rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
process. Notably, in close to one-third of economies, selected private sector representatives are invited formally for an in-person or virtual discussion with a pre-set agenda (Figure 7). For example, in Sri Lanka the DBI steering committee opens targeted formal consultations, where selected private sector representatives are invited formally for a discussion.

While allowing for private sector feedback to be solicited, targeted solicitation can vest discretion with the regulator in deciding who will be included in the consultation. Consequently, it is possible that less organized private sector groups are not well represented. For example, in Bulgaria, public servants choose, on a case-by-case basis, who to include in these consultations. Similarly, in over one-third of economies, including Vietnam and St Lucia, business regulatory/legislative proposals are formally circulated for public comment and any private sector entity or citizen can provide feedback without an invitation. Less frequent, informal consultations without a set agenda to solicit feedback, however, can be found across all regions and in lower-middle-income, upper-middle-income and high-income countries. For example, no lowincome economy has introduced an informal consultation mechanism, and it is two to three times less common in lower and upper middle-income economies, as compared to the formal mechanisms of consultation (Figure 7).

Figure 7: _Instruments used for private sector consultation_ <!-- Start of picture text --> Count<br>16<br>14<br>12<br>10<br>8<br>6<br>4<br>2<br>0<br>Any private sector entity or Formal consultation with Informal consultation with<br>citizen can provide feedback selected private sector private sector representatives<br>representatives<br>Low income Lower middle income Upper middle income High income<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Source: Reform Committee data_ _Note: Figure based on 107 economies with a functioning business reform committee, 51 of which reported some instrument for private sector consultation._ The informal nature of these consultations can ease the process of soliciting feedback, allowing stakeholders to speak and express themselves more freely. For example, Japan and New Zealand engage in informal consultation to gather feedback and have consensus. In the case of informal consultations, it is often argued that large enterprises and multi-national corporations (MNCs), with more resources and fluidity than that which exists between the government and large firms, are better suited to having such consultations; similarly, it can often mean that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and micro-firms lose out. Experience from Uganda suggests that informal, ad hoc mechanisms can be most effective in the shortterm, but in the long-term participants become frustrated at their lack of power.

The process of coordination with private sector actors typically takes place in the form of joint policy discussions, and sector-specific and area-specific policy meetings, such as starting a business (business 15
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<!-- Start of picture text --> Relative MSE for LASSO (95% C.1.)<br>1.6-<br>1.5-<br>1.4-<br>1.3-<br>1.2-<br>1.4-<br>1.0-<br>Math Swahili<br><!-- End of picture text --> <!-- Start of picture text --> Relative MSE for CIF (95% C.1.)<br>1.6-<br>1.5-<br>1.4-<br>1.3-<br>1.2-<br>1.1-<br>1.0-<br>0.9-<br>Math Swahili<br><!-- End of picture text -->
Africa is clearly lagging in this repect. The capacity to implement policies is necessary for success, but that capacity must be developed.

Of course, state capacity must be used to implement good policies, and to avoid or drop bad ones. An obvious, though nonetheless important, lesson that is well illustrated by China’s experience is the need for governments to avoid doing harm to poor people. One way is to reduce the (explicit and implicit) taxes they face. In China’s case, the government operated (for many years) an extensive foodgrain-procurement system that effectively taxed farmers by setting quotas and fixing procurement prices below market levels (to assure cheap food for far less poor urban consumers). This gave the government a powerful anti-poverty lever in the short-term, by raising the procurement price as happened in the mid-1990s, helping to bring both poverty and inequality down. Again, this reform is rather specific to China. But it would be a safe bet that every country in SSA can find its own examples of taxes and regulations that are biased against the poor. Research on Africa has pointed to ways in which past policies have placed a heavy burden on the poor, notably through urban biases in exchange rate and spending/taxing policies.<sup>34</sup> Another robust lesson concerns macroeconomic stabilization policy. China’s experience suggests that avoiding inflationary shocks has been good for poverty reduction. Higher inflation meant higher poverty.<sup>35</sup> (The reversals for China’s poor during the late 1980s evident in Figure 1 reflect in part the macroeconomic instability of that time. Low rural economic growth was another factor.) The importance of macroeconomic stability to sustained poverty reduction in China echoes findings in other developing countries.<sup>36</sup> Greater internal market integration has played a role in China’s success, although this is not a policy area in which China made particularly rapid progress. The impediments to migration within China have been noted already. There have also been frictions to internal trade, though declining in importance over time. However, there is nothing comparable in China today, or even 20 years ago I suspect, to the impediments to internal market integration faced in SSA. For example, you still can't drive a vehicle between some important commercial cities of Africa—

> 34 See, for example, Sahn et al. (1997) and Mwabu and Thorbecke (2004).

