rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Sovereign debt distress and
            corporate spillover impacts
In much of the standard corporate
            finance literature in which sovereign debt is treated as a
            risk free asset, corporate bond prices are seen to depend on
            idiosyncratic risk factors specific to the issuing company,
            with public debt playing an indirect role to the extent that
            it affects the term structure of interest rates. In the
            corporate world, however, the ability of a borrower to
            access international capital markets and the terms according
            to which it can raise capital depend not only on its own
            creditworthiness, but also on the financial health of its
            home-country sovereign. In times of financial stress, when
            investors lose confidence in the government's ability
            to use public finances to stabilize the economy or provide a
            safety net for corporations in distress, markets'
            assessment of private credit risk takes on a completely
            different dynamic than during normal times, incorporating an
            additional risk premium to compensate investors for the
            potential consequences of sovereign default. Using a new
            database that covers nearly every emerging-market corporate
            and sovereign entity that has issued bonds on global markets
            between 1995 and 2009, this paper investigates the degree to
            which heightened sovereign default risk perceptions during
            times of market turmoil influence the determination of
            corporate bond yield spreads, controlling for specific bond
            attributes and common global risk factors. Econometric
            evidence presented confirms that investors' perceptions
            of sovereign debt problems translate into higher costs of
            capital for private corporate issuers, with the magnitude of
            such costs increasing at times when sovereign bonds trade at
            spreads exceeding a threshold of 1000 bps. The key policy
            recommendation emerging from the analysis relates to the
            need to improve sovereign creditworthiness in order to
            prevent a loss in investor confidence that could trigger a
            panicky sell-off in sovereign debt with adverse
            macroeconomic and fiscal consequences. Implications for
            future research point to the need to develop better models
            of corporate bond pricing and valuation, recognizing
            explicitly the role of sovereign credit risk.
Equity in climate change: an
            analytical review
How global emissions reduction targets
            can be achieved equitably is a key issue in climate change
            discussions. This paper presents an analytical framework to
            encompass contributions to the literature on equity in
            climate change, and highlights the consequences -- in terms
            of future emissions allocations -- of different approaches
            to equity. Progressive cuts relative to historic levels --
            for example, 80 percent by industrial countries and 20
            percent by developing countries -- in effect accord primacy
            to adjustment costs and favor large current emitters such as
            the United States, Canada, Australia, oil exporters, and
            China. In contrast, principles of equal per capita
            emissions, historic responsibility, and ability to pay favor
            some large and poor developing countries such as India,
            Indonesia, and the Philippines, but hurt industrial
            countries as well as many other developing countries. The
            principle of preserving future development opportunities has
            the appeal that it does not constrain developing countries
            in the future by a problem that they did not largely cause
            in the past, but it shifts the burden of meeting climate
            change goals entirely to industrial countries. Given the
            strong conflicts of interest in defining equity in emission
            allocations, it may be desirable to shift the emphasis of
            international cooperation toward generating a low-carbon
            technology revolution. Equity considerations would then play
            a role not in allocating a shrinking emissions pie but in
            informing the relative contributions of countries to
            generating such a pie-enlarging revolution.
Cost recovery, equity, and
            efficiency in water tariffs : evidence from African utilities
Water and sanitation utilities in Africa
            operate in a high-cost environment. They also have a mandate
            to at least partially recover their costs of operations and
            maintenance (O&M). As a result, water tariffs are higher
            than in other regions of the world. The increasing block
            tariff (IBT) is the most common tariff structure in Africa.
            Most African utilities are able to achieve O&M cost
            recovery at the highest block tariffs, but not at the
            first-block tariffs, which are designed to provide
            affordable water to low-volume consumers, who are often
            poor. At the same time, few utilities can recover even a
            small part of their capital costs, even in the highest
            tariff blocks. Unfortunately, the equity objectives of the
            IBT structure are not met in many countries. The subsidy to
            the lowest tariff-block does not benefit the poor
            exclusively, and the minimum consumption charge is often
            burdensome for the poorest customers. Many poor households
            cannot even afford a connection to the piped water network.
