rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
In Search of Better Opportunities :
            Sorting and Agglomeration Effects among Young College
            Graduates in Colombia
This paper studies the dynamic sorting
            of workers prior to labor market entry that leads to skill
            differences across cities of different sizes, as well as its
            consequences on the estimation of agglomeration effects.
            Using rich administrative data for young, college-educated
            workers in Colombia, the paper shows that the most talented
            and best trained sort to big cities primarily because they
            attend college there and remain for work. The availability
            of colleges in an individual's high school city,
            parental resources, and high school city size are the most
            important determinants of the decision to move for college.
            The relatively less able remain in medium and small cities
            or move there for work after attending college in big
            cities. Pre-labor market sorting thus concentrates
            population and skill in big cities. As a result of this
            sorting, agglomeration effects are stronger for college than
            work city size, even after controlling for mediating factors
            such as individual ability or college selectivity.
Unmasking the Impact of COVID-19 on
            Businesses : Firm Level Evidence from Across the World
This paper provides a comprehensive
            assessment of the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
            on businesses worldwide with a focus on developing
            countries. The results are based on a novel data set
            collected by the World Bank Group and several partner
            institutions in 51 countries covering more than 100,000
            businesses. The paper provides several stylized facts.
            First, the COVID-19 shock has been severe and widespread
            across firms, with persistent negative impact on sales.
            Second, the employment adjustment has operated mostly along
            the intensive margin (that is leave of absence and reduction
            in hours), with a small share of firms laying off workers.
            Third, smaller firms are disproportionately facing greater
            financial constraints. Fourth, firms are increasingly
            relying on digital solutions as a response to the shock.
            Fifth, there is great uncertainty about the future,
            especially among firms that have experienced a larger drop
            in sales, which is associated with job losses. These
            findings provide a better understanding of the magnitude and
            distribution of the shock, the main channels affecting
            businesses, and how firms are adjusting. The paper concludes
            by discussing some avenues for future research.
Vulnerability to Poverty Following
            Extreme Weather Events in Malawi
Severe weather shocks recurrently hit
            Malawi, and they adversely affect the incomes of many farm
            households as well as small businesses. With climate change,
            the frequency of extreme weather events is expected to
            increase further. A clear understanding of households’
            vulnerability to shock-induced poverty is critical for
            disaster risk management and the design of scalable social
            safety net programs. Standard poverty measures rely on
            static snapshots that are suitable for quantifying
            structural poverty but not for assessing the vulnerability
            of non-poor households to fall below the poverty line when
            they experience shocks. This study uses a nationally
            representative household survey and exogenously measured
            weather shocks to assess households' vulnerability to
            poverty in Malawi. To accurately estimate the impacts of
            shocks on consumption and vulnerability, the study excludes
            any kind of assistance (aid and food or cash transfers) that
            households might have received after major disasters. The
            key findings of the study are as follows: (1) drought during
            the growing season decreases non-assistance consumption per
            capita by 5–12 percent, depending on its intensity; (2)
            excess rainfall at the onset of the growing season reduces
            food consumption by 1.8 percent, while excess rainfall later
            in the growing season appears to increase consumption; (3)
            vulnerability to poverty is generally higher than static
            poverty, especially compared to static poverty measured
            during a good weather year; and (4) in years of extreme
            droughts, such as 2016, recorded poverty rates are higher
            than vulnerability, which indicates that the magnitude of
            drought in 2016 was so large that the chance of falling
            below the poverty line as a result of an even higher
            magnitude shock was low. These results suggest that
            identifying vulnerable households is key in designing
            adaptive social safety net programs that can be scaled up to
            cover those who become eligible for such programs after
            experiencing shocks.
