rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Middle-income countries -
            development challenges and growing global role
There has been much debate recently
            about the role of international development institutions,
            such as the World Bank in middle-income countries. Some
            observers have suggested that middle-income countries have
            reached a stage in their economic development that calls
            into question the rationale for development
            institutions' continued engagement in these countries.
            But the authors find that middle-income countries continue
            to face significant development challenges. The nature of
            these challenges varies substantially, but all of these
            countries face an agenda calling for continued partnership
            with the international development community. Middle-income
            countries still have high levels of poverty. They are home
            to more than three-quarters of the world's poor (those
            living on less than U$S 2 a day). Poverty is pervasive in
            some middle-income countries, while in others the problem is
            one of major concentrations of poverty in backward areas.
            And recent crises have revealed the fragility of some of the
            gains against poverty in these countries. On the policy
            front, some countries have made great strides in reform, but
            many lag considerable behind, and even among the advanced
            reformers, the unfinished policy agenda is substantial. The
            countries' institutional capacity to manage reform
            varies greatly. So does their integration with the global
            economy. Many middle-income countries still have little
            access to international capital markets, and even those with
            better access, must contend with volatility in private
            capital flows. Beyond the need to assist middle-income
            countries in addressing these challenges, the case for
            continued engagement by international development
            institutions, derives from the increasing importance of
            these countries for a range of global public goods. With
            their growing role, and integration in the global economy,
            partnership with middle-income countries is a key element of
            global collective action, in such areas as reducing global
            poverty, maintaining international financial stability,
            improving global economic governance, protecting the global
            environmental commons, and fighting systemic health threats.
Who participates : the supply of
            volunteer labor and the distribution of government programs
            in rural Peru
Numerous analysts have linked
            volunteering and participation to positive economic and
            political outcomes. The author uses the 1994 Peru Living
            Standards Measurement Survey to analyze volunteering
            patterns in rural Peru. He finds that volunteers in rural
            Peru have a high opportunity cost of time. They are more
            educated and more likely to hold a job. Other household
            characteristics, such as gender, marital status, length of
            residence, and ethnicity, are also important predictors of
            the probability of volunteering. Controlling for household
            characteristics, communities differ widely in aggregate
            volunteer levels. These differences seem unrelated to
            differences in patterns of government expenditures.
            Volunteering may have important benefits in building social
            capital and encouraging greater ownership of development
            projects. For example, many public programs in rural Peru
            and elsewhere ask that the intended beneficiaries
            "participate" as a means of building trust and
            social capital, increasing the sustainability of investments
            and helping self-target investments to the poor. But the
            author finds that encouraging participation by potential
            beneficiaries is unlikely to be an effective form of
            self-targeting, since people with a higher opportunity cost
            of time volunteer more. Moreover, social programs that
            require participation may have difficulty reaching some
            vulnerable groups, such as women and the illiterate.
The impact of NAFTA and options for
            tax reform in Mexico
The North American Free Trade Agreement
            (NAFTA) has had a profound impact on Mexico's economy
            and institutions. Clearly, no consideration of tax reform
            can ignore its role. The thinking about tax reform in Mexico
            requires evaluating NAFTA's effect on Mexico's
            economy, including its tax structure, and the effects of its
            tax system on trade and capital flows between Mexico and its
            NAFTA partners, the United States and Canada. The authors
            review the evidence on NAFTA's economic effects,
            focusing on the changes in foreign trade and foreign direct
            investment flows in Mexico and the effects of these changes
            on Mexico's tax base and ability to raise tax revenues.
            Using marginal effective tax rate analysis, the authors also
            compare Mexico's tax system with those of Canada and
            the United States in terms of the effect on foreign direct
            investment. The authors draw two main conclusions from their
            analysis. First, by fueling Mexico's exports and
            foreign direct investment inflows, NAFTA has altered the
            country's economic structure and hence the industrial
            distribution of the tax base. This transformation calls for
            adapting the tax structure to an economy oriented toward
            services and manufacturing exports. And second,
            Mexico's membership in NAFTA provides no significant
            reasons for fundamental change in its tax structure. The new
            wave of tax reform should concentrate on raising revenues,
            simplifying the tax structure, and increasing the efficiency
            and overall equity of the tax system.
