rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Trade reform and regional dynamics :
            evidence from 25 years of Brazilian matched
            employer-employee data
This paper empirically studies the
            dynamics of labor market adjustment following the Brazilian
            trade reform of the 1990s. The paper uses variation in
            industry-speciﬁc tariﬀ cuts interacted with initial regional
            industry mix to measure trade-induced local labor demand
            shocks and examines regional and individual labor market
            responses to those one-time shocks over two decades.
            Contrary to conventional wisdom, the analysis does not ﬁnd
            that the impact of local shocks is dissipated over time
            through wage-equalizing migration. Instead, it ﬁnds steadily
            growing eﬀects of local shocks on regional formal sector
            wages and employment for 20 years. This ﬁnding can be
            rationalized in a simple equilibrium model with two
            complementary factors of production, labor and
            industry-speciﬁc factors such as capital, that adjust slowly
            and imperfectly to shocks. Next, the paper documents rich
            margins of adjustment induced by the trade reform at the
            regional and individual levels. Workers initially employed
            in harder hit regions face continuously deteriorating formal
            labor market outcomes relative to workers employed in less
            aﬀected regions, and this gap persists even 20 years after
            the beginning of trade liberalization. Negative local trade
            shocks induce workers to shift out of the formal tradable
            sector and into the formal nontradable sector.
            Non-employment strongly increases in harder hit regions in
            the medium run, but in the longer run, non-employed workers
            eventually ﬁnd re-employment in the informal sector. Working
            age population does not react to these local shocks, but
            formal sector net migration does, consistent with the
            relative decline of the formal sector and growth of the
            informal sector in adversely aﬀected regions.
Informal tradables and the
            employment growth of Indian manufacturing
India's manufacturing growth from
            1989 to 2010 displays two intriguing properties: 1) a
            substantial fraction of absolute and net employment growth
            is concentrated in informal tradable industries, and 2) much
            of this growth is connected to the development of one-person
            establishments. This paper investigates the causes and
            determinants of these growth patterns. The rapid
            urbanization of the informal sector plays the strongest
            role, while there is some evidence for subcontracting by the
            formal sector and a "push" entrepreneurship story.
            The paper also finds modest connections of this growth to
            rising female labor force participation. The connection
            between the presence of informal manufacturing and local
            productivity levels is strong, and varies across urban and
            rural areas in ways that bolster urbanization and
            subcontracting hypotheses.
Trade effects of customs reform :
            evidence from Albania
Despite enormous academic interest in
            international trade costs and keen policy interest in
            efforts to mitigate them, so far there is very little hard
            evidence on the impacts of trade facilitation efforts. This
            paper exploits a dramatic reduction in the rate of physical
            inspections by Albanian customs to estimate the effects of
            fewer inspection-related delays on the level and composition
            of imports. In this setting, the paper finds evidence that
            the expected median number of days spent in Albanian customs
            falls by 7 percent when the probability that a shipment is
            inspected falls from 50 percent or more to under 50 percent.
            In turn, this reduction in time produces a 7 percent
            increase in import value. The paper finds evidence that the
            reforms favored imports from preferential trading partners,
            especially the European Union. There are also reform-induced
            changes in the composition of trade, including increases in
            average quantities and unit prices, the number of shipments,
            and the number of importing firms per product-country pair
            and the number of countries per firm-product pair. A
            back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the estimate
            of 7 percent import growth along an intensive margin is
            roughly consistent with a 0.36 percentage point reduction in
            average tariff equivalent trade costs. Applying this figure
            to the value of Albania's non-oil imports produces a
            reform-induced trade cost savings estimate of approximately
            US$12 million in 2012.
