rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
facing a bribery solicitation when any firm in that particular cell conducts a business transaction. Additional statistics are shown below the regressions. First, the Durbin Wu-Hausman F-statistic is significant, rejecting the hypothesis that bribery is an exogenous variable. First-stage F- statistics for each instrument show whether the instruments are significant. In cases with one instrument F-statistics should be greater than 10, and in our estimation the F-statistic is 18.13 (column 1). Shea’s partial R-squared shows that our instrument is positively correlated to the endogenous variable.

Coefficients on the set of explanatory variables have the expected signs. Firms with higher sales in 2007 have lower sales growth, and growth rate decreases at a slower rate. This negative relationship between growth rate and size, which could be due to mean reversion, has been shown in many studies like Dunne et al. (1989), Rossi-Hansberg and Wright (2007), and Lentz and Mortensen (2008). Control for age shows that younger firms have significantly faster sales growth. This result also coincides with stylized facts that older firms have lower growth rates (Dunne et al. (1989). Firms with foreign ownership are likely to grow faster (Şeker 2011b; Almeida & Fernandes 2008). Results show that foreign owned firms have sales growth that is around 3 percent higher than those who do not. As for the exporters, although they grow faster than non-exporters, this difference is not significant. Sole proprietors have significantly lower sales growth.

Access to finance is an important factor for firm evolution. Firms with easier access to external finance for productive investment purposes are likely to grow faster. Beck et al. (2005) use a variety of proxies for financial constraints and show how adversely these factors affect growth. Estimation results show that having access to external finance increase growth by half a percentage point. We also include two dummy variables to control for the employment level of firm: medium (20-99 employees) and large (over 100 employees) firms. These dummies provide additional control for firm’s size and performance. Unlike sales, they are less volatile and less noisy. Medium and large firms grow faster than small firms with large firms having the fastest growth rate.

The principle result is the negative impact of bribery on firm growth. In column (1), bribery is estimated to have a negative effect on sales growth; firm who were bribed grow 23.6 percent less, or slightly less than one standard deviation from the average. In column (2), the exercise is 17
_Figure 9: Index of gender/disability equality measuring the extent to which officials promote gender equality and inclusion of children with disabilities._ <!-- Start of picture text --> 0.8<br>0.6<br>0.4<br>0.2<br>0<br>-0.2<br>-0.4<br>-0.6<br>-0.8<br>Gedenr/disabilitity equity index<br><!-- End of picture text --> Source: Calculations from CDG–World Bank 2022 microdata. Principal factor analysis of the following items: “Schools should try to promote gender equality.”, “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women.”, “Teachers found to have a sexual relationship with a secondary school student should be suspended.”, “Children with disabilities deserve the same level of access to public schooling as children without disabilities.”, “In most cases, accommodations should be made so that children with disabilities can be included in regular classrooms with children who do not have disabilities.” The index is normalized to have a zero mean and a unitary standard deviation across the whole sample; a score of 0.16 means that the average score in the country is 16% of a standard deviation above the global mean.

# 4.5 Officials favoring equality also tend to reject violence toward children.

The survey included three items about violence toward children. Officials were asked if beating of children by parents or teachers could be justified and about their perceived frequency of children affected by sexual violence. Officials displaying more favorable views about gender equality and inclusion of children with disabilities are also less likely to agree with statements justifying violence toward children (Table 1). Their estimates of the prevalence of sexual violence toward children were also lower. This is important since it suggests that officials’ views align with values espoused by major international development organizations, which reject the practice of violence against children.

13
# **Figure 9 The VAT gap in EU countries (2006)**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 40%<br>35%<br>30%<br>25%<br>20%<br>15%<br>10%<br>5%<br>0%<br>LU ES IE NL SE SI DK PT FI FR PL EE BG DE MT BE EU25 AT UK CZ LT IT LV HU SK GR RO<br><!-- End of picture text --> _Sources: European Commission, Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union, Reckon Report, 2009, Romanian National Institute of Statistics, Fiscal Council_ To conclude this section, revenue collections in Romania have been undermined by tax evasion of both direct and indirect taxes. With total losses from tax evasion estimated at about 10 percent of GDP or more, efforts to strengthen tax compliance should be a priority for public policy. Improving tax administration offers the scope for improving revenue collections, by reducing tax evasion, without having to raise tax rates.

