rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Fiscal management in federal
            democracies : Argentina and Brazil
In shifting to decentralized public
            finances, a country's central government faces certain
            fiscal management problems. First, during and soon after the
            transition, unless it reduces pending or increases its own
            tax resources, the central government tends to have higher
            deficits as it shifts fiscal resources to sub-national
            governments through transfers, revenue sharing, or
            delegation of tax bases. Reducing spending is hard, not only
            because cuts are always hard, but because sub-national
            governments might not take on expected tasks, leaving the
            central government with a legal or political obligation to
            continue spending for certain services. Second, after
            decentralization, the local or state government faces
            popular pressure to spend more and tax less, creating the
            tendency to run deficits. This tendency can be a problem if
            sub-national governments and their creditors expect or rely
            on bailouts by the central government. Econometric evidence
            from 32 large industrial and developing countries indicates
            that higher sub-national spending and deficits lead to
            greater national deficits. The authors investigate how, and
            how successfully, Argentina and Brazil dealt with these
            problems in the 1990s. In both countries, sub-national
            governments account for about half of public spending and
            are vigorous democracies in most (especially the largest)
            jurisdictions. The return to democracy in the 1980s revived
            and strengthened long-standing federal practices while
            weakening macroeconomic performance, resulting in
            unsustainable fiscal deficits, high inflation, sometimes
            hyperinflation, and low or negative growth. Occasional
            stabilization plans failed within a few years. Then
            Argentina (in 1991) and Brazil (in 1994) introduced
            successful stabilization plans. National issues were
            important in preventing and then bringing about
            macroeconomic stabilization, but so were intergovernmental
            fiscal relations and the fiscal management of sub-national
            governments. State deficits and federal transfers were often
            out of control in the 1980s, contributing to national
            macroeconomic problems. Stabilization programs in the 1990s
            needed to establish control, and self-control, over
            sub-national spending and borrowing.
Decentralization and fiscal
            management in Colombia
Colombia's political geography
            contrasts sharply with its economy. Physical characteristics
            and guerilla war fragment the country geographically, yet it
            has a long tradition of political centrism and macroeconomic
            stability. Recently, with political and economic
            decentralization, there has been some weakening of
            macroeconomic performance. The authors explore institutional
            arrangements that have helped Colombia manage the fiscal
            aspects of decentralization, despite the country's
            political problems. Fiscal decentralization proceeded
            rapidly in Colombia. Education, health, and much
            infrastructure provision have been decentralized to the
            departmentos and municipios. Decentralization has led to
            substantial but not overwhelming problems, both in
            maintaining fiscal balance nationally ( as resources are
            transferred of subnational levels) and in preventing
            unsustainable deficits by the subnational governments. The
            problems have arisen because central government interference
            prevents departments from controlling their costs and
            because of expectations of debt bailouts. Both are legacies
            of the earlier pattern of management from the center, and
            some recent changes - especially about subnational debt -
            may improve matters. Colombia's traditional political
            process has had difficulty dealing with problems of
            decentralization because traditional parties are weak in
            internal organization and have lost de facto rule over
            substantial territories. The fiscal problems of subnational
            government have been contained, however, because subnational
            governments are relatively weak politically and the central
            government, for the time being, has been able to enforce
            restrictions on subnational borrowing.
Developing countries and the next
            round of multilateral trade negotiations
Developing countries became full-fledged
            participants in multilateral trade negotiations only with
            the Uruguay Round, during which they succeeded in bringing
            agriculture into the GATT/WTO, reaching agreement on phasing
            out the Multi-Fibre Arrangement within ten years, and
            beginning work on services, among other things. Their
            overriding interest in the new round is still to ensure the
            healthy expansion of an open multilateral trading system.
            Developing countries should seek across-the-board
            liberalization rather than zero-for-zero reductions, which
            tend to favor the interest of industrial countries (which
            focus on sectors in which they have comparative advantage)
            and diminish the support for further cuts. Liberalization of
            agricultural trade provides important opportunities.
