rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Human Capital in Children
            : A Case Study on Scaling
This paper provides new insights on the
            science of scaling. The authors study an educational
            mentoring program with a home visit component implemented at
            scale in Mexico, under different modalities (original and
            enhanced training for mentors) and different situations
            (field experiment and policy implementation). While the
            program was ineffective when implemented by the government
            in its original modality, the enhanced modality boosts
            children&#x2019;s outcomes, both in the field experiment
            and during the government implementation. Higher-quality
            home visits encourage parent/child and parent/community
            interactions, which in turn are found to promote the
            scalability of the program. The work provides new knowledge
            on the socially determined nature of scaling educational programs.
What Are the Benefits of Government
            Assistance with Household Energy Bills Evidence from Ukraine
In April 2015, the Government of Ukraine
            abruptly raised the tariffs of natural gas to residential
            customers, which were previously well below the cost of
            acquiring gas and delivering it to households. The tariff
            increase—700 percent—caused considerable distress to the
            population and led the government to scale up its existing
            energy assistance program, the housing and utilities subsidy
            program. This paper examines the welfare effect of the
            program and potential redesigns of the program. Using
            several waves of Ukraine’s Household Budget Survey, the
            analysis finds that electricity, gas, and fuels account for
            a considerable share of household income. After the tariff
            hike, the average household that did not receive the housing
            and utilities subsidy spends 11 percent of its income on
            electricity, gas, and fuels, implying that it meets the
            definition of “fuel poor.” The average share for households
            that do receive the subsidy is 6–8 percent. The housing and
            utilities subsidy cuts the rate of fuel poverty in half. It
            also brings considerable consumer surplus gains of 6–7
            percent of income. This comes at a high price tag for the
            government, as the budget for the housing and utilities
            subsidy is 1–2.5 percent of gross domestic product.
            Considerable savings would be achieved with only a small
            loss of consumer surplus if the housing and utilities
            subsidy was cut in half. Linking the subsidy solely to
            income would also attain considerable savings, but at a high
            loss of welfare. The housing and utilities subsidy could
            also be paired with social tariffs, or an energy efficiency
            subsidy, with major savings for the government.
Financial Structure and Firm
            Innovation : Evidence from around the World
This paper analyzes the relationship
            between financial structure and innovation. Analysis of
            cross-country micro data over 2009–18 shows that a firm’s
            financial sources matter for the choice to innovate and the
            extent to which a firm innovates. The relationship is
            stronger for firms relying on non-bank financial
            intermediaries and for firms in low-technology sectors.
            Moreover, the use of external sources of finance is
            associated with improved prospects of innovation, especially
            in more financially developed countries. These findings
            suggest that developing the financial sector can bring
            benefits in terms of innovation.
Lowering Prices of Pharmaceuticals,
            Medical Supplies, and Equipment : Insights from Big Data for
            Better Procurement Strategies in Latin America
Containing rapidly growing health care
            costs in the Latin American and the Caribbean region,
            especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, requires an in-depth
            analysis of prices from a novel perspective. This paper
            documents hitherto understudied variations in prices paid
            for pharmaceuticals, equipment, and medical supplies within
            countries and markets. It also identifies effective
            procurement strategies for lowering prices within existing
            regulatory frameworks. The analysis uses public procurement
            data gathered by governments’ electronic procurement systems
            in nine countries and territories across the region. The
            data are uniquely detailed and complete, encompassing the
            minute detail of purchasing decisions and processes made
            across all regulated public entities in the study countries
            and territories. Traditional regression analysis and machine
            learning (random forests) methods are used to explain prices
            as a function of procurement decisions and outputs, such as
            the number of bidders. Based on in-depth discussions with
            policy makers, the paper also devises realistic policy
            interventions, which in turn can be used to estimate savings
            scenarios. First, the findings show that the prices paid
            vary greatly across and within countries. The latter is
            surprising given that the regulatory and institutional
            framework is largely fixed within each country. Second, a
            high proportion of within-country and -market variation can
            be explained by standard features of procurement policy
            implementation, such as the length of advertising tenders.
