rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Financial Inclusion in the Europe
            and Central Asia Region : Recent Trends and a Research Agenda
Financial inclusion can help promote
            development. Inclusive financial systems allow people to
            invest in their education and health, save for retirement,
            capitalize on business opportunities, and confront shocks.
            In the Europe and Central Asia region, there is great
            variation in financial inclusion. In the euro area, most
            adults already own an account. Account ownership -- which is
            the first step of entry into the formal financial system has
            increased in the developing countries in the region, to 65
            percent of the adult population from 45 percent in 2011.
            Tajikistan, Armenia, Moldova, the Kyrgyz Republic, and
            Georgia are among the countries that have seen the greatest
            increases globally, despite starting from a very low base.
            These experiences underline the potential role of digital
            payments in driving financial inclusion. Nevertheless,
            almost 30 percent of unbanked adults report lack of trust in
            banks as a barrier, which is nearly double the developing
            country average. And in some countries, gender and income
            gaps in account ownership remain significant. For example,
            the gender gap is close to 30 percentage points in Turkey,
            which is three times the average gap in developing
            countries. And in Romania, the gap between richest 60
            percent of the population and poorest 40 percent is 33
            percentage points, which is more than twice the average gap
            in developing countries. But there are many opportunities to
            increase account ownership. Over 80 percent of the unbanked
            have a mobile phone, and simply moving public sector pension
            payments into accounts would reduce the number of unbanked
            adults in the region by up to 20 million, including 8
            million in the Russian Federation alone. Given the
            heterogeneity of experiences, there are ample opportunities
            for countries in the region to learn from each other, which
            lays out a rich research and operational agenda going forward.
The Social Lives of Married Women :
            Peer Effects in Female Autonomy and Investments in Children
In patriarchal societies, sticky norms
            affect married women's social circles, their autonomy,
            and the outcomes of intra-household bargaining. This paper
            uses primary data on women's social networks in
            Uttarakhand, India; the modal woman has only three friends,
            and over 80 percent do not have any friends of another
            caste. This paper examines the effect of a shock to
            friends' empowerment on a woman's autonomy,
            specifically physical mobility, access to social safety
            nets, and employment outside the household; perceived social
            norms; and an outcome of household bargaining: investments
            in her children. The analysis instruments for endogenous
            network formation using a woman's age and her caste
            network in the village. The key peer effect is the impact of
            having a friend who received an empowerment shock on a woman
            who did not receive that shock. The results show significant
            peer effects on only a few of the examined measures of
            women's autonomy. In contrast, peer effects exist on
            all considered outcomes of a daughters’ diet and time spent
            on chores. The findings suggest a large decay rate between
            effects on own empowerment and peer effects. Interventions
            targeting child welfare through women's empowerment may
            generate second-order effects on intra-household
            decision-making, albeit with substantial decay rates, and
            thus benefit from targeted rather than randomized rollout.
            In contract, interventions on gender roles and women's
            autonomy may be limited by the stickiness of social norms.
Exploring the Heterogeneous Effects
            of Export Promotion
A semiparametric varying coefficient
            model is used to explore the heterogeneity in returns to
            export promotion across countries. Differences in
            characteristics of export-promotion agencies drive the
            heterogeneity in returns. Interestingly, characteristics
            that matter for export growth do not necessarily matter for
            GDP per capita growth. A 1 percent increase in
            export-promotion budgets is associated with an average
            increase in exports of 0.10 percent and an average increase
            in GDP per capita of 0.06 percent. However, these average
            returns hide a lot of heterogeneity. Returns in terms of
            exports vary from 0 percent in Cyprus and Vietnam to 0.22
            percent in Portugal. Returns in terms of GDP per capita show
            less heterogeneity, varying from 0.05 in Malawi to 0.10
            percent in Portugal and Nicaragua.
The Effects of Pollution and
            Business Environment on Firm Productivity in Africa
This paper explores the links between
            city competitiveness and air pollution and the business
            environment. Because competitive cities not only attract
            more productive firms, but also facilitate their business,
            the paper look at firm performance as a proxy for city
            competitiveness. It focuses on African firms, because this
            region is developing fast and experiencing increasing
            pollution levels and the effects of agglomeration economies.
