rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Providing social benefits in Russia
            : redefining the roles of firms and government
Russian firms commonly provide many
            nonmonetary benefits to workers, including such benefits as
            housing and some aspects of education and health care.
            Nonmonetary benefits may amount to 35 percent of labor
            costs, which is high compared with OECD countries. In a
            market economy, most of these benefits would be provided by
            local governments. The authors explain why the obvious
            solution - transferring social benefits and services from
            firms to local government or other agencies - is not so
            simple. At the same time, they outline the inefficiencies
            associated with firms providing such services and benefits.
            They explore the issues involved in calculating how social
            benefits should be divided between firms and the government
            and identify problems and options associated with the
            transition to a new division of rights and responsibilities.
            The main problem is housing. After a government decree in
            February 1993, steps have been taken to accelerate
            privatization, but they have been piecemeal. The main
            stumbling block is the financing and management of common
            property. The problem of free riders and the lack of an
            appropriate institutional setting is likely to exacerbate
            the problems of who handles and pays for common maintenance.
            The authors argue that a more systematic general program of
            divestiture in housing is essential. Part of this must be an
            explicitly new institutional arrangement for addressing the
            management problem. The quality of the housing stock varies
            greatly, so they suggest a scheme and possible financing for
            dampening the large scale effects of privatization and for
            ensuring a minimum level of quality for divested housing
            stock. They discuss the divestiture and related financing
            problems in a number of settings. What happens, for example,
            in a company town when the company ceases operation? Who
            covers benefits for the workers left without a job? What
            compensatory financial supports are provided in such a town,
            given existing budget arrangements?
Who would vote for inflation in
            Brazil : an integrated framework approach to inflation and
            income distribution
Most studies of how inflation affects
            income distribution focus only on wages or the inflation
            tax. The authors argue that this approach can be misleading
            as it ignores important channels through which inflation
            affects income distribution. The authors present an
            integrated framework that combines interest bearing assets
            with labor income and cash holdings. This allows them to
            describe clearly the conditions under which inflation will
            create gainers and losers. They apply the model to Brazil,
            which is a prime candidate for this exercise because its
            economy combines skewed income distribution and high
            inflation. They show that in Brazil inflation helped worsen
            income distribution in the 1980s. Their major findings
            follow. In 1980-1989, the inflation induced income loss for
            the lowest quintile in Brazil was an estimated 19 percent a
            year, of which 16 percent is attributable to the erosion of
            real wages and the rest to the inflation tax. During the
            same period, Brazil's middle class which lost close to
            30 percent of its annual income, was devastated because of
            its limited access to indexed assets. But the richest
            quintile managed to insulate itself from inflation by taking
            advantage of high real interest on demand deposits - without
            losing from reduced labor income. Had real assets and
            subsidized credits been considered in the analysis, the
            regressive effects on inflation would probably have been
            worse, say the authors. This raises a question: Do these
            findings about the distributional effects of inflation help
            explain Brazil's delays in adopting a stabilization program?
Recent estimates of capital flight
Researchers and policymakers have in
            recent years paid considerable attention to the phenomenon
            of capital flight. Researchers have focused on four
            questions: What concept should be used to measure capital
            flight? What figure for capital flight will emerge, using
            this measure? Can the occurrence and magnitude of capital
            flight be explained by certain (economic) variables? What
            policy changes can be useful to reverse capital flight? The
            authors focus strictly on presenting estimates of capital
            flight using a number of alternative methodologies. In their
            discussion of these methodologies, they show that although
            the approaches to measuring capital flight differ, the
            identities used in balance of payment data make them close
            in final measurement. In particular, the so-called World
            Bank residual and Dooley methods - presented in the past as
            very different approaches to measuring capital flight -
            actually produce similar measurements. The authors discuss
            the data used for calculating capital flight and the
            adjustment that must be made. They present aggregate capital
            flight figures using the various measures for 84 developing
            countries. The figures show a pattern of increasing capital
            flight until 1988, followed by a return of flight capital
            between 1989 and 1991. The authors present regional
            aggregates of capital flight and rank countries and regions
            by the level of capital flight relative to GDP. They find
            that capital flight is more widespread than commonly assumed
            and, relative to GDP, is rather evenly distributed. The
            capital flight-GDP Lorenz curve is above the 45-degree line,
            indicating that countries with a smaller GDP have more
            capital flight than one would expect if it were distributed
            proportionate to GDP.
