rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Revising financial sector policy in
            transitional socialist economies : will universal banks
            prove viable
Focusing on efforts under way in most
            transitional socialist economies, the author questions
            whether the banks emerging in the new policy framework will
            prove viable or be supervisable.  He offers a model of
            financial sector structure designed to foster the
            development of a sound banking system.  In describing the
            environment in which financial policy is being revised, the
            author notes that the extraordinary challenges policymakers
            face might influence the shape of policy.  He is concerned
            that policies to promote a sound banking system might be
            overlooked or sacrificed.  Fundamental policy objectives,
            says the author, are those important to long-term economic
            well-being.  These include establishing and maintaining the
            integrity of the payments system and the safety of
            depositors' savings, and ensuring that money markets
            function.  Transitional objectives, on the other hand,
            relate primarily to the immediate task of privatizing and
            restructuring enterprises.  Policymakers must balance
            inherent conflicts between the two kinds of objectives while
            promoting the achievement of both.  Many transitional
            socialist economies, he observes, adopt a policy framework
            that envisions universal banking. The author assesses the
            consequences of the immediate emergence of financial
            conglomerates, or universal-type banks, and questions
            whether - in the face of limited managerial and
            institutional capability, limited capability for supervising
            financial markets, and extraordinary financial market risks
            - financial conglomerates simultaneously pursuing
            conflicting fundamental and transitional objectives will
            prove viable.  The author advocates delaying the emergence
            of financial conglomerates until skills are developed and
            market turmoil subsides.  In the transitional period,
            regulatory policy would assign to banks primary
            responsibility for achieving fundamental objectives, and
            would encourage nonbank financial institutions to pursue
            transitional objectives.  Policy should promote financial
            soundness in the banking system, to control the potential
            costs to government of achieving its fundamental objectives.
Recent experience with commercial
            bank debt reduction
The authors review the case for
            market-based debt reduction and concerted debt reduction.
            They explain the new menu-based approach to debt reduction
            and discuss why it may be preferred to market-based and
            concerted debt reduction.  In a review of the five recent
            debt-reduction agreements, they find that the menu approach
            indeed achieved debt reduction at substantially lower costs
            than a comparable market-based operation.  By one measure,
            the five countries may have saved more than $8 billion.
            Even a menu-based approach to debt reduction, however, is
            unlikely to directly benefit the debtor financially.  They
            find that the debtors suffered financial losses equal to a
            few percent of their GDPs.  Indirect benefits, or efficiency
            gains associated with debt reduction, are necessary to make
            the operation benefit the debtor.
Protection and industrial structure
            in India
Effective protection rates in India are
            so high and vary so greatly that anything short of low
            uniform tariffs and the complete elimination of quantitative
            restrictions would not make the industrial incentive scheme
            transparent, as it needs to be. The authors produce evidence
            to show that there is ample scope for reducing tariffs and
            quantitative restrictions and that most industries could
            coexist with much less protection than they now have. By
            eliminating all surcharges on inputs (tariffs on imported
            inputs, price differentials on local inputs, nondeductible
            excise taxes) - even without correcting for the effects of
            high investment costs - most projects (including import
            substitution projects) would earn from current international
            prices a positive profit margin on their marginal as well as
            full production costs. The proportion of projects with a
            positive profit margin would triple, from 20 to 63 percent.
            Among import-substituting projects that are not candidates
            for export under the present trade regime, under the
            proposed new regime half would be candidates for export if
            they would procure their inputs at international prices.
            Lower tariffs would fulfill their primary purpose more
            effectively: providing protection and incentive signals. The
            function of generating public revenues, another critical
            issue in India, should be fulfilled not through tariffs but
            through more efficient and protection-neutral instruments -
            in particular direct taxation (income tax) and nontariff
            indirect taxation (neutral excise taxes, MODVAT, and
            preferably the value-added tax on consumption).
