rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Performance-related pay in the
            public sector : a review of theory and evidence
The objective of this paper is to
            provide a review of the theoretical and, in particular,
            empirical literature on performance-related pay in the
            public sector spanning the fields of public administration,
            psychology, economics, education, and health with the aim of
            distilling useful lessons for policy-makers in developing
            countries. This study to our knowledge is the first that
            aims to disaggregate the available evidence by: (i) the
            quality of the empirical study; (ii) the different public
            sector contexts, in particular the different types of public
            sector jobs; and (iii) geographical context (developing
            country or OECD settings). The paper's main findings,
            based on a comprehensive review of 110 studies of public
            sector and relevant private sector jobs are as follows.
            First, we find that overall a majority (65 of 110) of
            studies find a positive effect of performance-related pay,
            with higher quality empirical studies (68 of the 110)
            generally more positive in their findings (46 of the 68).
            These show that explicit performance standards linked to
            some form of bonus pay can improve, at times dramatically,
            desired service outcomes. Second, however, these more
            rigorous studies are overwhelmingly for jobs where the
            outputs or outcomes are more readily observable, such as
            teaching, health care, and revenue collection (66 of the
            68). There is insufficient evidence, positive or negative,
            of the effect of performance-related pay in organizational
            contexts that that are similar to that of the core civil
            service, characterized by task complexity and the difficulty
            of measuring outcomes, to reach a generalized conclusion
            concerning such reforms. Third, while some of these studies
            have shown that performance-related pay can work even in the
            most dysfunctional bureaucracies in developing countries,
            there are too few cases to draw firm conclusions. Fourth,
            several observational studies identify problems with
            unintended consequences and gaming of the incentive scheme,
            although it is unclear whether the gaming results in an
            overall decline in productivity compared to the
            counterfactual. Finally, few studies follow up
            performance-related pay effects over a long period of time,
            leaving the possibility that the positive findings may be
            due to Hawthorne Effects, and that gaming behavior may
            increase over time as employees become more familiar with
            the scheme and learn to manipulate it.
Global fiscal adjustment and trade
            rebalancing : Global fiscal adjustment and trade rebalancing
The emergence of substantial fiscal
            deficits and a large build up of government debt in major
            advanced economies will inevitably lead to a period of
            fiscal consolidation in coming years. In an earlier paper,
            McKibbin and Stoeckel (2010) explored the effects of this
            fiscal adjustment in advanced economies on the global
            economic outlook. This paper focuses on the differences
            between the impacts of fiscal policy in advanced versus
            emerging economies. In particular, the need for more fiscal
            spending on infrastructure in emerging economies and the
            need for fiscal consolidation in advanced economies leads
            naturally to the question of what this asymmetric fiscal
            adjustment might do to global trade balances as well as
            global economic growth over the coming decades. The
            adjustment needed in both regions is substantial and the
            asymmetry of the adjustment implies important consequences
            for trade and capital flows between regions as well as asset
            price adjustments within and between regions.
How bribery distorts firm growth :
            differences by firm attributes
How corruption affects economic
            performance has been studied for over a decade. Yet the lack
            of detailed firm-level data has limited research regarding
            who is carrying the real burden of corruption. This study
            shows that for firms in the Latin America and Caribbean
            region, bribery significantly distorts firm growth. Firms
            that pay bribes when conducting business transactions --
            such as applying for permits, electricity, or water
            connections -- have 24 percent lower annual sales growth
            than firms that do not face such solicitations. Moreover,
            these distortions are more severe for low-revenue-generating
            and young firms. Using the instrumental variables method,
            the authors show that these results are robust to different
            specifications and the use of different sub-samples.
Equality of opportunities and fiscal
            incidence in Cote d'Ivoire
This study analyzes opportunities for
            children in Cote d'Ivoire, where opportunities refer to
            access to basic services and goods that improve the
            likelihood of a child maximizing his or her human potential.