            Developing countries have a considerable stake in reducing
            agricultural protection and subsidies and prohibiting
            agricultural taxes and export quotas. Of particular interest
            are agreements covering services - including, for example,
            agreements on ways to permit the temporary immigration of
            construction workers. It is important that labor standards
            not be used to stifle competition from labor-abundant
            developing countries - that any agreement about labor
            standards not raise the costs of unskilled labor in
            countries whose comparative advantage lies in exported
            products that use unskilled labor extensively - and that
            excessively high product standards not be imposed.
            Developing countries can increase their leverage
            substantially by forming coalitions based on common
            interests in a wide range of areas (as the Cairns group did
            in the Uruguay Round).
Economic reforms and total factor
            productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean
            (1950-95) - an empirical note
The authors rely on a series of growth
            accounting exercises to determine whether the growth rate of
            total factor productivity (TFP) or the unexplained portion
            of GDP growth (after controlling for the accumulation of
            capital per worker) in 18 Latin American and Caribbean
            economies has benefited from economic reform. They use Sachs
            and Warner (1995) criteria to identify the years of economic
            reform. They apply growth decomposition analysis and
            econometric tests to determine whether TFP growth has been
            significantly higher during periods of economic reform.
            Although the growth decomposition analysis assumes that the
            capital share of output is constant across Latin American
            countries, the economic estimates allow for cross-country
            differences. In ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions and
            seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR), two alternative dummy
            variables are used to control for the effects of
            business-cycle fluctuations on observed rates of TFP growth.
            In addition, the SUR regressions consider the possibility
            that Latin American economies face common shocks. Finally,
            panel regressions are based on five-year averages of the
            growth rates of GDP and capital per worker. The authors find
            that, on average, economic reforms have been associated with
            a 1.5 percent yearly increase in the rate of TFP growth. But
            there are important differences across countries and in some
            cases economic reforms have been associated with lower TFP growth.
Foreign investment and productivity
            growth in Czech enterprises
Firm-level data for the Czech Republic
            (1992-96) suggest that foreign investments had a positive
            impact on recipient firms' total factor productivity
            (TFP) growth. This result is robust to corrections for the
            sample-selection bias that prevails because foreign
            investment tends to go to firms with above-average
            productivity performance. This result is not surprising,
            given the presumption that foreign investors transfer new
            technologies and knowledge to partner firms. With some lag,
            this is likely to be reflected in greater TFP growth.
            Foreign direct investment appears to have a greater impact
            on TFP growth than joint ventures, suggesting that parent
            firms are transferring more know-how (soft or hard) to
            affiliates than joint venture firms get from their partners.
            Joint ventures and foreign direct investment together appear
            to have a negative spillover effect on firms that do not
            have foreign partnerships. This effect is relatively large
            and statistically significant. But if the focus is
            restricted to the impact of foreign-owned affiliates
            (foreign direct investment) on all other firms in an
            industry, the magnitude of the negative effect becomes much
            smaller and loses statistical significance. This result,
            together with the fact that joint ventures and foreign
            direct investment together account for significant shares of
            total output in many industries, suggests that more research
            is needed to determine how much knowledge diffuses from
            firms with strong links to foreign firms to firms that do
            not have such links. Especially important is the extent of
            spillovers among joint venture firms and between foreign
            affiliates and firms with joint ventures. Insofar as joint
            venture firms invest in technological capacity (as suggested
            by their training efforts), those firms could be expected to
            be better able to absorb and benefit from the diffusion of
            know-how. The absence of such capacity may underlie the
            observed negative spillover effect on other firms in the
            industry. Longer time series and collection of data on
            variables that measure firms' in-house technological
            effort would help identify the magnitude and determinants of
            technological spillovers.