Concession contract renegotiations :
            some efficiency versus equity dilemmas
The authors analyze the possibility of
            tradeoffs between efficiency and equity as well as the
            possibility of distributional conflicts in the context of
            renegotiation of infrastructure contracts in developing
            countries. To do so, they present a model in which contracts
            are awarded by auctioning the right to operate an
            infrastructure service to a private monopoly, and consider
            the possibility of renegotiation. To identify the potential
            sources of tradeoffs, they track the possible outcomes of
            different renegotiation strategies for the monopoly running
            the concession and for the two groups of consumers-rich and
            poor-who alternate in power according to a majority voting
            rule. Among the model� most important policy implications is
            this: if having firm-driven renegotiations is a major
            concern, efficiency should not be the only consideration in
            selecting an operator. Indeed, consumers may want to award
            the concession to a less efficient firm if that would reduce
            the probability of renegotiation, since a lower probability
            of firm-driven renegotiations (due to demand shocks, for
            example) is associated with higher welfare for all service users.
Does foreign bank penetration reduce
            access to credit in developing countries " evidence
            from asking borrowers
Existing evidence on the effect of
            foreign bank penetration on lending to small and medium-size
            enterprises is ambiguous. Case studies of developing
            countries show that foreign banks lend less to such firms
            than domestic banks do. But cross-country studies find that
            foreign bank entry fosters competition and reduces interest
            rates, benefits that should extend to all firms. The authors
            use data from a large cross-country survey of enterprises to
            investigate this issue. Their results suggest that foreign
            bank penetration improves financing conditions (both the
            quantities of financing and the terms) for enterprises of
            all sizes, although it seems to benefit larger firms more.
Bank regulation and supervision :
            what works best
The authors draw on their new database
            on bank regulation and supervision in 107 countries to
            assess different governmental approaches to bank regulation
            and supervision and evaluate the efficacy of different
            regulatory and supervisory policies. First, the authors
            assess two broad and competing theories of government
            regulation: the helping-hand approach, according to which
            governments regulate to correct market failures, and the
            grabbing-hand approach, according to which governments
            regulate to support political constituencies. Second, they
            assess the effect of an extensive array of regulatory and
            supervisory policies on the development and fragility of the
            banking sector. These policies include the following:
            Regulations on bank activities and the mixing of banking and
            commerce. Regulations on entry by domestic and foreign
            banks. Regulations on capital adequacy. Design features of
            deposit insurance systems. Supervisory power, independence,
            and resources; stringency of loan classification;
            provisioning standards; diversification guidelines; and
            powers to take prompt corrective action. Regulations
            governing information disclosure and fostering private
            sector monitoring of banks. Government ownership of banks.
            The results raise a cautionary flag with regard to reform
            strategies that place excessive reliance on a country's
            adherence to an extensive checklist of regulatory and
            supervisory practices that involve direct government
            oversight of and restrictions on banks. The findings, which
            are much more consistent with the grabbing-hand view of
            regulation than with the helping-hand view, suggest that the
            regulatory and supervisory practices most effective in
            promoting good performance and stability in the banking
            sector are those that force accurate information disclosure,
            empower private sector monitoring of banks, and foster
            incentives for private agents to exert corporate control.
On decomposing the causes of health
            sector inequalities with an application to malnutrition
            inequalities in Vietnam
The authors propose a method for
            decomposing inequalities in the health sector into their
            causes, by coupling the concentration index with a
            regression framework. They also show how changes in
            inequality over time, and differences across countries, can
            be decomposed into the following: Changes due to changing
            inequalities in the determinants of the variable of
            interest. Changes in the means of the determinants. Changes
            in the effects of the determinants o the variable of
            interest. The authors illustrate the method using data on
            child malnutrition in Vietnam. They find that inequalities
            in height-for-age in 1993 and 1998 are accounted for largely
            by inequalities in household consumption and by unobserved
            influences at the commune level. And they find that an
            increase in such inequalities is accounted for largely by
            changes in these two influences. In the case of household
            consumption, rising inequalities play a part, but more
            important have been the inequality-increasing effects of
            rising average consumption and the increased protective
            effect of consumption on nutritional status. In the case of
            unobserved commune-level influences, rising inequality and
            general improvements seem to have been roughly equally
            important in accounting for rising inequality in malnutrition.
