rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Testing the importance of search
            frictions, matching, and reservation prestige through
            randomized experiments in Jordan
Unemployment rates for tertiary-educated
            youth in Jordan are high, as is the duration of
            unemployment. Two randomized experiments in Jordan were used
            to test different theories that may explain this phenomenon.
            The first experiment tested the role of search and matching
            frictions by providing firms and job candidates with an
            intensive screening and matching service based on
            educational backgrounds and psychometric assessments.
            Although more than 1,000 matches were made, youth rejected
            the opportunity to even have an interview in 28 percent of
            cases, and when a job offer was received, they rejected this
            offer or quickly quit the job 83 percent of the time. A
            second experiment built on the first by examining the
            willingness of educated, unemployed youth to apply for jobs
            of varying levels of prestige. Youth applied to only a small
            proportion of the job openings they were told about, with
            application rates higher for higher prestige jobs than lower
            prestige jobs. Youth failed to show up for the majority of
            interviews scheduled for low prestige jobs. The results
            suggest that reservation prestige is an important factor
            underlying the unemployment of educated Jordanian youth.
Testing the importance of search
            frictions, matching, and reservation prestige through
            randomized experiments in Jordan
WPS7030 Policy Research Working Paper 7030 Testing the Importance of Search Frictions, Matching, and Reservation Prestige Through Randomized Experiments in Jordan _Matthew Groh David McKenzie Nour Shammout Tara Vishwanath_ Development Research Group Finance and Private Sector Development Team September 2014
Infrastructure gap in South Asia :
            infrastructure needs, prioritization, and financing
If the South Asia region hopes to meet
            its development goals and not risk slowing down or even
            halting growth, poverty alleviation, and shared prosperity,
            it is essential to make closing its huge infrastructure gap
            a priority. Identifying and addressing gaps in the data on
            expenditure, access, and quality are crucial to ensuring
            that governments make efficient, practical, and effective
            infrastructure development choices. This study addresses
            this knowledge gap by focusing on the current status of
            infrastructure sectors and geographical disparities, real
            levels of investment and private sector participation,
            deficits and proper targets for the future, and bottlenecks
            to expansion. The findings show that the South Asia region
            needs to invest between US$1.7 trillion and US$2.5 trillion
            (at current prices) to close its infrastructure gap. If
            investments are spread evenly over the years until 2020, the
            region needs to invest between 6.6 and 9.9 percent of 2010
            gross domestic product per year, an estimated increase of up
            to 3 percentage points from the 6.9 percent of gross
            domestic product invested in infrastructure by countries in
            the region in 2009. Given the enormous size of the
            region's infrastructure deficiencies, it will need a
            mix of investment in infrastructure stock and supportive
            reforms to close its infrastructure gap. One major challenge
            will be prioritizing investment needs. Another will be
            choosing optimal forms of service provision, including the
            private sector's role, and the decentralization of
            administrative functions and powers.
Spatial dynamics of electricity
            usage in India
India's manufacturing sector has
            undergone many spatial adjustments since 1989, including,
            for example, the organized sector's migration to rural
            locations, the powerful rise of informal manufacturing
            within cities, and the development of intermediate cities
            for manufacturing. This paper investigates the impact of
            these spatial adjustments for electricity usage in Indias
            manufacturing sector. Striking spatial differences in energy
            usage exist, and whether spatial adjustments exacerbate or
            alleviate energy consumption strains is important for issues
            ranging from reducing India's power blackouts to
            stemming rising pollution levels. Using detailed surveys for
            the organized and unorganized sectors, the analysis finds
            that electricity usage per unit of output in urban plants
            declined steadily during 1989-2010. In the rural areas, by
            contrast, electricity consumption per unit of output for
            organized sector plants peaked in 2000 and thereafter
            declined. Decomposing the observed trends in aggregate
            electricity usage from 2000 onwards, the paper finds that
            most reductions in electricity usage per unit of output came
            from reductions in existing sites of activity (defined
            through state-industry-urban/rural cells). The second
            biggest factor leading to reduced usage was lower usage in
            fast-growing sectors. By contrast, spatial movements of
            manufacturing activity across India did not significantly
            change usage levels and may have even increased them. This
            appears to have been in part because of the split nature of
            the mobility, with organized and unorganized sectors
            migrating in opposite directions.