> 35 Ravallion and Chen (2007) show that the adverse effect of inflation on poverty measures for China is robust to adding controls for mean income, relative procurement prices for foodgrains and government spending. The inflation effect appears to be a short-term distributional effect.

> 36 See Easterly and Fischer (2001) and Dollar and Kraay (2002) (both using cross-country data), Datt and Ravallion (1998) using data for India, and Ferreira et al. (2008) for Brazil.

18
- Bourguignon, F., V. Levin, and D. Rosenblatt (2004): "Declining International Inequality and Economic Divergence: Reviewing the Evidence Through Different Lenses," _Economic Internationale, (4Q),_ 13-26.

- Bourguignon, F., and C. Morrisson (2002): "Inequality among World Citizens: 1820-1992," _American Economic Review,_ 92(4), 727-744.

- Bussolo, M., R. De Hoyos, and D. Medvedev (2008) “Economic Growth and Income Distribution: Linking Macroeconomic Models with Household Survey Data at the Global Level” Paper prepared for the 30th _Conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth_ , Portoroz, Slovenia, 24-30 August

- Bussolo, M., R. De Hoyos, D. Medvedev, D. van der Mensbrugghe (2007) “Global growth and distribution: are China and India reshaping the world?” _World Bank Policy Research Working Papers_ No. 4392, Washington D.C.

- Bussolo, M., Lay, J. and van der Mensbrugghe, D. (2006) “Structural change and poverty reduction in Brazil : the impact of the Doha Round.” _World Bank Policy Research Working Paper_ 3833

- Chaudhuri, S. and Ravallion, M. (2006) “Partially Awakened Giants: Uneven Growth in China and India”, _mimeograph_ , The World Bank

- Chen, S. and Ravallion, M., “Household Welfare Impacts of China's Accession to the World Trade Organization.” _World Bank Policy Research Working Paper_ No. 3040

- Ferreira, Francisco H. G., and Phillippe G. Leite. (2003) “Meeting the Millennium Development Goals in Brazil: Can Microsimulations Help?” _Economía_ 3 (2): 235–79.

- Ferreira, Francisco H. G., and Martin Ravallion (2003) “Global poverty and inequality: a review of the evidence”, _World Bank Policy Research Working Paper_ No. 4623

- Mayda, A.M. and Rodrik, D. (2005) “Why are some people (and countries) more protectionist than others?,” _European Economic Review_ , Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1393-1430, August.

- Mayer, W., (1984) “Endogenous tariff formation”, _American Economic Review_ 74, 970– 985

- Milanovic, B. (2002): "True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First Calculation Based on Household Surveys Alone," _Economic Journal,_ 112(476), 51-92.

- (2005): _Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality._

- Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.

23
Policy Research Working Paper 7451

# **Abstract**

Growing research and policy interest focuses on the misallocation of output and factors of production in developing economies. This paper considers the possible misallocation of financial loans. Using plant-level data on the organized and unorganized sectors, the paper describes the temporal, geographic, and industry distributions of financial loans. The focus of the analysis is the hypothesis that land misallocation might be an important determinant of financial misallocation (for example, because of the role of land as collateral against loans). Using district-industry variations, the analysis finds evidence to support this hypothesis, although it does not find a total reduction in the intensity of financial loans or those being given to new entrants. The analysis also considers differences by gender of business owners and workers in firms. Although potential early gaps for businesses with substantial female employment have disappeared in the organized sector, a sizeable and persistent gap remains in the unorganized sector.

