rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Who remained in poverty, who moved
            up, and who fell down an investigation of poverty dynamics
            in Senegal in the late 2000s
Poverty estimates based on cross-section
            data provide static snapshots of poverty rates.  Although a
            time series of cross-section data can offer some insights
            into poverty trends, it does not allow for an assessment of
            dynamics at the household level. Such a dynamic perspective
            on poverty generally calls for panel data and this kind of
            analysis can usefully inform poverty reduction policy,
            notably the design of social protection interventions.
            Absent actual panel data for Senegal, this paper applies new
            statistical methods to construct synthetic panel data from
            two rounds of cross-section household surveys in 2005 and
            2011. These data are used to study poverty transitions. The
            results suggest that, in marked contrast to the picture
            obtained from cross-section data, there exists a great deal
            of mobility in and out of poverty during this period. More
            than half the population experiences changes in its poverty
            status and more than two-thirds of the extreme (food) poor
            move up one or two welfare categories. Factors such as rural
            residence, disability, exposure to some kind of natural
            disaster, and informality in the labor market are associated
            with a heightened risk of falling into poverty. Belonging to
            certain ethnicities and factors such as migration, working
            in the non-agriculture sector, and having access to social
            capital are associated with a lower risk of falling into poverty.
A "Delphi exercise" as a
            tool in Amazon rainforest valuation
The Amazon rainforest, the world's
            largest and most biodiverse, represents a global public good
            of which 15 percent has already been lost. The worldwide
            value of preserving the remaining forest is today unknown. A
            "Delphi" exercise was conducted involving more
            than 200 environmental valuation experts from 36 countries,
            who were asked to predict the outcome of a survey to elicit
            willingness to pay for Amazon forest preservation among
            their own countries' populations. Expert judgments of
            average willingness-to-pay levels, per household per year,
            to fund a plan to protect all of the current Amazon
            rainforest up to 2050, range from $4 to $36 in 12 Asian
            countries, to near $100 in Canada, Germany, and Norway, with
            other high-income countries in between. Somewhat lower
            willingness-to-pay values were found for a less strict plan
            that allows a 12 percent further rainforest area reduction.
            The elasticity of experts' willingness-to-pay
            assessments with respect to own-country per capita income is
            slightly below but not significantly different from unity
            when results are pooled across countries and income is
            adjusted for purchasing power parity.
Inequality stagnation in Latin
            America in the aftermath of the global financial crisis
Over the past decade (2003-12), Latin
            America has experienced strong income growth and a notable
            reduction in income inequality, with the region's Gini
            coefficient falling from 55.6 to 51.8. Previous studies have
            warned about the sustainability of such a decline, and this
            paper presents evidence of stagnation in the pace of
            reduction of income inequality in Latin America since 2010.
            This phenomenon of stagnation is robust to different
            measures of inequality and is largely attributable to the
            impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Mexico and Central
            America, where inequality rose after 2010 as labor income
            recovered. Moreover, this paper finds evidence that much of
            the continuation of inequality reduction after the crisis at
            the country level has been due to negative or zero income
            growth for households in the top of the income distribution,
            and lower growth of the incomes of the poorest households.
            The crisis also highlighted weaknesses in the region's
            labor markets and the heavy reliance on public transfers to
            redistribute, underscoring the vulnerability of the
            region's recent social gains to global economic conditions.
Inequality stagnation in Latin
            America in the aftermath of the global financial crisis
WPS7146 Policy Research Working Paper 7146 Inequality Stagnation in Latin America in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis _Louise Cord Oscar Barriga Cabanillas Leonardo Lucchetti Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán Liliana D. Sousa Daniel Valderrama_ Poverty Global Practice Group December 2014
Sustainability of solar electricity
            : the role of endogenous resource substitution and market
            mediated responses
This study seeks to understand how
            materials scarcity and competition from alternative uses
            affects the potential for widespread deployment of solar
            electricity in the long run, in light of related technology
            and policy uncertainties. Simulation results of a computable
            partial equilibrium model predict a considerable expansion
            of solar electricity generation worldwide in the near
            decades, as generation technologies improve and production
            costs fall. Increasing materials scarcity becomes a
            significant constraint for further expansion of solar
            generation, which grows considerably slower in the second
            half of the coming century. Solar generation capacity
            increases with higher energy demand, squeezing consumption
            in industries that compete for scarce minerals. Stringent
            climate policies hamper growth in intermittent solar
            photovoltaics backed by fossil fuel powered plants, but lead
            to a small increase in non-intermittent concentrated solar
            power technology. By the end of the coming century, solar
            electricity remains a marginal source of global electricity
            supply even in the world of higher energy demand, strict
            carbon regulations, and generation efficiency improvements.
