rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Greening global value chains :
            innovation and the international diffusion of technologies
            and knowledge
Using novel data on patents, trade of
            equipment goods, and foreign direct investments and insights
            from the economic literature, the paper seeks to lay out the
            state of knowledge on the role of innovation and the
            diffusion of technologies in the greening of global value
            chains as well as some of the main policy issues. A special
            emphasis is put on developing countries -- distinguishing
            emerging economies and least-developed countries -- and on
            climate-mitigation technologies. Emerging economies are
            already reasonably well integrated in the global economy. As
            a consequence, technologies flow in through the imports of
            capital goods and local investments by multinational
            enterprises owning technologies. Pushing further technology
            transfer requires strengthening intellectual property
            rights, lowering barriers to trade and investments and
            improving technological absorptive capacities. In contrast,
            their role in innovation is limited. Standard tools of
            innovation policy - public research and development, public
            support to private research and development, better access
            to finance - should develop. But studies also suggest that
            governments should introduce more stringent environmental
            policies with proper enforcement at home to go beyond the
            adoption of foreign technologies. The situation of
            least-developed countries is very different: they do not
            import green technologies and low barriers to trade and
            foreign direct investment or strict intellectual property
            rights are unlikely to trigger technology transfer. In these
            countries, the focus should be on building technological capacities.
Education and civil conflict in Nepal
Between 1996 and 2006, Nepal experienced
            violent civil conflict as a consequence of a Maoist
            insurgency, which many argue also brought about an increase
            in female empowerment. This paper exploits variations in
            exposure to conflict by birth cohort, survey date, and
            district to estimate the impact of the insurgency on
            education outcomes. Overall conflict intensity, measured by
            conflict casualties, is associated with an increase in
            female educational attainment, whereas abductions by
            Maoists, which often targeted school children, have the
            reverse effect. Male schooling tended to increase more
            rapidly in areas where the fighting was more intense, but
            the estimates are smaller in magnitude and more sensitive to
            specification than estimates for females. Similar results
            are obtained across different specifications, and robustness
            checks indicate that these findings are not due to selective migration.
Export diversification in twelve
            European and Central Asian countries and the role of the
            commodity boom
This paper examines export
            diversification along the product and market dimensions for
            selected countries in the Europe and Central Asia region
            and, more generally, export performance. While the latter is
            extraordinary, with average export growth rates above 10
            percent, the evidence on diversification is less impressive,
            and hints at a role played by the interaction of natural
            resource abundance and the commodity price boom. A
            cross-country analysis including 171 economies suggests that
            the region's resource rich countries are less
            diversified than would be expected given their resource
            endowments, level of development, and size.  The commodity
            boom period was associated with an increase in concentration
            for the resource rich along the product dimension: they did
            not increase the number of products exported and became more
            reliant on oil and gas. During the same period, the resource
            poor increased their export product scope while maintaining
            other concentration indices unchanged. A similar but milder
            pattern is found for diversification along the destination dimension.
Agriculture as a sector of
            opportunity for young people in Africa
This paper sheds light on how to harvest
            the "youth dividend" in Sub-Saharan Africa by
            creating jobs in agriculture. The agriculture that attracts
            the youth will have to be profitable, competitive, and
            dynamic. These are the same characteristics needed for
            agriculture to deliver growth, to improve food security, and
            to preserve a fragile natural environment. With higher
            priority accorded to implementation of well-designed public
            investments in agriculture, continued progress on regulatory
            and policy reform, and attention to assure inclusion of
            young people in Africa's agricultural renaissance, the
            sector's handsome youth dividend can be collected and
            widely shared.
Network proximity and business
            practices in African Manufacturing
Patterns of correlation in innovation
            and contractual practices among manufacturing firms in
            Ethiopia and Sudan are documented. Network data that
            indicate whether any two firms in the utilized sample do
            business with each other, buy inputs from a common supplier,
            or sell output to a common client are used for the analysis.