            Third, the explanatory models point to the potential for
            lowering prices across the region by about 14 percent by
            implementing low-level, yet impactful changes to how
            purchasing is done.
Improving Public Procurement
            Outcomes : Review of Tools and the State of the Evidence Base
Considering that about 15 percent of
            global gross domestic product flows through public
            procurement systems, the lack of systematic evidence on what
            works in this field is a major challenge for effective
            policy making. Hence, this paper systematically reviews the
            state of the evidence on major public procurement reforms
            and their impact on value for money and open access to
            public tenders. It discusses the reliably identified costs
            and benefits and systematically evaluates the quality of the
            evidence base, relying on academic and policy literature.
            The quality of evidence on the impact of public procurement
            interventions is mediocre, with reliable evidence
            established in multiple countries using diverse analytical
            methods only for selective, typically narrow tools. Although
            there is a range of policy tools with global policy interest
            and extensive implementation record, these have received
            little to no evaluation. As high-quality research uses
            different outcome measures, comparing intervention
            effectiveness is only possible for a very narrow outcome:
            savings. Comparing intervention types according to their
            effects on savings, centralized procurement and framework
            agreements stand out with the largest effects, over 50
            percent. Most other intervention types were documented to
            achieve about 5-10 percent price savings if they were well
            implemented. Given the estimated US$11 trillion spent on
            procurement annually around the world, even savings of 1
            percent amounts to US$110 billion annually. This systematic
            review points out that research on e-procurement and its
            variants, transparency portals, civil society supervision,
            and opening up the black box of public management, among
            others, would deserve considerably more research going forward.
Neutral Real Interest Rates in
            Inflation Targeting Emerging and Developing Economies
With close to 30 emerging market and
            developing economies (EMDEs) using inflation targeting to
            determine monetary policy, and many of them for over 15
            years, it is possible to create a meaningful measure of
            neutral real interest rates in these economies. The neutral
            real interest rate provides policymakers with a benchmark
            for the interest rate at which economic activity reaches its
            full potential and inflation will stabilize. The deviation
            of policy rates from this neutral rate determines whether
            monetary policy is accommodative or restrictive. This paper
            provides aggregate estimates of the neutral rate in 20 of
            these economies. EMDEs have seen a decline in the neutral
            rate of 4 percentage points, from over 6 percent in 2000 to
            closer to 2 percent at the end of 2019; advanced economies
            saw an above 2 percentage point decline over this period.
            The decline of neutral real interest rates in EMDEs can only
            partially be related to domestic drivers of desired savings
            and investment. The secular decline in the neutral rate of
            interest is limiting the ability of EMDEs to stimulate
            economies in the face of large shocks. The neutral real
            interest rate is unobservable and subject to a high degree
            of uncertainty, double the size of that for advanced
            economies. With such high uncertainty determining the stance
            of monetary policy in these economies is a challenge.
COVID-19 and Children’s School
            Resilience : Evidence from Nigeria
This paper analyzes the impact of
            COVID-19 lockdown measures on children's school
            resilience. Using an individual fixed-effect linear
            probability model on Nigeria data, it exploits the
            quasi-randomness of these measures to estimate their effect
            on school attendance after the lockdown was lifted. The
            results show that COVID-19 lockdown measures reduced
            children's probability of attending school after the
            school system reopened. This negative impact increased with
            children's age, reaching a peak among those whose
            education was no longer compulsory. For schoolchildren in
            that age group, the negative effect of COVID-19 lockdown
            measures is likely to be permanent, which, if not reversed,
            will undermine the quality of the economy-wide future labor
            force. The paper also finds evidence that in the child
            marriage-prone North-West part of Nigeria that these
            measures increased gender inequality in education among
            children aged 12 to 18. This result suggests that COVID-19
            lockdown measures may exacerbate harmful traditional
            practices such as child marriage.