25
24 concerned, all quantitative restrictions are eliminated on the date of entry into force of the rrAs. Customs duties levied on steel products are to be eliminated after five years.<sup>37</sup> Taking into account that almost all CN items failing in this group are subject to GSP rates, tariff concessions are not significant.

Table 8: The "SteeP ECSC Sub-Group: Exports to the EC md Pre-ITAs Market Access

||Exports<br>1991|Share in Indust<br>Exports, 1991|rial Index 1991<br>1988=100|NTB Coverage<br>Ratio,|Simple Average<br>Tariff Rate|Range of<br>tariff rates<br>Max-Min|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||(in U|S$ million)||-<br>n|perce<br>t||
|Bulgaria|77|11.4|227|74.6|5.4|lO-0.0|
|FCSK|489|10.5|202|64A|5.6|10-0.0|
|Hungry<br>|139|4.2|175|58.2|0.0|3.2-0.0|
|Poland|280|4.5|258|_S7.4_|0.1|4.0-0.0|
|Romania|61|3.6|96|68.2|0.0|0.040.0|

# Sources: See Table 2.

This should not imply that all NTBs will disappear (to the contary, other instruments have gained prominence as quantiatve restrictions had been removed), or that all tariffs will indeed decline accordg to the schedule. Steel industries in both the EC and CEE-5 counties have significant surplu capacity, prouiding slrong pressures to export and to protect domestic makes against foreign imports.<sup>3</sup> While the market share has remained low (3.6 percent of EC imports in 1992), penetrafion by CEE-5 steel imports increased dramatically between 1988 and 1992 with Poland and the FCSK each doubling their share in EC imports.

This export success triggered calls for protectionist measures. In 1993, responding to complaints from domestic steel producers about the "flood" of cheap imports from Eastem Europe, the EC approached Hunpgran and Polish governments to impose voluntary resais and set quotas on imports of some steel products (steel coils, sheets, wire rod, strip, and cut lengths) originating in the Czech Republic and Slovak 37 At the begiing of the first year of ITAs the duties are reduced to 80 percent of the basic duties and fiher lowered to 60, 40, 20, 10 and 0 percent (of the basic duties) at the begining of the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth years, respectively.

3s It is estimated that the CEE-5 sted industry works at around SO percent of its former capacity (Peel, 1993).
to rely more on youth who got exposed to plant water at age older than 2. As a consequence, the final sample would have a smaller share of individuals who got exposed to treated water at age zero to two, and the average treatment effects would be smaller simply because it omits (to a greater extent) those sample who benefits the most from treated water.<sup>37</sup> As a result of this consideration, we expect to find significantly weaker treatment effects when controlling for village fixed effects as compared to using county-year fixed effects. This weakening of treatment effects must be stronger for outcomes that take a longer term to materialize--the dummy of graduating from a middle or high school.

Presenting the regression results with both county-year and village FE controls, Table 6 confirms our conjectures. Controlling for village FEs decreases the magnitudes of the treatment effects for all of the outcome variables. The gain in grades of education completed drops from 1.08 to 0.44 years, and the estimate of the likelihood of being a graduate of a middle school and a high school change from 13 to 5 percentage points and from 14.7 to 3.2 percentage points, respectively. Controlling for village FEs also makes the estimates of the effects on two dummy outcome variables statistically insignificant, but the coefficient of Water Plant for grades of education completed stays statistically significant the five percent level. Thus, even with the variation coming from 26% of the original sample villages and only focusing on their beforeafter comparison, and ignoring more those individuals who began their treatment at early childhood, we still find a significant effect of Water Plant on grades attained. The coefficient of 0.437, representing the lowest bound for the water plant effect in all our specifications, still translates into a huge annual return to investing in a water plant: 118%.<sup>38</sup> This again supports our conclusion that the water plant for rural people in China has been highly cost-effective.

# **Does the Plant Water Effect Reflect Health Improvement or Time Saving?**

> 37 In particular, for data of wave 1997 and after, those individuals who got exposed to treated water at age zero to two would be excluded from the treated sample.

> 38 We obtain this figure as follows:  The monthly wage is constructed as 2.69 yuan (i.e., hourly wage rate) * 8 hours

> * 20.83 days per month, or 448.3 yuan.  The annual returns from having a water plant is 448.3 (i.e., month wage) * * 12 months * 10.5% (i.e., educational returns for an additional year of education) * 0.437 (i.e., the education effect of having a water plant).  Changing this number into dollars (by dividing it by 7) and dividing the dollar amount by the cost of the plant construction (30 dollars), we obtain 118%.