            Only limited support is found for the commonly held idea
            that firms that are more proximate in a network sense are
            more likely to adopt similar practices. Indeed, for certain
            practices, adoption decisions appear to be local strategic
            substitutes: if one firm in a given location uses a certain
            practice, nearby firms are less likely to do so. These
            results suggest that the diffusion of technology and new
            business practices may play a more limited role in spurring
            growth in Africa's manufacturing sector than is often
            assumed in the present policy discussion.
Can conditional cash transfers
            compensate for a father's absence
This paper investigates how the
            permanent departure of the father from a household affects
            children's school enrollment and work participation in
            rural Colombia. The results indicate that the permanent
            departure of the father decreases children's school
            enrollment by approximately 5 percentage points and
            increases child labor by 3 percentage points. This paper
            explores the rollout of a conditional-cash-transfer program
            during the period of study and shows that this program
            counteracts these adverse effects. When coupled with other
            evidence, this finding strongly suggests that the channel
            through which the father's departure most affects
            children is by reducing the income of very poor households,
            which tightens their liquidity constraints. This finding
            also highlights the important safety-net role played by
            welfare programs with respect to disadvantaged households,
            particularly because these households are unlikely to have
            formal or informal mechanisms with which to insure
            themselves against such vagaries.
How many dimensions do we trade in
            product space geometry and latent comparative advantage
This paper proposes a new quantitative
            implementation of Balassa's idea that export
            composition and revealed comparative advantage inform the
            relationship between endowments in domestic factors of
            production and exports. It proposes that the export
            composition of countries is close to a low-dimensional
            manifold or "Product Space" within the space of
            export composition, which has as many dimensions as product
            lines. The Product Space corresponds to a few latent
            endowments explaining the structure of the trade matrix. The
            model uses non-linear techniques to identify the product
            space from the 2010 export matrix of 128 countries and 61
            products, and to estimate the latent factors of endowments
            by country. It formalizes a concept of latent comparative
            advantage, which has practical country specific
            applications, relevant for "trade competitiveness"
            policies. Compared with classical revealed comparative
            advantage, the model assesses how well countries are
            matching their potential implied by the latent variables,
            and also identifies products for which the latent advantage
            is not yet revealed (extensive margin). The data suggests
            that the degree of overlap between latent and revealed
            advantage is a metric of "trade competitiveness."
Partial consumption insurance and
            financial openness across the world
This paper examines the extent of
            international consumption risk sharing for a group of 50
            industrial and developing countries. The analysis is based
            on the empirical implementation of a model of partial
            consumption insurance whose parameters have the natural
            interpretation of coefficients of partial risk sharing even
            when the 0 hypothesis of perfect risk sharing is rejected.
            Estimation results show that rich countries exhibit higher
            degrees of risk sharing than developing countries, and that
            the gap between both country groups appears to have widened
            over the period of financial globalization. Moreover, the
            pattern of consumption risk sharing is related to the degree
            of financial openness: countries with larger stocks of
            foreign assets or liabilities exhibit larger degrees of risk
            sharing. Furthermore, countries whose foreign asset stocks
            are more tilted towards foreign direct investment assets
            also show higher degrees of consumption risk sharing.
PPML estimation of dynamic discrete
            choice models with aggregate shocks
This paper introduces a computationally
            efficient method for estimating structural parameters of
            dynamic discrete choice models with large choice sets. The
            method is based on Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML)
            regression, which is widely used in the international trade
            and migration literature to estimate the gravity equation.
            Unlike most of the existing methods in the literature, it
            does not require strong parametric assumptions on
            agents' expectations, thus it can accommodate
            macroeconomic and policy shocks. The regression requires
            count data as opposed to choice probabilities; therefore it
            can handle sparse decision transition matrices caused by
            small sample sizes. As an example application, the paper
            estimates sectoral worker mobility in the United States.
