rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
prevalence of labor contracts by gender and by urban versus rural origin for migrants. A few interesting findings emerge from this disaggregation. First, the improvement in labor contract prevalence is even more impressive for those migrants who are wage employees. For all migrant wage workers, the share with labor contracts increased from 37% in 2005 to 60% in 2010. Even if we restrict attention to rural migrants, the majority (51%) of wage employees had labor contracts by 2010.<sup>7</sup> Second, by 2010 there do not appear to be substantial gender differences in the likelihood of having a labor contract, whether for local residents or migrants. This represents clear progress from the situation in 2001 and 2005 when women were 6-7 percent less likely to have labor contracts. Finally, the gains are even more dramatic for urban-to-urban migrants, of which 75% of wage employees had labor contracts in 2010, compared to 51% of rural migrant workers and 80% of local resident workers. Urban-tourban migrants had a much lower prevalence of labor contracts in 2005.

Next, we estimate probit models to provide evidence on the factors predicting that a worker will have a labor contract, and present report using the 2010 CULS data in Table 5. As before, results are reported separately for migrants and local resident workers. For migrant workers, there is no significant gender difference and younger workers (below age 30) are 8-12% more likely to have a labor contract than older workers. However, age differences disappear and lose statistical significance if we restrict the sample to wage workers, suggesting that younger workers are much more likely to be engaged in wage employment compared to older workers. Education strongly predicts whether or not a migrant will have a labor contract: compared to those with less than middle school education, middle school graduates are 14% more likely to have a labor contract, senior high graduates are 28% more likely, and college graduates are 55% more likely. These effects are slightly diminished when restricting the sample to wage workers. Finally, migrants are 16-28% more

> 7 It is also worth noting that among wage workers, the share of migrants with contracts was greater in 2005 than in 2001, suggesting a longer period of reduced informalization. But the increase in migrant wage workers with contracts was very small between 2001 and 2005 and very large between 2005 and 2010.

13
LIBERIA’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE When operational efficiencies and under-pricing are taken into account, Liberia’s power utility generates hidden costs equivalent to 158 percent of revenues. This is relatively high compared to the performance of neighboring countries in Africa (figure 9).

**Figure 9. Liberia’s power sector performs relatively well on hidden costs**

Hidden costs of power utilities in selected countries <!-- Start of picture text --> unaccounted losses % of revenues underpricing collection inefficiencies<br><!-- End of picture text --> Source: Eberhard and others 2009.

In the medium term, reducing the cost of producing power in Liberia is a key strategic objective. The country has a number of power options that are much more cost-effective, including biomass generation at around $0.20-0.25 per kilowatt-hour, heavy fuel oil at around $0.15-20 per kilowatt-hour, hydropower at around $0.10-0.20 per kilowatt-hour, and power imports at around $0.10-0.15 per kilowatt-hour. (Hydropower resources in Liberia are relatively costly to develop compared to other hydropower resources in Africa. This is due to highly seasonal flows and relatively flat terrain, which complicate the development of reservoirs and necessitate significant thermal back-up generation.) Given the available options, the cost of producing power in Liberia is likely to fall substantially over time towards $0.15 per kilowatt-hour, or even lower if trade is fully exploited (figure 10). Making the necessary investments to bring additional cost-effective sources of power on stream is a pressing matter for the country.

19
investment requirements. However, it is well above the current budgetary capacity of the Ministry of Public Works, which has an annual budget of close to US$800 million. Although MOP's budget has been increasing by approximately 10% annually and is expected to continue to rise in the future, an important part of new resources will be devoted to the maintenance of the already existing infrastructure. Without the concession programme it would have been extremely difficult to tackle the infrastructure deficit using public funds alone.

**Table 2.6: Costs of the infrastructure deficit**

|**Type of loss**|**Annual loss**(US$**million)**|
|---|---|
|Traffic delays|433|
|Fruit damaged in surface transit|108|
|Highway delays and vehicle wear|465|
|Port delays|42|
|Accident, injuries and damage|130|
|Gastrointestinal illnesses|106|
|Other health effects|216|

Source: Chilean Chamber of Construction, 1995.

