            Ethiopia. The results suggest that adverse market conditions
            limit the adoption of fertilizer-based technologies,
            especially among resource-poor households. Farmers appear to
            respond to market signals in the aggregate and this provides
            a pathway for subsidies to stimulate demand. However, the
            research suggests that lowering transaction costs, through
            investments in infrastructure and market institutions, can
            generate deeper effects by expanding the technologies
            available to farmers across all pricing outcomes.
A systemic analysis of land markets
            and land institutions in West African cities : rules and
            practices - the case of Bamako, Mali
This paper presents a new type of land
            market analysis relevant to cities with plural tenure
            systems as in West Africa. The methodology hinges on a
            systemic analysis of land delivery channels, which helps to
            show how land is initially made available for circulation,
            how tenure can be formalized incrementally, and the
            different means whereby households can access land. The
            analysis is applied to the area of Bamako in Mali, where
            information was collected through (i) interviews with key
            informants, (ii) a literature review on land policies,
            public allocations, and customary transfers of land, (iii) a
            press review on land disputes, and (iv) a survey of more
            than 1,600 land transfers of un-built plots that occurred
            between 2009 and 2012. The analysis finds that land is
            mostly accessed through an informal customary channel,
            whereby peri-urban land is transformed from agricultural to
            residential use, and through a public channel, which
            involves the administrative allocation of residential plots
            to households. The integrated analysis of land markets and
            land institutions stresses the complexity of procedures and
            the extra-legality of practices that strongly affect the
            functioning of formal and informal markets and make access
            to land costly and insecure, with negative social, economic,
            and environmental impacts over the long term.
A systemic analysis of land markets
            and land institutions in West African cities : rules and
            practices - the case of Bamako, Mali
WPS6687 Policy Research Working Paper 6687 A Systemic Analysis of Land Markets and Land Institutions in West African Cities Rules and Practices The Case of Bamako, Mali _Alain Durand-Lasserve Maÿlis Durand-Lasserve Harris Selod_ The World Bank Development Research Group Environment and Energy Team November 2013