rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Gender differences in poverty and
            household composition through the life-cycle : a global perspective
This paper uses household surveys from
            89 countries to look at gender differences in poverty in the
            developing world. In the absence of individual-level poverty
            data, the paper looks at what can we learn in terms of
            gender differences by looking at the available individual
            and household level information. The estimates are based on
            the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank
            poverty estimates. The paper focuses on the relationship
            between age, sex and poverty. And finds that, girls and
            women of reproductive age are more likely to live in poor
            households (below the international poverty line) than boys
            and men. It finds that 122 women between the ages of 25 and
            34 live in poor households for every 100 men of the same age
            group. The analysis also examines the household profiles of
            the poor, seeking to go beyond headship definitions. Using a
            demographic household composition shows that nuclear family
            households of two married adults and children account for 41
            percent of poor households, and are the most frequent
            household where poor women are found. Using an economic
            household composition classification, households with a male
            earner, children and a non-income earner spouse are the most
            frequent among the poor at 36 percent, and the more frequent
            household where poor women live. For individuals, as well as
            for households, the presence of children increases the
            household likelihood to be poor, and this has a specific
            impact on women, but does not fully explain the observed
            female poverty penalty.
Analysis of the mismatch between
            Tanzania household budget survey and national panel survey
            data in poverty and inequality levels and trends
This study carries out a thorough
            investigation of the potential sources of mismatch in
            poverty and inequality levels and trends between the
            Tanzania National Panel Survey and Household Budget Survey.
            The main findings of the study include the following. First,
            the difference in poverty levels between the Household
            Budget Survey and the National Panel Survey is essentially
            explained by the differences in the methods of estimating
            the poverty line. Second, the discrepancy in poverty trends
            can be mainly attributed to the difference in inter-year
            temporal price deflators, and, to a lesser extent, spatial
            price deflators. The use of the consumer price index for
            adjusting consumption variation across years would show a
            decline in poverty during the past five years for the
            Household Budget Survey and the National Panel Survey.
            Third, despite noticeable differences in the methods of
            household consumption data collection, the Household Budget
            Survey and National Panel Survey show close mean household
            consumption levels in the last rounds, when using the
            consumer price index to adjust for inter-year price
            variations. Mean household consumption levels in the
            Household Budget Survey 2011/12 and National Panel Survey
            2010/11 are comparable, and the mean consumption level in
            the National Panel Survey 2012/13 is around 10 percent
            higher. The difference is driven by higher levels of
            aggregate and food consumption by the better-off groups in
            the National Panel Survey. Fourth, the mismatch in
            inequality trends and pro-poor growth patterns between the
            two surveys could not be resolved and is a subject for
            further analysis.
International competition, returns
            to skill, and labor market adjustment
Does increased import competition lead
            to higher returns to skill within an industry and,
            therefore, to greater incentives for skill acquisition? Does
            it also induce skill upgrading by the industry’s existing
            workforce? To answer these questions, this paper follows
            individual workers across skills/occupations, firms, and
            industries using a longitudinal matched employer-employee
            data set covering all workers and firms in Portugal over
            1986-2000. To identify the effects of international
            competition the analysis uses two exogenous measures of
            changes in international competition at the industry level.
            The first is a quasi-natural experiment based on the strong
            appreciation of the Portuguese currency during 1989-1992 and
            preexisting differences in trade exposure across industries
            in a differences-in-differences estimation. The second is
            source-weighted real exchange rates defined at the industry
            level. Based on both empirical strategies, and two
            definitions of skill, the paper shows that international
            competition increases returns to skill and induces
            skill/occupation upgrading within industries.
Impact of U.S. market access on
            local labor markets in Vietnam
This paper examines the impact of U.S.
            market access on local labor markets in a developing
            country, Vietnam. The study finds that following the
            implementation of the Vietnam–United States bilateral trade
            agreement in December 2001, manufacturing employment
            increased in provinces that were more exposed to U.S. tariff
            cuts. In those provinces, employment also increased in many
            service sectors, reflecting strong spillovers of job gains.
            The new job opportunities have attracted labor from
            agriculture, thus reducing agricultural employment. The
            paper examines three possible channels of job gain
            spillovers, namely, demand, production, and real estate.
            Although there is evidence for all three channels, the
            demand channel is the most important.
Giving Sisyphus a helping hand :
            pathways for sustainable RIA systems in developing countries
Regulatory impact assessment is a tool
            used by governments to support evidence-based and
            coordinated policy making. This paper contributes to the
            debate on regulatory impact assessment in developing
            countries by addressing the lack of a systematic account of
            reforms, and the lack of a comprehensive explanatory account
            of reform outcomes. The study first maps developing
            countries' regulatory impact assessment reforms between
            2001 and 2016. In total, 60 reforms are identified. Reform
            design is analyzed by measuring adherence to six
            internationally recognized "good practices." The
            study then assesses whether the reforms -- two years or more
            after they were launched -- led to functioning regulatory
            impact assessment systems. Of the 60 reforms, 20 led to
            functional systems within two years of the conclusion of the
            reform. Three reforms were too recent to be assessed. The
            study shows that adherence to good practices is a necessary
            but not sufficient condition for early success. Among the
            six good practices, two are shown to be particularly
            decisive for the success of regulatory impact assessment
            reforms, namely, formal integration of regulatory impact
            assessment in policy making and the presence of a regulatory
            oversight unit. The second part of the study analyzes
            regulatory impact assessment reforms that did not produce
            early success despite adhering to good practices. The study
            tests several hypothetical reasons for slow developments. It
            points to the importance of donor flexibility and patience
            and the need for building reform constituencies inside and
            outside government. The traditional orthodoxy of regulatory
            impact assessment reforms as an extension of red tape
            reduction is challenged. The paper finally presents several
            possible policy implications of the findings.