            The principle that guides this analysis is one of equality
            of opportunity, which is that a child's circumstances
            at birth should not determine his or her access to
            opportunities. The analysis computes the Human Opportunity
            Index, which measures the extent to which access to basic
            services is universal and evenly distributed among children
            of different circumstances. Opportunities are limited in
            Cote d'Ivoire, despite some improvements in access to
            electricity and timely access to primary education.
            Otherwise, trends on access remain stagnant. Scale effects
            (variations across the board) are behind these trends, with
            little improvement observed from equalizing interventions.
            Circumstances such as region and household head
            characteristics affect a child's access to
            opportunities, while household incomes and a child's
            gender and ethnicity play a relatively small role in access
            differentials. Public spending on education opportunities is
            shown to be regressive and pro-rich, especially when
            analyzed across the distribution of circumstances rather
            than acroos income level.The groups of children that are
            particularly behind in terms of educational opportunities
            are those whose household heads lack primary education and
            reside in rural areas. Closing the enrollment gap of these
            children should be a priority for targeted educational
            interventions. However, improving opportunities may require
            more than a single type of intervention: opportunities with
            low coverage may need to be scaled up, while those with
            large inequalities of access may require equalizing interventions.
The political economy of the middle
            class in the Dominican Republic : individualization of
            public goods, lack of institutional trust and weak
            collective action
This paper tries to uncover some of the
            hidden factors behind poor public service delivery in the
            Dominican Republic. By looking at three sector cases,
            education, health and electricity, it is possible to observe
            that in this setting of low quality of public services the
            "middle class" is opting out from the system and
            adopting private solutions to collective problems. The
            combination of this opting out behavior with low levels of
            institutional trust, especially among "middle
            class" members, fragmented interests and clientelism,
            among other factors, results in weak collective action and
            lack of effective demand for improvements in service
            provision. Some of the tentative policy options to break
            this sub-optimal equilibrium are i) to build capacity in
            civil society organizations and help them forming a
            pro-reform coalition, ii) reduce the gap between the middle
            class and the poorer by trying to improve the provision of
            public goods and enlarging the welfare state, and (iii)
            increase transparency mechanisms and introduce e-government
            formulas in order to optimize the allocation of public resources.
The contribution of African women to
            economic growth and development : historical perspectives
            and policy implications -- Part I : the pre-colonial and
            colonial periods
Bringing together history and economics,
            this paper presents a historical and processual
            understanding of women's economic marginalization in
            Sub-Saharan Africa from the pre-colonial period to the end
            of colonial rule. It is not that women have not been
            economically active or productive; it is rather that they
            have often not been able to claim the proceeds of their
            labor or have it formally accounted for. The paper focuses
            on the pre-colonial and colonial periods and outlines three
            major arguments. First, it discusses the historical
            processes through which the labor of women was increasingly
            appropriated even in kinship structures in pre-colonial
            Africa, utilizing the concepts of "rights in
            persons" and "wealth in people." Reviewing
            the processes of production and reproduction, it explains
            why most slaves in pre-colonial Africa were women and
            discusses how slavery and slave trade intensified the
            exploitation of women. Second, it analyzes how the
            cultivation of cash crops and European missionary
            constructions of the individual, marriage, and family from
            the early decades of the 19th century sequestered female
            labor and made it invisible in the realm of domestic
            production. Third, it discusses how colonial policies from
            the late 19th century reinforced the "capture" of
            female labor and the codification of patriarchy through the
            nature and operation of the colonial economy and the
            instrumentality of customary law. The sequel to this paper
            focuses on the post-colonial period. It examines the
            continuing relevance and impact of the historical processes
            this paper discusses on post-colonial economies, and
            suggests some policy implications.
Orderly sovereign debt restructuring
            : missing in action !