**Table 2.7: Infrastructure investment needs, 1995- 2000**

|**Sector**|**Investment (millions of US$)**|
|---|---|
|Inter-city roads and Highways|4,250|
|Urban Roads|2,000|
|Water Treatment|1,480|
|Potable Water Supply|950|
|Equipment|810|
|Sea Ports|450|
|Railroads|470|
|Irrigation|370|
|Control of Rainwater|195|
|Airports|100|
|**Total**|**11,075**|

Source: Ministry of Public Works _5_
we find that with a simple uniform rate on all goods, the richest quintile pays twice as much in taxes as the poorest quintile in the average country. This ’progressivity dividend’ from exempting the informal sector is largest in the poorest countries and decreases with development.

We provide a similar characterization of the food Engel curves within countries. Consistent with an extensive literature (see for example Deaton and Paxson, 1998), we find that food are Engel curves downward sloping in all countries. This shape motivates the commonly observed use of the de jure exemption of food purchases from consumption taxes (or taxation at a reduced rate). We indeed find that applying such an exemption makes consumption taxes progressive, but less so than the de facto exemption of the informal sector, particularly in poor countries. Once informal consumption is accounted for, exempting food increases progressivity only marginally. This is because most poor households’ food consumption takes place in the informal sector.

Our second contribution is to build a simple model to derive the implications of these consumption patterns for tax policy. We extend the multi-person model of optimal commodity taxation of Diamond (1975) in two directions: we introduce formal and informal (untaxed) varieties of each good and we allow for changes in consumption patterns over the development path. We consider a scenario in which the government sets a uniform rate on all goods, and one with different rates on food and non-food goods. Allowing for informal varieties affects both the and characteristics of efficiency equity consumption taxes. It increases the efficiency cost because households can substitute to informal varieties when taxes increase; it makes consumption taxes progressive as long as IECs are downward sloping. Calibrating the model to the data, we find that the optimal level of rate differentiation between food and non-food products increases with development.<sup>1</sup> This is due to the shape of the formal food Engel curve, which is effectively flat in low-income countries but becomes negative in middle-income countries. In some least-developed countries, we find that subsidizing food relative to non-food can neither be justified on equity nor on efficiency grounds.

Our third contribution is to investigate the impact of consumption tax policies on inequality by combining the calibrated optimal rates with the household data. The impact of a tax policy on inequality depends not only on its progressivity, but also on the level of tax rates and size of tax bases which determine the share of taxes in households’ budgets. We find that setting a uniform tax rate on all goods while taking into account

> 1This is true for our baseline value of the elasticity of substitution in consumption between formal and informal varieties, the parameter which determines the size of the efficiency cost of taxation due to the existence of an informal sector. We use a baseline value taken from Faber and Fally (2017) and Atkin et al. (2018b) and discuss the robustness of our results to alternative values.

2
|**Measure**|**M1**<br>**M3**|**M4**<br>**Sector**<br>**scope**|
|---|---|---|
|Access to and use of public telecommunications service mandated|x<br>x|x<br>SS|
|Collocation or site sharing mandated|x|SS|
|Secondary spectrum trading allowed|x<br>x|SS|
|Existence of a collateral registry and access of all lending institutions to collateral information|x<br>x|SS|
|Access to railway infrastructure mandated at national level|x|SS|
|Independence of infrastructure managers required|x|SS|
|Transfer of public funds between services and infrastructure management activities is prohibited|x|SS|
|Transfer or trading of infrastructure capacity is prohibited|x|SS|
|Functions relating to infrastructure access provided by rail firms|x|SS|
|Memo: Monopoly on infrastructure|x|SS|
|Industry representatives involved in setting entry and pricing regulations|x<br>x|x<br>COM|