This paper is a product of the Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Global Practice Group. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors may be contacted at Eghani@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
at the provider or from health insurance events as in Gilleskie (1998) — unfortunately often the only data we have. Table C.6, column (5) shows in fact that the average uncensored spell in our sample is weakly _longer_ in all treatment groups than in the control, by between 6 and 48 percent (0.26-1.99 out of 4.11 days). Our hazard estimates confirm that this is entirely selection bias: the large number of additional visits in the subsidy groups tend to be from families who wait on average longer for care, and so they raise the average time to care in the group. Put differently, when underuse is rampant but responds strongly to an intervention, we show that data collected at the point of use are subject to selection effects so strong that they reverse the estimated impact of the intervention on some aspects of care-seeking behavior. Even recognizing that selection bias may occur, data of uncensored spells only would not permit the researcher to distinguish selection e.g. from moral hazard (parents waiting longer before getting care with the subsidy).<sup>27</sup> Similar issues arise when asking retrospective information on health for a specific (short) period of time.<sup>28</sup>

**Application: Predicting Care-Seeking for Alternative Illness Environments.** Our study estimates demand for care conditional on detailed health information. A benefit of this approach could be more accurate out-of-sample predictions. In Appendix section C.3, we demonstrate an application by projecting health care demand for a set of hemorrhagic fever spells (Ebola and Marburg disease), where detailed descriptions of the course of illness are available. This illustrates how records of conditional care-seeking behavior might help improve estimates of undetected infections and time-to-care for those who contract a specific illness, for instance in the initial phases of new disease outbreaks. More generally, we can make predictions of behavior in other disease environments. In Mali, policymakers might be

> 27Note that the Cox model assumes proportionality and so does not permit for demand changes that exhibit both selection into care _and_ an increase in time-to-care under the subsidy (which might occur with a decrease in care seeking on early spell days but an increase later in the spell). However, Figure 2 and the proportionality test in Appendix section C.1 show that the proportionality assumption reflects the data well. 28An example are the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). The DHS questionnaire asks about diarrhea and fever spells and treatment sought within the last two weeks. Shorter spells are observed in full, but longer spells are likely to be censored by the visit date. Moreover, detailed questions about treatment are asked only about spells that are ongoing at the time of the survey. See Heger Boyle et al. (2018), especially questions 518 and 527 and following.

34
The sample of firms used is a result of merging the SDC data with Thomson Reuters Worldscope data, which provide information on firms’ financial statements (balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements) for publicly listed firms. We need this information both to classify firms as large and for the use-of-funds analysis. After matching the two sources, Worldscope data are available for publicly listed firms and for 70% of the equity issuers contained in the SDC database of the 25 emerging markets under study. The information on market value of equity, which we use to classify firms by size, is available from the IPO year onward.

Table 1 reports summary statistics of issuance activity by country. Column (1) reports the number of firms included in the sample. Columns (2) and (3) show the average annual value of equity issuance proceeds for all firms in a country and the value of proceeds per firm, respectively. In a typical year, the average firm in the sample (including issuers and non-issuers) issues equity worth 6 million U.S. dollars. Because most firms are not actively issuing equity every year, the value of proceeds per issuing firm is much larger.

For the first of our three instrumental variables, we collect data from the MSCI Emerging Markets Index for the period 1996-2016.<sup>13</sup> The MSCI index is a stock market index covering 25 emerging market countries representing 10% of global stock market capitalization. The index covers approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country. The index is maintained by MSCI Inc., formerly Morgan Stanley Capital International, and is used as a common benchmark for international equity mutual funds. Appendix Figure 2 plots the average weights of the 25 countries in the MSCI Index.

> 13 The instrumental variable analysis that uses the lagged MSCI weights is restricted to the sample 1997-2016 because the MSCI weights are available only for 1996-2015. An advantage of the other two instruments (other countries’ market value and issuance volume) is that they can be estimated over the whole sample period, 19912016. The results using the second and third instruments are robust to restricting the sample to the period covered by the MSCI data.

12
APEC Secretariat, Singapore.

- Cecchini, P. et. al (1988) _The European Challenge in1992_ . Commission of the European Communities.

- Helble, Shepherd and Wilson (2007) “Transparency and Trade Facilitation in the Asia Pacific: Estimating the Gains from Reform,” APEC and the World Bank.

- Hertel, T. (1996) _Structure of GTAP Model_

- Francois, Joseph F., and Miriam Manchin (2007), “Institutions, Infrastructure, and Trade”, Policy Research Working Paper No. 4152, The World Bank.

- Francois, J., van Meijl, H. and van Tongelen, F. (2003) “Economic Implications of Doha Round,” _GTAP Discussion Paper_ , No. 1397.