22
29 The success of Western integration will largely depend on the willingness of the West to open their markets to the Baltics. In the following the importance of this potential constraint is discussed in more detail.

# 5. Conditions of Market Access in Main Western Markets for the Baltics.

Is the West willing to welcorne the Baltics? Are the conditions offered such that deeper integration becomes possible? A recent paper by Kaminski-Yeats (1993) argues that the FSU countries in general have been among the least preferred suppliers in many OECD countries. The Baltics have done better than other FSU countries, but are still well below their most likely competitors - the reforming East European countries. The situation is changing rapidly, however. Access to main West European markets - EFTA and EU - is discussed in more detail below. Market access is also only one determinant of export performance. Even with most open markets inefficient producers are unlikely to succeed, which underlines the importance of domestic policies. Trade can also be influenced by other structural or natural factors such as natural resources or past structure of industry.

# i) EFTA Markets.

Geographic proximity and high income levels make the Nordics important potential trading partneis for the Baltics and most EFTA countries have given them substantial concessions in market access. Bilateral free trade agreements have been in force since mid 1992 between the Baltics and Finland, Sweden and Norway. For Finland the agreement was a continuation of the duty free access granted previously to the republics of the Soviet Union. Agreement with Switzerland entered into force in April 1993. Austria, the remaining large EFTA member, has granted the Baltics GSP treatment. The bilateral agreements provide for duty free access for industrial products'<sup>3</sup> subject to origin rules.'<sup>4</sup> Agricultural products and fish (Sweden and Norway) are subject to separate agreements.

"3The definition of industrial products in the agreements (HS chapters 25-97) is much wider than the traditional definition of manufactures in international trade statistics. The definition includes petroleum, many iron and steel products.

"'Origin rules require that 1) a product is wholly obtained in the free trade area, 2) the tariff heading in the Harmonized System for the finished product must be different in the four digit level from the tariff heading for dte third country material used; 3) a specific percentage or processing requirement is met. The rules of origin as a general rule require substantial transformation to qualify as a local product. The large number of specific provisions on different products differentiates the rules. Textiles and clothing tend to have the tightest rules.
# **Table 2 Accounting for the Change in Public Savings**

|**Period**|**Adjusted**<br>**Saving**<br>**Rate**<br>**(% of**<br>**GNP)**|**Change**|**M**|**ovements in P**<br>**(% of G**<br>**Exp**|**ublic Savi**<br>**NP)**<br>**lanations**|**ng**|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||||**Consumption**|**Capital**<br>**Gains**|**Unadj**|**usted Dis**|**posable I**|**ncome**|
||||___________<br>|__________|**Total**|**GOS**|**TAX**|**Other**|
|56-60|4.8|0.7|-0.5|0.7|-0.5|0.1|-0.1|-0.5|
|61-65|2.1|-2.7|0.8|-0.6|-1.3|-0.1|-0.6|-0.6|
|66-70|5.9|3.8|0.6|1.0|3.4|0.1|3.1|0.2|
|71-75|4.8|-1.1|2.2|0.3|0.8|_-0.5_|_0.5_|0.8|
|76-80|8.0|3.2|-0.8|0.4|2.0|-0.8|1.7|1.1|
|81-85|1.0|-7.0|2.2|-3.0|-1.8|1.7|-1.9|-1.6|
|86-90|3.9|2.9|-0.7|-0.1|2.1|2.5|2.2|-2.6|
|91-93|9.7|5.8|0.9|3.6|3.1|0.8|1.2|1.1|

Source: National Accounts, Data Appendix and Authors Calculations. The National Accounts constructed bv El Banco de la Republica during 1950-1969 did not present explicitlv the depreciation of public physical capital.

# **Table 3 Accounting for the Change in National Savings**

|**Period**|**Adjusted**<br>**Saving**<br>**Rate**<br>**(% of**<br>**GNP)**|**Change**|**Movem**|**ents in National**<br>**(% of GNP)**<br>**Explanat**|**Saving**<br>**ions**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||||**Consumption**|**Capital**<br>**Gains**|**Unadjusted Disposable**<br>**Income**|
|56-60|18.8|_5.0_|-3.8|1.3|-0.1|
|61-65|14.1|-4.7|3.1|-1.7|0.1|
|66-70|18.9|4.8|-0.9|4.0|-0.1|
|71-75|18.2|-0.7|0.3|-0.3|-0.1|
|76-80|22.5|4.3|-3.2|0.9|0.2|
|81-85|14.6|-7.9|4.2|-3.8|0.1|
|86-90|20.6|6.0|-5.9|0.1|-0.2|
|91-93|23.9|3.3|1.6|4.9|0.0|

Source: National Accounts, Data Appendix and Authors Calculations.