Impact of Grain Trade Policies on
            Prices and Welfare : Evidence from Malawi
Restricting cross-border trade through
            export bans in an attempt to stabilize domestic prices has
            been a particularly popular policy tool used by many
            sub-Saharan countries in recent years. However, little is
            known about how the variability in harvests and seasonality
            -- two critical dimensions of smallholder agriculture in
            Africa -- mediate the effects of export bans on household
            welfare. This study assesses the short-term impact of export
            bans on prices and welfare of households in Malawi,
            accounting for these heterogeneities. It uses monthly panel
            data on maize prices from 152 markets in Malawi and
            neighboring countries. To identify the impacts of the bans,
            the study compares the change in price dispersion between a
            domestic market in Malawi and another market in a
            neighboring country, relative to the price dispersion
            between the domestic market and other markets within Malawi
            that are at a similar distance as the domestic-foreign
            market pair. The findings show that export bans, in the
            short run, are associated with lower domestic prices, lower
            relative prices, and less seasonality in prices in Malawi.
            This is after accounting for harvest levels and the
            existence of trade restrictions in neighboring countries.
            The short-run effects of the export bans help explain why
            policymakers are likely to engage in the use of such
            policies. However, the welfare analysis shows that the
            welfare gains and poverty reduction effects are small in
            magnitude and likely to be offset by the long-run
            distortionary effects of restrictive trade policies.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Formal
            Firms: Micro Tax Data Simulations across Countries
How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting
            firm profits and tax payments in developing countries? This
            paper uses administrative corporate tax records from 10 low-
            and middle-income countries around the world to provide
            plausible estimates. Modeling the lockdown-triggered revenue
            shock with simple and transparent assumptions, the analysis
            predicts that less than half of all firms will remain
            profitable by the end of 2020, about 5-10 percent of the
            formal aggregate annual payroll will be lost, and firm exit
            rates will double. As a result, it is expected that tax
            revenue remitted by the corporate sector will fall by at
            least 1.5 percent of baseline gross domestic product.
            Differences in sectoral composition and firms' cost
            structures generate heterogeneity in the results across
            countries: wage subsidies are less effective in low-income
            countries and government revenue losses are smaller.
Risk Management in Border Inspection
As part of their commitments under the
            World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade
            Facilitation, many developing countries are set to adopt
            risk management, a strategy for selecting import shipments
            for inspection. This paper formalizes key enforcement issues
            related to risk management. It argues that the complexities
            of international trade oversight mean that inspecting
            agencies lack certainty about the conditional probability
            that a given shipment will not comply with import
            regulations. Ambiguity of this sort is likely to be
            important in developing countries that lack the
            sophisticated information technology (IT) used in advanced
            risk management systems. This paper show empirically that
            infrequent shipments have conditionally higher inspection
            rates, a finding that is consistent with the ambiguity
            hypothesis. This paper formalizes a role for ambiguity in a
            theoretical model of border inspection. Finally, the paper
            calibrates the model and shock the ambiguity parameters to
            illustrate the consequences of an IT -driven improvement in
            risk management capabilities for search and compliance.
Africa in Manufacturing Global Value
            Chains : Cross-Country Patterns in the Dynamics of Linkages
Africa's linkages in manufacturing
            global value chains are reasonably high compared with other
            developing regions. Still, linkage rates have declined
            steeply in recent years in non-resource rich countries in
            the region although they have increased sharply in countries
            that are rich in natural resources. Moreover, the level and
            dynamics of linkages to manufacturing global value chains
            vary significantly between countries within each group of
            natural resource endowments. The current levels, activity
            structure, and geographic configuration of linkage rates
            evolved over the past 20 years. In addition, these linkages
            cut across broad activity categories, including
            manufacturing textiles and apparel, metal products,
            transport equipment, and electrical goods. This paper
            analyzes the sources of the variation in linkage rates in
            the framework of an estimated gravity and linear probability
            model. It is shown that the domestic actors in these
            linkages are typically relatively large establishments (100
            or more employees) and have been in operation for five years
            or longer. These manufacturers are also more likely to have
            foreign equity holders or foreign technology licenses. These
            findings should be seen in the light of policies that
            promote industrialization by facilitating integration into
            manufacturing global value chains at links that maximize job
            and productivity gains.
