rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Perceptions of environmental risks
            in Mozambique : implications for the success of adaptation
            and coping strategies
Policies to promote adaptation climate
            risks often rely on the willing cooperation of the intended
            beneficiaries. If these beneficiaries disagree with policy
            makers and programme managers about the need for adaptation,
            or the effectiveness of the measures they are being asked to
            undertake, then implementation of the policies will fail. A
            case study of a resettlement programme in Mozambique shows
            this to be the case. Farmers and policy-maker disagreed
            about the seriousness of climate risks, and the potential
            negative consequences of proposed adaptive measures. A
            project to provide more information about climate change to
            farmers did not change their beliefs. The results highlight
            the need for active dialog across stakeholder groups, as a
            necessary condition for formulating policies that can then
            be successfully implemented.
Exports and productivity -
            comparable evidence for 14 countries
The authors use comparable micro level
            panel data for 14 countries and a set of identically
            specified empirical models to investigate the relationship
            between exports and productivity. The overall results are in
            line with the big picture that is by now familiar from the
            literature: Exporters are more productive than non-exporters
            when observed and unobserved heterogeneity are controlled
            for, and these exporter productivity premia tend to increase
            with the share of exports in total sales; there is strong
            evidence in favour of self-selection of more productive
            firms into export markets, but nearly no evidence in favour
            of the learning-by-exporting hypothesis. The authors
            document that the exporter premia differ considerably across
            countries in identically specified empirical models. In a
            meta-analysis of their results the authors find that
            countries that are more open and have more effective
            government report higher productivity premia. However, the
            level of development per se does not appear to be an
            explanation for the observed cross-country differences.
Insurance, credit, and technology
            adoption : field experimental evidence from Malawi
The adoption of new agricultural
            technologies may be discouraged because of their inherent
            riskiness. This study implemented a randomized field
            experiment to ask whether the provision of insurance against
            a major source of production risk induces farmers to take
            out loans to invest in a new crop variety. The study sample
            was composed of roughly 800 maize and groundnut farmers in
            Malawi, where by far the dominant source of production risk
            is the level of rainfall. We randomly selected half of the
            farmers to be offered credit to purchase high-yielding
            hybrid maize and improved groundnut seeds for planting in
            the November 2006 crop season. The other half of the farmers
            were offered a similar credit package but were also required
            to purchase (at actuarially fair rates) a weather insurance
            policy that partially or fully forgave the loan in the event
            of poor rainfall. Surprisingly, take up was lower by 13
            percentage points among farmers offered insurance with the
            loan. Take-up was 33.0 percent for farmers who were offered
            the uninsured loan. There is suggestive evidence that the
            reduced take-up of the insured loan was due to the high
            cognitive cost of evaluating the insurance: insured loan
            take-up was positively correlated with farmer education
            levels. By contrast, the take-up of the uninsured loan was
            uncorrelated with farmer education.
Distributional effects of
            educational improvements :are we using the wrong model
Measuring the incidence of public
            spending in education requires an intergenerational
            framework distinguishing between what current and future
            generations - that is, parents and children - give and
            receive. In standard distributional incidence analysis,
            households are assumed to receive a benefit equal to what is
            spent on their children enrolled in the public schooling
            system and, implicitly, to pay a fee proportional to their
            income. This paper shows that, in an intergenerational
            framework, this is equivalent to assuming perfectly
            altruistic individuals, in the sense of the dynastic model,
            and perfect capital markets. But in practice, credit markets
            are imperfect and poor households cannot borrow against the
            future income of their children. The authors show that under
            such circumstances, standard distributional incidence
            analysis may greatly over-estimate the progressivity of
            public spending in education: educational improvements that
            are progressive in the long-run steady state may actually be
            regressive for the current generation of poor adults. This
            is especially true where service delivery in education is
            highly inefficient - as it is in poor districts of many
            developing countries - so that the educational benefits
            received are relatively low in comparison with the cost of
            public spending. The results have implications for both
            policy measures and analytical approaches.