Asian trade barriers against primary
            and processed commodities
Many developing countries are being
            encouraged to shift toward increased processing and exports
            of domestically produced natural resource based products now
            exported in primary form. But in many major markets, the
            structure of tariffs and nontariff barriers militate against
            such efforts. Zero or low tariffs are generally applied to
            industrial countries' imports of primary (unprocessed)
            commodities; duties increase, or "escalate", as
            the level of processing or fabrication increases. Tariff
            escalation produces a trade bias against processed goods. In
            the past, such trade barrier escalation has been attributed
            chiefly to industrial countries. The authors examined the
            structure of restrictions in Asian countries and found that
            most Asian countries' tariffs incorporated more
            escalation than do tariffs in industrial countries.
            Apparently tariff escalation is often reinforced by
            nontariff barriers on processed goods, although supporting
            data for this finding are less firm. This issue should be
            viewed as a North-South issue, contend the authors. A bias
            against imports of processed goods is built into trade
            barrier escalation among Asian countries and should be
            addressed in regional initiatives to liberalize intra-Asian
            trade barriers. The authors make three recommendations for
            dealing with escalation issues in multilateral negotiations:
            Japan, and to a lesser extent, the Republic of Korea are the
            keys to successful negotiations on these issues, as they
            have a far greater import bias against processed commodities
            than do all other countries with which the authors compare
            them. That is, Japanese and Korean trade barriers
            incorporate far more escalation than do trade barriers in
            other countries studied. Disproportionately high cuts in
            trade barriers for unprocessed commodities are not the
            solution, as they would increase effective protection for
            processed goodss. Any approach to trade liberalization
            should deal with both tariffs and nontariff barriers, to
            ensure that a reduction in one type of restriction is not
            offset by a further tightening in the other. Several Asian
            countries apply both types of restrictions to commodity imports.
How fast has Chinese industry grown
Data for recent years indicate an
            acceleration of Chinese industrial growth, from the annual
            rates of about 10 percent recorded in the quarter century
            before economic reform to figures approaching 15 percent in
            the mid- and late 1980s. Evaluating the statistics
            underlying these reports requires an appraisal of how
            economic reform has affected the ability of China's
            statistical system to measure economic performance.
            Erroneous information about the rate and pattern of
            industrial growth could distort measures of productivity
            change considered to be central indicators of the
            effectiveness of Chinese industrial reform. The author
            describes the statistical materials and procedures used to
            provide information on the growth of industrial output. He
            investigates sources of bias in the official statistics to
            indicate, whenever possible, how these biases affected
            reported output totals, and to appraise the impact of
            adjustments to reported output growth on measures of
            industrial productivity. The specific consequences of
            decentralized decisionmaking, growing price flexibility,
            inflation, dual pricing systems, the emergence of
            enterprises with few or no ties to the system of state
            planning, and other emerging features of the industrial
            system may be unique to China but the broader issues raised
            are relevant in many countries. The author finds
            considerable evidence of an upward bias in measures of
            China's real industrial output in the past decade. The
            issue is not whether such bias exists but whether its
            presence substantially alters our perception of the rate and
            pattern of Chinese industrial growth. To clarify this issue
            requires investigating the extent of possible upward bias.
            This in turn calls for an analysis of possible links between
            upward bias - which is itself difficult to observe - and
            other economic patterns that may be more readily measurable.
