rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Assessing job flows across countries
            : the role of industry, firm size, and regulations
This paper reviews the process of job
            creation and destruction across a sample of 16 industrial
            and emerging economies over the past decade. It exploits a
            harmonized firm-level data set drawn from business registers
            and enterprise census data. The paper assesses the
            importance of technological factors that characterize
            different industries in explaining cross-country differences
            in job flows. It shows that industry effects play an
            important role in shaping job flows at the aggregate level.
            Even more importantly, differences in the size composition
            of firms-within each industry-explain a large fraction of
            the overall variability in job creation and destruction.
            However, even after controlling for industry/technology and
            size factors there remain significant differences in job
            flows across countries that could reflect differences in
            business environment conditions. The authors look at one
            factor shaping the business environment, namely, regulations
            on hiring and firing of workers. To minimize possible
            endogeneity and omitted variable problems associated with
            cross-country regressions, we use a difference-in-difference
            approach. The empirical results suggest that stringent
            hiring and firing costs reduce job turnover, especially in
            those industries that require more frequent labor
            adjustment. Regulations also distort the patterns of
            industry/size flows. Within each industry, medium and large
            firms are more severely affected by stringent labor
            regulations, while small firms are less affected, probably
            because they are partially exempted from such regulations or
            can more easily circumvent them.
An essay on economic reforms and
            social change in China
The author applies a systems-oriented
            "holistic" approach to China's radical
            economic reforms during the past quarter of a century. He
            characterizes China's economic reforms in terms of a
            multidimensional classification of economic systems. When
            looking at the economic consequences of China's change
            of economic system, he deals with both the impressive growth
            performance and its economic costs. The author also studies
            the consequences of the economic reforms for the previous
            social arrangements in the country, which were tied to
            individual work units-agriculture communes, collective
            firms, and state-owned enterprises. He continues with the
            social development during the reform period, reflecting a
            complex mix of social advances, mainly in terms of poverty
            reduction, and regresses for large population groups in
            terms of income security and human services, such as
            education and, in particular, health care. Next, the author
            discusses China's future policy options in the social
            field, whereby he draws heavily on relevant experiences in
            industrial countries over the years. The future options are
            classified into three broad categories: policies influencing
            the level and distribution of factor income, income
            transfers including social insurance, and the provision of
            human services.
Cooperative game theory and its
            application to natural, environmental, and water resource
            issues : 1. basic theory
Game theory provides useful insights
            into the way parties that share a scarce resource may plan
            their use of the resource under different situations. This
            review provides a brief and self-contained introduction to
            the theory of cooperative games. It can be used to get
            acquainted with the basics of cooperative games. Its goal is
            also to provide a basic introduction to this theory, in
            connection with a couple of surveys that analyze its use in
            the context of environmental problems and models. The main
            models (bargaining games, transfer utility, and non-transfer
            utility games) and issues and solutions are considered:
            bargaining solutions, single-value solutions like the
            Shapley value and the nucleolus, and multi-value solutions
            such as the core. The cooperative game theory (CGT) models
            that are reviewed in this paper favor solutions that include
            all possible players and ignore the strategic stages leading
            to coalition building. They focus on the possible results of
            the cooperation by answering questions such as: Which
            coalitions can be formed? And how can the coalitional gains
            be divided to secure a sustainable agreement? An important
            aspect associated with the solution concepts of CGT is the
            equitable and fair sharing of the cooperation gains.
Cooperative game theory and its
            application to natural, environmental, and water resource
            issues : 2. application to natural and environmental resources
This paper provides a review of various
            applications of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of
            natural and environmental resources. With an increase in the
            level of competition over environmental and natural
            resources, the incidents of disputes have been at the center
            of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases of
            common pool resources such as fisheries and forests, and
            cases of environmental pollution such as acid rain, flow,
            and stock pollution. In addition to providing examples of
            cooperative solutions to allocation problems, the conclusion
            from this review suggests that cooperation over scarce
            environmental and natural resources is possible under a
            variety of physical conditions and institutional
            arrangements. CGT applications to international fishery
            disputes are especially useful in that they have been making
            headway in policy-related agreements among states and
            regions of the world. Forest applications are more local in
            nature, but of great relevance in solving disputes among
            communities and various levels of governments.
Cooperative game theory and its
            application to natural, environmental, and water resource
            issues : 3. application to water resources
This paper reviews various applications
            of cooperative game theory (CGT) to issues of water
            resources. With an increase in the competition over various
            water resources, the incidents of disputes have been in the
            center of allocation agreements. The paper reviews the cases
            of various water uses, such as multi-objective water
            projects, irrigation, groundwater, hydropower, urban water
            supply, wastewater, and transboundary water disputes. In
            addition to providing examples of cooperative solutions to
            allocation problems, the conclusion from this review
            suggests that cooperation over scarce water resources is
            possible under a variety of physical conditions and
            institutional arrangements. In particular, the various
            approaches for cost sharing and for allocation of physical
            water infrastructure and flow can serve as a basis for
            stable and efficient agreement, such that long-term
            investments in water projects are profitable and
            sustainable. The latter point is especially important, given
            recent developments in water policy in various countries and
            regional institutions such as the European Union (Water
            Framework Directive), calling for full cost recovery of
            investments and operation and maintenance in water projects.