Policy and performance in customs :
            evaluating the trade facilitation agreement
The 2013 World Trade Organization
            ministerial in Bali produced a comprehensive framework
            agreement on trade facilitation. If fully implemented, the
            agreement should increase the speed and reduce the cost of
            moving goods across international borders. But which reforms
            are most likely to improve these outcomes, how much
            improvement should be expected, and what might such
            improvements be worth? This paper adopts the Organisation
            for Economic Co-operation and Development's trade
            facilitation indicators as quantitative descriptions of
            trade facilitation policy. It estimates the impact of the
            indicators and other variables on the time necessary to
            clear customs, the associated cost, and a customs
            performance index. Of the 12 policy bundles, the good
            governance and impartiality indicator is most clearly
            related to customs clearance time. A move to best practice
            in all policies by all World Trade Organization members
            would reduce the predicted time spent in customs by an
            average of 1.6 days for imports and 2 days for exports.
            Using a conservative estimate of the value of time in trade,
            such comprehensive reforms imply a mean tariff equivalent
            reduction of 0.9 percentage points on imports and 1.2
            percentage points on exports. The same estimates are used to
            calculate welfare gains of policy reform by World Trade
            Organization members. Reform in China alone accounts for
            roughly one-fourth of the global benefits from the Trade
            Facilitation Agreement.
Economic implications of a potential
            free trade agreement between India and the United States
This paper explores the economic
            implications of a potential free trade agreement between
            India and the United States. A series of simulations is
            conducted assuming 100 percent ad valorem equivalent tariff
            cuts for goods and 50 percent cuts for services. The overall
            impacts are likely to be positive for the United States and
            India. While gains from trade creation are offset by trade
            diversion on the import side, both countries appear to gain
            from improved access on the export side. The United States
            is likely to gain largely through terms of trade
            improvements for its goods and services, as initial
            protection in India is particularly high. India would
            experience an expansion of exports and output, especially in
            textiles and apparel. As the United States and India are
            negotiating other free trade agreements, such as the
            Trans-Pacific Partnership and India's agreement with
            the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the paper also
            explores how the effects of an India-United States free
            trade agreement are affected by prior free trade agreements.
            Adding an India-United States free trade agreement to prior
            agreements tends to bring additional welfare benefits to
            both countries. India would also gain substantially if it
            concluded a free trade agreement with the United States and
            then extended it to other partners. The results suggest that
            an India-United States free trade agreement might become a
            building block toward more liberal trade regimes.
No condition is permanent : middle
            class in Nigeria in the last decade
The economic debate on existence and
            definition of the middle class has become particularly
            lively in many developing countries. Despite this growing
            interest, the identification of the middle class group in
            these countries remains quite challenging. Building on a
            recently developed framework to define the middle class,
            this paper tries to estimate the Nigerian middle class size
            in a rigorous quantitative manner. By exploiting publicly
            available panel data, the expenditure associated to a 10
            percent probability of falling into poverty is estimated,
            and this is used as the middle class threshold for Nigeria.
            The threshold expenditure for the middle class in Nigeria is
            found to be 378.39 Naira per capita per day (2010 PPP).
            Relying on this threshold and through survey-to-survey
            imputation the size of Nigeria's middle class in 2003
            is also estimated. The results show that there has been
            considerable improvement on the size of the middle class and
            poverty reduction between 2003 and 2013. Poverty decreased
            between 2003 and 2013 from 45 to 33 percent, while the
            middle class increased from 13 percent to 19 percent.
            Nevertheless the results still paint a heterogeneous picture
            of poverty and the middle class in Nigeria, where the
            largest portion of the population, although above the
            poverty threshold, continues to live with average or high
            vulnerability to poverty.
Using lotteries to incentivize safer
            sexual behavior : evidence from a randomized controlled
            trial on HIV prevention
Financial incentives are a promising HIV
            prevention strategy. This paper assesses the effect on HIV
            incidence of a lottery program in Lesotho with low expected
            payments but a chance to win a high prize conditional on
            negative test results for sexually transmitted infections.
            The intervention resulted in a 21.4 percent reduction in HIV
            incidence over two years. Lottery incentives appear to be
            particularly effective for individuals willing to take
            risks. This paper estimates a model linking sexual behavior
            to HIV incidence and finds that risk-loving individuals
            reduce the number of unprotected sexual acts by 0.3/month
            for every $1 increase in the expected prize.