Long-run impacts of increasing
            tobacco taxes : evidence from South Africa
Tobacco taxes are considered an
            effective policy tool to reduce tobacco consumption and
            produce long-run benefits that outweigh the costs associated
            with a price increase. Through this policy, some of the most
            adverse effects and economic costs of smoking can be
            reduced, including shorter life expectancy, higher medical
            expenses, added years of disability among smokers, and the
            effects of secondhand smoke. Nonetheless, tobacco taxes are
            often considered regressive because low-income households
            tend to allocate a larger share of their budgets to
            purchasing tobacco products. This paper uses an extended
            cost-benefit analysis to estimate the distributional effect
            of tobacco taxes on household welfare in South Africa. The
            analysis considers the effect on household income through an
            increase in tobacco prices, changes in medical expenses, and
            the prolongation of working years. The results indicate that
            a rise in tobacco prices initially generates negative income
            variations across all groups in the population. If benefits
            through lower medical expenses and an expansion in working
            years are considered, the negative effect is reduced,
            particularly in medium- and upper-bound elasticities.
            Consequently, the aggregate net effect is progressive and
            benefits the bottom deciles more than the richer ones.
            Overall, tobacco tax increases exert a small, but positive
            effect in the presence of low conditional tobacco price
            elasticity. If the population is more responsive to tobacco
            price changes (or participation elasticity estimates are
            included), then they would experience even more gains from
            the health and work benefits. More research is needed to
            clarify the distributional effects of tobacco taxation in
            South Africa.
An evaluation of the contributing
            factors of water scheme failures in Nigeria
This paper utilizes information from the
            2015 Nigeria National Water and Sanitation Survey to
            identify the extent and timing of the failure of water
            schemes in the country and the factors affecting it. Around
            46 percent of all the water schemes in Nigeria are
            nonfunctional, and approximately 30 percent are likely to
            fail in the first year. The results indicate that during the
            first year of operation, factors that can be controlled in
            the design, implementation, and operational stages
            contribute to the failure of 61 percent of the water
            schemes. As water schemes age, their likelihood of failure
            is best predicted by factors that cannot be modified. The
            influence of operational factors, such as repairs and
            maintenance, decreases slightly over time.
The speed of justice
Can procedural reforms improve judicial
            efficiency? And do improvements in judicial efficiency
            benefit firms? The authors study a reform that gave judges
            in Senegal the powers to desk reject cases and the
            responsibility to complete pre-trials within four months.
            They combine three years of hearing-level caseload data and
            monthly firm tax filings with the staggered roll-out of the
            reform to produce three key results. First, the reform
            improved judicial efficiency, with no detrimental effect on
            quality. Second, firms' monthly revenues drop by 8-11
            percent upon entering pre-trial. Third, completing pre-trial
            within four months significantly reduces this negative
            impact on revenues. Survey results show firms are willing to
            pay higher legal fees to achieve post-reform speed,
            suggesting net positive benefits of the reform on firms.
Eyes in the sky, boots on the ground
            : assessing satellite- and ground-based approaches to crop
            yield measurement and analysis in Uganda
Crop yields in smallholder systems are
            traditionally assessed using farmer-reported information in
            surveys, occasionally by crop cuts for a sub-section of a
            farmer's plot, and rarely using full-plot harvests.
            Accuracy and cost vary dramatically across methods. In
            parallel, satellite data is improving in terms of spatial,
            temporal, and spectral resolution needed to discern
            performance on smallholder plots. This study uses data from
            a survey experiment in Uganda, and evaluates the accuracy of
            Sentinel-2 imagery-based, remotely-sensed plot-level maize
            yields with respect to ground-based measures relying on
            farmer self-reporting, sub-plot crop cutting (CC), and
            full-plot crop cutting (FP). Remotely-sensed yields include
            two versions calibrated to FP and CC yields (calibrated),
            and an alternative based on crop model simulations, using no
            ground data (uncalibrated). On the ground, self-reported
            yields explained less than 1 percent of FP (and CC) yield
            variability, and while the average difference between CC and
            FP yields was not significant, CC yields captured
            one-quarter of FP yield variability. With satellite data,
            both calibrated and uncalibrated yields captured FP yield
            variability on pure stand plots similarly well, and both
            captured half of FP yield variability on pure stand plots
            above 0.10 hectare. The uncalibrated yields were
            consistently 1 ton per hectare higher than FP or CC yields,
            and the satellite-based yields were less well correlated
            with the ground-based measures on intercropped plots
            compared with pure stand ones. Importantly, regressions
            using CC, FP and remotely-sensed yields as dependent
            variables all produced very similar coefficients for yield
            response to production factors.