Coverage under old-age security
            programs and protection for the uninsured - What are the issues
Most old people in developing countries
            are uninsured by formal social security programs. Economic
            growth is the key to increased coverage, but policy also
            matters, argues the author. Contributory insurance programs
            may not work for much of the population in developing
            economies. Moreover, the tradeoffs between higher take-home
            pay and old-age benefits, between maximizing coverage and
            minimizing evasion, and between increased coverage and
            greater competitiveness, must be carefully evaluated before
            opting for expanded coverage, especially among low-income
            groups. Keeping the contribution rate low and including some
            redistribution toward low-income groups in contributory
            systems may help reduce the number of uninsured, while
            avoiding costly tradeoffs. Recent years have seen a tighter
            link between benefits and contributions in contributory
            systems - most obviously in the shift toward multi-pillar
            systems with large defined-contribution components, usually
            accompanied by a modest re-distributive public pillar. This
            tighter link makes social security systems more fiscally
            sustainable and may be considered a precondition for
            financially sound expansion of coverage. At the same time,
            the number of uninsured or underinsured (who have
            contributed only small amounts) could increase, as a result
            of the tighter benefit-contribution link. The uninsured fall
            into two groups: 1) Workers who spend much of their lives in
            agriculture or the informal sector (often self-employed or
            in small firms), in jobs not covered by contributory
            programs. Many of these workers are low earners, for whom
            contributing today for potential old-age benefits my not be
            welfare-enhancing - and governments do not have the capacity
            to compel contributions. Social security reforms that make
            benefits contingent on contributions should include better
            social assistance programs for these low-income groups.
            Efficient program design and program costs must also be
            considered. 2) Women who, having worked mostly in the
            household, expect to be supported by the family system,
            which may fail them in old age. Family support for dependent
            spouses should be incorporated into the pay-put phase of the
            defined-contribution pillar, to keep old women out of poverty.
Comparing the performance of public
            and private water companies in the Asia and Pacific region :
            what a stochastic costs frontier shows
Estache and Rossi estimate a stochastic
            costs frontier for a sample of Asian and Pacific water
            companies, comparing the performance of public and
            privatized companies based on detailed firm-specific
            information published by the Asian Development Bank in 1997.
            They find private operators of water companies to be more
            efficient than public operators. Costs in concessioned
            companies tend to be significantly lower than those in
            public companies. The authors show that rankings based on
            standard indicators are not always very consistent. This
            paper contributes to that growing literature. The rest of
            the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the
            theoretical structure of the cost model estimated. Section 3
            provides an overview of earlier studies of the water sector.
            Section 4 presents the estimates of costs frontiers obtained
            for a large sample of Asian and Pacific Region water
            companies, distinguishing between public and private
            operators. Section 5 compares the performance ranking from
            efficiency frontier measures to those obtained from
            productivity indicators. Section 6 concludes.
Corporate growth, financing, and
            risks in the decade before East Asia's financial crisis
East Asia's financial crisis has
            been attributed in part to the weak performance and risky
            financial structures of Asian corporations. In the period
            before Asia's financial crisis, however, analysts were
            not suggesting that the financial structure of many East
            Asian corporations would be unable to withstand the combined
            shocks of increased interest rates, depreciated currencies,
            and large drops in domestic demand. To document the basic
            record of corporate performance and financing structures for
            East Asian corporations, the authors analyze data for 5,550
            firms in nine countries for the period 1988-96. They find
            large differences in performance and financial structure
            across countries. Profitability - as measured by real return
            on assets (ROA) in local currency -- was relatively low in
            Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore in
            the decade before the crisis. Corporations in Indonesia, the
            Philippines, and Thailand averaged high returns - roughly
            double those in Germany and the United States for the same
            period. In 1994-96, measured performance declined somewhat
            in several East Asian countries, especially Japan and Korea.
            Those differences in performance were not fully reflected in
            sales growth, as investment rates were high and continued to
            drive output growth in all countries. These stylized facts
            suggest that the East Asian miracle was indeed based on a
            vibrant corporate sector. But the combination of high
            investment and relatively low profitability in some
            countries meant that much external financing was needed.