            This can be a significant barrier to expansion for
            utilities. Therefore, many countries have begun to subsidize
            household connections. For many households, standposts
            managed by utilities, donors, or private operators have
            emerged as an alternative to piped water. Those managed by
            utilities or that supply utility water are expected to use
            the formal utility tariffs, which are kept low to make water
            affordable for low-income households. The price for water
            that is resold through informal channels, however, is much
            more expensive than piped water.
Provision of water to the poor in
            Africa : experience with water standposts and the informal
            water sector
Standpipes that dispense water from
            utilities are the most common alternatives to piped water
            connections for poor customers in the cities of Sub-Saharan
            Africa. Fifty-five percent of the unconnected urban
            population relies on standpipes as their first water source.
            Other informal water providers include household resellers
            and a variety of water tankers and vendors, which are the
            first water source of 1 percent and 3 percent of the urban
            population, respectively. In the cities studied, the
            percentage of unconnected households ranges from 12 percent
            to 86 percent of the population. The percentage of
            unconnected people covered by standpipes is substantially
            higher for countries with higher rates of household
            connection, while the percentage of unconnected people
            covered by water tankers or water vendors is higher for
            countries with lower rates of household connection. Water
            prices in the informal market are much higher than for
            households with private connections or yard taps. Although
            standpipes are heavily subsidized by utilities, the prices
            charged by standpipe operators are closely related to the
            informal water reseller price. Standpipe management models
            also affect the informal price of water. For example, the
            shift from utilities management to delegated management
            models without complementary regulation or consumer
            information has often led to declines in service levels and
            increased prices. Standpipes are not the only or even the
            most efficient solution in peri-urban areas. Programs that
            promote private household connections and arrangements that
            improve pricing and services in the household resale market
            should also be considered by policy makers.
Poverty, living conditions, and
            infrastructure access : a comparison of slums in Dakar,
            Johannesburg, and Nairobi
In this paper the authors compare
            indicators of development, infrastructure, and living
            conditions in the slums of Dakar, Nairobi, and Johannesburg
            using data from 2004 World Bank surveys. Contrary to the
            notion that most African cities face similar slum problems,
            find that slums in the three cities differ dramatically from
            each other on nearly every indicator examined. Particularly
            striking is the weak correlation of measures of income and
            human capital with infrastructure access and quality of
            living conditions. For example, residents of Dakar's
            slums have low levels of education and high levels of
            poverty but fairly decent living conditions. By contrast,
            most of Nairobi's slum residents have jobs and
            comparatively high levels of education, but living
            conditions are but extremely bad . And in Johannesburg,
            education and unemployment levels are high, but living
            conditions are not as bad as in Nairobi. These findings
            suggest that reduction in income poverty and improvements in
            human development do not automatically translate into
            improved infrastructure access or living conditions. Since
            not all slum residents are poor, living conditions also vary
            within slums depending on poverty status. Compared to their
            non-poor neighbors, the poorest residents of Nairobi or
            Dakar are less likely to use water (although connection
            rates are similar) or have access to basic infrastructure
            (such as electricity or a mobile phone). Neighborhood
            location is also a powerful explanatory variable for
            electricity and water connections, even after controlling
            for household characteristics and poverty. Finally, tenants
            are less likely than homeowners to have water and
            electricity connections.
Social security distortions onto the
            labor market: estimates for Colombia
This paper identifies and quantifies
            three distortions caused by the existing social security and
            social assistance systems in Colombia. These distortions
            refer to the discrepancy between the cost of formal social
            security for the employer and the worker's valuation of
            the received service (social distortion): the differences in
            social security benefits received by salaried and
            self-employed formal workers (occupational distortion); and
            the discrepancy caused by the cost in employing a formal
            instead of an informal worker (informal distortion). Based
            on recently collected information concerning Colombian
            workers' willingness to pay for several packages of
            social security benefits, the study calculates that social
            distortions range from 2 to 27 percent of the workers'
            labor earnings; the occupational distortion amounts to 50
            percent of formal salaried workers' earnings; and the
            informal distortions represent between 45 and 56 percent of
            formal workers' labor income. Results indicate that
            valuations of the contributive and noncontributive
            protection systems play a key role in explaining these
            distortions. In addition, the Colombian social protection
            system thereby places a hefty tax on the formal worker (and
            employer) while transferring resources to the informal
            worker, but these distortions are not sufficient to revert
            differentials in earnings among formal and informal workers.
