rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Containing systemic risk :
            paradigm-based perspectives on regulatory reform
Financial crises can happen for a
            variety of reasons: (a) nobody really understands what is
            going on (the collective cognition paradigm); (b) some
            understand better than others and take advantage of their
            knowledge (the asymmetric information paradigm); (c)
            everybody understands, but crises are a natural part of the
            financial landscape (the costly enforcement paradigm); or
            (d) everybody understands, yet no one acts because private
            and social interests do not coincide (the collective action
            paradigm). The four paradigms have different and often
            conflicting prudential policy implications. This paper
            proposes and discusses three sets of reforms that would give
            due weight to the insights from the collective action and
            collective cognition paradigms by redrawing the regulatory
            perimeter to internalize systemic risk without promoting
            dynamic regulatory arbitrage; introducing a truly systemic
            liquidity regulation that moves away from a purely
            idiosyncratic focus on maturity mismatches; and building up
            the supervisory function while avoiding the pitfalls of
            expanded official oversight.
History of events and
            life-satisfaction in transition countries
Using Life in Transition Survey data for
            27 transition countries, the findings of this paper suggest
            that higher life satisfaction is correlated with lesser
            experience of unpleasant events such as labor market shock
            or economic distress, mostly in the recent past. Social
            capital such as trust, participation in civic groups, and
            financial stability lead to higher satisfaction, whereas
            lower relative position to a reference group leaves one with
            lower life satisfaction. The paper also finds substantial
            regional variation in life satisfaction between European,
            Balkan, and lower and middle-income Commonwealth of
            Independent States. Finally, after controlling for various
            events that took place during the interview and the nature
            of refusal of the respondents across countries, the authors
            show that reported life satisfaction is lower if the
            emotional state is negative during the interview.
Do procurement rules impact
            infrastructure investment efficiency an empirical analysis
            of inversao das fases in Sao Paulo state
As a means to reduce delays in public
            works implementation, a number of Brazilian states have
            recently reformed their procurement rules allowing
            contractor price proposals to be assessed before the
            technical evaluation of submitted bids is undertaken (in a
            procedure known as inversao das fases). In order to evaluate
            the effects of such reform, this paper adopts a
            difference-in-differences methodology to compare the
            procurement performance of Sao Paulo state (a reformer
            state) and Minas Gerais' (a non-reformer state) largest
            water and sewage utility along three efficiency dimensions:
            (i) procurement process duration; (ii) likelihood of
            complaint resolution litigation; and (iii) prices paid to
            contractors. The analysis finds that the reform is
            associated with a 24 day reduction in the duration of
            procurement processes for large projects and a 7 percentage
            point drop in the likelihood of court challenges
            irrespective of project size. Although both effects are
            economically important, only the latter is statistical
            significant. Finally, the paper finds no evidence of an
            effect of the procurement reform on prices paid.
Equity and public governance in
            health system reform : challenges and opportunities for China
Achieving the objective of China's
            current health system reform, namely equitable improvements
            in health outcomes, will be difficult not least because of
            the continuously growing income disparities in the country.
            The analysis in this paper shows that since 2000, disparity
            in selected health outcomes has been declining across
            provinces, largely due to earmarked central government
            allocations. By contrast, public expenditure on health is
            increasingly regressive (positively correlated with local
            income per capita) across provinces, and across prefectures
            and lower levels within provinces. The increasing inequity
            in public expenditure at sub-national levels indicates that
            incentives, responsibilities, and resources at sub-national
            levels are not well aligned with China's national
            priorities. To address the weaknesses in equity and
            efficiency that characterize China's health system and
            health outcomes, China's health system reform may
            require complementary reforms to improve governance for
            public service delivery across sectors.