16
**Table 6.1 Main Constraint to Business Development (%)**

|**Obstacles**|**1997 S**|**urvey**|**2001 S**|**urvey**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||**Sole**|**Limited**|**Sole**|**Limited**|
||**Proprietorship**|**Liability &**<br>**Shareholding**|**Proprietorship**|**Liability &**<br>**Shareholding**|
|Insufficient Capital|31.8|32.5|35.7|39.5|
|Insufficient skilled|1.5|0.0|4.8|10.5|
|workers|||||
|Insufficient|0.0|0.0|0.0|1.3|
|technical know-how|||||
|Limited market|48.4|44.2|35.7|27.6|
|demand/too much|||||
|competition|||||
|Lack of|3.0|1.3|4.8|1.3|
|marketing/transport|||||
|Lack of modern|0.0|3.9|4.8|2.6|
|machinery|||||
|Lack of raw material|0.0|2.6|2.4||
|Too much|0.0|1.3|0.0|1.3|
|interference by local<br>officials|||||
|Unstable policy<br>|1.5|5.2|0.0|2.6|
|environment|||||
|Insufficient land|6.1|1.3|9.5|10.5|
|space|||||
|Other|4.5|2.5|2.4|0.0|
|No problems|3.0|5.2|0.0|2.6|
|**_Total_**|**_100_**|**_100_**|**_100_**|**_100_**|

Source: World Bank Survey, 2001 & Ronnas et al., 2001 67. Two obstacles that became more important over the last few years are access to land and skilled labor. The increased need for more land is most likely a sign of the growing size and maturation of private companies. Small and Medium Enterprises are growing into larger enterprises. The need for land is also related however to the increased need for capital as land use rights are often required as collateral for bank loans.

_68._ The lack of skilled labor has become relatively more important as constraint for private enterprises, more in the South than in the North. Even though the general educational level of Vietnam’s labor force is relatively high—in 2000, the rate of illiteracy and uncompleted primary education stood only at 20.5%—there is a lack of technically skilled labor<sup>_41_</sup> . The lack of skilled workers in the manufacturing sector was also confirmed in the case studies.

> 41 MOLISA. Labor Survey 2000.

32
definitive statements on the types of reform that carry the highest payoffs in particular environments.

# **Conclusion**

A new pragmatism surrounding the tarnished bullet of private participation should not foster commitment to a new silver bullet of institutional reform. Not least, evidence that corruption remains a significant issue in the wealthiest countries in the world suggests the complexity of progress –and that zero tolerance is an implausible stand.<sup>31</sup> Experience of the process of governance and institutional reform to date is that it is a complex and lengthy process prone to false starts and setbacks.

Improved governance involves transactions costs, and so there is an optimum level of governance which avoids high-cost limited impact interventions. Anti-corruption measures, much like other regulation designed to minimize market or government failure, can carry higher costs than the economic benefit of the reduced corruption with which they are associated. Ben Olken’s (2004) examination of anti-corruption interventions in the Indonesia KDP project suggested that sending out invitations to village meetings to discuss projects may have fallen into that category, for example. Similarly, international competitive bidding may reduce opportunities for local collusion, but it can also greatly extend procurement processes and add significantly to costs.<sup>32</sup> Again, even if we set the goal of reducing corruption to zero, it is not clear that we have the tools to accomplish such a goal. For example, the Olken study found that an estimated 24 percent of expenditures were “lost” in materials theft, suggesting that community-driven development is not a panacea even if it can be a powerful tool to improve outcomes.

Having said that, governance reform, particularly at the sector level, can carry high payoffs. And ignoring governance weaknesses can significantly dampen economic returns to infrastructure projects. Even with (especially because of) imperfect knowledge of what works in the sector, greater effort and evaluation regarding infrastructure governance should be a priority.