Russian WTO accession : what has
            been accomplished, what can be expected
This paper summarizes the principal
            reform commitments that Russia has undertaken as part of its
            World Trade Organization (WTO) accession negotiations,
            providing detailed assessments in banking, insurance, and
            agriculture. The paper assesses the gains to the Russian
            economy from these commitments, based on a summary of
            several modeling efforts undertaken by the author and his
            colleagues. The author compares Russian commitments with
            those of other countries that have recently acceded to the
            WTO to assess the claim that the demands on Russia are
            excessive due to political considerations. He explains why
            Russian WTO accession will result in the elimination of the
            Jackson-Vanik Amendment against Russia. Finally, he
            discusses the remaining issues in the negotiations and the
            time frame for Russian accession as of the fall of 2007.
Litigation and settlement : new
            evidence from labor courts in Mexico
Using a newly assembled data set on
            procedures filed in Mexican labor tribunals, the authors of
            this paper study the determinants of final awards to
            workers. On average, workers recover less than 30 percent of
            their claim. The strongest result is that workers receive
            higher percentages of their claims in settlements than in
            trial judgments. It is also found that cases with multiple
            claimants against a single firm are less likely to be
            settled, which partially explains why workers involved in
            these procedures receive lower percentages of their claims.
            Finally, the authors find evidence that a worker who
            exaggerates his or her claim is less likely to settle.
Public-private partnerships in transport
This paper summarizes the evidence on
            the evolution of transport PPPs over the last 15 years or
            so. In the process, it provides a primer on the associated
            policy issues, including of the central role of project
            finance in the implementation of PPP policies and the
            debates on risk allocation in the design of PPPs. The paper
            also offers a discussion of the increasingly well recognized
            residual roles for the public sector in transport, with an
            emphasis on the regulatory debates surrounding the adoption
            of PPPs.
Aid inflows and the real effective
            exchange rate in Tanzania
Tanzania is well placed to receive a
            significant increase in aid inflows in coming years. Despite
            the potential for the additional aid inflows to raise income
            levels in the country, increasing them may bring about
            structural changes in the economy that may be unwelcome. One
            such change is an appreciation of the real exchange rate
            that leads to a contraction of traditional export sectors
            and a loss of export competitiveness. This paper employs a
            reduced-form equilibrium real exchange rate approach to
            explain movements in Tanzania's real effective exchange
            in recent decades. Particular attention is paid to the
            relationship between aid inflows and the real effective
            exchange rate. The authors find that the long-run behavior
            of the real effective exchange rate is influenced by terms
            of trade movements, the government's trade
            liberalization efforts, and aid inflows. Positive
            terms-of-trade movements are associated with an
            appreciation, periods of improving trade liberalization are
            associated with a depreciation, and increases in aid inflows
            are associated with a depreciation in the real effective
            exchange rate. Although the last result is non-standard, it
            is not empirically unique and does have theoretical
            underpinnings. A detailed analysis of this relationship over
            the last decade shows that the Bank of Tanzania's
            response to aid inflows is likely the main reason for the finding.
Infant mortality over the business
            cycle in the developing world
The diffusion of cost-effective life
            saving technologies has reduced infant mortality in much of
            the developing world.  Income gains may also play a direct,
            protective role in ensuring child survival, although the
            empirical findings to date on this issue have been mixed.