            The CGT approaches discussed and demonstrated in this paper
            can provide a solid basis for finding possible and stable
            cost-sharing arrangements.
The macro financing of natural
            hazards in developing countries
The authors propose a financial model to
            address the design of efficient risk financing strategies
            against natural disasters at the country level. It is simple
            enough to shed analytical light on some of the key issues
            but flexible and realistic enough to provide some
            quantitative guidance on the ex ante financing of
            catastrophic losses. The risk financing problem is
            decomposed into two steps. First, the resource gap, defined
            as the difference between losses and available ex-post
            resources (such as post-disaster aid), is identified. It
            determines the losses to be financed by ex ante financial
            instruments (reserves, catastrophe insurance, and contingent
            debt). Second, the cost-minimizing financial arrangements
            are derived from the marginal costs of the financial
            instruments. The model is solved through a series of
            graphical analyses that make this complex financial problem
            easier to apprehend. This model captures and explains the
            main impacts of financial parameters (such as insurance
            premium, cost of capital) on efficient risk financing structures.
Contagion and firms'
            internationalization in Latin America : evidence from
            Mexico, Brazil, and Chile
The author investigates whether
            contagion matters when emerging market firms cross-list
            their stocks in a developed capital market. She develops a
            rational expectations model where financial markets are
            segmented along emerging markets' borders and contagion
            spreads from one emerging market to another through the
            actions of international investors rebalancing their
            portfolio using stocks cross-listed in the developed market.
            The author finds that contagion is a cost of
            internationalization as cross-listed stocks are more
            affected by contagion than pure domestic stocks.
            Furthermore, a welfare analysis of international
            cross-listing versus financial autarky suggests that the
            benefits of internationalization in terms of less
            information asymmetry and better market efficiency offset
            the costs of contagion. Her model is able to explain some
            transmission of the 1998 Brazilian crisis to Mexico and Chile.
The composition of growth matters
            for poverty alleviation
This paper contributes to explain the
            cross-country heterogeneity of the poverty response to
            changes in economic growth. It does so by focusing on the
            structure of output growth. The paper presents a two-sector
            theoretical model that clarifies the mechanism through which
            the sectoral composition of growth and associated labor
            intensity can affect workers' wages and, thus, poverty
            alleviation. Then it presents cross-country empirical
            evidence that analyzes first, the differential
            poverty-reducing impact of sectoral growth at various levels
            of disaggregation, and the role of unskilled labor intensity
            in such differential impact. The paper finds evidence that
            not only the size of economic growth but also its
            composition matters for poverty alleviation, with the
            largest contributions from labor-intensive sectors (such as
            agriculture, construction, and manufacturing). The results
            are robust to the influence of outliers, alternative
            explanations, and various poverty measures.
Informality trends and cycles
This paper studies the trends and cycles
            of informal employment. It first presents a theoretical
            model where the size of informal employment is determined by
            the relative costs and benefits of informality and the
            distribution of workers' skills. In the long run,
            informal employment varies with the trends in these
            variables, and in the short run it reacts to accommodate
            transient shocks and to close the gap that separates it from
            its trend level. The paper then uses an error-correction
            framework to examine empirically informality's long-
            and short-run relationships. For this purpose, it uses
            country-level data at annual frequency for a sample of
            industrial and developing countries, with the share of
            self-employment in the labor force as the proxy for informal
            employment. The paper finds that, in the long run,
            informality is larger in countries that have lower GDP per
            capita and impose more costs to formal firms in the form of
            more rigid business regulations, less valuable police and
            judicial services, and weaker monitoring of informality. In
            the short run, informal employment is found to be
            counter-cyclical for the majority of countries, with the
            degree of counter-cyclicality being lower in countries with
            larger informal employment and better police and judicial
            services. Moreover, informal employment follows a stable,
            trend-reverting process. These results are robust to changes
            in the sample and to the influence of outliers, even when
            only developing countries are considered in the analysis.
Finance and hunger : empirical
            evidence of the agricultural productivity channel
Using cross-country and panel
            regressions, the authors show that financial sector
            development significantly reduces undernourishment (hunger),
            largely through gaining farmers and others access to
            productivity-enhancing equipment, translating into
            beneficial income and general effects. They show
            specifically that a deeper financial sector leads to higher
            agricultural productivity, including higher cereal yields,
            through increased fertilizer and tractor use. Higher
            productivity in turn leads to lower undernourishment. The
            results are robust to various specifications and econometric
            tests and imply that a 1 percentage point increase in
            private credit to GDP reduces undernourishment by 0.22-2.45
            percentage points, or about one-quarter the impact of GDP
            per capita.