Equality of opportunity : theory and evidence
Building on earlier work by political
            philosophers, economists have recently sought to define a
            concept of equity that accommodates the fairness of reward
            to individual responsibility and effort, while allowing for
            the existence of some inequalities which are unfair and
            should be compensated. This paper -- commissioned as a
            chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Well Being and Public
            Policy -- provides a critical review of the economic
            literature on equality and inequality of opportunity. A
            simple 'canonical model' of equal opportunity is
            proposed, and used to explore the two fundamental concepts
            in this (relatively) new theory of social justice: the
            principles of compensation and reward. Ex-ante and ex-post
            versions of the compensation principle are presented, and
            the tensions between them are discussed. Different
            approaches to the measurement of inequality of opportunity
            -- and empirical applications -- are reviewed, and
            implications for the measurement of poverty and of the rate
            of economic development are discussed.
As the market churns : estimates of
            firm exit and job loss using the World Bank's
            enterprise surveys
This paper uses a unique data set of
            panel firms from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys in
            47 economies, to provide estimates of the patterns of firm
            exit, and analyzes various firm characteristics and
            conditions under which firms leave the market. Firms'
            labor productivity and age are robustly associated with a
            lower likelihood of exit, consistent with conceptions of
            creative destruction and findings elsewhere in the
            literature. These findings are robust across several
            specifications. However, the effects are mitigated by other
            factors, such as use of bank financing and the presence of
            limited liability. Although firm size does appear to matter,
            its effect is lessened after accounting for labor
            productivity. The paper also provides basic estimates of job
            loss attributable to firm exit, estimating that on average 3
            to 4 percent of private sector employment is lost per annum
            due to firm exit. Because of the challenges of data
            collection, the analysis relies on a necessarily
            conservative definition of exit and provides a framework for
            future work on utilizing such periodic survey panels to
            estimate the relative patterns of firm attrition and the
            associated job loss.
What explains the stagnation of
            female labor force participation in urban India
Female labor force participation rates
            in urban India between 1987 and 2011 are surprisingly low
            and have stagnated since the late 1980s. Despite rising
            growth, fertility decline, and rising wages and education
            levels, married women's labor force participation
            hovered around 18 percent. Analysis of five large
            cross-sectional micro surveys shows that a combination of
            supply and demand effects have contributed to this
            stagnation. The main supply side factors are rising
            household incomes and husband's education as well as
            the falling selectivity of highly educated women. On the
            demand side, the sectors that draw in female workers have
            expanded least, so that changes in the sectoral structure of
            employment alone would have actually led to declining
            participation rates.
Analyzing the dynamics of school
            dropout in upper secondary education in Latin America : a
            cohort approach
This study examines trends in school
            dropout at the upper secondary education level across Latin
            America over the past two decades, and attempts to identify
            factors influencing these rates. The methodology contributes
            to the existing literature by employing repeated cross
            sections of data to track the life cycle path of
            representative groups of individuals belonging to a birth
            cohort, by constructing and analyzing a synthetic data base
            of household survey data from 18 countries. A key finding is
            that while upper secondary enrollment rates increased in the
            region, the proportion of upper secondary age youth dropping
            out of school has remained persistently high, despite
            relatively favorable macroeconomic conditions. Furthermore,
            the study traces the moment in the life cycle at which the
            majority of dropout takes place to reveal differences
            between countries. Finally, to explain the trends in upper
            secondary dropout rates, the study examines the impact of
            three groups of factors: (i) shifts in the cohort size and
            socioeconomic composition of the population eligible for
            entering upper secondary education; (b) the macroeconomic
            environment and labor market opportunities; and (c) the
            returns to schooling. A series of regressions shows that an
            important factor that may be driving higher dropout levels
            has been the higher numbers of students from poor
            socioeconomic backgrounds reaching the upper secondary
            level. In addition, high returns to education have been a
            pull factor into the schooling system, while, especially in
            countries where the majority of youth dropout early (prior
            to upper secondary education), the data confirm an apparent
            substitution effect due to the opportunity cost of forgoing
            employment opportunities. Overall, the findings confirm the
            importance of policy makers' focus on upper secondary
            education across Latin America and suggest implications for
            focusing the policy agenda.