Evidence on policies to increase the
            development impacts of international migration
International migration offers
            individuals and their families the potential to experience
            immediate and large gains in their incomes, and offers a
            large number of other positive benefits to the sending
            communities and countries. However, there are also concerns
            about potential costs of migration, including concerns about
            trafficking and human rights, a desire for remittances to be
            used more effectively, and concerns about externalities from
            skilled workers being lost. As a result there is increasing
            interest in policies which can enhance the development
            benefits of international migration and mitigate these
            potential costs. This paper provides a critical review of
            recent research on the effectiveness of these policies at
            three stages of the migration process: pre-departure, during
            migration, and directed toward possible return. The existing
            evidence base suggests some areas of policy success:
            bilateral migration agreements for countries whose workers
            have few other migration options, developing new savings and
            remittance products that allow migrants more control over
            how their money is used, and some efforts to provide
            financial education to migrants and their families.
            Suggestive evidence together with theory offers support for
            a number of other policies, such as lowering the cost of
            remittances, reducing passport costs, offering dual
            citizenship, and removing exit barriers to migration.
            Research offers reasons to be cautious about some policies,
            such as enforcing strong rights for migrants like high
            minimum wages. Nevertheless, the paper finds the evidence
            base to be weak for many policies, with no reliable research
            on the impact of most return migration programs, nor for
            whether countries should be trying to induce communal
            remitting through matching funds.
The critical mass approach to
            achieve a deal on green goods and services : what is on the
            table how much to expect
At the Davos forum of January 2014, a
            group of 14 countries pledged to launch negotiations on
            liberalizing trade in "green goods" (also known as
            "environmental" goods), focusing on the
            elimination of tariffs for an Asia-Pacific Economic
            Cooperation list of 54 products. The paper shows that the
            Davos group, with an average tariff of 1.8 percent, has
            little to offer as countries have avoided submitting
            products with tariff peaks for tariff reductions. Even if
            the list were extended to the 411 products on the World
            Trade Organization list, taking into account tariff
            dispersion, the tariff structure on environmental goods
            would be equivalent to a uniform tariff of 3.4 percent,
            about half the uniform tariff-equivalent for
            non-environmental goods. Enlarging the number of
            participants to low-income countries might be possible as,
            on average, their imports would not increase by more than 8
            percent. However, because of the strong complementarities
            between trade in environmental goods and trade in
            environmental services, these should also be brought to the
            negotiation table, although difficulties in reaching
            agreement on their scope are likely to be great.
Interest rate caps around the world:
            still popular, but a blunt instrument
Among other common forms of government
            financial control, caps on interest rates have been
            declining over the past several decades as most
            industrialized countries and a rising number of developing
            countries continue liberalizing their financial policies.
            However, in several countries the last financial crisis
            reopened the debate on interest rate controls as a tool for
            consumer protection. This paper undertakes a stock-taking
            exercise to determine the number of countries currently
            capping interest rates on loans. The paper looks at the main
            characteristics of the regimes countries have used,
            including the source of rate-setting authority, the
            methodology, and the criteria for establishing the cap. The
            paper finds at least 76 countries around the world currently
            use some form of interest rate caps on loans -- all with
            varying degrees of effects, including the withdrawal of
            financial institutions from the poor or from specific
            segments of the market, an increase in the total cost of the
            loan through additional fees and commissions, among others.
