rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The nexus of energy supply and human health
Uses of main primary energy resources,
            such as coal, oil, and solid biomass, are directly linked
            with adverse impacts on human health. Air pollution emitted
            from various activities in the energy supply chains is the
            main risk factor to human health, along with accidental and
            occupational risk exposures. Estimates of premature deaths
            are over four million per year for ambient air pollution
            (2015) and household or indoor air pollution (2012). More
            than 80 percent of the mortality from ambient air pollution
            emitted from the energy supply chains occurs in developing
            countries. The impact of household air pollution, mainly
            from traditional biomass used for cooking and space heating,
            disproportionately falls on women and children under age
            five years. Acute respiratory infections, mainly caused by
            household air pollution, are one of the largest categories
            of deaths (64 percent) of children under age five years in
            developing countries. These statistics indicate the deep
            nexus between the energy supply chain and human health. Yet,
            the negative implications for human health from energy use
            often receive inadequate consideration. It is critically
            important to take account of these human health impacts in
            developing energy supply plans and energy policies in
            developing countries.
The impact of electricity shortages
            on firm productivity : evidence from Pakistan
Power shortages present a significant
            challenge to manufacturers, who rely on power as a key input
            to production. In Pakistan, power shortages are commonplace,
            but empirical evidence on the impact of shortages is still
            lacking. Using a survey of 4,500 manufacturing firms for the
            year 2010-11, this paper estimates the impact of electricity
            shortages on firm productivity in Pakistan. The analysis
            finds that a 10 percent increase in the duration of outages
            on average leads to a 0.14 percent decrease in a firm's
            total revenue and a 0.36 percent decrease in the value
            added, all else being equal. There is heterogeneity in the
            impacts of shortages across sectors: the industries that are
            most energy-intensive, such as manufacturers of metal, wood,
            and paper, are affected the most severely by shortages.
Whose power gets cut using
            high-frequency satellite images to measure power supply irregularity
In many parts of the developing world,
            access to electricity is uneven and inconsistent,
            characterized by frequent and long hours of power outages.
            Many countries now engage in systematic load shedding
            because of persistent power shortages. When and where
            electricity is provided can have important impacts on
            welfare and growth. But quantifying those impacts is
            difficult because utility-level data on power outages are
            rarely available and not always reliable. This paper
            introduces a new method of tracking power outages from outer
            space. This measure identifies outage-prone areas by
            detecting excess fluctuations in light outputs. To develop
            these measures, the study processed the complete historical
            archive of sub-orbital Defense Meteorological Satellite
            Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS)
            nighttime imagery captured over South Asia on every night
            since 1993. The analysis computes annual estimates of the
            Power Supply Irregularity index for all 600,000 villages in
            India from 1993 to 2013. The Power Supply Irregularity index
            measures are consistent with ground-based measures of power
            supply reliability from the Indian Human Development Survey,
            and with feeder-level outage data from one of the largest
            utilities in India. The study’s methods open new
            opportunities to study the determinants of power outages as
            well as their impacts on welfare.
Measuring ownership, control, and
            use of assets
Assets generate and help diversify
            income, provide collateral to access credit, alleviate
            liquidity constraints in the face of shocks, and are key
            inputs into empowerment. Despite the importance of
            individual-level data on asset ownership and control, and
            that most assets are owned by individuals, solely or
            jointly, it is typical for the micro data on asset ownership
            to be collected at the household level, often from only one
            respondent per household. Even when the data are collected
            at the individual level, with identification of reported or
            documented owners of a given asset within the household, the
            information is still often solicited from a single
            respondent. Further, the identification of owners is seldom
            paired with the identification of individuals who hold
            various rights to assets, limiting understanding of the
            interrelationships among ownership and rights, and whether
            these relationships vary across individuals. Through a
            review of the existing approaches to data collection and the
            relevant literature on survey methodology, this paper
            presents an overview of the current best practices for
            collecting individual-level data on the ownership and
            control of assets in household and farm surveys. The paper
            provides recommendations in three areas: (1) respondent
            selection; (2) definition and measurement of assess to and
            ownership and control of assets; and (3) measurement of the
            quantity, value, and quality of assets. Open methodological
            questions that can be answered through analysis of existing
            data or the collection and analysis of new data are
            identified for future research.