41
**Table 6: Distribution of Firm Age by Age of the Owner**

||**Years in**<br>**Business**|**Years i**<br>**One ye**|**n Business:**<br>**ar or less**|**Years i**<br>**Two ye**|**n Business:**<br>**ars or less**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Age of Owner**|**Mean**|**Mean**|**Frequency**|**Mean**|**Frequency**|
|19 or,younger|2.61|.524|99|.693|131|
|20 to 24|2.86|.366|191|.573|299|
|25 to29|3.96|.277|253|.462|421|
|30 to'34|4.96|.233|268|.380|437|
|35 to.39|6.41|.193|250|.325|420|
|40 to44|7.90|.168|196|.283|329|
|45 to49|9.53|.138|138|.251|251|
|50to'54|11.5|.128|117|.191|174|
|55 to159|12.8|.116|75|.199|129|
|60 to69|15.8|.107|91|.180|153|
|70 or older|17.8|.086|33|.153|59|

**Table 7. Depth of participation in societal institutions**

|**Depexndent variable**|**Log revenue**|**Years in business**|**Pseudo R**<sup>**2**</sup>|**# obs**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Fraction of paid workers|2.84|.051|0.115|1697|
|registered with IMSS|(9.15)|(2.86)|||
|Fraction of all institutions in|.245|.004|0.211|8870|
|which the firm participates|(52.2)|(7.17)|||
|Fraction of all institutions,|.386|.005|0.145|8870|
|exclucding business guild<br>registration and dues|(44.6)|(5.53)|||

Tobit regressions. Absolute values of t statistics in parentheses.

31
**Figure 5: Annual growth rates (%) of skilled and unskilled labor supplies (2005-2030)**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 4.0<br>Skilled workers 45 degree line<br>3.5 SSA<br>3.0<br>SAS<br>XLC<br>2.5 MNA<br>PER<br>2.0 COL CAC<br>XEA<br>CHL MEX<br>CHN<br>1.5 ARG<br>BRA<br>USA<br>1.0<br>EUR<br>XHY ECA 0.5<br>Unskilled workers<br>0.0<br>-1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0<br>-0.5<br>-1.0<br><!-- End of picture text --> Source: World Bank staff calculations.

Note: ARG-Argentina, BRA-Brazil, CAC-Central America & Caribbean, CHL-Chile, CHN-China, COL-Colombia, ECA-Europe & Central Asia, EUR-EU27 & EFTA, MEX-Mexico, MNA-Middle East & North Africa, PER-Peru, SAS-South Asia, SSA-Sub-Saharan Africa, USA-United States, XEA-Rest of East Asia, XHY-Rest of high-income, XLC-Rest of Latin America The skill premiums for the initial year (2005) along with the main results of CGE simulations for the final year (2030) are presented in Table 1.<sup>16</sup> In 2005 at the level of almost 6 the skill premium in China was the highest among the reported countries/regions. At 4.6 the skill premium in SubSaharan Africa was also quite impressive. In Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, wages of skilled workers were more than 2.5 times higher than wages of unskilled workers.

Overall, our results indicate that in all regions the skill premium is expected to continue to fall, as growing supply of skilled workers is likely to outpace the growth of demand for skilled workers. The most significant drop in the skill premium is expected in Argentina and Chile, which record a significant increase in the supply of skilled workers only partially attenuated by a relatively significant shift of production towards skilled workers-intensive services.

This study also considers the urban premium defined as a ratio of wages of unskilled workers in urban over rural areas. To understand the evolution of urban premium we divide the national

> 16 The table also shows urban premium, these are discussed in detail below.

15
make China an exception to the growth and finance literature. They are consistent with the work on socialized banks by La Porta et al. (2002) and Cole (2007).