An Analysis of Clinical Knowledge,
            Absenteeism, and Availability of Resources for Maternal and
            Child Health : A Cross-Sectional Quality of Care Study in 10
            African Countries
This paper assesses the quality of
            health care across African countries based on health
            providers' clinical knowledge, their clinic attendance,
            and drug availability, with a focus on seven conditions
            accounting for a large share of child and maternal
            mortality: malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, pneumonia,
            diabetes, neonatal asphyxia, and postpartum hemorrhage. With
            nationally representative, cross-sectional data from 10
            countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, collected using clinical
            vignettes, unannounced visits, and visual inspections of
            facilities, this study assesses whether health providers are
            available and have sufficient knowledge and means to
            diagnose and treat patients suffering from common conditions
            amenable to primary health care. The study draws on data
            from 8,061 primary and secondary care facilities in Kenya,
            Madagascar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Sierra
            Leone, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda, and 22,746 health
            workers. These data were gathered under the Service Delivery
            Indicators program. Across all conditions and countries,
            health care providers were able to correctly diagnose 64
            percent of the clinical vignette cases, and in 45 percent of
            the cases, the treatment plan was aligned with the correct
            diagnosis. For diarrhea and pneumonia, two common causes of
            under-five deaths, 27 percent of the providers correctly
            diagnosed and prescribed the appropriate treatment for both
            conditions. On average, 70 percent of health workers were
            present in the facilities to provide care during facility
            hours when those workers were scheduled to be on duty. Taken
            together, the estimated likelihood that a facility has at
            least one staff present with competency and the key inputs
            required to provide child, neonatal, and maternity care that
            meets minimum quality standards is 14 percent. Poor clinical
            knowledge is a greater constraint in care readiness than
            drug availability or health workers' absenteeism in the
            10 countries. However, the paper documents substantial
            heterogeneity across countries.
Why Do Firms Pay Bribes : Evidence
            on the Demand and Supply Sides of Corruption in Developing Countries
This paper empirically examines the
            demand and supply sides of bribery using World Bank
            Enterprise Survey data on 18,005 firms in 75 developing
            countries. It assesses the determinants of firms' bribe
            paying behavior and examine how bribe behavior affects two
            main sectors where corruption is rampant: taxation and
            government contracts. The paper shows that corruption in tax
            administration tends to be mainly a demand-side phenomenon.
            Paying a bribe requested by a public official is associated
            with a 16 percent increase in the share firms~^!!^ sales not
            reported for tax purposes. In public procurement, the
            results suggest, on the contrary, that corruption is a
            supply-side phenomenon, with bribe transactions generally
            initiated by firms to secure public contracts. Firms
            supplying a bribe without a previous request by officials is
            associated with a 17 percent increase in the bribe paid to
            secure a government contract, more than three times the
            effect observed on the demand side of bribery.
Do Innovative Firms Pay Higher Wages
            : Micro-Level Evidence from Brazil
Several studies have documented a
            positive and causal relationship product or process
            innovation -- and labor productivity. Given the links
            between labor productivity and wages, a likely implication
            of this positive relationship is that innovation is
            associated with higher wages of more productive firms. This
            paper explores the relationship between innovation and wages
            using Brazil's employer-employee census and a novel
            measure of innovation derived from the share of technical
            and scientific occupations of workers in the firm. The
            results show a robust and positive wage premium associated
            with innovative firms. The decomposition of this
            innovation-related wage premium suggests a series of
            important stylized facts: (i) the innovation wage premium is
            larger for manufacturing but also positive and significant
            for agriculture and services; (ii) it is larger for large
            firms, but also positive and significant for all firm size
            categories including micro firms; and (iii) it is larger for
            medium- and low-skill occupations, although this depends on
            the use of firm fixed effects. More importantly, the paper
            explores the causality between innovation and wages and
            finds empirical support for the ideas that
            “self-selection”—firms that innovate already pay higher
            wages before becoming innovators -- and increases in wages
            associated with starting innovation activity, which are
            persistent for three years after firms start innovating.