Liberalizing basic
            telecommunications : the Asian experience
The authors examine the liberalization
            of the basic telecommunications sector in Asian countries
            with a view to identifying good policy and determining how
            multilateral negotiations can promote it. They find that
            most Asian governments, despite the move away from
            traditional public monopolies, are still unwilling to allow
            unrestricted entry, eliminate limits on private and foreign
            ownership, and establish strong, independent regulators. But
            where comprehensive reform has been undertaken-including
            privatization, competition, and regulation-the availability
            of main lines, the quality of service, and the productivity
            of labor are significantly higher. Somewhat surprisingly,
            little unilateral liberalization has occurred since the last
            round of telecommunications negotiations under the General
            Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The new round
            therefore faces the challenge of not merely harvesting
            unilateral liberalization, as in the past, but of
            negotiating away existing restrictions. Since quantitative
            restrictions on the number of telecommunications service
            suppliers are pervasive, deepened GATS rules could help
            ensure transparent and nondiscriminatory allocation of
            licenses. There may also be a need to sharpen the regulatory
            principles established in the last round and to create rules
            that safeguard not only the rights of foreign suppliers but
            also those of consumers.
Tropical bubbles : asset prices in
            Latin America, 1980-2001
The authors test for the existence of
            asset price bubbles in Latin America in 1980-2001, focusing
            mainly on stock prices. Based on unit root and cointegration
            tests, they find that they cannot reject the hypothesis of
            bubbles. They arrive at the same conclusion using Froot and
            Obstfeld's intrinsic bubbles model. To examine
            empirical regularities of these bubble episodes in the
            region, the authors identify periods of significant stock
            price overvaluation. They quantify the relative importance
            of different factors that determine the probability of
            bubble occurrence, focusing on the contrast between the
            country-specific variables and the common external factors.
            They include as country-specific variables both the level
            and the volatility of domestic credit growth, the volatility
            of asset returns, the capital flows to each country, and the
            terms of trade. As common external variables, they consider
            the degree of asset overvaluation in the U.S. stock and real
            estate markets and the term spread of U.S. Treasury
            securities. To quantitatively assess the relative importance
            of each factor, they estimate a logit model for a panel of
            five Latin American countries from 1985 to 2001. In general,
            the authors find that the marginal probabilities of common
            and country-specific variables are of roughly the same order
            of magnitude. This finding contrasts with those of previous
            studies that real asset returns in Latin America are
            dominated by local factors. Finally, the authors explore the
            main channels through which asset prices affect real
            economic activity, with the most important being the balance
            sheet effect and its impact on bank lending. They show how
            the allocation of bank lending across different sectors
            responded sensitively to real estate prices during the boom
            years in countries that experienced banking crises. Thus
            asset price bubbles have long-lasting effects in the
            financial sector and, through this channel, on growth.
            Another channel through which asset prices-particularly
            stock market prices-affect long-run growth is through their
            effect on investment. The authors find a strong positive
            association between stock prices and investment and a
            negative effect of stock price volatility on investment. An
            additional motive for the central bank to monitor asset
            prices is the general coincidence of the crash episodes
            identified by the authors with currency crises in the region
            in the past two decades.
Japan's official development
            assistance : recent issues and future directions
Japan remains the world's largest
            national donor of aid funds. But the Japanese government,
            facing prolonged economic stagnation and mounting public
            sector debt, is under increasing public pressure to reduce
            aid budgets and to use official development assistance in
            more explicit pursuit of Japan's own economic and
            political interests. Internationally, Japan continues to
            attract criticism for its emphasis on infrastructure
            projects and its limited willingness to participate in
            multilateral partnerships. The authors argue that Japan can
            meet these domestic and international challenges by
            developing a coherent national strategy for official
            development assistance, broadly designed to enhance
            effectiveness, accountability, and transparency.