This paper takes a hard look at the
            experience with official intervention in sovereign debt
            crises, focusing on debt crises of the 1980s, Russia in
            1998, Argentina in 2001, and Greece in 2010. Based on the
            track record, the authors argue that in situations where
            countries face a solvency problem, official intervention is
            more likely to succeed if official money is lent at the
            risk-free rate reflecting its seniority and private
            creditors receive an upfront haircut. Such an approach would
            limit the costs associated with procrastination and increase
            the chances of success by enabling a more realistic fiscal
            program to restore solvency. They examine the moral hazard
            implications for debtor countries of this proposal and find
            that these are unlikely to be severe. In fact, after their
            crises of 1997-2001, emerging market countries embarked on
            an aggressive and comprehensive program of self-insurance,
            indicating that they are weary of debt crises and their
            costs. However, the prospect of an upfront haircut for
            private creditors in the event of insolvency is likely to
            make them more diligent in their sovereign lending decisions.
What has driven the decline of
            infant mortality in Kenya
Substantial declines in infant and
            under-5 mortality have taken place in recent years in many
            countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kenya's infant
            mortality rate has fallen by 7.6 percent per year, the
            fastest rate of decline among the 20 countries in the region
            for which recent Demographic and Health Survey data is
            available. Kenya's rate of postneonatal deaths per
            1,000 live births fell by more than half over a five-year
            period, dropping from 47 to 22, as measured using data from
            the 2003 and 2008-09 Demographic and Health Surveys. Among
            the possible causes of the decline are various targeted new
            public health initiatives and improved access to water and
            sanitation. A Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition using Demographic
            and Health Survey data shows that the increased ownership of
            insecticide-treated bednets in endemic malaria zones
            explains 39 percent of the decline in postneonatal mortality
            and 58 percent of the decline in infant mortality. Changes
            in other observable candidate factors do not explain
            substantial portions of the decline. The portion of the
            decline not explained may be associated with generalized
            trends such as the overall improvement in living standards
            that has taken place with economic growth. The widespread
            ownership of insecticide-treated bednets in areas of Kenya
            where malaria is rare suggests that better targeting of
            insecticide-treated bednet provision programs could improve
            the cost-effectiveness of such programs.
Female wages in the apparel industry
            post-MFA : the cases of Cambodia and Sri Lanka
The end of the Multi-fiber
            Arrangement/Agreement on Textiles and Clothing in 2005 was a
            major policy change that affected the allocation of global
            apparel productions well as the lives of workers involved in
            this sector. Since the apparel industry is often the major
            female employer in developing countries, this policy change
            was expected to have major implications for women. This
            paper analyzes the wages and working conditions of women in
            the apparel sector in Cambodia and Sri Lanka following the
            phase-out the Multi-fibre Arrangement. In both countries,
            apparel is a major source of exports, and women constitute
            70 to 80 percent of the workers employed in the apparel
            industry. The paper finds that after the removal of the
            Multi-fibre Arrangement, apparel prices declined as a result
            of the increased competition. The theoretical model suggests
            that a decrease in prices would lead to a decrease in
            apparel wage premiums relative to other industries in the
            short run and the widening of the male-female wage gap in
            the long run. The empirical findings support these
            theoretical predictions. Wage premiums in the apparel sector
            relative to other industries went down post-Multi-fibre
            Arrangement in Cambodia and Sri Lanka and the male-female
            wage gap increased. The paper finds mixed results in terms
            of working conditions in Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
The spatial development of India
In the last two decades the Indian
            economy has been growing unabatedly, with memories of the
            Hindu rate of growth rapidly fading. But this unprecedented
            growth has also resulted in widening spatial disparities.
            While cities such as Hyderabad have emerged as major
            clusters of high development, many rural areas have been
            left behind with little development benefits accruing to
            them.  India's mega-cities have continued to grow. This
            situation raises a number of important policy questions.
            Should India aim to spread development more equally across
            space? Are India's cities becoming too large? Should
            the government invest in infrastructure in the large cities
            to reduce congestion or in medium-sized locations to
            facilitate the emergence of new economic clusters? What are
            the tradeoffs between agglomeration economies and congestion
            costs?  How different is Indias experience compared with
            China and USA?