Competition and efficiency in
            Hungarian banking
Banking reform started much earlier in
            Hungary than in other socialist countries and Hungary now
            has by far the most advanced system among transitional
            socialist economies.  The authors discuss recent trends in
            competition and efficiency in Hungarian banking.  They
            assess the performance of Hungarian banks and note the
            tremendous progress that has been made in expanding the
            number of competing banks, strengthening the legal and
            regulatory framework, increasing the banks' managerial
            autonomy, and promoting development of the private sector.
            But the authors also note that effective competition is
            constrained by the continuing segmentation of the market.
            In addition to the segmentation of corporate and household
            banking inherited from the old regime, a new segmentation
            appears to have emerged, between large and small banks, or
            between old and new banks.  The entry of new banks -
            especially joint-venture banks - has a clear impact on
            market shares, but competition appears to be more effective
            in increasing the range of services than in lowering bank
            spreads.  The impact of foreign banks would be greater if
            they were allowed to open branches or at least to establish
            fully owned subsidiaries.  During the period under review,
            there was a collapse of long-term lending, reflecting both
            conservative lending practices and a subdued demand for
            investment finance. But the use of short-term credits has
            picked up considerably since 1988, in line with the ongoing
            restructuring of the Hungarian economy and the growth of
            services.  Reported nominal spreads and profit ratios appear
            to be high by international standards.  For small banks,
            these reflect the high level of inflation and the low level
            of leverage.  But for the large banks, the high nominal
            spreads may be more apparent than real because of the
            existence of nonperforming loans.  There is considerable
            uncertainty about the size of nonperforming loans, following
            the collapse of CMEA trade and its adverse impact on
            corporate profitability.  Tackling the problem of
            nonperforming loans is important both for enhancing the
            efficiency of banks and for lowering nominal spreads, the
            high level of which appears to hinder the financing of new firms.
Family planning programs in
            sub-Saharan Africa
In the 1980s, signs that sub-Saharan
            Africans would welcome family planning in numbers sufficient
            to make a difference in fertility rates were scattered and
            weak. Pessimists cited formidable cultural and socioeconomic
            barriers; optimists provided resources for pilot projects,
            coupled with research to document results and to guide
            expansion and replication. Among projects with measurable
            achievements in acceptance of family planning in settings
            that were less than promising were the Ghana Registered
            Midwives Project, the Ruhengeri Project in Rwanda, and the
            Sudan Community-Based Family Health Project. All were
            associated with the Operations Research Program of Columbia
            University's Center for Population and Family Health.
            In Ghana, midwives in private practice were trained and
            given other support to initiate family planning services. In
            Rwanda, rural community development volunteers added family
            planning to their educational activities. In the Sudan,
            rural catchment areas and work assignments of rural primary
            health care personnel were changed to introduce family
            planning and strengthen other child survival services.
            Positive results were evident from quantitative measures of
            service delivery and, in Rwanda and the Sudan, from an
            increase in contraceptive prevalence in the project areas.
            Other criteria for success included improved management
            skills, motivation for replicating successful programmatic
            elements, and potential for continuity. Questions remain as
            to why attitudes changed, when contraceptive use for family
            limitation will be practiced widely, and how applicable the
            experiences reported here are to other locations. These
            projects do not provide the answers. They do, nonetheless,
            support an optimistic view for the future of family planning
            in sub-Saharan Africa.