Return Migrants and the Wage Premium
            : Does the Legal Status of Migrants Matter
This paper examines the impact of the
            legal status of overseas migrants on their wages upon return
            to the home country. Using unique data from the Arab
            Republic of Egypt, which allows distinguishing between
            return migrants according to whether their international
            migration was documented or undocumented, the paper examines
            the impact of illegal status on wages upon return. Relying
            on a conditional mixed process model, which takes into
            account the selection into emigration, return, and the legal
            status of temporary migration, the analysis finds that, upon
            return, undocumented migrants experience a wage penalty
            compared with documented migrants, as well as relative to
            non-migrants. The results are the first to show the impact
            of undocumented migration on the migrant upon return to the
            country of origin.
Trade Creation and Trade Diversion
            in African RECs : Drawing Lessons for AfCFTA
This study aims to draw key lessons for
            the African Continental Free Trade Area using evidence from
            within the region. Although drawing lessons from the rest of
            the world is essential, given the unique features of
            economies in the Africa region, the most relevant lessons
            can be drawn from the experiences of regional economic
            communities in the continent. The study draws on the eight
            regional economic communities that have been recognized by
            the African Union as pillars on which the continent will
            rely to implement the African Continental Free Trade Area.
            The study evaluates the trade creation and trade diversion
            impacts of each of the eight RECs and examines their
            performance with the goal of drawing lessons and identifying
            challenges for the success of the African Continental Free
            Trade Area. Despite significant heterogeneities, there is
            more trade creation than trade diversion and a generally
            positive impact on trade within the regional economic
            communities. Two regional economic communities in
            particular—the East African Community and the Southern
            African Development Community—outperform all the other
            regional economic communities in terms of boosting
            intra–regional economic community trade. This is mainly
            associated with the high level of investment in trade
            facilitation, the level of synergy between national and
            regional goals, the density of economic activity, and the
            advancement in the quantity and quality of regional
            infrastructure. There are also many challenges that policy
            makers should address to realize the objectives of the
            African Continental Free Trade Area and transform the
            continent. Learning from the regional economic communities
            is central. But, given the scope of the African Continental
            Free Trade Area, there is also a need to examine the
            transition from regional economic communities to the African
            Continental Free Trade Area, which is expected to be a
            sticky transition.
Gendered Laws, Informal Origins, and
            Subsequent Performance
This research explores the relationship
            between laws that discriminate on the basis of gender and
            the probability that a female-owned business begins
            operating in the informal sector. This is achieved by
            tracing the origins of formal businesses surveyed in the
            World Bank Enterprise Surveys and merging this with
            information on the level of legal equality between genders
            as measured by the Women, Business and the Law database. In
            addition, the research explores whether starting a business
            informally has any differential effect on subsequent firm
            performance depending on the gender of the owner(s). The
            results show that gender discriminatory laws increase the
            likelihood that firms with female owners will begin
            operations in the informal sector; as expected, this does
            not hold for enterprises that are solely owned by men.
            Furthermore, the research provides evidence that firms that
            began operations informally have poorer performance years
            later—a relationship that exists both for firms with female
            owners and for firms fully owned by men. The results show
            notable variation by region.
Sectoral Decomposition of
            Convergence in Labor Productivity : A Re-examination from a
            New Dataset
This paper investigates how the
            sector-specific source or the changing sectoral composition
            of labor productivity has contributed to aggregate beta
            convergence, using a newly constructed eight-sector
            database. The main findings are twofold. First, both within
            and sectoral reallocation have become important drivers of
            aggregate convergence in labor productivity. Second,
            agricultural productivity growth has been a significant
            contributor to aggregate convergence, whereas catch-up in
            other sectors has only contributed a small amount to
            convergence. The strong growth of the agriculture sector has
            been the most important driver of aggregate productivity
            convergence even though agricultural productivity itself in
            low-income countries is weakly converging to that in
            advanced economies.