Overall, our results suggest that even in fast growing economies like China where the formal financial system serves a small portion of the private sector, external finance from the formal financial system is associated with faster growth and higher profit reinvestment rates for those firms that receive it. We find no evidence that alternative financing channels are associated with higher growth. While we have some limited evidence that informal finance might help the smallest micro sized firms, we find that all firms irrespective of size, benefit from access to formal finance. Our findings suggest that the role of reputation and relationship based informal financing and governance mechanisms in supporting the growth of private sector firms is likely to be limited and unlikely to substitute for formal mechanisms.

We discuss the Chinese economy and its financial system in detail in Section 2. In Section 3 we describe the survey data and summary statistics and in Section 4 we present our empirical model. Section 5 presents our regression results, Section 6 discusses the results, and Section 7 concludes.

# **2. The Chinese Financial System**

The Chinese financial system is characterized by a large and dominant banking sector that is predominantly state owned.<sup>8</sup> Consequently, a large share of bank funding

> 8 The banking sector is dominated by four large state owned banks that have historically had their own specialized role: the _Industrial and Commercial Bank of China_ (provides working capital loans to state industrial enterprises), _China Agriculture Bank_ (specializes in agricultural lending), _China Construction Bank_ (provides funds for construction and fixed asset investment) and the _Bank of China_ (specializes in trade finance and foreign-exchange transactions). While the above banks have ceased to be specialized sector-wise in recent years, there continues to be a large sectoral bias in their loan portfolios. In addition to the big four state-owned commercial banks, there are also several minor players that include Policy banks

7
WPs, with a stipulated duration and start date.<sup>13</sup> The potential seller provides a minimum acceptable asking price. At the same time, potential buyers submit their maximum bids.

The canned software <mark>then finds the market clearing price ω for each WP such that the counts on the two sides of the market are in balance (at least approximately; some local averaging may be required). Under regular conditions a unique price, or range of prices, will exist. The equilibrium price schedule is then announced. All those citizens who said they are willing to sell their right-to-work for at least ω will take the offer, while a similar number of people wanting a WP but willing to pay no more than ω (plus stipulated taxes and charges) take it up. I</mark> t is the responsibility of the buyer to provide the full bid amount to complete the transaction. Once bought, the WP cannot be resold.

This is not the only possible way of implementing our proposal. A variation on the scheme would entail the seller selecting a (more or less) continuous vector of characteristics as well as an asking price (rather than the government setting this schedule of characteristics initially, though possibly revising it later). The double-auction mechanism for finding the equilibrium would then be more complicated computationally, but not any more so than some of those found in practice.<sup>14</sup> An optional design that may well be more popular for citizens of the host country (for its familiarity as well as transparency) is similar to the auction site _eBay_ . Once cleared for using the site, a citizen submits his offer to sell a WP, specifying the conditions (notably the desired duration and start date) and the price he wants to get. A seller should be able to monitor the ongoing prices for the similar WPs and set up the price for his WP accordingly. After the WP is listed on the site, anybody in the world can bid for that as a WP, with the appropriate taxes and charges added. A particular WP will go to the highest bidder.

Once the transaction is confirmed, the seller (a citizen) receives the money to his bank account and a note is made in his profile (linked, for example in the United States to his Social Security number) indicating the period when that person is not eligible to work in his own country. From that moment, the seller has no obligation either to the buyer or to the authorities. On the expiration date of the WP, the work status of the seller is reset to an original state and he again becomes eligible to work.

> 13 The price of the WP that starts tomorrow would probably be lower than the price of one that starts in 2 months; the price of the longer-term WPs will differ from the prices of the shorter-term WPs, etc. 14 An overview of the options can be found in Haeringer (2017).

12
# **1 Introduction**

The political and economic crisis in Venezuela has given rise to a massive exodus, estimated at 4.3 million people (as of the end of 2019). Many Venezuelans sought refuge in neighboring countries. It is estimated that 1.5 million Venezuelans had settled in Colombia by the end of 2019, and over 2 million elsewhere in Latin America.