            The paper concludes that there are more effective ways of
            reducing interest rates on loans over the long run and of
            improving access to finance: measures that enhance
            competition and product innovation, improve financial
            consumer protection frameworks, increase financial literacy,
            promote credit bureaus, enforce disclosure of interest
            rates, and promote microcredit products. Such measures
            should be implemented in an integrated manner. However, if
            caps are still considered a useful policy tool for reducing
            interest rates on loans and increasing access to finance,
            they should be implemented in accord with the caveats
            described in the paper.
CGE analysis of the impact of
            foreign direct investment and tariff reform on female and
            male wages
This study analyzes the impact on male
            and female wages of tariff reform and the reduction of
            regulatory barriers faced by domestic and foreign firms
            operating in business services. The study applies the model
            to Tanzania and develops a data set that distinguishes labor
            and wages by gender for 52 sectors and four skill
            categories. The model is the first to incorporate modern
            trade theory to assess the gender implications of trade
            reform. Given that the Dixit-Stiglitz framework results in
            productivity gains from additional varieties of services,
            the analysis finds that real wages increase across all
            worker categories. However, the increase in wages is higher
            for males than for females, because business services use
            males more intensively than females. The most skilled
            (female and male) workers, who are also the most intensively
            used in the business services sectors, benefit more from the
            real increases in wages. The model illustrates that as the
            development process continues and developing countries
            become more business service oriented, these sectors demand
            more educated workers and their wages will increase relative
            to those of unskilled workers. The policy conclusion from
            this model is that it is crucial to invest in the education
            of females so their human capital increases and their skills
            are more marketable in business services and other more
            technologically modern occupations. Otherwise, the wage gap
            between males and females would likely widen further.
Weather shocks and health at birth
            in Colombia
Poor health at birth has negative
            long-run effects on individual well-being and is also
            detrimental for intergenerational mobility. This paper
            examines whether health outcomes at birth are affected by in
            utero increased exposure to rainfall and temperature shocks
            in Colombia, one of the countries in the world with the
            highest incidence of extreme weather events per year. The
            paper uses a fixed effects design to gauge the causal effect
            using variation in fetal exposure to these shocks by
            municipality and date of birth. The analysis finds negative
            effects of temperature shocks on birth health outcomes and
            no effect of rainfall shocks. The results indicate that heat
            waves lead to a 0.5 percentage point reduction in the
            probability of being born at full term and a decline of 0.4
            percentage point in the probability of newborns classified
            as healthy. The timing of exposure to the shock matters and
            it matters differently for different outcomes. These
            findings are critical to prioritize responses to counteract
            the negative effects of weather, particularly hot shocks,
            which are projected to become more frequent and intense with
            changing climate.
Informing migration policies : a
            data primer
Researchers in many fields, such as
            demography, economics, and sociology, have established
            various data collection methodologies and principles to
            answer a range of academic and policy questions on
            migration. Although the progress has been impressive, some
            basic challenges remain. This paper addresses some basic,
            yet fundamental, questions on identification of
            international migrants and how their various demographic,
            personal, and human capital characteristics are captured via
            different data sources. The critical issues are the
            construction of proper sampling frames in censuses,
            registers, and surveys and the design of questionnaires in
            household, labor market, and other relevant surveys. The
            paper discusses how these data sources can be used to answer
            policy questions in areas such as labor markets, education,
            or poverty. The focus is on how some of the existing
            shortcomings in availability, quality, and relevance of
            migration data can be overcome via improvements in data
            collection methods.
Does land fragmentation increase the
            cost of cultivation evidence from India
Although a large literature discusses
            the productivity effects of land fragmentation, measurement
            and potential endogeneity issues are often overlooked. This
            paper uses several measures of fragmentation and controls
            for endogeneity and crop choice by looking at inherited
            paddy and wheat plots to show that these issues matter
            empirically. While crop choice can mitigate effects,
            fragmentation as measured by the Simpson index increases
            production cost and fosters substitution of labor for
            machinery, especially for small and medium farmers. Greater
            distances between fragments have a smaller effect. Creating
            opportunities for market-based consolidation could be one
            step to limit fragmentation-induced cost increases.