Supporting Carbon Tax Implementation
            in Developing Countries through Results-Based Payments for
            Emissions Reductions
This paper discusses compensation
            mechanisms to strengthen incentives for lower-income
            countries to adopt carbon taxes through donor-funded support
            programs. The paper considers two cases: the provision of
            climate finance when the host country uses the additional
            mitigation to meet its own greenhouse gas mitigation target
            (the "incremental cost price"); and a transaction
            in an international carbon market with the mitigation credit
            created by host country mitigation transferred outside the
            country (the “opportunity cost price”). Both offset the host
            country's deadweight loss from imposing a carbon tax,
            which is lower when the host country enjoys large
            co-benefits from mitigation. Formulas are derived for the
            incremental cost price and the opportunity cost price. The
            opportunity cost price is always larger than the incremental
            cost price, as the host country under the opportunity cost
            price must use additional, more expensive mitigation
            policies to reach its mitigation target. The paper discusses
            additional costs and barriers that deter hosts from adopting
            carbon taxes. These arguments can help to explain why few
            low-income countries have so far adopted carbon taxes, and
            why the necessary compensation for tax adoption may exceed
            theoretical assessments.
Women's Legal Rights and Gender
            Gaps in Property Ownership in Developing Countries
Women's property ownership matters
            for their well-being and agency; it can also advance
            economic prosperity and promote the human development of
            future generations. Yet, until recently, lack of data has
            constrained researchers from gaining a comprehensive
            overview of gender differences in property ownership in the
            developing world. Using Demographic and Health Survey data
            from 41 developing countries, this paper seeks to fill this
            gap, by investigating the extent of gender gaps in the
            incidence of property ownership (land and housing) and the
            factors associated with these gaps, focusing on the role of
            legal systems. The study finds that there is substantial
            variation in gender gaps across countries, but in almost all
            countries men are more likely to own property than women.
            Within countries, gender gaps are most pronounced for groups
            that are already disadvantaged, that is, the rural
            population and the poorest quintile. The disadvantage in
            property ownership experienced by women reflects a variety
            of factors, including discriminatory norms and laws on
            inheritance, property ownership, marital regimes, and
            protection from workplace discrimination. Countries with
            more gender egalitarian legal regimes generally have higher
            levels of property ownership by women, especially housing.
            These results suggest that reforms to establish a more
            gender-equitable legislative framework could be an important
            mechanism to increase women's property ownership.
Learning Poverty : Measures and Simulations
COVID-19-related school closures are
            pushing countries off track from achieving their learning
            goals. This paper builds on the concept of learning poverty
            and draws on axiomatic properties from social choice
            literature to propose and motivate a distribution-sensitive
            measures of learning poverty. Numerical, empirical, and
            practical reasons for the relevance and usefulness of these
            complementary inequality sensitive aggregations for
            simulating the effects of COVID-19 are presented. In a
            post-COVID-19 scenario of no remediation and low mitigation
            effectiveness for the effects of school closures, the
            simulations show that learning poverty increases from 53 to
            63 percent. Most of this increase seems to occur in
            lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income countries,
            especially in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and
            South Asia. The countries that had the highest levels of
            learning poverty before COVID-19 (predominantly in Africa
            and the low-income country group) might have the smallest
            absolute and relative increases in learning poverty,
            reflecting how great the learning crisis was in those
            countries before the pandemic. Measures of learning poverty
            and learning deprivation sensitive to changes in
            distribution, such as gap and severity measures, show
            differences in learning loss regional rankings. Africa
            stands to lose the most. Countries with higher inequality
            among the learning poor, as captured by the proposed
            learning poverty severity measure, would need far greater
            adaptability to respond to broader differences in student needs.
People in Harm's Way : Flood
            Exposure and Poverty in 189 Countries
Flooding is among the most prevalent
            natural hazards affecting people around the world. This
            study provides a global estimate of the number of people who
            face the risk of intense fluvial, pluvial, or coastal
            flooding. The findings suggest that 1.47 billion people, or
            19 percent of the world population, are directly exposed to
            substantial risks during 1-in-100 year flood events. The
            majority of flood exposed people, about 1.36 billion, are
            located in South and East Asia; China (329 million) and
            India (225 million) account for over a third of global
            exposure. Of the 1.47 billion people who are exposed to
            flood risk, 89 percent live in low- and middle-income
            countries. Of the 132 million people who are estimated to
            live in both extreme poverty (under $1.9 per day) and in
            high flood risk areas, 55 percent are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
            About 587 million people face high flood risk, while living
            on less than $5.5 per day. These findings are based on
            high-resolution flood hazard and population maps that enable
            global coverage, as well as poverty estimates from the World
            Bank's Global Monitoring Database of harmonized
            household surveys.