            The analysis finds two interesting results. First, the
            negative association between air pollution and firm
            performance can be seen at lower than expected levels of
            pollution. Second, the effects of capacity agglomeration on
            labor productivity growth are stronger compared to other
            regions. These findings suggest that cities in this region
            should address pollution issues soon, as they continue to
            grow fast and pollution levels are becoming an increasing concern.
Measuring the Unmeasured : Combining
            Technology and Behavioral Insights to Improve Measurement of
            Business Outcomes
Business survey outcomes for micro and
            small firms are notoriously noisy, with multiple sources of
            measurement and recall error. This paper introduces a new
            survey methodology that combines automatic consistency
            checks of electronic data collection with triangulation and
            dynamic adjustment to arrive at more precise estimates of
            business performance. The methodology uses insights from
            behavioral science to lower the cognitive cost of initial
            recall and establishes salient and relevant anchors to allow
            for dynamic triangulation and adjustment toward a final
            estimate. The validity of this method is field tested
            against traditional performance measures as well as
            administrative data across three emerging markets: Ghana,
            Rwanda, and Uganda. The results show significant upward
            adjustment from traditional measures for both sales and
            profits, a lower coefficient of variation in the
            cross-section, and higher autocorrelation in panel data.
            Comparisons with administrative data further confirm a
            higher correlation and closer magnitude relative to
            traditional measures. This research reconciles
            recommendations for increased attention to survey design
            with a method to leverage electronic survey technology
            beyond consistency checks.
Distributional Effects of
            Competition : A Simulation Approach
Understanding the economic and social
            effects of the recent global trends of rising market
            concentration and market power has become a policy priority,
            particularly in developing countries where markets are often
            more concentrated. In this context, since the poor are
            typically the most affected by lack of competition, new
            analytical tools to assess the distributional effects of
            variations in market concentration in a rapid and
            cost-efficient manner are required. To fill this knowledge
            gap, this paper introduces a simple simulation method, the
            Welfare and Competition tool (WELCOM), to estimate with
            minimum data requirements the direct distributional effects
            of market concentration through the price channel. Using
            this simple yet novel tool, this paper also illustrates the
            simulated distributional effects of reducing concentration
            in two markets in Mexico that are known for their high level
            of concentration: mobile telecommunications and corn
            products. The results show that increasing competition from
            four to 12 firms in the mobile telecommunications industry
            and reducing the market share of the oligopoly in corn
            products from 31.2 percent to 7.8 percent would achieve a
            combined reduction of 0.8 percentage points in the poverty
            headcount as well as a decline of 0.32 points in the Gini coefficient.
The Impact of Minimum Wage Hikes on
            Employment and Wages in Cambodia
Using an event-study framework, this
            paper examines the impact of four minimum wage hikes between
            2008 and 2015 on the Cambodian labor market. The analysis
            finds that, except for immediate adjustments around the time
            of the hikes, the minimum wage hikes did not affect
            participation rates in the affected sector -- garments and
            footwear -- or the unaffected sectors. However, the minimum
            wage hikes increased wages modestly (3 percent) for workers
            in the affected sectors and modestly decreased wages (1.5
            percent) for workers in the unaffected sectors. The gains
            for the affected sectors are slightly larger at higher
            quantiles than at lower quantiles. This is suggestive of a
            change in compensation structure within the affected firms
            as a result of the hikes.
Uncertainty in Ex-Ante Poverty and
            Income Distribution : Insights from Output Growth and
            Natural Resource Country Typologies
This paper studies future poverty,
            inequality, and shared prosperity outcomes using a panel
            data set with 150 countries over 1980-2014. The findings
            suggest that global extreme poverty will decrease in
            absolute and relative terms in the period 2015-2030.
            However, absolute poverty is likely to increase by 2030 in
            resource-output oriented countries and economies with low
            rates of output per capita growth. Countries with high
            growth rates of output are expected to achieve poverty
            levels below 3 percent by 2030. Global and country
            aggregations show a decrease in income inequality by 2030;
            though, significant downside risks could increase wealth
            inequality in high- and low-output growth economies by 2030.