Crossing the threshold : an analysis
            of IBRD graduation policy
According to World Bank policy,
            countries remain eligible to borrow from the International
            Bank for Reconstruction and Development until they are able
            to sustain long-term development without further recourse to
            Bank financing. Graduation from the Bank is not an automatic
            consequence of reaching a particular income level, but
            rather is supposed to be based on a determination of whether
            the country has reached a level of institutional development
            and capital-market access that enables it to sustain its own
            development process without recourse to Bank funding. This
            paper assesses how International Bank for Reconstruction and
            Development graduation policy operates in practice,
            investigating what income and non-income factors appear to
            have influenced graduation decisions in recent decades,
            based on panel data for 1982 through 2008. Explanatory
            variables include the per-capita income of the country, as
            well as measures of institutional development and market
            access that are cited as criteria by the graduation policy,
            and other plausible explanatory variables that capture the
            levels of economic development and vulnerability of the
            country. The authors find that the observed correlates of
            Bank graduation are generally consistent with the stated
            policy. Countries that are wealthier, more creditworthy,
            more institutionally developed, and less vulnerable to
            shocks are more likely to have graduated. Predicted
            probabilities generated by the model correspond closely to
            the actual graduation and de-graduation experiences of most
            countries (such as Korea and Trinidad and Tobago), and
            suggest that Hungary and Latvia may have graduated
            prematurely -- a prediction consistent with their subsequent
            return to borrowing from the Bank in the wake of the global
            financial crisis.
An empirical investigation of the
            nexus among money balances, commodity prices and consumer
            goods' prices
This paper aims to identify the nexus
            between the excess of liquidity in the United States and
            commodity prices over the 1983-2006 period. In particular,
            it assesses whether commodity prices react more powerfully
            than consumer goods' prices to changes in real money
            balances. Within a cointegrated vector autoregressive
            framework, the author investigates whether consumer prices
            and commodity prices react to excess liquidity, and if the
            different price elasticities of supply for goods and
            commodities allow for differences in the dynamic paths of
            price adjustment to a liquidity shock. The results show a
            positive relationship between real money and real commodity
            prices and provide empirical evidence for a stronger
            response of commodity prices with respect to consumer
            goods' prices. This could imply that, if the magnitude
            of the reaction is due the fact that consumer goods'
            prices are slower to react, then their long-run value can be
            predicted with the help of commodity prices. The findings
            support the view that the latter should be considered as a
            valid monetary indicator.
Determinants and dynamics of
            schooling and child labor in Bolivia
This paper investigates the determinants
            of primary school enrollment, attendance and child labor in
            Bolivia from 1999 to 2007. The analysis also aims at
            identifying the substitution and complementary relationships
            between schooling and working. Although enrollment rates
            show a significant improvement, lack of attendance remains
            an issue. The empirical results reveal that the increase in
            enrollment is led by indigenous children and those living in
            urban areas. Moreover, contrary to common belief, being
            extremely poor and indigenous are the main determinants of
            school attendance. Although extremely poor children
            increased their school attendance, they were not able to
            reduce child labor. However, for indigenous children school
            attendance and child labor were substitutes, increasing
            schooling and reducing child labor.
Are rural road investments alone
            sufficient to generate transport flows lessons from a
            randomized experiment in rural Malawi and policy implications
This paper draws lessons from an
            original randomized experiment in Malawi. In order to
            understand why roads in relatively good condition in rural
            areas may not be used by buses, a minibus service was
            subsidized over a six-month period over a distance of 20
            kilometers to serve five villages. Using randomly allocated
            prices for use of the bus, this experiment demonstrates that
            at very low prices, bus usage is high. Bus usage decreases
            rapidly with increased prices. However, based on the results
            on take-up and minibus provider surveys, the experiment
            demonstrates that at any price, low (with high usage) or
            high (with low usage), a bus service provider never breaks
            even on this road. This can contribute to explain why
            walking or cycling is so widespread on most rural roads in
            Sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of policy implications, this
            experiment explains that motorized services need to be
            subsidized; otherwise a road in good condition will most
            probably not lead to provision of service at an affordable
            price for the local population.