Short-term impacts of formalization
            assistance and a bank information session on business
            registration and access to finance in Malawi
Despite regulatory efforts designed to
            make it easier for firms to formalize, informality remains
            extremely high among firms in Sub-Saharan Africa. In most of
            the region, business registration in a national registry is
            separate from tax registration. This paper provides initial
            results from an experiment in Malawi that randomly allocated
            firms into a control group and three treatment groups: a) a
            group offered assistance for costless business registration;
            b) a group offered assistance with costless business
            registration and (separate) tax registration; and c) a group
            offered assistance for costless business registration along
            with an information session at a bank that ended with the
            offer of business bank accounts. The study finds that all
            three treatments had extremely large impacts on business
            registration, with 75 percent of those offered assistance
            receiving a business registration certificate. The findings
            offer a cost-effective way of getting firms to formalize in
            this dimension. However, in common with other studies,
            information and assistance has a limited impact on tax
            registration. The paper measures the short-term impacts of
            formalization on financial access and usage. Business
            registration alone has no impact for either men or women on
            bank account usage, savings, or credit. However, the
            combination of formalization assistance and the bank
            information session results in significant impacts on having
            a business bank account, financial practices, savings, and
            use of complementary financial products.
"Small miracles" --
            behavioral insights to improve development policy : World
            Development Report 2015
One of the most fruitful advances in
            modern economics has been the introduction of psychological
            realism into the model of "economic man." The
            World Development Report 2015 organizes the evidence about
            how humans actually think and make decisions into a coherent
            framework useful for designing development policy. This
            paper elaborates on the three principles of human thinking
            that constitute the report's intellectual framework:
            Human thinking is dual process -- automatic as well as
            deliberative (thinking automatically); it is conditioned by
            social context and the salience of social identities
            (thinking socially); and it is shaped by mental models that
            are socially constructed (thinking with mental models).
            Behavioral insights create scope for policy interventions
            that produce "miracles" from the perspective of
            traditional economics.
Effects of the internet on
            participation : study of a public policy referendum in Brazil
Does online voting mobilize citizens who
            otherwise would not participate? During the annual
            participatory budgeting vote in the southern state of Rio
            Grande do Sul in Brazil -- the world's largest --
            Internet voters were asked whether they would have
            participated had there not been an online voting option
            (i-voting). The study documents an 8.2 percent increase in
            total turn-out with the introduction of i-voting. In support
            of the mobilization hypothesis, unique survey data show that
            i-voting is mainly used by new participants rather than just
            for convenience by those who were already mobilized. The
            study also finds that age, gender, income, education, and
            social media usage are significant predictors of being
            online-only voters. Technology appears more likely to engage
            people who are younger, male, of higher income and
            educational attainment, and more frequent social media users.
Interviewer effects in subjective
            survey questions: evidence from Timor-Leste
There is an inherent tension between
            traditional norms and survey protocols for quantitative data
            collected in the developing world. Unexpected interactions
            between the interviewer and respondent can lead to
            interviewer effects in the data, particularly in the case of
            subjective or sensitive questions. This paper makes use of a
            unique data set available from Timor-Leste containing
            subjective and objective questions to study these effects.
            In addition to their age and gender, data were collected
            from the interviewers regarding their opinions on the
            subjective questions prior to fieldwork. Fixed effects and
            mixed effects logit models are used to examine the main
            effects and interactions between interviewer and respondent
            characteristics. More objective measures serve as a pseudo
            control group. The paper finds interviewer effects in the
            both subjective and objective data, but the magnitude is
            considerably stronger for subjective questions. The paper
            also finds that female respondents are more susceptible to
            influence based on the interviewer's beliefs. Despite
            methodological shortcomings, the study highlights the need
            to consider more fully the impact of traditional cultural
            norms when conducting quantitative surveys in the developing
            world on topics that are outside the standard objective questions.
Economic shocks and subjective
            well-being : evidence from a quasi-experiment
This article examines how economic
            shocks affect individual well-being in developing countries.
            Using the case of a sudden and unanticipated currency
            devaluation in Botswana as a quasi-experiment, the article
            examines how this monetary shock affects individuals'
            evaluations of well-being. This is done by using microlevel
            survey data, which—incidentally—were collected in the days
            surrounding the devaluation. The chance occurrence of the
            devaluation during the time of the survey enables us to use
            pretreatment respondents, surveyed before the devaluation,
            as approximate counterfactuals for post-treatment
            respondents, surveyed after the devaluation. Estimates show
            that the devaluation had a large and significantly negative
            effect on individuals' evaluations of subjective
            well-being. These results suggest that macroeconomic shocks,
            such as unanticipated currency devaluations, may have
            significant short-term costs in the form of reductions in
            people's sense of well-being.
The curious case of Brazil's
            closedness to trade
Although Brazil has become one of the
            largest economies in the world, it remains among the most
            closed economies as measured by the share of exports and
            imports in gross domestic product. This feature cannot be
            explained simply by the size of Brazil's economy.
            Rather, it is due to an economic structure reliant on
            domestic value chain integration as opposed to participation
            in global production networking. It also reflects more
            generally an export base that shows lack of dynamism.
            Opening up and moving toward integration into global value
            chains could produce efficiency gains and help Brazil
            address its productivity and competitiveness challenges.