            Substantial uncertainty, as measured by the variability of
            the simulated outcomes, exists on shared prosperity gaps
            across the studied country typologies.
Learning from Power Sector Reform :
            The Case of Pakistan
Pakistan's power sector underwent a
            substantial, if protracted, reform process. Beginning with
            an independent power producer program in 1994, the full
            unbundling of the national vertically integrated power and
            water utility, the Water and Power Development Authority,
            and the establishment of a regulatory entity, the National
            Electric Power Regulatory Authority, followed in 1997,
            paving the way for the eventual privatization of one major
            distribution utility, Karachi Electric, in 2005. Plans to
            privatize the remaining distribution utilities were shelved
            following the controversy surrounding the Karachi Electric
            transaction. A single buyer model has been in operation
            since the sector restructuring, with the Central Power
            Purchasing Agency fully separated from transmission and
            dispatch (the National Transmission and Dispatch Company) in
            June 2015. Despite these major steps, Pakistan has continued
            to suffer from inadequate capacity and other constraints,
            leading to large and frequent blackouts. At the heart of the
            impasse is the so-called "circular debt" crisis,
            whereby distribution utilities struggling to collect
            revenues and meet regulatory targets for transmission and
            distribution losses default on their payments to generators,
            and the sector is periodically bailed out by the government
            once losses accumulate to intolerable levels, at high cost
            to the exchequer. This dynamic has undermined incentives for
            utilities to improve their efficiency, while discouraging
            generators from investing in new capacity to address supply
            shortages. In the meantime, little has been done to
            accelerate access to electricity to the significant share of
            unserved population in rural areas.
Tracking the Sustainable Development
            Goals : Emerging Measurement Challenges and Further Reflections
The Sustainable Development Goals
            recently adopted by the United Nations represent an
            important step to identify shared global goals for
            development over the next two decades. Yet, the stated goals
            are not as straightforward and easy to interpret as they
            appear on the surface. Review of the Sustainable Development
            Goals indicators suggests that some further refinements to
            their wordings and clarifications to their underlying
            objectives would be useful. This paper brings attention to
            potential pitfalls with interpretation, where different
            evaluation methods can lead to different conclusions about
            country performance. The review of the United Nations'
            Sustainable Development Goals database highlights the
            overwhelming challenge with missing data: data are available
            for just over 50 percent of all the indicators and for just
            19 percent of what is needed for comprehensively tracking
            progress across countries and over time. The paper offers
            further reflections and proposes some simple but
            cost-effective solutions to these challenges.
The Rise of Domestic Capital Markets
            for Corporate Financing : Lessons from East Asia
Firms from emerging economies have
            significantly increased the amount of bond financing,
            particularly after the Global Financial Crisis and when
            compared to other financing instruments. The literature
            links this growth to a rise in international bond issuances
            as the supply of capital by foreign investors expanded. This
            paper explores the role of domestic markets by comparing
            domestic and international bond issuances by East Asian
            firms, which are the most active bond issuers in emerging
            economies. The paper shows that an expansion in domestic
            bond issuances, in domestic currency, by more and smaller
            firms was the main component behind the overall growth in
            bond financing. This expansion was accompanied by a decline
            in bond yields, higher firm leverage, and higher cash
            accumulation following issuances after 2008. The evidence is
            consistent with a higher supply of funds by domestic
            investors being an important driver behind the rise in
            domestic bond financing.
Labelled Loans, Credit Constraints
            and Sanitation Investments
Credit constraints are considered to be
            an important barrier hindering adoption of preventive health
            investments among low-income households in developing
            countries. However, it is not obvious whether, and the
            extent to which, the provision of labelled micro-credit --
            where the loan is linked to the investment only through its
            label -- will boost human capital investments, particularly
            when it is characterised by other attractive attributes,
            such as a lower interest rate. This paper studies a cluster
            randomised controlled trial of a sanitation micro-credit
            program in rural India, which made available lower interest
            loans for sanitation. The loans were linked with sanitation
            through their name only. The loans were not bundled with any
            toilet, and loan use was weakly monitored, but not enforced.