            This paper assembles data from Demographic and Health
            Surveys (DHS) in 59 countries to analyze the relationship
            between changes in per capita GDP and infant mortality.  The
            authors show that there is a strong, negative association
            between changes in per capita GDP and infant mortality- in a
            first-differenced specification the implied elasticity of
            infant mortality with respect to per capita GDP is
            approximately -0.56.  In addition to this central result,
            two findings are noteworthy.  First, although there is some
            evidence of changes in the composition of women giving birth
            during economic upturns and downturns, the observed changes
            in infant mortality are not a result of mothers with
            protective characteristics timing fertility to correspond
            with the business cycle. Second, the association between
            infant mortality and per capita GDP is particularly
            pronounced for periods of large contractions in GDP,
            suggesting the inability of developing country households or
            health systems (or both) to smooth resources.  Simple
            back-of-the-envelope calculations using the estimates
            suggest that there may have been more than 1 million
            "excess" deaths in the developing world since 1980
            as a result of large, negative contractions in per capita GDP.
Private provision of rural
            infrastructure services: competing for subsidies
Market-oriented reforms of
            infrastructure in developing countries tend to focus
            primarily on commercially viable services in urban areas.
            Nevertheless, an increasing number of countries are
            beginning to experiment with extending the market paradigm
            to infrastructure services in rural areas that are often
            less attractive in commercial terms. In these cases,
            subsidies are used to close the gap between market
            requirements and development needs, and are increasingly
            determined and allocated on a competitive basis. The authors
            discuss the conditions under which competition among firms
            for such subsidies-successfully used in the
            telecommunications sector in a number of middle-income
            countries-could also be applied to electricity, water and
            sanitation, and transportation services in lower-income countries.
Two case studies on electronic
            distribution of government securities: the U.S. Treasury
            Direct System and the Philippine Expanded Small Investors Program
The case study on the U.S. Treasury
            Direct examines the evolution of the electronic distribution
            systems for marketable and nonmarketable government
            securities, the main objectives, and the basic legal
            infrastructure and the preconditions enabling the system.
            The U.S. experience highlights that the enabling environment
            and infrastructure (for example, in terms of information
            databases such as Pay.Gov) make a large difference in terms
            of both the security and convenience that customers can
            expect in the use of the system. The system also achieved
            important cost savings for the Bureau of the Public Debt.
            The case study on the Small Investors Program of the
            Philippines looks at a program that the Philippine
            government has been experimenting with to sell its
            securities directly to retail investors over the Internet.
            The recently revised version of the program-called the
            Expanded Small Investors Program-aims to increase access to
            government securities and distribute them more widely,
            develop better savings products, and enhance competition in
            the primary markets for these securities. The authors
            analyze whether the program's main goals can be
            achieved while mitigating the risks. Their analysis suggests
            that there are good reasons to believe that the new program
            will succeed. Still, regular and responsive assessments and
            adjustments will be required as the program moves forward.
Mortgage securities in emerging markets
Despite its recognized economic and
            social importance, housing finance often remains
            underdeveloped in emerging economies. Residential lending
            remains small, poorly accessible, and depository-based.
            Lenders remain vulnerable to significant credit, liquidity,
            and interest rate risks. As a result, housing finance is
            relatively expensive and often rationed. The importance of
            developing robust systems of housing finance is paramount as
            emerging economy governments struggle to cope with
            population growth, rapid urbanization, and rising
            expectations from a growing middle class. The capital
            markets in many economies can provide an attractive and
            potentially large source of long-term funding for housing,
            and solutions to better allocate part of the risks. The
            advent of institutional investors is creating large and
            rapidly growing pools of funds that may facilitate the
            development of mortgage-related securities. Despite such a
            strong appeal, there are significant barriers to the
            development of mortgage securities in emerging markets.
            Their success is dependent on many factors, starting with a
            strong legal and regulatory framework and liberalized
            financial sector, and including a developed primary mortgage
            market. The experience in developing mortgage securities in
            emerging markets has been mixed. The authors review the
            experience of introducing mortgage securities in emerging
            markets and explore the policy issues related to this theme.