The behavior of Russian firms in
            1992 : evidence from a survey
The authors surveyed 41 firms in and
            around Moscow in the last two weeks of November 1992 to get
            an empirical handle on how firms are responding to the
            changing economic environment.  They found the following
            conclusions.  There were large negative (supply and demand)
            shocks to output for a significant number of firms and
            branches.  Profitability was remarkably buoyant in real
            terms.  There was clear evidence that firms with market
            power rapidly adjusted producer prices, trying to maintain
            or increase their markup.  There was no evidence of a
            strategic change in pricing rules.  Most firms experienced
            relative stability in earnings and in the distribution of
            revenues.  There was no substantial evidence of
            decapitalization - at least through greater borrowing or
            predatory wage settlements.  The upward shift in interfirm
            arrears was smaller than aggregate numbers might have led
            one to expect. Inertia in the wage system should not be
            ignored.  Real wages were cut back sharply by the great
            price shock of January 1992, but real statistical wages then
            climbed back toward early 1991 levels.  Benefits firms
            provided account for large shares of labor income and 40 to
            45 percent of firms' costs.  Firms may have tried to
            squeeze benefits particulary in housing, but allocations to
            the Social Fund have generally stayed constant. Employment
            adjustments were limited, despite the downward pressure on
            output and the lack of growth in firms surveyed.  Net
            employment separations were relatively restricted.  Firms
            continued to hire at significant rates in 1992, in part
            because of fixed factors technology, in part because of the
            reluctance of firms to discard workers.  Consequently, firms
            have shed few workers - mostly ancillary and clerical staff,
            usually women; some firms chose to place workers on minimum
            wages, reducing labor costs significantly.  The result is
            that unemployment benefits are provided de facto within the
            firms rather than through labor offices.  In short the
            status of the so-called production worker, the core of the
            Russian industrial firm, remains untouched. Clearly there
            was a large "employment overhang" at the end of
            1993.  The next stage of the transition will be difficult.
Equity and bond flows to Asia and
            Latin America : the role of global and country factors
The authors investigate what has
            motivated the large portfolio flows to several developing
            countries in recent years. Using monthly data on U.S.
            capital flows to nine Latin American and nine Asian
            countries (instead of monthly reserves data), they analyze
            the behavior of bond and equity flows to those countries.
            Using panel data, they find that global factors - such as a
            drop in U.S. interest rates and the slowdown in U.S.
            industrial production - are important in explaining capital
            inflows. But country developments are at least as important
            in determining those flows, especially for Asia. They also
            find that equity flows are more sensitive than bond flows to
            global factors, but that bond flows are generally more
            sensitive to a country's credit rating and to the
            secondary market price of debt.
Population, health, and nutrition :
            annual operational review for fiscal 1992
Population, health, and nutrition (PHN)
            lending decreased in fiscal 1992 from the record levels of
            fiscal 1991, in both the amount and the number of
            operations. Lending amounted to $961.6 million for 16
            projects, compared with $1,567.6 million for 28 projects in
            fiscal 1991. This temporary dip in PHN lending is
            attributable largely to pipeline factors. Fiscal 1993
            lending is projected to recapture if not exceed the fiscal
            1991 level, and projections for fiscal 1993 and fiscal 1995
            are for a continued increase in lending volume. PHN projects
            approved in fiscal 1992 have been responsive to the World
            Bank's objective of poverty alleviation. Collectively,
            fiscal 1992 projects cover the essential features of good
            poverty work but the depth and quality of poverty work
            varies across projects. Drawing from the good practices
            observed and lessons recorded in this year's portfolio,
            the review offers the following suggestions, among others,
            for strengthening PHN interventions to alleviate poverty:
            poverty information and monitoring must be accompanied by
            dissemination and sensitization activities to strengthen
            national understanding of poverty-related issues and
            national commitment to resolving them through the proper
            policy; community involvement in project design and
            development requires clearly defined and carefully designed
            institutional and procedural mechanisms, and a concerted
            effort to make them work; it is essential that PHN sector
            work identify poor and vulnerable groups and assess their
            needs and demands for basic health, family planning, and
            nutrition services; and even the most demand-driven project
            designs targeted to clearly identified poverty groups
            require promotional activities to ensure that these groups
            participate in and benefit from project initiatives. Health
            lending is now a decade old, and many innovations in PHN
            lending have emerged only in the past four or five years.