What does MFN trade mean for India
            and Pakistan can MFN be a Panacea
India and Pakistan, the two largest
            economies in South Asia, share a common border, culture and
            history. Despite the benefits of proximity, the two
            neighbors have barely traded with each other. In 2011, trade
            with Pakistan accounted for less than half a percent of
            India's total trade, whereas Pakistan's trade with
            India was 5.4 percent of its total trade. However, the
            recent thaw in India-Pakistan trade relations could signal a
            change. Pakistan has agreed to grant most favored nation
            status to India. India has already granted most favored
            nation status to Pakistan. What will be the gains from trade
            for the two countries? Will they be inclusive? Is most
            favored nation status a panacea? Should the granting of most
            favored nation status be accompanied by improvements in
            trade facilitation, infrastructure, connectivity, and
            logistics to reap the true benefits of trade and to promote
            shared prosperity? This paper attempts to answer these
            questions. It examines alternative scenarios on the gains
            from trade and it finds that what makes most favored nation
            status work is the trade facilitation that surrounds it. The
            results of the general equilibrium simulation indicate
            Pakistan's most favored nation status to India would
            generate larger benefits if it were supported by improved
            connectivity and trade facilitation measures. In other
            words, gains from trade would be small in the absence of
            improved connectivity and trade facilitation. The idea of
            trade facilitation is simple: implement measures to reduce
            the cost of trading across borders by improving
            infrastructure, institutions, services, policies,
            procedures, and market-oriented regulatory systems. The
            returns can be huge, even with modest resources and limited
            capacity. The dividends of trade facilitation can be shared
            by all.
The role of private equity
            investments in public firms : international evidence
This paper compares the raising of
            external equity capital from private equity investors via
            private investments in public equity (PIPEs) and seasoned
            equity offerings (SEOs) using a sample of 456 PIPEs and
            1,910 SEOs drawn from nine Asian countries. Consistent with
            the idea that insiders attempt to time the markets, firms
            issuing SEOs are preceded by a significantly higher run-up
            in stock price compared with those issuing PIPEs. This
            result is consistent with the undervaluation hypothesis that
            states that firms are more likely to issue PIPEs when they
            perceive their stock to be undervalued. In contrast to the
            United States where this undervaluation appears to be driven
            by financial distress and asymmetric information, the
            results show PIPE and SEO issuers to be statistically
            undistinguishable from each other. The announcement of a
            PIPE offering is on average associated with a significantly
            higher stock market reaction compared with an issue of a
            SEO, suggesting that private equity investors may play a
            certification or monitoring role. However, a comparison of
            PIPE issuers' operating performance and stock market
            returns in the pre-issue and the post-issue periods does not
            detect any significant improvements.
Multidimensional auctions for public
            energy efficiency projects : evidence from the Japanese ESCO market
Competitive bidding is an important
            policy tool to procure goods and services from the market at
            the lowest possible cost. Under traditional public
            procurement systems, however, it may be difficult to
            purchase highly customized objects, such as energy
            efficiency services. This is because not only prices but
            also other nonmonetary aspects need to be taken into
            account. Multidimensional auctions are often used to
            evaluate multidimensional bids. This paper examines the
            bidding strategy in multidimensional auctions, using data
            from public energy service company projects in Japan. It
            shows that multidimensional auctions work well, as theory
            predicts. The competition effect is significant. In
            addition, strategic information disclosure, including
            walk-through and preannouncement of reserve prices, can also
            promote energy savings and investment. Risk sharing
            arrangements are critical in the energy service company
            market. In particular, the public sector should take
            regulatory risk.
Misunderestimating corruption
Estimates of the extent of corruption
            rely largely on self-reports of individuals, business
            managers, and government officials. Yet it is well known
            that survey respondents are reticent to tell the truth about
            activities to which social and legal stigma are attached,
            implying a downward bias in survey-based estimates of
            corruption. This paper develops a method to estimate the
            prevalence of reticent behavior, in order to isolate rates
            of corruption that fully reflect respondent reticence in
            answering sensitive questions. The method is based on a
            statistical model of how respondents behave when answering a
            combination of conventional and random-response survey
            questions. The responses to these different types of
            questions reflect three probabilities -- that the respondent
            has done the sensitive act in question, that the respondent
            exhibits reticence in answering sensitive questions, and
            that a reticent respondent is not candid in answering any
            specific sensitive question. These probabilities can be
            estimated using a method-of-moments estimator. Evidence from
            the 2010 World Bank Enterprise survey in Peru suggests
            reticence-adjusted estimates of corruption that are roughly
            twice as large as indicated by responses to standard
            questions. Reticence-adjusted estimates of corruption are
            also substantially higher in a set of ten Asian countries
            covered in the Gallup World Poll.