Small and medium enterprises : a
            cross-country analysis with a new data set
In the aftermath of the global financial
            crisis of 2008-2009, there has been an increased interest in
            the role of small and medium enterprises in job creation and
            economic growth. However the lack of consistent indicators
            at the country level restricts extensive cross-country
            analyses of lending to small and medium enterprises. This
            paper introduces a new dataset to fill this gap in the small
            and medium enterprise data landscape. In addition, it
            provides the first set of results of analyses with this new
            dataset, predicting the global small and medium enterprise
            lending volume to be $10 trillion. The bulk of this volume,
            70 percent, is in high-income countries. On average, small
            and medium enterprise loans constitute 13 percent of gross
            domestic product in developed countries and 3 percent in
            developing countries. Note that although a unique small and
            medium enterprise definition does not exist, differences in
            definitions across countries are not statistically
            significant in explaining the differences in small and
            medium enterprise lending volumes.
Access to financial services and the
            financial inclusion agenda around the world : a
            cross-country analysis with a new data set
Recent empirical evidence highlights
            that access to basic financial services can make a
            substantial positive difference in improving poor
            people's lives. Accordingly, financial sector reforms
            that promote financial inclusion are increasingly at the
            core of policymakers agendas. The Consultative Group to
            Assist the Poor and the World Bank Group, in response,
            launched the Financial Access project, including a
            cross-country database on financial inclusion topics and an
            annual report to inform the policy debate. Using this
            database, this paper (i) counts the number of unbanked
            adults around the world at 56 percent, (ii) analyzes the
            state of access to deposit and loan services as well as the
            extent of retail networks, and (iii) discusses the state of
            financial inclusion mandates around the world.
Toward a sustainable global energy
            supply infrastructure : net energy balance and density considerations
This paper complements previous work on
            the economics of different energy resources by examining the
            growth potential of alternative electricity supply
            infrastructures as constrained by innate physical limits.
            Coal-fired generation meets the criteria of longevity
            (abundance of energy source) and scalability (effective
            capability to expand to the multi-terawatt level) which are
            critical for a sustainable energy supply chain, but it
            carries a very heavy carbon footprint. Renewables and
            nuclear power meet both the longevity and climate
            friendliness criteria. However, they vary in terms of their
            ability to deliver net energy at a scale needed for meeting
            a huge global energy demand. The low density of renewable
            resources for electricity generation and the current
            intermittency of many renewables limit their ability to
            achieve high rates of growth. And a significant global
            increase in nuclear power deployment could engender serious
            risks related to proliferation, safety, and waste disposal.
            Unlike renewable sources of energy, nuclear power is an
            unforgiving technology because human lapses and errors can
            have ecological and social impacts that are catastrophic and
            irreversible. The transition to a low carbon economy is
            likely to prove much more challenging than some optimists
            have claimed.
Sunk costs, market contestability,
            and the size distribution of firms
This paper offers a new economic
            explanation for the observed inter-industry differences in
            the size distribution of firms. The empirical
            estimates--based on three temporal (1982, 1987, and 1992)
            cross-sections of the four-digit United States manufacturing
            industries--indicate that increased market contestability,
            as signified by low sunk costs, tends to reduce the
            dispersion of firm sizes. These findings provide support for
            one of the key predictions of the theory of contestable
            markets: that market forces under contestability would tend
            to render any inefficient organization of the industry
            unsustainable and, consequently, tighten the distribution of
            firms around the optimum.
Self-regulation in securities markets
This paper canvasses the trends in
            self-regulation and the role of self-regulation in
            securities markets in different parts of the world. The
            paper also describes the conditions in which self-regulation
            might be an effective element of securities markets
            regulation, particularly in emerging markets. Use of
            self-regulation and self-regulatory organizations is often
            recommended in emerging markets as part of a broader
            strategy aimed at improving the effectiveness of securities
            regulation and market integrity. According to the
            International Organization of Securities Commissions,
            reliance on self-regulation is an optional feature of a
            regulatory regime. Self-regulatory organizations may support
            better-regulated and more efficient capital markets, but the
            value of self-regulation is again being questioned in many
            countries. Forces such as commercialization of exchanges,
            development of stronger statutory regulatory authorities,
            consolidation of financial services industry regulatory
            bodies, and globalization of capital markets are affecting
            the scope and effectiveness of self-regulation -- and in
            particular the traditional role of securities exchanges as
            self-regulatory organizations.The paper reviews different
            models of self-regulation, including exchange
            self-regulatory organizations, member (or independent)
            self-regulatory organizations, and industry or dealers
            associations. It draws on examples of self-regulatory
            organizations from many markets to illustrate the degree of
            reliance on self-regulation, as well as the range of
            functions for which self-regulatory organizations are
            responsible, in markets around the world. Issues that are
            important to the effective operation of self-regulatory
            organizations are discussed, such as corporate governance,
            managing conflicts of interest, and regulatory oversight by
            government authorities.