            Hence it is not directly obvious that the loan should boost
            sanitation investments. A simple theoretical framework
            indicates that the intervention could increase sanitation
            ownership through three channels -- relaxation of credit
            constraints, salience of the loan label, or the lower
            interest rate. The presented empirical evidence, combined
            with model predictions, allow to conclude that the loan
            label -- which to date has not received much attention in
            the literature -- significantly impacts households borrowing
            and investment behaviour. Labelling loans is thus a viable
            strategy to improve uptake of lumpy preventive health investments.
Can Micro-Credit Support Public
            Health Subsidy Programs
The low take-up of cost-effective and
            highly subsidised preventive health technologies in
            low-income countries remains a puzzle. One under-studied
            reason is that the design of subsidy schemes is such that
            households remain financially constrained. This paper
            analyses whether, and how, micro-finance supports a large
            public health subsidy program in the developing world -- the
            Swachh Bharat Mission -- in achieving its aim of increasing
            uptake of individual household latrines. Exploiting a
            cluster randomised controlled experiment of a sanitation
            micro-finance program that coincided with the launch of the
            SBM program, and unique survey data matched to
            administrative data, findings reveal that the
            complementarity runs on two levels: First, micro-credit
            allows households officially ineligible for the subsidy to
            invest in sanitation by alleviating credit constraints.
            Second, micro-credit also helps subsidy eligible households
            to overcome short-term liquidity constraints induced by the
            remuneration-post-verification subsidy design to invest in
            sanitation. Subsidy eligible households living in areas
            experiencing large delays in subsidy disbursement, or high
            toilet costs, are more likely to take a sanitation loan, but
            less likely to use the loan to construct a toilet.
Combining Growth and Gender
            Diagnostics for the Benefit of Both
Women's economic empowerment is not
            a new issue; nevertheless, it continues to challenge
            governments and development assistance agencies. One of the
            reasons for this hurdle may well be that gender advocates
            and growth devotees are speaking different languages when
            there is a huge space for them to collaborate effectively
            and pursue both agendas simultaneously. This paper outlines
            a framework for gender-enhanced growth diagnostics that can
            be used to identify win-win solutions based on policies that
            target jointly the binding constraints to economic growth
            and those limiting female economic participation. The
            welfare gain from such a reform surpasses the gain from a
            pro-growth reform addressing only the binding constraint to
            growth or that from a pro-gender reform aimed at closing
            gender gaps. Using Turkey's country growth diagnostics
            and data on gender gaps, the paper uses the approach to
            identify those constraints to women's economic
            empowerment that align with national growth priorities and
            may therefore gain greater traction with policy makers.
The Lost Human Capital : Teacher
            Knowledge and Student Achievement in Africa
In many low-income countries, teachers
            do not master the subject they are teaching, and children
            learn little while attending school. Using unique data from
            nationally representative surveys of schools in seven
            Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper proposes a
            methodology to assess the effect of teacher subject content
            knowledge on student learning when panel data on students
            are not available. The paper shows that data on test scores
            of the student's current and the previous year's
            teachers, and knowledge of the correlation structure of
            teacher knowledge across time and grades, allow estimating
            two structural parameters of interest: the contemporaneous
            effect of teacher content knowledge, and the extent of fade
            out of teacher impacts in earlier grades. The paper uses
            these structural estimates to understand the magnitude of
            teacher effects and simulate the impacts of various policy
            reforms. Shortfalls in teachers' content knowledge
            account for 30 percent of the shortfall in learning relative
            to the curriculum, and about 20 percent of the cross-country
            difference in learning in the sample. Assigning more
            students to better teachers would potentially lead to
            substantial cost-savings, even if there are negative
            class-size effects. Ensuring that all incoming teachers have
            the officially mandated effective years of education, along
            with increasing the time spent on teaching to the officially
            mandated schedule, could almost double student learning
            within the next 30 years.