Banking Research in the Time of COVID-19
Despite the devastating worldwide human
            and economic tolls of the COVID-19 crisis, it has created
            some positive economic and financial surprises and
            opportunities for research. This paper highlights two such
            favorable surprises —the shortest U.S. recession on record
            and the avoidance of any banking crisis—and a number of
            research opportunities.  The paper ties the “economic
            surprise” of the short recession to the speed and size of
            U.S. stimulus programs during COVID-19—faster and larger
            than for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). It connects the
            “financial surprise” of the resilient banking sector to
            prudential policies put in place during and after the GFC
            that fortified U.S. banks prior to COVID-19. These twin
            “surprises” are also mutually reinforcing—if either the
            economy or banking system had failed, so would the other.
            The paper also reviews extant COVID-19 banking research and
            suggests paths for future research. It recommends that
            particular attention be paid to research outside of the
            U.S.—where fewer favorable “surprises” may be present—as the
            best way to advance knowledge in this area.
Financial Incentives to Increase
            Utilization of Reproductive, Maternal, and Child Health
            Services in Low- and Middle-Income Countries : A Systematic
            Review and Meta-Analysis
Financial incentives for health
            providers and households are increasingly used to improve
            reproductive, maternal, and child health service coverage in
            low- and middle-income countries. This study provides a
            quantitative synthesis of their effectiveness. A systematic
            review was conducted of the effects of performance-based
            financing, voucher, and conditional cash transfer programs
            on six reproductive, maternal, and child health service
            indicators, with eligible evidence coming from randomized
            controlled trials and studies using double-difference,
            instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity
            designs. Four literature searches were conducted between
            September 2016 and March 2021 using seven academic
            databases, Google Scholar, development agency and think tank
            websites, and previous systematic reviews. Random effects
            meta-analysis was used to obtain mean effect sizes. From 58
            eligible references 212 impact estimates were extracted,
            which were synthesized into 130 program-specific effect
            sizes. Financial incentives increase coverage of all
            considered reproductive, maternal, and child health
            indicators, but mean effects sizes are of modest magnitude.
            Effect size heterogeneity is typically low to moderate, and
            there is no indication that study bias risk, baseline
            indicator levels, or a combination of provider- and
            household-level incentives impact effect sizes. There is,
            however, weak evidence that mean effect sizes are somewhat
            smaller for performance-based financing than for voucher and
            conditional cash transfer programs, and that the increase in
            income, rather than the incentive itself, drives coverage
            improvements. Financial incentives improve reproductive,
            maternal, and child health service coverage. If future
            research confirms the preliminary finding that
            performance-based financing has smaller effects, voucher and
            conditional cash transfer programs are the preferred policy
            option among incentive interventions to achieve higher
            reproductive, maternal, and child health service coverage.
            The relative effectiveness and efficiency of incentives
            compared with unconditional increases of provider and
            household incomes, however, need to be studied further.
Distributional Impacts of Taxes and
            Benefits in Post-Soviet Countries
This study compares the distributional
            impacts of the main tax and social spending programs in
            eight countries of the former Soviet Union (Armenia,
            Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian
            Federation, Tajikistan, and Ukraine) by applying a
            state-of-the-art fiscal incidence analysis based on the
            Commitment to Equity methodology. The region is highly
            interesting due to a unique combination of strong elements
            of path dependency (socialist legacies) with radical
            liberalization and welfare state retrenchment. The study
            examines the actual outcomes in terms of inequality and
            poverty and assesses the extent to which these outcomes can
            be attributed to various welfare state policies in these
            countries. It examines the extent to which taxes and social
            spending are progressive (whether the average transfer
            declines with income) and equalizing (whether they reduce
            inequality). In contrast to the majority of fiscal incidence
            studies, which are typically limited to the assessment of
            the impact of direct taxes and transfers, the study
            estimates the cumulative impact of the tax-benefit system as
            a whole, including direct and indirect taxes, cash
            transfers, and transfers in kind such as public education
            and health care.