Do we need a zero pure time
            preference or the risk of climate catastrophes to justify a
            2C global warming target
This paper confronts the wide political
            support for the 2C objective of global increase in
            temperature, reaffirmed in Copenhagen, with the consistent
            set of hypotheses on which it relies. It explains why
            neither an almost zero pure time preference nor concerns
            about catastrophic damages in case of uncontrolled global
            warming are prerequisites for policy decisions preserving
            the possibility of meeting a 2C target. It rests on an
            optimal stochastic control model balancing the costs and
            benefits of climate policies resolved sequentially in order
            to account for the arrival of new information (the RESPONSE
            model). This model describes the optimal abatement pathways
            for 2,304 worldviews, combining hypotheses about growth
            rates, baseline emissions, abatement costs, pure time
            preference, damages, and climate sensitivity. It shows that
            26 percent of the worldviews selecting the 2C target are not
            characterized by one of the extreme assumptions about pure
            time preference or climate change damages.
Why are developing countries so slow
            in adopting new technologies the aggregate and complementary
            impact of micro distortions
This paper explores how developmental
            and regulatory impediments to resource reallocation limit
            the ability of developing countries to adopt new
            technologies. An efficient economy innovates quickly; but
            when the economy is unable to redeploy resources away from
            inefficient uses, technological adoption becomes sluggish
            and growth is reduced. The authors build a model of
            heterogeneous firms and idiosyncratic shocks, where
            aggregate long-run growth occurs through the adoption of new
            technologies, which in turn requires firm destruction and
            rebirth.  After calibrating the model to leading and
            developing economies, the authors analyze its dynamics in
            order to clarify the mechanism based on firm renewal. The
            analysis uses the steady-state characteristics of the model
            to provide an explanation for long-run output gaps between
            the United States and a large sample of developing
            countries. For the median less-developed country in the
            sample, the model accounts for more than 50 percent of the
            income gap with respect to the United States, with 60
            percent of the simulated gap being explained by
            developmental and regulatory barriers taken individually,
            and 40 percent by their interaction. Thus, the benefits from
            market reforms are largely diminished if developmental and
            regulatory distortions to firm dynamics are not jointly addressed.
Why are developing countries so slow
            in adopting new technologies the aggregate and complementary
            impact of micro distortions
WPS5393 Policy Research Working Paper 5393 Why Are Developing Countries So Slow in Adopting New Technologies?

The Aggregate and Complementary Impact of Micro Distortions _Raphael Bergoeing Norman V. Loayza Facundo Piguillem_ The World Bank Development Research Group Macroeconomics and Growth Team August 2010
Experimental approaches in migration studies
The decision of whether or not to
            migrate has far-reaching consequences for the lives of
            individuals and their families. But the very nature of this
            choice makes identifying the impacts of migration difficult,
            since it is hard to measure a credible counterfactual of
            what the person and their household would have been doing
            had migration not occurred. Migration experiments provide a
            clear and credible way for identifying this counterfactual,
            and thereby allowing causal estimation of the impacts of
            migration. The authors provide an overview and critical
            review of the three strands of this approach: policy
            experiments, natural experiments, and researcher-led field
            experiments. The purpose is to introduce readers to the need
            for this approach, give examples of where it has been
            applied in practice, and draw out lessons for future work in
            this area.
The role of standards in global
            value chains
Standards have become an increasingly
            important dimension in global trade. Without the capacity to
            meet the growing body of standards, producers may either
            have difficulty in entering global markets, or be relegated
            to unprofitable and low-margin niches. This paper overviews
            the history of standards, explains the difference between
            different types of standards, and identifies the key
            stakeholders involved in the setting of standards. It then
            addresses the role that standards play in enterprise
            upgrading and considers some of the major costs for
            producers in meeting standards, including potential cost
            barriers for small-scale producers. Before concluding with a
            discussion of the policy challenges raised by these
            developments, it discusses the extent to which standards
            intensity in global value chains will be affected when the
            final markets increasingly move from high-income consumers
            in the North to lower-income consumers in Southern economies
            such as China and India.