Measuring time use in development settings
This paper discusses the challenges
            associated with collecting time-use data in developing
            countries. The paper suggests potential solutions,
            concentrating on the two most common time-use methods used
            in development settings: stylized questions and time
            diaries. The paper identifies a significant lack of rigorous
            empirical research comparing these methods in development
            settings, and begins to fill this gap by analyzing data from
            Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index surveys in
            Bangladesh and Uganda. The surveys include stylized
            questions and time diary estimates for the same individual.
            The study finds limited evidence that stylized questions are
            more feasible (in terms of interview length) but also less
            accurate, compared with time diaries. These results are
            attributed to the relatively greater cognitive burden
            imposed on respondents by stylized questions. The paper
            discusses the importance of broadening the scope of time-use
            research to capture the quantity and quality of time, to
            achieve richer insights into gendered time-use patterns and
            trends. The paper suggests a path forward that combines
            mainstream time-use data collection methods with promising
            methodological innovations from other disciplines.
Does financial education impact
            financial literacy and financial behavior, and if so, when
A meta-analysis of 126 impact evaluation
            studies finds that financial education significantly impacts
            financial behavior and, to an even larger extent, financial
            literacy. These results also hold for the subsample of
            randomized experiments (RCTs). However, intervention impacts
            are highly heterogeneous: financial education is less
            effective for low-income clients as well as in low- and
            lower-middle income economies. Specific behaviors, such as
            the handling of debt, are more difficult to influence and
            mandatory financial education tentatively appears to be less
            effective. Thus, intervention success depends crucially on
            increasing education intensity and offering financial
            education at a "teachable moment."
Variance and Skewness in Density
            Predictions : A World GDP Growth Forecast Assessment
The paper introduces a Bayesian
            cross-entropy forecast (BCEF) procedure to assess the
            variance and skewness in density forecasting. The
            methodology decomposes the variance and skewness of the
            predictive distribution accounting for the shares of
            selected risk factors. The method assigns probability
            distributions to baseline-projections of an economic or
            social random variable -- for example, gross domestic
            product growth, inflation, population growth, poverty
            headcount, among others -- combining ex-post and ex-ante
            market information. The generated asymmetric density
            forecasts use information derived from surveys on
            expectations and implied statistics of predictive models.
            The BCEF procedure is applied to produce world GDP growth
            forecasts for three-year horizons using information spanning
            the period of October 2005-August 2015. The scores indicate
            that the BCEF density forecasts are more accurate and
            reliable than some naïve—symmetric and normal distributed
            confidence interval—predictions, illustrating the
            value-added of the introduced methodology.
Welfare-consistent global poverty measures
The paper provides new measures of
            global poverty that take seriously the idea of
            relative-income comparisons but also acknowledge a deep
            identification problem when the latent norms defining
            poverty vary systematically across countries.
            Welfare-consistent measures are shown to be bounded below by
            a fixed absolute line and above by weakly-relative lines
            derived from a theoretical model of relative-income
            comparisons calibrated to data on national poverty lines.
            Both bounds indicate falling global poverty incidence, but
            more slowly for the upper bound. Either way, the developing
            world has a higher poverty incidence but is making more
            progress against poverty than the developed world.
Politics, public works and poverty :
            evidence from the Bangladesh employment generation programme
            for the poorest
Public works programs can be effective
            safety nets if they help allocate resources toward poor
            households. By setting wages lower than market rates public
            works programs identify poor households reasonably well.
            When these programs are oversubscribed and lack beneficiary
            selection rules however, discretion by local politicians can
            influence their distribution and their effectiveness as
            safety nets. This paper tests this hypothesis using
            household survey data on a seasonal public works program in
            Bangladesh. The results show access to local politicians is
            a significant determinant of participation, and can increase
            the relative probability of participation by 110 percent.