Labor productivity and employment
            gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa
Drawing on a new set of nationally
            representative, internationally comparable household
            surveys, this paper provides an overview of key features of
            structural transformation—labor allocation and labor
            productivity—in four African economies. New, micro-based
            measures of sector labor allocation and cross-sector
            productivity differentials describe the incentives
            households face when allocating their labor. These measures
            are similar to national accounts-based measures that are
            typically used to characterize structural changes in African
            economies. However, because agricultural workers supply far
            fewer hours of labor per year than do workers in other
            sectors, productivity gaps disappear almost entirely when
            expressed on a per-hour basis. What look like large
            productivity gaps in national accounts data could really be
            employment gaps, calling into question the prospective gains
            that laborers can achieve through structural transformation.
            These employment gaps, along with the strong linkages
            observed between rural non-farm activities and primary
            agricultural production, highlight agriculture's
            continued relevance to structural change in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Global experiences with special
            economic zones : focus on China and Africa
This study briefly summarizes the
            development experiences of special economic zones in China
            and Africa, the lessons that Africa can learn from China,
            and the preliminary results of the Chinese investments in
            special economic zones in Africa. The study makes
            recommendations on how to unleash the power of special
            economic zones and industrial zones in Africa through
            strategically leveraging the Chinese experiences. The
            success factors of Chinese special economic zones include
            the strong and long-term commitment of the government, a
            conducive business environment in the zones, strategic
            locations, technology upgrading and skills training, and
            strong linkages with the local economy. However, the Chinese
            experiences highlight some pitfalls to avoid, such as the
            “mushroom approach” and high-level overlaps at the later
            stage, environmental degradation, and the unbalance between
            industrial development and social dimensions. This calls for
            a bigger role for the market. Sub-Sahara Africa's
            experience with traditional economic zones has been
            relatively poor, except in a few countries, such as
            Mauritius. The key challenges include the poor regulatory
            and institutional framework, lack of effective strategic
            planning, weak governance and implementation capacity, and
            inadequate infrastructure, among others.  Since 2006, China
            has implemented special economic zone projects globally,
            including in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is
            still too early to conduct a full assessment of these
            projects; however, the evidence shows that some zones have
            begun to attract investments and make important
            contributions to the local economy. The main challenges
            include access to land, regulatory barriers, resettlement
            and coordination issues, and lack of external infrastructure.
The local socioeconomic effects of
            gold mining : evidence from Ghana
Ghana is experiencing its third gold
            rush, and this paper sheds light on the socioeconomic
            impacts of this rapid expansion in industrial production.
            The paper uses a rich data set consisting of geocoded
            household data combined with detailed information on gold
            mining activities, and conducts two types of
            difference-in-differences estimations that provide
            complementary evidence. The first is a local-level analysis
            that identifies an economic footprint area very close to a
            mine; the second is a district-level analysis that captures
            the fiscal channel. The results indicate that men are more
            likely to benefit from direct employment as miners and that
            women are more likely to gain from indirect employment
            opportunities in services, although these results are
            imprecisely measured. Long-established households gain
            access to infrastructure, such as electricity and radios.
            Migrants living close to mines are less likely to have
            access to electricity and the incidence of diarrheal
            diseases is higher among migrant children. Overall, however,
            infant mortality rates decrease significantly in mining communities.
Data deprivation : another
            deprivation to end
The Millennium Development Goal of
            halving the incidence of extreme poverty from its 1990 level
            will be achieved in 2015, and the international development
            community is now moving to a new goal of “ending extreme
            poverty.” However, the data needed to monitor progress
            remain severely limited. During the 10 year period between
            2002 and 2011, as many as 57 countries have zero or only one
            poverty estimate. This paper refers to such lack of poverty
            data as “data deprivation,” because the poor are often
            socially marginalized and voiceless, and the collection of
            objective and quantitative data is crucial in locating them
            and formulating policy to help them exit extreme
            deprivation. This paper studies the extent of data
            deprivation and proposes targets for ending data deprivation
            by 2030—the year by when the international community aims to
            end extreme poverty. According to the analysis in this
            paper, this target is ambitious but possible, and achieving
            it is necessary to be able to declare the end of extreme
            poverty with confidence.
The local economic impacts of
            resource abundance : what have we learned
What are the socioeconomic impacts of
            resource abundance? Are these effects different at the
            national and local levels? How could resource booms benefit
            (or harm) local communities? This paper reviews a vast
            literature examining these questions, with an emphasis on
            empirical works. First, the evidence and theoretical
            arguments behind the so-called resource curse, and other
            impacts at the country level, are reviewed. This
            cross-country literature highlights the importance of
            institutions. Then, a simple analytical framework is
            developed to understand how resource booms could impact
            local communities, and the available empirical evidence is
            examined. This emerging literature exploits within-country
            variation and is opening new ways to think about the
            relation between natural resources and economic development.
            The main message is that others factors, such as market
            mechanisms and local spillovers, are also relevant for
            understanding the impact of resource abundance. Finally, the
            paper discusses issues related to fiscal decentralization
            and provides ideas for future research.