- McDougall, R. (2003) “A New Regional Household Demand System for GTAP,” _GTAP Technical Paper_ , No. 20.

- Malcolm, G. (1998) “Adjusting Tax Rates in the GTAP Data Base,” _GTAP Technical Paper_ , No. 12

- Wilson, J.S., Mann, C. and Otsuki, T. (2005) “Assessing the Benefit of Trade Facilitation: A Global Perspective,” _The World Economy_ , 28(6), pp.841-871.

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45

# Security

The security situation in Afghanistan has seen some improvement in the past years; nevertheless, the country is still mired in constant conflict. The Afghan government struggles to regain control of a large part of its territory. According to a report to the US Congress by the US Special Inspector‐General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), at end of March in 2017, just 59.7% of the nation’s districts were in the control of the Afghan government. The government’s control of 407 districts was reduced from 72% in Nov. 2015 to 57% in Nov. 2016. The report also painted a picture of struggle. Major roads that link the country are heavily contested. Numerous strikes in Afghanistan’s main cities and bombings in the capital Kabul are symptoms of the lack of control<sup>47</sup> . UN reports indicate that in 2015, at least 3,545 civilians were killed and 7,457 were injured<sup>48</sup> . The number was higher in 2016, setting the record at 3,498 deaths and 7,920 injured<sup>49</sup> .

# Economic Opportunity

According to predictions by the World Bank, Afghanistan is expected to grow its real GDP by 2.2% in 2016. The rate of economic expansion will accelerate to 2.6% and 3.4% in 2017 and 2018 respectively. However, the unstable political environment and the fragile security situation represent large risks. Hindering progress further is the extent of corruption<sup>50</sup> , which affects decisions in all spheres: economic development, public investment, political decisions, appointments, and recruitment. Recruitment for political positions has shown strong ethnic preference<sup>51</sup> .

# Social Services

The Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI) said working conditions in 2016 improved compared to 2015. The finding comes from a survey conducted on employment. Although this survey showed some positive improvement in working conditions, however, security and infrastructure are still worrying. According to ACCI, private sector’s trust is reducing every day.

Residents in Afghanistan raise concerns over acute foreign currency shortage. UNHCR does not promote the return to Afghanistan. However, those who decide to return will be assisted. UNHCR’s monitoring survey shows that the typical cash grant of $400 per person covers expenditure for about two to three months. The vast majority of refugees (75%) spent the cash grant on meeting immediate humanitarian needs. 15% were able to make investments 47 EIU Country Outlook: Afghanistan, June 20th 2017 48 Afghanistan Had Record Civilian Casualties in 2015, U.N. Says, Feb 14 2016, David Jolly, The New York Times, <u>https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/world/asia/afghanistan‐record‐civilian‐ casualties‐2015‐united‐nations.html</u> 49 Afghanistan’s Civilian Casualties Hit Record High in 2016, Patricia Gossman, Human Rights Watch, <u>https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/06/afghanistans‐civilian‐casualties‐hit‐record‐high‐2016</u> 50 BBC Monitoring cited by EIU, Afghanistan politics: Daily examines insecurity, domestic challenges. June 15, 2017 51 BBC Monitoring, cited by EIU report: Afghanistan business: Assessing operational challenges for businesses, May 4<sup>th</sup> 2017
Policy Research Working Paper 5345

# **Abstract**

Trade negotiators and policy advisors are keen to know the relative contribution of different farm policy instruments to international trade and economic welfare. Nominal rates of assistance or producer support estimates are incomplete indicators, especially when (especially in developing countries) some commodities are taxed and others are subsidized, in which case positive contributions can offset negative contributions. This paper develops and estimates a new set of more-satisfactory indicators to examine the relative contribution of different farm policy instruments to reductions in agricultural trade and welfare, drawing on recent literature on trade restrictiveness indexes and a recently compiled database on distortions to agricultural prices for 75 developing and high-income countries over the period 1960 to 2004. Results confirm earlier findings that border taxes are the dominant instrument affecting global trade and welfare, but they also suggest declines in export taxes contributed nearly as much as cuts in import protection to global welfare gains from agricultural policy reforms since the 1980s.

This paper—a product of the Trade and Integration Team, Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the department to improve policy making through greater transparency of the extent and effects of past policy choices. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at kym. anderson@adelaide.edu.au.

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