            Participation has a positive impact on food and nonfood
            consumption of poorer participants. The same is not true for
            less poor participants. The results suggest rather than
            relying on local politicians, public works aiming to
            maximize their impact on poverty should rely on an objective
            and transparent targeting system that ensures participation
            of larger numbers of poorer households.
Bridging the intention-behavior gap
            the effect of plan-making prompts on job search and employment
The paper tests the effects of
            plan-making on job search and employment. In a field
            experiment with unemployed youths, participants who complete
            a detailed job search plan increase the number of job
            applications submitted (by 15 percent) but not the time
            spent searching, consistent with intention-behavior gaps
            observed at baseline. Job seekers in the plan-making group
            diversify their search strategy and use more formal search
            channels. This greater search efficiency and effectiveness
            translate into more job offers (30 percent) and employment
            (26 percent). Weekly reminders and peer-support
            sub-treatments do not improve the impacts of plan-making,
            suggesting that limited attention and accountability are
            unlikely mechanisms.
Child schooling and child work in
            the presence of a partial education subsidy
Could a partial subsidy for child
            education increase children's participation in paid
            work? In contrast to much of the theoretical and empirical
            child labor literature, this paper shows that child work and
            school participation can be complements under certain
            conditions. Using data from the randomized evaluation of a
            conditional cash transfer program in the Philippines, the
            analysis finds that some children, who were in neither
            school nor work before the program, increased participation
            in school and work-for-pay after the program. Earlier cash
            transfer programs, notably those in Mexico, Brazil, and
            Ecuador, increased school attendance while reducing child
            labor. Those programs fully offset schooling costs, while
            the transfers under the Philippine transfers fall short of
            the full costs of schooling for a typical child. As a
            result, some beneficiary children from poor Philippine
            households increased work to support their schooling. The
            additional earnings from this work represent a substantive
            share of the shortfall in the schooling costs net of
            transfer. The paper rules out several potential alternative
            explanations for the increase in child labor, including
            changes in household productive activities, adult labor
            supply, and household expenditure patterns that, in
            principle, can arise after a cash transfer and may also
            affect the supply of or demand for child labor.
Short-term impact of Brexit on the
            United Kingdom's export of goods
The short-term impact of Brexit on goods
            exports is assessed using the Overall Trade Restrictiveness
            Index of the United Kingdom's major trading partners.
            The analysis shows that in the short run, leaving the
            European Union may cause the United Kingdom's exports
            to the European Union to decrease by 2 percent, and the
            prospect of a major trade collapse post-Brexit is unlikely.
            This is because the European Union's Most Favored
            Nation (MFN) tariffs are higher on products that are less
            responsive to tariffs, and lower on products that are more
            responsive to tariffs.
Unequal laws and the disempowerment
            of women in the labor market : evidence from firm-level data
Institutions are defined as the set of
            rules that govern human interactions. When these rules are
            discriminatory, they may disempower segments of a population
            in the economic spheres of activity. This study explores
            whether laws that discriminate against women influence their
            engagement in the economy. The study adopts a holistic
            approach, exploring an overall measure of unequal laws also
            known as legal gender disparities, and relates it to several
            labor market outcomes for women. Using data for more than
            60,000 firms across 104 economies, the study finds that
            unequal laws not only discourage women's participation
            in the private sector workforce, but also their likelihood
            to become top managers and owners of firms. Suggestive
            evidence indicates that access to finance and corruption are
            pathways by which legal gender disparities disempower women
            in the labor market.
Oil discovery and macroeconomic
            management : the recent Ghanaian experience
This paper analyses the evolution of
            fiscal and monetary variables in Ghana, from the discovery
            of oil in 2007 through to 2014. It documents the
            deterioration of fiscal and monetary discipline over this
            period, which resulted in a rebound of debt, a deterioration
            of the external balance, and a decrease in public
            investment. The paper goes on to analyse the potential
            causes of this deterioration, including the political
            economy context, and the fiscal and monetary institutional
            framework. The suggested causes include the politics of
            Ghana's dominant two-party system. Finally, the paper
            discusses what Ghana could have done differently to avoid
            the various damaging effects associated with the oil
            discovery. It does not aim to provide specific fiscal policy
            recommendations for Ghana, but rather to give an empirical
            account of Ghana's experience that may be useful for
            other countries that discover oil.