Risk preferences and the decision to
            flee conflict
Despite the growing numbers of forcibly
            displaced persons worldwide, many people living under
            conflict choose not to flee. Individuals face two lotteries
            -- staying or leaving -- characterized by two distributions
            of potential outcomes. This paper proposes to model the
            choice between these two lotteries using quantile
            maximization as opposed to expected utility theory. The
            paper posits that risk-averse individuals aim at minimizing
            losses by choosing the lottery with the best outcome at the
            lower end of the distribution, whereas risk-tolerant
            individuals aim at maximizing gains by choosing the lottery
            with the best outcome at the higher end of the distribution.
            Using a rich set of household and conflict panel data from
            Nigeria, the paper finds that risk-tolerant individuals have
            a significant preference for staying and risk-averse
            individuals have a significant preference for fleeing, in
            line with the predictions of the quantile maximization
            model. These findings are contrary to findings on economic
            migrants, and call for separate policies toward economic and
            forced migrants.
Asymmetric information on
            noncognitive skills in the Indian labor market : an
            experiment in online job portal
This paper examines the impact of
            noncognitive (socio-emotional) skills on job market
            outcomes, using a randomized control trial implemented in an
            online job portal in India. Job seekers who registered in
            the portal were asked to take a Big-Five type personality
            test and, for a random subsample of the test takers, the
            results were displayed to potential employers. The outcomes
            are measured by whether a potential employer shortlisted a
            job seeker by opening (unlocking) his/her application and
            background information. The results show that the treatment
            group for whom test results were shown generally enjoyed a
            higher probability of unlock. That is, employers are more
            interested in those for whom they can see personality test
            results. Such a relationship was not seen in the pre-test
            period, which confirms that the results are unlikely to be
            spurious. The study also finds a significant impact among
            organized, calm, imaginative, and/or quiet applicants (no
            effect is detected among easy-going, sensitive, realistic,
            and/or outgoing applicants), which seems to display
            employers' preference.
Reflections of employers'
            gender preferences in job ads in India : an analysis of
            online job portal data
Using online job portal data and
            probabilistic regression estimations, the paper investigates
            the explicit gender bias and salary gap in the Indian job
            market, reflected in more than 800,000 job recruitment
            advertisements. Exploring formal and informal sector
            occupations, the study finds high existence of
            employers' gender bias in hiring. Explicit gender
            preferences are highly job specific, and it is common to
            mention the preferred gender in job ads, which, in general,
            favor men over women. Although ads for professional
            occupations exhibit less explicit gender bias, they are not
            gender neutral. In all types of professional jobs,
            irrespective of the share of ads with preference for men or
            women, on average, ads targeting men specify/offer much
            higher salary. Employers in elementary sectors as well as
            blue-collar jobs express more segregated gender preference.
            The findings support the existing research that argues women
            are more preferred in low-quality, low-status, typically
            low-paid informal jobs. Targeting women for low-quality jobs
            explains half of the mean offered salary gap specified in
            ads; the rest is direct gender bias. The paper also suggests
            that, with the rise of new technology and sectors, gender
            bias in hiring in those new types of jobs is expected to decline.
Fiscal incentives and firm
            performance : evidence from the Dominican Republic
This paper evaluates the impact of
            fiscal incentives on firm performance in the Dominican
            Republic. In recent years, the Dominican government has
            approved several new corporate tax benefits. While the
            literature on value-added tax incentives is extensive, the
            impact of corporate tax incentives is less well studied and
            is the subject of an ongoing debate. Using firm-level panel
            data from 2006 to 2015, this analysis uses fixed- and
            random-effects models to examine the relationship between
            corporate tax incentives and selected firm-level performance
            indicators. The results reveal that corporate income tax
            exemptions positively impact the performance of individual
            firms in the Dominican Republic, but uneven tax treatment
            across firms distorts competition in the industrial sector,
            with negative effects on overall economic productivity.
Access to employment and property
            values in Mexico
Location is one of the main
            characteristics households consider when buying a property
            or deciding where to live, since it determines accessibility
            to employment subcenters and public transport stations.
            Using a geographically-referenced data set on new housing
            developments, this paper estimates how households value
            accessibility in Mexico City. The results are shown
            considering road accessibility to formal employment
            subcenters (private accessibility) and distance to the main
            public transport stations in the city (public
            accessibility). The results suggest that accessibility to
            employment subcenters is considered an amenity for
            households, while being closer to a Metro station is
            perceived as a dis-amenity. Moreover, households located in
            neighborhoods with a greater proportion of informal workers
            and lower education levels give a lower value to private
            accessibility than households located in neighborhoods with
            a lower proportion of informal workers or in high-educated
            neighborhoods. These results are evidence of the existence
            of spatial segregation in the city, where disadvantaged
            households are segregated not only because of their economic
            conditions, but also because they are located farther away
            from employment opportunities.