A diagnostic framework for assessing
            public investment management
This paper provides a pragmatic and
            objective diagnostic approach to the assessment of public
            investment management systems for governments. Since
            weaknesses in public investment management can negate the
            core argument that additional fiscal space allocated to
            public investments could enhance future economic prospects,
            attention to the processes that govern public investment
            selection and management is critical.  The paper begins with
            a description of eight key "must-have" features of
            a well-functioning public investment system: (1) investment
            guidance, project development, and preliminary screening;
            (2) formal project appraisal; (3) independent review of
            appraisal; (4) project selection and budgeting; (5) project
            implementation; (6) project adjustment; (7) facility
            operation; and (8) project evaluation. The emphasis is
            placed on the basic processes and controls (linked at
            appropriate stages to broader budget processes) that are
            likely to yield the greatest assurance of efficiency in
            public investment decisions. The approach does not seek to
            identify best practice, but rather to identify the
            "must have" institutional features that would
            address major risks and provide an effective systemic
            process for managing public investments. The authors also
            develop a diagnostic framework to assess the main stages of
            the public investment management cycle. In principle, the
            identification of core weaknesses will allow reforms to
            focus scarce managerial and technical resources where they
            will yield the greatest impact. In addition, the framework
            is intended to motivate governments to undertake periodic
            self-assessments of their public investment systems and
            design reforms to enhance the productivity of public investment.
Foreign bank participation in
            developing countries : what do we know about the drivers and
            consequences of this phenomenon
Foreign bank participation has increased
            steadily across developing countries since the mid-1990s.
            This paper documents this trend and surveys the existing
            literature to explore the drivers and consequences of this
            phenomenon, paying particular attention to the differences
            observed across regions both in the degree of foreign bank
            participation and in the impact of this process. Local
            profit opportunities, the absence of barriers to entry, and
            the presence of mechanisms to mitigate information problems
            have been the main factors driving foreign bank entry across
            developing countries. In general, foreign bank participation
            has been shown to exert a positive influence on banking
            sector efficiency and competition. The weight of the
            evidence suggests that foreign bank presence does not
            endanger, but rather enhances banking sector stability. And
            although some case studies suggest that foreign bank entry
            limits access to finance, many cross-country studies offer
            evidence to the contrary.
Public debt management in emerging
            market economies : has this time been different
Despite the scale of the global
            financial crisis, to date it has not resulted in a sovereign
            debt crisis among emerging market countries. Two significant
            factors in this outcome are the improved macroeconomic
            management and public debt management in these countries
            over the past decade. This paper reviews the improvements in
            macroeconomic fundamentals and the composition of public
            debt portfolios in emerging market countries prior to the
            crisis and concludes that the policies and strategies
            pursued by governments provided them with a buffer when the
            crisis hit. Nevertheless, with the international capital
            markets effectively closed for over three months and
            domestic borrowing in many cases impacted by extreme risk
            aversion, government debt managers were required to adapt
            their strategies to rapidly changing circumstances. The
            paper reviews the impact of the crisis and the responses of
            debt managers to the drying up of international capital,
            decreased liquidity in markets, and sharply increased term
            premia. Three categories of response are identified: (i)
            funding from other sources to reduce pressure on market
            borrowing; (ii) adapting funding programs to changes in
            demand in the different types of securities; and (iii)
            implementing liability management operations to support the
            market. Most governments were willing to accept temporarily
            greater risk in their portfolios, often reversing long
            established strategies, at a time when financial markets
            were under stress. These actions contributed to the measures
            taken by governments to stabilize markets and prevent
            economies from stalling. Looking to the future, government
            debt managers will need to consider how they can increase
            the resilience of public debt portfolios for the uncertain
            times that lie ahead.