            Outside equity was used sparingly - in part because stock
            markets were depressed (Japan) or because insiders preferred
            to retain control - so borrowing was heavy in most East
            Asian countries, and leverage increased in the years before
            1996 in Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. Risk increased as
            short-term (foreign exchange) borrowing became increasingly
            important in the 1990s, especially in Malaysia, Taiwan
            (China), and Thailand. In other words, it is now apparent
            that some of the vulnerabilities in corporate financial
            structures that were to become an important factor in East
            Asia's financial crisis already existed in the early
            1990s, although they were not noted at the time.
Diversification and efficiency of
            investment by East Asian corporations
The East Asian financial crisis has been
            attributed in part to the corporate diversification
            associated with the misallocation of capital investment
            toward less profitable and more risky business segments.
            Much anecdotal evidence to support this view has surfaced
            since the crisis but there was little discussion of it
            before the crisis. Quite the contrary: The rapid expansion
            of East Asian firms by entering new business segments was
            viewed as contributing to the East Asian miracle. The
            authors examine the efficiency of investment by diversified
            corporations in nine East Asian countries, using unique
            panel data from more than 10,000 corporations for the
            pre-crisis period, 1991-96. They: 1) Document the degree of
            diversification in the corporate sector in Hong Kong,
            Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, the
            Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and Thailand,
            countries that have achieved enviable rates of economic
            growth over the past three decades. 2) Distinguished between
            vertical and complementary diversification and study the
            differences across nine countries. 3) Investigate whether
            diversification in East Asian has hurt economic efficiency.
            Their study tests the learning-by-doing and
            misallocation-of-capital hypotheses related to the types and
            degrees of diversification in East Asian countries. Firms in
            Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand appear to have
            suffered significant negative effects of vertical
            integration on short-term performance; the same countries
            gained significant short-term benefits from complementary
            expansion. The results suggests that the
            misallocation-of-capital hypothesis is appropriate for Korea
            and Malaysia; the learning-by-doing hypothesis for
            Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand. Firms in more developed
            countries succeed in vertically integrating and improve both
            short-term profitability and market valuation. Firms in more
            developed countries are ultimately more likely to benefit
            from such diversification (learn faster, to improve their
            performance). And diversification by firms in less developed
            countries is subject to more misallocation of capital.
Pension reform in small developing countries
The authors provide a framework in which
            small countries can assess the proper role for the state and
            the private sector in pension policy. Based on industrial
            organization theory and pension economics, this framework
            draws on experience in small countries. The authors identify
            how optimal pension policies can change in small countries
            (those with fewer than 1 million active contributors to
            pension funds), explore optimal pension reform design for
            small countries, and incorporate other stylized assumptions
            about small countries into the discussion: the relatively
            greater international mobility of labor and capital, the
            greater scarcity of human capital specialized in financial
            supervision and tax administration, fewer independent
            interests, and higher political volatility and risk over
            long time horizons. They conclude that: 1) For small
            countries the Chilean model should be modified to include
            greater reliance on international trade in financial
            services -- especially services that benefit from economies
            of scale and scope, such as collections, account processing,
            and benefit payments. Such an approach would require a
            greater harmonization of accounting and regulatory standards
            between small developing countries and the countries from
            which financial services are imported. 2) The unbundling of
            pension services is more advantageous in small than in large
            countries. 3) The collection of contributions and the
            payment of benefits (which are subject to substantial
            economies of scale for small countries) should be
            mandatorily unbundled from other pension services. 4) Those
            services should be provided separately to ensure competition
            in the selection of trustees and competitive investment
            management services. This type of pension system design may
            be preferable to having a foreign firm provide all pension
            services. 5) When other assumptions (such as susceptibility
            to large gross migration flows) are combined with the
            assumption of a small-country base, mandatory pension
            systems or fiscal incentives are found to be less effective
            in small than in large countries. Large countries have
            broader contribution bases and much smaller gross migration
            flows, making them demographically more stable. 6) The
            relatively greater international migration in small
            countries makes full funding of pension systems even more
            important in small than in large countries.