The administration of road user
            taxes in developing countries
After studying the problems of
            administering road user taxes in 19 developing countries,
            the author reports the following, among other things. There
            is no single, correct structure for road user taxation since
            the various charges may play different roles in different
            national revenue systems.  All effective tax administration
            requires a solid, uncomplicated tax structure. The
            substantial revenue potential of road user taxation rests on
            a growing tax base.  Despite this, road user taxation
            remains an underused source of public finance in developing
            countries.  Tax evasion and avoidance narrow the tax base,
            cost governments revenue, and compromise the efficiency and
            redistribution objectives of a tax system.  Evasion may
            occur by nonfiling, underreporting, or smuggling.  It
            generally increases with the tax rates (particularly the
            marginal tax rates) and decreases with a greater probability
            of detection and with a more severe penalty.  Avoidance is
            the result of loopholes in a tax system that enable a
            taxpayer to reduce liability by adjusting the consumption or
            composition of received income, or by making different
            investment or production choices.  The problems of evasion
            and avoidance must be approached simultaneously.  If a tax
            administration narrows the possibility for successful
            evasion, the result may be an increase in avoidance. The
            four main types of road user charges are:  (1) fuel tax; (2)
            sales tax, excise tax, and import duty; (3) annual license
            and vehicle registration charges; and (4) tolls.  Action
            should be taken under all four main reform options:  (1) to
            keep rate levels as low as possible; (2) to broaden the tax
            base, limit exemptions, and move toward a single uniform tax
            rate; (3) to simplify taxes to minimize ambiguity, ease
            administration, reduce administrative cost, and lower the
            compliance cost; and (4) to improve tax enforcement by
            improving tax collection, record-keeping, liability
            assessment, and identification of those liable to pay the
            tax.  Transport fuel pricing needs to be better coordinated,
            and rate structures - especially for sales tax, excise tax,
            and import duty - could be lowered and made uniform.  In
            some countries there is scope for raising fuel tax and the
            annual license tax, provided it is accompanied by better
            enforcement.  Evidence found in the case studies for this
            paper have not supported an incentives argument:  that
            taxpayers will be more inclined to pay if they see a direct
            benefit between tax and spending.
Universal service obligations in
            utility concession contracts and the needs of the poor in
            Argentina's privatization
The authors summarize the main lessons
            emerging from Argentina's experience, including
            universal service obligations in concession contracts. They
            discuss free-riding risks, moral hazard problems, and other
            issues that arise when social concerns are delegated to
            private operators. After reporting on Argentina's
            experience, the authors suggest some guidelines: 1)
            Anticipate interjurisdictional externalities. Users'
            mobility makes targeting service obligations difficult. 2)
            Minimize the risks imposed by elusive demand. In providing
            new services, a gradual policy may work better than a
            "shock". 3) Realize that unemployment leads to
            delinquency and lower expected tariffs. Elasticity of fixed
            and usage charges is important. 4) Deal with the fact that
            the poor have limited access to credit. Ultimately, plans
            that included credit for the payment of infrastructure
            charges were not that successful. 5) Coordinate regulatory,
            employment, and social policy. One successful plan to
            provide universal service involved employing workers from
            poor families in infrastructure extension works. 6) Beware
            of the latent opportunism of users who benefit from special
            programs. Special treatment of a sector may encourage
            free-riding (for example, pensioners overused the telephone
            until a limit was placed on the number of subsidized phone
            calls they could make). 7) Fixed allocations for payment of
            services do not ensure that universal service obligations
            will be met. How do you deal with the problem that many
            pensioners do not pay their bills? 8) anticipate that
            operators will have more information than regulators do. If
            companies exaggerate supply costs in remote areas, direct
            interaction with poor users there may lead to the selection
            of more cost-effective technologies. 9) "Tailored"
            programs are often much more effective than standardized
            programs. They are clearly more expensive but, when
            demand-driven, are also more effective.
How has the debt crisis affected
            commercial banks
Top commercial banks seemed to have
            weathered the debt crisis, however it remains to be seen
            whether their current strength and stability will help
            reestablish normal credit relationships between private
            banks and the developing countries. Some losses by private
            creditors are likely to be part of any resolution of the
            debt crisis, and such losses are implicit in some of the
            many proposals for dealing with the crisis. However, through
            a combination of self interest and public policy the current
            impasse in the debt crisis should be overcome. This may be
            done partly through large scale debt swaps sponsored by
            private or public agencies. Debt swaps are already being
            implemented bilaterally in small steps and through a variety
            of instruments, including debt conversions and buybacks.