Introducing a performance-based
            school grant in Jakarta : what do we know about its impact
            after two years
This paper evaluates the early impact of
            introducing a performance component into Jakarta's
            school grant program on learning outcomes. Using
            administrative data, it applies difference-in-differences
            and regression discontinuity approaches to identify the
            impact of the grant by exploiting differences in program
            coverage over time, as well as by comparing changes in test
            scores between schools that received the additional
            performance award with schools that did not. The paper finds
            that the introduction of the performance component had
            different impacts on government primary and junior secondary
            schools. The program improved learning outcomes for primary
            schools at the bottom of the performance distribution and
            narrowed performance gaps across schools. However,
            improvements in equity were also driven by negative impacts
            of the program on better performing primary schools.
            Overall, the program reduced primary examination scores
            albeit by a small amount. In contrast to the results at the
            primary level, the performance component improved
            examination scores in government junior secondary schools.
            However, the impact seemed to be greatest among better
            performing schools and has therefore widened performance
            gaps. The findings also suggest that program impact was
            largely through competition between schools to receive the
            performance component. There is little evidence that the
            additional resources schools received from the award had any
            additional impact. The evaluation utilized preexisting
            administrative data and the paper offers some suggestions on
            how education information systems can be strengthened to
            create more robust feedback loops between research and policy.
Financial development, growth, and
            crisis: is there a trade-off
This paper reviews the evolving
            literature that links financial development, financial
            crises, and economic growth in the past 20 years. The
            initial disconnect -- with one literature focusing on the
            effect of financial deepening on long -- run growth and
            another studying its impact on volatility and crisis—has
            given way to a more nuanced approach that analyzes the two
            phenomena in an integrated framework. The main finding of
            this literature is that financial deepening leads to a
            trade-off between higher economic growth and higher crisis
            risk; and its main conclusion is that, for at least
            middle-income countries, the positive growth effects
            outweigh the negative crisis risk impact. This balanced view
            has been revisited recently for advanced economies, where an
            emerging and controversial literature supports the notion of
            "too much finance," suggesting that there might be
            a threshold beyond which financial depth becomes detrimental
            for economic growth by crowding out other productive
            activities and misallocating resources. Nevertheless, the
            growth/crisis trade-off is alive and strong for a large
            share of the world economy. Recognizing the intrinsic
            trade-offs of financial development can provide a useful
            framework to design policies targeting financial deepening,
            diversity, and inclusion. In particular, acknowledging the
            trade-offs can highlight the need for complementary policies
            to mitigate the risks, from financial macroprudential
            policies to monetary policy frameworks that monitor the
            growth of credit and asset prices.
Korea's growth experience and
            long-term growth model
This paper analyzes the Republic of
            Korea's rapid and sustained growth experience for the
            past six decades from the perspective of the neoclassical
            growth model (the workhorse model of the World Bank’s Long
            Term Growth Model (LTGM) project). Overall, the sources of
            Korea's growth were balanced among labor market and
            demographic factors, capital investment, human capital
            accumulation, and productivity growth. However, the main
            engine of growth evolved sequentially, e.g., labor and human
            capital factors in the 1960s, capital deepening in the
            1970s, and then productivity growth for the following
            periods. The major sources of sustained growth over six
            decades were human capital accumulation and productivity
            growth rather than labor or capital investment. A
            counterfactual calibration of the model explains
            Korea's actual growth experience well, and shows why
            gaps between the model’s predictions and the data arise.
            This illustrates that an appropriate calibration of a simple
            neoclassical growth model provides useful lessons and tools
            for policy makers in developing countries in designing their
            national development strategies.