> 31 The recent corruption scandal involving Randy Cunningham, a Congressman from San Diego in the US, is a case in point: he received $525,000 in return for $6m in government contracts (Newsweek 3/20/06 “The CIA: Questions About a Contract”).  This is a payoff as a percentage of the contract value of a little under 10 percent –around the same as the level of bribe payments reported for government contracts in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.  That the price demanded by Cunningham was so low suggests an active market for corruption even in the US.

> 32 In the case of school construction, bundled ICB approaches have been abandoned due to high cost in favor of delegation to contract management agencies, NCB and community-based approaches by the 1990s (Theunynck, 2006).

26
arithmetic tells us that the standard deviation of measurement error is SD(ε) = (1− ρ/) ρ where ρ is the correlation between these two particular expert assessments.<sup>18</sup> We report this standard deviation in Table 3 for several pairs of indicators that we have discussed in the paper, and it ranges from 0.70 to 1.53 across our examples. By way of comparison, the standard errors associated with aggregate indicators such as the WGI are much smaller, reflecting the benefits of aggregation in reducing noise in the individual indicators. For example the standard error for the estimate of Control of Corruption for a typical country in 2006 on the WGI is just 0.17, or less than a quarter of the standard error of the most precise pair of individual indicators in this example.

To appreciate the magnitude of this measurement error, it is useful to go one step further and calculate the width of a 90% confidence interval for governance based on any one of these individual indicators, based on the additional assumption that governance and the error term are jointly normally distributed. This width of the confidence interval is 2x1.64xSD(g | y)= 3.28x 1− ρ , and is reported in the last column of Table 3. Since our assumptions imply that 95 percent of countries would have governance levels between -2 and 2, these figures imply that a 90 percent confidence interval for governance for any individual country would span between half and twothirds of the entire most-likely range of governance outcomes!

# _Why Aggregate Indicators?_

We have emphasized how measurement error is present in all indicators of governance. Aggregate indicators of governance can be a useful way of combining, organizing, and summarizing the information from alternative sources, and thus reducing the influence of measurement error in any individual indicator. This is no more than a simple intuition that averaging across different proxies for governance will provide a

> In more general applications of the unobserved components model, such as the Worldwide Governance Indicators, this restriction is not required as there are three or more data sources.

> 18 For details on this calculation see Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi (2004, 2006).  Gelb, Ngo and Ye (2004) implement a similar calculation comparing the African Development Bank and World Bank CPIA scores.  Their conclusion that the CPIA ratings are quite precise is largely driven by the fact that they focus on the aggregate CPIA scores (across all macro, structural, social and public sector dimensions), which are very highly correlated between the two institutions.  In the case of the CPIA, here we focus on one of 16 specific questions, and at this level of disaggregation the correlation between the two sets of ratings is considerably lower.

26
Table 1 Summary Statistics. Uganda National Household Survey

||Average|Std. Dev|
|---|---|---|
|HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS|||
|Household size|5.67|3.05|
|Male heads|0.74|0.44|
|Married heads|0.71|0.45|
|Males|0.49|0.22|
|Age 18-45|0.30|0.23|
|Age 46-|0.16|0.26|
|Age 0-5|0.19|0.18|
|Age 6-12|0.22|0.18|
|Age 12-18|0.13|0.16|
|POVERTY|||
|Monthly per capita expenditure (US$)|16.5|19.2|
|Urban poverty line (US$)<sup>1</sup>|18.9||
|Rural poverty line (US$)<sup>2</sup>|15.6||
|Poverty rate|35.2||
|EXPORT PARTICIPATION|||
|Cultivated land (in acres)|2.57|3.52|
|Share of land in export crops|0.07|0.17|
|Share of income from export crops|0.08|0.17|
|HEALTH|||
|Proportion of sick members|0.31|0.30|
|Proportion of sick children|0.25|0.34|
|Sick mother|0.22|0.42|
|Number of children|2.63|1.97|
|Sick mother * number of children|0.63|1.61|
|INCOME & ASSETS<sup>3</sup>|||
|Remittances|0.48|0.50|
|Non-farm income|0.35|0.48|
|Animal assets|0.71|0.45|
|Equipment assets|0.99|0.08|

Note: own calculations from the Uganda National Household Survey (UNHS) 1999/2000. 1. The urban poverty line is equivalent to 0.63 US dollars per day. 2. The rural poverty line is equivalent to 0.52 US dollars per day. 3. National averages are constructed from dichotomous variables at the household level that indicate whether a household received remittances or not, etc.

31