Promoting women's economic
            empowerment : what works
A review of rigorous evaluations of
            interventions that seek to empower women economically shows
            that the same class of interventions has significantly
            different outcomes depending on the client. Capital alone,
            as a small cash loan or grant, is not sufficient to grow
            women-owned subsistence-level firms. However, it can work if
            it is delivered in-kind to more successful women
            microentrepreneurs, and it should boost the performance of
            women's larger-sized SMEs. Very poor women need a more
            intensive package of services than do less poor women to
            break out of subsistence production and grow their
            businesses. What works for young women does not necessarily
            work for adult women. Skills training, job search
            assistance, internships, and wage subsidies increase the
            employment levels of adult women but do not raise wages.
            However, similar interventions increase young women's
            employability and earnings if social restrictions are not
            binding. Women who run subsistence-level firms face
            additional social constraints when compared to similar men,
            thus explaining the differences in the outcomes of some
            loans, grants, and training interventions that favor men.
            Social constraints may also play a role in explaining
            women's outcome gains that are short-lasting or emerge
            with a delay. The good news is that many of the additional
            constraints that women face can be overcome by simple,
            inexpensive adjustments in program design that lessen family
            and social pressures. These include providing capital
            in-kind or transacted through the privacy of a mobile phone
            and providing secure savings accounts to nudge women to keep
            the money in the business rather than to divert it to
            non-business uses.
Estimates of ad valorem equivalents
            of barriers against foreign suppliers of services in eleven
            services sectors and 103 countries
A new database on the barriers faced by
            foreign suppliers of services has been produced by the World
            Bank. Data for 103 countries are available on 11 of the most
            important services sectors in international trade. Based on
            these data and building on the methodology and publications
            supported by the Australian Productivity Commission, this
            paper produces estimates of the ad valorem equivalents of
            the barriers for all these sectors and countries. Compared
            with estimates available in the literature that are based on
            assessments of country- and sector-specific barriers to
            services providers, the estimates expand the set of sectors
            and more than triple the set of countries for which
            estimates of the ad valorem equivalents of the services
            barriers are available.
Motivations, monitoring
            technologies, and pay for performance
Monitoring technologies and pay for
            performance contracts are becoming popular solutions to
            improve public services delivery. Their track record is
            however mixed. To show why this may be the case, this paper
            develops a principal agent model where agents'
            motivations vary and so does the effectiveness of monitoring
            technologies. In such a set-up the model shows that: (i)
            monitoring technologies should be introduced only if
            agents' motivations are poor; (ii) optimal pay for
            performance contracts are nonlinear/non-monotonic in
            agents' motivations and monitoring effectiveness; (iii)
            investments aimed at improving agents' motivations and
            monitoring quality are substitutes when agents are
            motivated, complements otherwise; and (iv) if the
            agents' "type" is private information, the
            more and less motivated agents could be separated through a
            menu of pay for performance/non pay for performance
            contracts, such that only the less motivated choose the pay
            for performance ones.
Party age and party color : new
            results on the political economy of redistribution and inequality
This paper advances research on
            inequality with unique, new data on income distribution in
            61 countries, including 20 Latin American countries, to
            explore the effects of political parties on redistribution.
            First, consistent with a central -- but still contested --
            assumption of the political economy literature, left-wing
            governments redistribute more. In addition, consistent with
            recent research on the importance of party organization and
            the organizational differences between younger and older
            parties, older left-wing parties are more likely to
            internalize the long-run costs of redistribution and to be
            more credible in their commitment to redistribution, leading
            them to redistribute less. With entirely different data, the
            paper also provides evidence on mechanisms: left-wing
            governments not only redistribute more, they tax more; older
            left-wing parties, though, tax less than younger ones.