An evaluation of the 2014 subsidy
            reforms in Morocco and a simulation of further reforms
Under increasing budget pressure,
            Morocco carried out an extensive set of subsidy reforms in
            2014 and is planning for further reforms for 2015–2017,
            which will eliminate most consumers' subsidies. This
            paper evaluates (ex post) the 2014 reforms and simulates (ex
            ante) the impact on household welfare, poverty, and the
            government budget of the total elimination of subsidies. The
            paper considers food and energy subsidies and estimates
            direct and indirect effects using SUBSIM, a subsidies
            simulation model designed by the World Bank. It finds that
            the 2014 reforms have been a good mix of reforms from a
            distributional, welfare, poverty, and government budget
            perspectives. They are perhaps the most rational reforms
            undertaken in the Middle East and North Africa region in
            recent years. The analysis also finds further reforms costly
            for the poor and more complex from a political economy
            perspective, especially for liquefied petroleum gas.
The quest for subsidy reforms in Libya
Shortly before the 2011 Libyan
            revolution, consumers' subsidies were rapidly increased
            by the regime in an effort to reduce social discontent. In
            the aftermath of the revolution, these subsidies became
            important for people's subsistence, but also a very
            heavy burden for the state budget. Since then, the Libyan
            government has been confronted with the necessity of
            reforming subsidies in a politically and socially complex
            environment. This paper uses household survey data to
            provide a distributional analysis of food and energy
            subsidies and simulate the impact of subsidy reforms on
            household wellbeing, poverty, and the government's
            budget. Despite the focus on direct effects only, the
            results indicate that subsidy reforms would have a major
            impact on household welfare and government revenues. The
            elimination of food subsidies would reduce household
            expenditure by about 10 percent and double the poverty rate
            while saving the equivalent of about 2 percent of the
            government budget. The elimination of energy subsidies would
            have a similar effect on household welfare, but a larger
            effect on poverty while government savings would be almost 4
            percent of the budget. The size of these effects, the
            weakness of market institutions, and the current political
            instability make subsidy reforms extremely complex in Libya.
            It is also clear that subsidy reforms will call for some
            form of compensation for the poor, a gradual rather than a
            big bang approach, and a product-by-product sequence of
            reforms rather than an all-inclusive reform.
Report cards : the impact of
            providing school and child test scores on educational markets
This paper studies study the impact of
            providing school and child test scores on subsequent test
            scores, prices, and enrollment in markets with multiple
            public and private providers. A randomly selected half of
            the sample villages (markets) received report cards. This
            increased test scores by 0.11 standard deviations, decreased
            private school fees by 17 percent, and increased primary
            enrollment by 4.5 percent. Heterogeneity in the treatment
            impact by initial school quality is consistent with
            canonical models of asymmetric information. Information
            provision facilitates better comparisons across providers,
            improves market efficiency and raises child welfare through
            higher test scores, higher enrollment, and lower fees.
Estimating the size of external
            effects of energy subsidies in transport and agriculture
It is widely accepted that the costs of
            underpricing energy are large, whether in advanced or
            developing countries. This paper explores how large these
            costs can be by focussing on the size of the external
            effects that energy subsidies in particular generate in two
            important sectors—transport and agriculture—in two countries
            in the Middle East and North Africa, the Arab Republic of
            Egypt (transport) and the Republic of Yemen (agriculture).
            The focus is mainly on the costs associated with congestion
            and pollution, as well as the impact of underpriced energy
            for depletion of scarce water resources, including through
            crop selection. Quantifying the size of external effects in
            developing countries has received relatively little
            analytical attention, although there is a significant body
            of literature for developed countries. By building on
            earlier research, as well as employing the United Nations
            ForFITS model, the paper provides indicative estimates of
            the external costs of energy subsidies, as manifested in
            congestion and pollution. The estimates using simulations
            indicate that these costs could be materially reduced by
            elimination or reduction of energy subsidies. The paper also
            describes the impact of energy subsidies on water
            consumption in a region where water resources are
            particularly limited.  The findings provide further evidence
            of the adverse and significant consequences of subsidizing energy.