Empowering women : the effect of
            women's decision-making power on reproductive health
            services uptake -- evidence from Pakistan
A large body of research has attempted
            to explore the links between women's autonomy and their
            uptake of reproductive health services in the South Asia
            region, but the evidence so far is inconclusive. This study
            uses the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement
            Survey to examine the influence of household decision making
            on women's uptake of reproductive health services. The
            analysis finds that women's decision-making power has a
            significant positive correlation with reproductive health
            services uptake and that influential males'
            decision-making power has the opposite effect, after
            controlling for socio-economic indicators and supply-side
            conditions. The findings suggest that empowering women and
            increasing their ability to make decisions may increase
            their uptake of reproductive health services. They also
            suggest that policies directed toward improving women's
            utilization of maternity services must target men as well as
            women in Pakistan.
Challenges for youth employment in
            Pakistan : are they youth-specific
This paper analyzes the patterns of and
            the challenges for youth employment in Pakistan and examines
            whether these challenges are youth-specific. Using the
            2005/2006 Labor Force Survey, the analysis includes
            determinants of unemployment, determinants of working in the
            formal sector, rate of return on education, and determinants
            of working hours. The paper finds that many of the
            challenges to youth employment in Pakistan are not
            youth-specific. Policies should thus emphasize broader labor
            market reforms, even in the context of tackling youth
            employment issues. Still, some challenges are
            youth-specific, such as a higher youth unemployment rate and
            insufficient returns to better-educated youth. To address
            these challenges, more youth-specific interventions are needed.
Quantifying Carbon and
            distributional benefits of solar home system programs in Bangladesh
Scaling-up adoption of renewable energy
            technology, such as solar home systems, to expand
            electricity access in developing countries can accelerate
            the transition to low-carbon economic development. Using a
            purposely collected national household survey, this study
            quantifies the carbon and distributional benefits of solar
            home system programs in Bangladesh. Three key findings are
            generated from the study. First, dissemination of solar home
            systems brings about significant carbon benefits: the total
            carbon emissions avoided from replacing kerosene use for
            lighting by solar home systems in non-electrified rural
            households was equivalent to about 4 percent of total annual
            carbon emissions in Bangladesh in 2007. This figure
            increases to about 15 percent if the grid-electricity
            generation is used as the energy baseline to estimate the
            carbon avoided from the installation of solar home systems.
            Second, solar home system subsidies in rural Bangladesh are
            progressive when the program is geographically targeted.
            Third, there exists a market potential for solar home
            systems in many rural areas if micro-credit schemes are made
            available and the propensity to install solar home systems
            is very responsive to income, with a 1-percent increase in
            per capita income increasing the probability of installing
            solar home systems by 12 percent, controlling for other factors.
Foreign aid and business bottlenecks
            : a study of aid effectiveness
This paper proposes a new framework to
            analyze aid effectiveness. Using World Bank firm survey data
            and OECD aid flow data, the authors analyze whether aid
            targets areas that firms in developing countries have
            identified as obstacles for their growth and whether aid
            actually improves firms' perceptions of those areas.
            The analysis finds that aid does target the areas that firms
            have identified as obstacles; aid funding trade related
            projects is particularly effective in targeting the correct
            countries. For the most part, aid has a positive impact on
            improving firms' perceptions, particularly in the
            business environment. And for each target area, smaller aid
            disbursements tend to be more effective at improving firm
            perceptions than larger disbursements.