Resolving systemic financial crisis
            : policies and institutions
The authors analyze the role of
            institutions in resolving systemic banking crises for a
            broad sample of countries. Banking crises are fiscally
            costly, especially when policies like substantial liquidity
            support, explicit government guarantees on financial
            institutions liabilities, and forbearance from prudential
            regulations are used. Higher fiscal outlays do not, however,
            accelerate the recovery from a crisis. Better
            institutionsless corruption, improved law and order, legal
            system, and bureaucracydo. The authors find these results
            to be relatively robust to estimation techniques, including
            controlling for the effects of a poor institutional
            environment on the likelihood of financial crisis and the
            size of fiscal costs. Their results suggest that countries
            should use strict policies to resolve a crisis and use the
            crisis as an opportunity to implement medium-term structural
            reforms, which will also help avoid future systemic crises.
Are returns to private
            infrastructure in developing countries consistent with risks
            since the Asian crisis
This paper presents a basic assessment
            of the financial performance of infrastructure service
            operators in developing countries.  It relies on a new
            database of 120 companies put together to track the
            evolution of the cost of capital, the cost of equity and the
            return to equity for electricity, water and sanitation,
            railways and port operators in 31 developing countries
            distributed evenly across low-income, low-middle income and
            upper middle-income countries.  The paper shows that between
            1998 and 2002, the average cost of capital in developing
            countries varied from less than 11 percent to over 15
            percent across regions and sectors while the cost of equity
            varied from around 13 percent to over 22 percent.
            Low-middle-income countries have recovered relatively well
            from the East Asia crisis, while low-income and
            upper-middle-income countries have seen their situation
            deteriorate since the crisis.  At the regional level, the
            main story is that East Asia is recovering quite well from
            its crisis, and that the financial performance of the
            operators in Africa and Latin America has deteriorated.
            Eastern Europe and South Asia are doing relatively better
            but show a large volatility of returns over time and within
            sectors.  At the sector level, the railways and the energy
            sectors have seen their performance deteriorate
            significantly over the period, while the water and port
            sectors have done relatively better.  In all sectors and
            regions, the average return to equity has been lower than
            the cost of equity since the Asian crisis.
Loss aversion and trade policy
This paper provides new survey evidence
            showing that loss aversion and reference dependence are
            important in shaping people's perception of trade
            policy.  Under the assumption that agents' welfare
            functions exhibit these behavioral elements, we analyze a
            model with a welfare-maximizing government and with the
            lobbying framework of Grossman and Helpman (1994).  The
            policy implications of the augmented models differ in three
            important ways.  One, there is a region of compensating
            protection, where a decline in the world price leads to an
            offsetting increase in protection, such that a constant
            domestic price is maintained.  Two, protection following a
            single negative price shock will be persistent.  Three,
            irrespective of the extent of lobbying, there will be a
            deviation from free trade that tends to favor loss-making
            industries.  The augmented models are more consistent with
            the observed structure of protection, and in particular,
            explain why many trade policy instruments are explicitly
            designed to maintain prices at a given level.
An evaluation of the performance of
            regression discontinuity design on PROGRESA
While providing the most reliable method
            of evaluating social programs, randomized experiments in
            developing and developed countries alike are accompanied by
            political risks and ethical issues that jeopardize the
            chances of adopting them.  In this paper the authors use a
            unique data set from rural Mexico collected for the purposes
            of evaluating the impact of the PROGRESA poverty alleviation
            program to examine the performance of a quasi-experimental
            estimator, the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD).  Using
            as a benchmark the impact estimates based on the
            experimental nature of the sample, we examine how estimates
            differ when we use the RDD as the estimator for evaluating
            program impact on two key indicators: child school
            attendance and child work.  Overall the performance of the
            RDD was remarkably good.  The RDD estimates of program
            impact agreed with the experimental estimates in 10 out of
            the 12 possible cases.  The two cases in which the RDD
            method failed to reveal any significant program impact on
            the school attendance of boys and girls were in the first
            year of the program (round 3).  RDD estimates comparable to
            the experimental estimates were obtained when we used as a
            comparison group children from non-eligible households in
            the control localities.