The cost-effectiveness of national
            training systems in developing countries
This paper reviews the literature on the
            cost-effectiveness of different modes of occupational
            training, focusing primarily on employer-sited training,
            occupational training within formal education, and out of
            school center-based training. The literature can be divided
            into two categories: studies which have attempted to measure
            in quantitative terms the benefits and costs of different
            modes of training, and qualitative studies which have
            examined non-measurable aspects of cost-effectiveness. Among
            the conclusions brought to light are: that schools should be
            responsible for teaching basic skills and the theoretical
            aspects of vocational training, and employers should be
            responsible for the practical end - with on-the-job training
            supplemented in some cases by training at training centers.
            Institutionalized pre-employment training for entry-level
            jobs is less cost-effective - despite wishful thinking that
            it provides an easy solution to the problems of mass youth unemployment.
Some implications of policy games
            for high inflation economies
The authors used the policy game
            approach to gain insight into a problem that has puzzled
            analysts of high inflation economies. Why are programs based
            on tight fiscal and monetary policies slow at reducing
            inflation in high inflation countries? Distinguishing
            between regimes of rule and discretion the authors explain
            that governments that cannot abide by policy rules and tend
            to use surprise inflation in a discretionary manner to
            achieve short term goals ( e.g. eroding the real wage or the
            real value of domestic debt ), raising the rational
            public's inflationary expectations. If policy makers
            can convince the public that they will not resort to
            surprise inflation tactics, the long term level of inflation
            may be reduced considerably. Another problem addressed is
            how should policymakers who are genuinely interested in
            disinflation react to adverse public expectations? The
            policymakers are faced with the dilemna of sticking to their
            announced policy and paying immediate costs in terms of
            unemployment and capital flight, or compromising their
            initial targets at the cost of renewed inflationary
            expectations. They conclude that lack of credibility
            generates disinflation costs. And if the source of a
            credibility problem is the inability of weak policymakers to
            honor their committment, strong policymakers may need to
            compromise to some extent.
Wage and employment policies in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia (CSFR) faces marked
            challenges for successfully accomplishing its transition to
            a market economy.  In recent years the economy was
            characterized by a good deal of internal and external
            equilibrium, making possible the current market oriented
            reforms without the complications which arise from a complex
            stabilization program.  However, the present administration
            is contending both with the distorted allocation of
            resources and a rigid regulatory framework left by the old
            system; these have created potential impediments to the
            success of reform measures.  Labor market reforms in both
            the short and long term represent a dramatic change from the
            past, and a key challenge for designing programs and
            attaining political stability.  In the short run, proper
            labor market policies play a central role in preventing an
            inflationary spiral.  In the longer term, CSFR, like all
            other Eastern European countries in economic transition,
            faces the challenge of designing an appropriate
            institutional framework for the labor market.  Unemployment
            will be a normal byproduct of market allocation as persons
            flow between jobs, necessitating an unemployment insurance
            system along with policies and institutions aimed at easing
            the friction incurred with intersectoral labor mobility.
            Similarly, wage setting mechanisms must be instituted,
            possibly through collective bargaining.
Urban property tax reform :
            guidelines and recommendations
The property tax is a potentially
            attractive means of financing municipal government in
            developing countries. As a revenue source, it can provide
            local government with access to a broad and expanding tax
            base. At present, however, yields of urban property taxes in
            developing countries are extremely low. In part, these low
            yields reflect failures in the administration of the tax.
            Procedural improvements alone, however, are unlikely to have
            a significant, sustained impact on property tax yields. This
            suggests that the scope of reform must be expanded to
            address the systems for rate setting and revaluation, and
            the incentives confronting administrators of the tax. The
            scope of reform may have to include the entire structure of
            local finance. Judging from recent experience, providing
            local government with complete autonomy over tax policy and
            administration does not always guarantee that the tax will
            be exploited effectively. Under these conditions, property
            tax reform can only be achieved in the context of wider
            restructuring in the sources of municipal revenue. By
            reducing the extent of arbitrary subsidies between
            jurisdictions and confronting local taxpayers with the cost
            of the services they consume, these reforms are consistent
            with the pursuit of the efficiency objective that is the
            principal justification for property tax reform.