An alternative technical education
            system in Mexico : a reassessment of CONALEP
Using matched pair methods,
            Lopez-Acevedo reevaluates the labor market performance of
            graduates of Mexico's Colegio Nacional de Educacion
            Profesional Ttnica (CONALEP), the country's largest
            technical education system. She also assesses the impact of
            innovations introduced by CONALEP in 1991. The analysis
            shows that individuals in the control group find jobs faster
            than CONALEP graduates do, but a larger share of CONALEP
            graduates work in an occupation consistent with their field
            of specialization or training. CONALEP graduates earn 20-28
            percent more than the control group. And employers invest
            more in training CONALEP graduates than they do in training
            individuals in the control group. The author shows that the
            innovations introduced by CONALEP increase graduates'
            probability of finding a job and shorten their job search. A
            cost-benefit analysis appears to show that CONALEP is an
            effective training system.
Gender and the allocation of adult
            time : evidence from the Peru LSMS panel data
Ilahi analyzes the determinants of
            intra-household time use in Peru in 1994 and 1997. She tests
            whether sickness, unemployment, the provision of water and
            energy services, and other factors affect the time use of
            men and women differently. The results show that women work
            up to a fifth more than men do and that women in poor
            households work more than those in rich ones, while there is
            no difference for men. Women's work is concentrated in
            housework and men's in income-generating activities.
            Sickness does not affect the work burdens of men or women,
            but it alters the composition: men work more in
            income-generating activities, and women tend the sick. Men
            bear a greater burden from female unemployment than do women
            from male unemployment. Improvements in the provision of
            water and energy services affect the time use of both men
            and women. And finally, demographic and life-cycle variables
            are as important as gender in explaining differences in time use.
Evaluating emergency programs
Emergency programs are designed to
            soften the impact of economic crises-income shocks
            experienced by an entire community or country-on consumption
            and human capital accumulation. Of particular concern are
            poor people: as a result of inadequate savings or inadequate
            access to credit or insurance markets, the poor are unable
            to draw on resources from better times to offset a loss in
            income today. Further, the systemic nature of the shocks
            means that risk cannot be effectively pooled through local
            informal insurance mechanisms. Emergency interventions have
            included social funds, workfare programs, training programs,
            conditional transfers (linked to health center visits or
            children's school attendance, for example), and
            traditional direct, unconditional transfers in kind (such as
            communal tables or targeted food handouts). The author
            highlights some conceptual problems in choosing among these
            options and evaluating one program of a certain type
            relative to another. It argues that most such interventions
            can be thought of as containing both a transfer and an
            investment component and that their evaluation as emergency
            programs needs to more explicitly incorporate the
            intertemporal nature of their design. More specifically, the
            mandated investments in physical or human capital will
            benefit the poor, but only in the future-after the
            crisis-and their implementation diverts resources from
            alleviating present hardship. This needs to be reflected in
            the discount factor used to evaluate these investments.
            Maloney argues that the way emergency programs are financed,
            particularly the way the burden is shared between central
            and municipal governments, also has important implications
            for the criteria for evaluation. The analysis suggests that
            most conventional means of evaluating projects-net present
            value at market discount rates, labor intensity, cost per
            job created-may not be relevant or are at least ambiguous in
            the context of emergency programs. As a result, policymakers
            are left with few "hard" indicators with which to
            evaluate such programs. Maloney argues for an approach in
            which the policymaker weighs the appropriateness of
            deviations from the theoretically "ideal"
            benchmark program, which delivers a "smart"
            transfer costlessly to the target beneficiary, and discusses
            the arguments for or against these deviations. The modest
            goal of the proposed approach is to clarify the key issues
            and provide more solid grounding for the necessarily
            subjective judgment calls that policymakers will inevitably
            have to make.