            This review demonstrates that good practices and new and
            promising ideas - well worth emulating - are scattered
            across PHN work. Overall, PHN work is moving in the right
            direction and the quality of work is generally seen to be
            improving. Welcome trends (which should be encouraged and
            reinforced) include serious attention to the poorest, most
            vulnerable populations, growing consideration of the demand
            of target groups, and increased attention to monitoring and
            evaluation of sector performance.
Should sub-Saharan Africa expand
            cotton exports
In the 1980s, cotton production in sub -
            Saharan Africa expanded significantly. Annual production
            growth averaged 4.7 percent between 1980 and 1990, compared
            with only 1.2 percent for 1964-79. At the same time, cotton
            exports grew an average 8 percent a year, compared with
            almost no growth between 1964 and 1979. Concern has been
            expressed, at the World Bank and elsewhere, about the
            adding-up problem of expanding exports for commodities that
            are highly price-inelastic. The concern has been that export
            expansion - as a result of project loans or structural
            adjustment programs - could lead to a fall in world prices
            and an overall reduction in export revenues. The authors
            assess whether expansion of cotton exports in sub - Saharan
            African countries has produced an adding-up problem. They
            test the hypothesis that export expansion has led, or will
            lead, to a decline in the terms of trade, which would offset
            any benefits from export expansion. Their results reject
            this hypothesis. Using comparative static analysis -
            comparing sub - Saharan Africa's export share with
            estimated world demand elasticies - they show that sub -
            Saharan Africa's 14 percent share of world exports is
            too small relative to the estimated price elasticity of
            demand (ranging from -0.2 to -0.3) to produce an adding-up
            problem. Using an econometric model of the world fibers
            market, the authors show that maintaining the high 1980s
            growth rate of cotton exports in the 1990s would increase
            sub-Saharan African export revenues more than 50 percent by
            the end of the decade, compared with base-case projections.
            And, except when the price elasticity of world cotton demand
            is lowered substantially below its estimated value,
            estimates of the elasticity of export revenue relative to
            export volume were close enough to unity for the authors to
            conclude that an adding-up problem does not exist for
            expanded cotton exports in sub-Saharan Africa. Their
            analysis also shows that the structural adjustment programs
            implemented in the 1980s are unlikely to have had a
            significant adverse impact on the world cotton market. A 20
            percent real devaluation for all of sub-Saharan Africa, for
            example, leads to an average 0.4 percent decline in the
            world price of cotton, while a 20 percent increase in
            producer cotton prices in all sub-Saharan African countries
            leads to a 0.8 percent decline in the world price.
The economic impact of military expenditures
The author addresses three questions
            about military spending in developing countries: What are
            the levels of (and trends in) military spending as a
            percentage of gross national product? What impact does
            peacetime military spending have on growth, government
            spending on social welfare and infrastructure, and other key
            economic variables? What major factors influence the level
            of military spending? The author finds that military
            spending as a share of GNP generally fell in the 1980s, even
            in the Middle East and North Africa. The mean level of
            military expenditure as a share of GNP (MES) was 3.9
            percent, well below the peak of 5.3 percent in 1976. In
            1989, MES averaged only 2.7 percent in Latin America and 2.0
            percent in sub-Saharan Africa - the two regions with the
            most severe economic problems. He finds no evidence of a
            negative relationship between military spending as a share
            of GNP and the peacetime growth rate of developing countries
            - except where military spending is high. He finds that
            higher shares of MES are not associated with lower shares of
            government spending on education, health, and
            infrastructure. As MES increases, government spending as a
            share of GNP increases, which allows the level of spending
            on health, education, and infrastructure to be maintained.
            The author finds some evidence that increased military
            spending in the developing countries has a weak negative
            impact on investment and the balance of trade. He finds no
            evidence of a statistically significant relationship between
            military spending and inflation. The most important
            determinant of peacetime military spending is the spending
            level of neighboring countries - in other words, the
            potential external threat. Regional conciliation and
            disarmament may be an important step toward reduced military spending.