Naturally, Venezuelan migrants have sought employment in the host countries but, because of their recent arrival and their transient status, our knowledge of their working conditions is scant. Our paper aims to fill this gap focusing on Ecuador, where almost 400,000 Venezuelans have settled and many more have transited through the country on the way to other destinations. More specifically, we provide the first analysis of the labor-market conditions of Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador, based on a new nationally representative survey of this population that also includes information on the Ecuadorans living in the same localities. The survey (known by its Spanish acronym EPEC) was promoted by the World Bank and the government of Ecuador and implemented during the summer of 2019. The design and scope of the survey are unique in the context of the countries across Latin America hosting Venezuelan migrants.

By providing detailed information on the skills, employment and wages of Venezuelan migrants, as well as the Ecuador-born population in the same local areas, we are able to analyze the effects of several policies aimed at improving the economic conditions of migrants while alleviating the adjustment costs on the native population and maximizing the net economic gain for the receiving country.

Our analysis delivers several important findings. First, we estimate that the inflows of Venezuelan migrants (between 2016 and the summer of 2019) amounted to 2% of Ecuador’s population, reaching much higher concentrations in several provinces. The data also show that Venezuelan migrants are young (aged 32 on average) and highly educated, compared to Ecuador’s working-age population. They also have very high employment rates, about 17 percentage-points higher than Ecuadorans in the same canton of residence, and account for 3% of Ecuador’s employment. However, their employment is of much lower quality, characterized by high informality and temporality, higher weekly work hours, and lower wages, despite the higher schooling levels. The survey also provides information on the occupations held by migrants back in the home country, allowing us to document a high degree of occupational downgrading.

All in all, the previous findings strongly suggest that the skills of many Venezuelan migrants are vastly underutilized. At the same time, the brunt of the adjustment to the 1
researchers in using any of the temperature products since there is no apparent pattern of which product works best in what situation. In linear specifications, mean and median daily temperature tend not to be significant, but in quadratic specifications without fixed effects, mean and median tend to be negatively correlated with outcomes, and in quadratic specifications with fixed effects, mean and median tend to be positively correlated with outcomes. For variance, though, even this pattern falls apart, with a single specification producing both positive and negative coefficients. Based on all of this evidence, we conclude that any of the three temperature products are as likely to produce results substantially similar to each other as they are to produce results substantially different from each other. Researchers may need to verify the robustness of their results to the choice of remote sensing temperature data source. Overall, however, temperature seems to be a poor predictor of agricultural outcomes in these Sub-Saharan African countries.

# **5 Discussion**

Having examined results from 129,600 regressions on panel data from six countries with 33,738 total household observations, it is useful to recapitulate our results and provide direction towards a set of best practices when looking to combine remote sensing weather data with household survey data. We also outline future work, both items from our pre-analysis plan that remain unaddressed and exploratory analysis that was not prespecified.

## **5.1 Towards a Set of Best Practices**

Remotely sensed weather data has become a common component of economic analysis (Dell et al., 2014; Donaldson and Storeygard, 2016). Yet there has been little recognition in the economics literature that these data can suffer from measurement error. Nor has there been a convergence on a set of best practices for dealing with measurement error. Few empirical papers today would fail to verify the robustness of the results to different specifications (Simonsohn et al., 2020) or different iterations of the data Steegen et al. (2016). Yet economics papers rarely, if ever, verify the robustness of results to different sources of remote sensing data or the use of different weather metrics. As we have shown in this paper, such a blas ́e approach to the use of remote sensing weather data is unjustified.

To investigate the degree to which measurement error is an issue in remote sensing weather data, we tested three hypotheses using a set of heuristics outlined in our pre-analysis plan. Hypothesis 1 considered the degree to which extraction methods used to obfuscate the true location of a household introduced mismeasurement when obfuscated household coordinates are paired with remote sensing data. The preponderance of evidence discussed in section 4.1 leads us to conclude that we cannot reject the null for Hypothesis 1. There is no clear evidence that different obfuscation procedures have different impacts on estimates of agricultural production. Any measurement error which may 43