Utilities reforms and corruption in
            developing countries
This paper shows empirically that
            "privatization" in the energy, telecommunications,
            and water sectors, and the introduction of independent
            regulators in those sectors, have not always had the
            expected effects on access, affordability, or quality of
            services. It also shows that corruption leads to adjustments
            in the quantity, quality, and price of services consistent
            with the profit-maximizing behavior that one would expect
            from monopolies in the sector. The results suggest that
            privatization and the introduction of independent regulators
            have, at best, only partial effects on the consequences of
            corruption for access, affordability, and quality of utility services.
Adult mortality and consumption
            growth in the age of HIV/AIDS
The authors use a 13-year panel of
            individuals in Tanzania to assess how adult mortality shocks
            affect both short and long-run consumption growth of
            surviving household members. Using unique data which tracks
            individuals from 1991 to 2004, they examine consumption
            growth, controlling for a set of initial community,
            household and individual characteristics. The effect is
            identified using the sample of households in 2004 which grew
            out of baseline households. The authors find robust evidence
            that an affected household will see consumption drop 7
            percent within the first five years after the adult death.
            With high growth in the sample over this time period, this
            creates a 19 percentage point growth gap with the average
            household. There is some evidence of persistent effects of
            these shocks for up to 13 years, but these effects are
            imprecisely estimated and not significantly different from
            zero. The impact of female adult death is found to be
            particularly severe.
Water allocation strategies for the
            Kat Basin in South Africa : comparing negotiation tools and
            game theory models
Governments and developing agencies
            promote participatory approaches in solving common pool
            resource problems, such as in the water sector. Two main
            participatory approaches have been applied separately,
            namely negotiation and mediation. In this paper the authors
            apply the Role-Playing Game that is a component of the
            Companion Modeling approach, a negotiation procedure, and
            the Cooperative Game Theory (Shapley value and the Nucleolus
            solution concepts) that can be mirrored as a mediated
            mechanism to a water allocation problem in the Kat watershed
            in South Africa. While the absolute results of the two
            approaches differ, the negotiation and the cooperative game
            theory provide similar shares of the benefit allocated to
            the players from various cooperative arrangements. By
            evaluating the two approaches, the authors provide useful
            tips for future extension for both the Role-Playing Games
            and the Cooperative Game Theory applications.
The economics of consanguineous marriages
The institution of consanguineous
            marriage-a marriage contracted between close biological
            relatives-has been a basic building block of many societies
            in different parts of the world. This paper argues that the
            practice of consanguinity is closely related to the practice
            of dowry, and that both arise in response to an agency
            problem between the families of a bride and a groom. When
            marriage contracts are incomplete, dowries transfer control
            rights to the party with the highest incentives to invest in
            a marriage. When these transactions are costly however,
            consanguinity can be a more appropriate response since it
            directly reduces the agency cost. The paper's model
            predicts that dowry transfers are less likely to be observed
            in consanguineous unions. It also emphasizes the effect of
            credit constraints on the relative prevalence of dowry
            payment and consanguinity. An empirical analysis using data
            from Bangladesh delivers robust results consistent with the
            predictions of the model.
Patient satisfaction, doctor effort,
            and interview location : evidence from Paraguay
To examine the relationship between
            patient satisfaction and doctor performance, the authors
            observed 2,271 interactions between 292 doctors and their
            patients in 98 clinics and hospitals in Paraguay and
            conducted an exit-survey with the same patients as they left
            the clinic. For a subsample of 64 facilities they also
            interviewed patients who visited the facility within the
            last week. There are three patterns in the data: (1) Patient
            satisfaction is positively correlated with doctor effort,
            measured as a combination of time spent, questions asked,
            and examinations performed after controlling for observed
            doctor and patient characteristics; (2) However, accounting
            for unobserved doctor characteristics dramatically reduces
            the level of significance and size of correlation between
            effort and satisfaction, showing that much of the positive
            relationship is driven by these unobserved doctor-specific
            factors; and (3) Reported satisfaction is significantly
            lower for patients interviewed at home compared with those
            interviewed at the clinic. This leads the authors to
            conclude that even if patient satisfaction reflects some
            aspects of the doctor's performance, unobserved
            heterogeneity combined with survey biases limit the
            widespread applicability of patient satisfaction as an
            indicator of doctor performance.
Migration and remittances : causes
            and linkages
The authors empirically examine the
            determinants of remittance flows at the cross-country level.
            They consider, among other things, the significance of the
            level of migration, the education level of migrants, and
            financial sector development in determining remittances.
            Given the potential endogeneity problems, the migration and
            financial development variables are instrumented in the
            estimation. They find that the migration level is the main
            driver of remittance flows, even after controlling for the
            endogeneity bias through instrumental variable estimation.
            The authors also find that the education level of migrants
            relative to the population in home countries, the size of
            the economy, and the level of economic development of
            recipient countries adversely affect remittance flows. While
            they find the effect of financial sector development to be
            positive, its significance is not strongly supported in
            their analysis.