Pharmaceutical patents and prices :
            a preliminary empirical assessment using data from India
The enforcement of stringent
            intellectual property rights in the pharmaceutical sector of
            developing countries generates considerable controversy, due
            to both the extensive research investment and the public
            policy importance of this sector. This paper explores the
            likely effects of enforcing product patents on prices and
            utilization of drugs in the Central Nervous System market in
            India. The Central Nervous System segment is the second
            largest therapeutic category in terms of retail sales in the
            world and is one of the fastest growing segments in India.
            Using information on product patents granted by the
            government and panel data on pharmaceutical prices and
            utilization from 2003-2008, the paper finds limited evidence
            of overall price increase following the introduction of
            product patents. However, there appear to be heterogeneous
            effects on prices by the type of product patent granted on
            drugs, implying the need for a careful examination of the
            product patent portfolio.
Gender and rural non-farm entrepreneurship
Despite their increasing prominence in
            policy debates, little is known about gender inequities in
            non-agricultural labor market outcomes in rural areas. Using
            matched household-enterprise-community data sets from
            Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, this paper
            documents and analyzes gender differences in the individual
            portfolio choice and productivity of non-farm
            entrepreneurship. Except for Ethiopia, women are less likely
            than men to become nonfarm entrepreneurs. Women's
            nonfarm entrepreneurship isn't strongly correlated with
            household composition or educational attainment, but is
            especially prevalent amongst women who are the head of their
            household. Female-led firms are much smaller and less
            productive on average, though gender differences in
            productivity vary dramatically across countries. Mean
            differences in log output per worker suggest that male firms
            are roughly 10 times as productive as female firms in
            Bangladesh, three times as those in Ethiopia and twice as
            those in Sri Lanka. By contrast, no significant differences
            in labor productivity were detected in Indonesia.
            Differences in output per worker are overwhelmingly
            accounted for by sorting by sector and size. They can't
            be explained by differences in capital intensity, human
            capital or the local investment climate, nor by increasing
            returns to scale.
Green Growth : an exploratory review
The concept of "Green Growth"
            is a focus of much interest and considerable debate among
            decision makers concerned with enhancing both nearer-term
            economic progress and longer-term environmental
            sustainability. Proponents of Green Growth emphasize not
            only the need to protect various forms of natural capital to
            sustain improvements in material living standards and
            poverty reduction, but also the potential for strategically
            crafted environmental policies to achieve sustainability at
            low cost, perhaps even to help stimulate growth. However,
            there has been so far relatively little exploration of the
            analytical underpinnings of Green Growth, or its
            ambiguities. An exploratory investigation of the goals and
            underlying assumptions embedded in various conceptions of
            Green Growth facilitates consideration of how they might be
            interpreted vis-à-vis standard principles of intertemporal
            economic efficiency, including the value of the environment.
            Several plausible potential channels are identified for how
            synergy between economic growth and environmental
            sustainability might be more extensive than implied by
            standard economic theory. However, it is not possible to
            address their practical significance without more empirical
            research than is currently available. Consequently, some
            claims of substantial win-win opportunities between growth
            and the environment may be premature.
Financing infrastructure and
            monitoring fiscal risks at the subnational level
This paper explores the building blocks
            of an institutional framework to govern borrowing by
            subnational entities to finance infrastructure investment.
            The framework should help in achieving sustainable financing
            of development needs and sound management of fiscal risks.
            Based on international experience, the authors suggest a
            minimum set of indicators for monitoring fiscal and debt
            developments. Recognizing the different nature and
            operations of the subnational entities, they propose
            specific indicators for special purpose vehicles and the
            government's general budget. The paper outlines an
            analytical framework to inform policy decisions concerning
            subnational debt limits, which are country-specific and
            should not be mechanically applied. Basic notions
            underpinning medium-term macro-fiscal frameworks and debt
            sustainability analyses provide effective guidance for
            identifying prudent levels of subnational debt. The authors
            argue that developing fiscal and debt indicators and setting
            borrowing limits should be part of a broader strategy to put
            in place an adequate fiscal architecture to coordinate and
            monitor the budgetary and borrowing policies conducted by
            individual subnational governments. Consistent with this
            general principle, they explore several areas of subnational
            public finance and management that need to be addressed with
            adequate governance structures and policy choices.