Social spending, distribution, and
            equality of opportunities : opportunity incidence analysis
Existing evidence forms a body of
            "conventional wisdom" on the redistributive impact
            of fiscal policies that has been recently questioned by more
            disaggregated analyses. This paper proposes an additional
            extension to the traditional benefit incidence analysis to
            explore further the extent to which the conventional wisdom
            holds, as well as to provide effective guidance in fiscal
            decision making. The benefit incidence analysis extension
            includes linking fiscal policies with the concept of
            equality of opportunities. The paper describes this approach
            and showcases the application of the proposed
            "opportunity incidence analysis" to six pilot
            countries: Liberia, Cote dIvoire, Zambia, Tajikistan,
            Thailand, and Paraguay. Three main contributions stand out:
            first, opportunity incidence analysis complements
            traditional benefit incidence analysis by applying its
            mechanics to a more forward looking concept of equal
            opportunity. Second, opportunities can be used to target
            public spending with higher precision. Third,
            micro-simulations can be used to understand the
            cost-effectiveness of alternative spending interventions
            that seek to improve equality of opportunities. All of these
            results complement the diagnosis produced by traditional
            incidence analysis and provide useful information to guide
            specific policy decisions.
Missing(ness) in action :
            selectivity bias in GPS-based land area measurements
Land area is a fundamental component of
            agricultural statistics, and of analyses undertaken by
            agricultural economists. While household surveys in
            developing countries have traditionally relied on
            farmers' own, potentially error-prone, land area
            assessments, the availability of affordable and reliable
            Global Positioning System (GPS) units has made GPS-based
            area measurement a practical alternative. Nonetheless, in an
            attempt to reduce costs, keep interview durations within
            reasonable limits, and avoid the difficulty of asking
            respondents to accompany interviewers to distant plots,
            survey implementing agencies typically require interviewers
            to record GPS-based area measurements only for plots within
            a given radius of dwelling locations. It is, therefore,
            common for as much as a third of the sample plots not to be
            measured, and research has not shed light on the possible
            selection bias in analyses relying on partial data due to
            gaps in GPS-based area measures. This paper explores the
            patterns of missingness in GPS-based plot areas, and
            investigates their implications for land productivity
            estimates and the inverse scale-land productivity
            relationship. Using Multiple Imputation (MI) to predict
            missing GPS-based plot areas in nationally-representative
            survey data from Uganda and Tanzania, the paper highlights
            the potential of MI in reliably simulating the missing data,
            and confirms the existence of an inverse scale-land
            productivity relationship, which is strengthened by using
            the complete, multiply-imputed dataset. The study
            demonstrates the usefulness of judiciously reconstructed
            GPS-based areas in alleviating concerns over potential
            measurement error in farmer-reported areas, and with regards
            to systematic bias in plot selection for GPS-based area measurement.
The projection of development :
            cinematic representation as an(other) source of
            authoritative knowledge
Popular representations of development
            need to be taken seriously (though not uncritically) as
            sources of authoritative knowledge, not least because they
            are how most people in the global north (and elsewhere)
            encounter development issues. To this end, this paper
            presents three clusters of films on development: those
            providing uniquely instructive insights, those unhelpfully
            eliding and simplifying complex processes, and those that,
            with the benefit of historical hindsight, usefully convey a
            sense of the prevailing assumptions that guided and
            interpreted the efficacy of interventions (whether of a
            military, diplomatic or humanitarian nature) at a particular
            time and place. The authors argue that the commercial and
            technical imperatives governing the production of
            contemporary films, and popular films in particular,
            generate a highly variable capacity to accurately render key
            issues in development, and thereby heighten their potential
            to both illuminate and obscure those issues.