rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
ECCAS's infrastructure : a
            regional perspective
Sound infrastructure is fundamental for
            growth across the Economic Community of Central African
            States (ECCAS). During 1995-2005, improvements in
            infrastructure boosted growth in Central Africa by 1
            percentage point per capita annually, primarily due to the
            introduction and expansion of mobile telephony. Improved
            roads also made a small contribution. Conversely, inadequate
            power deterred growth to a greater degree than elsewhere in
            Africa. ECCAS must address a complex set of challenges.
            Economic activity takes place in isolated pockets separated
            by vast distances. Two countries are landlocked and
            dependent on regional corridors; seven countries have
            populations of under 10 million; and eight have economies
            that are smaller than $10 billion/year. This difficult
            economic geography demands a regional approach to developing
            infrastructure. Yet Central Africa's infrastructure has
            the poorest performance record in all of Africa on most
            aggregate indicators. Transportation is slow and the most
            expensive in Sub-Saharan Africa, with poor road conditions,
            border delays, port delays, time-consuming administrative
            processes, no integrated railway network, and inefficient
            air transport. The ICT backbone is still in its early
            stages; access rates are low and the prices of critical
            services are the highest in Africa. ECCAS has the
            least-developed power sector on the continent despite
            significant hydropower resources. If Central Africa's
            infrastructure could be improved to the level of Mauritius,
            regional growth performance would be boosted by some 5
            percentage points, with power making the strongest
            contribution. The cost of such an improvement is estimated
            at $1.8 billion/year for a decade and will require external assistance.
Higher wages, lower pay : public vs.
            private sector compensation in Peru
Do public sector employees earn less
            than their counterparts in the private sector? This paper
            addresses this question in the case of Peru, a country where
            civil service reform is being debated yet the only available
            empirical studies on wage differentials date back to the
            late 1980s. Using data from the 2009 national household
            survey, the authors perform a multiple step analysis. First,
            they estimate a single equation with a public sector dummy,
            which is found to be statistically significant and positive
            when only monetary wages are taken into account. However,
            when in-kind payments and bonuses are included to measure
            compensation, the analysis finds a private sector premium.
            Second, they estimate for public and formal private
            employees two distinct wage functions, including the inverse
            Mills ratio. This takes into account the selection bias
            resulting from workers self-selecting into the public or
            private sector. Third, these results are used to decompose
            wage differentials using the standard Oaxaca-Blinder
            approach. The results show that the compensation
            differentials are not significant except for the sub-sample
            of employees that achieved a postgraduate degree.
To give or to forgive aid versus
            debt relief
Is generalized debt relief an effective
            development strategy, or should assistance be tailored to
            countries' characteristics? To answer this question,
            the authors build a simple model in which recipient
            governments reveal their creditworthiness if donors offer
            them to choose between aid and debt relief. Since offering
            such a menu is costly, it is preferred by donors only when
            the cost of assistance is low, and the probability that an
            indebted country is creditworthy is high enough. For lower
            probabilities and higher costs of assistance, donors prefer
            a policy of only debt relief. Very limited aid is the
            preferred policy only for high costs of assistance, and low
            probabilities that the government is creditworthy.
The elusive quest for supply
            response to cash-crop market reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa :
            the case of cotton
Little cross-cutting conclusions emerge
            from comparative studies on the impact of structural
            adjustment on Sub-Saharan African agricultural performance.
            This paper aims to illuminate this long-standing debate by
            adopting a novel quantitative, sectoral and long-term
            approach controlling for country-specific determinants. It
            incorporates detailed information on the pace of reforms and
            the nature of post-reform market structure, pre-reform
            policies and weather conditions at the cultivation zone
            level. The cotton sector is the focus of this paper because
            of its particularly interesting institutional history. The
            authors find that the changes in market structure brought
            about by reforms have had very different impacts in
            Francophone West and Central Africa and in the rest of
            Sub-Saharan Africa. In the former region, production has
            been higher but productivity lower, on average, in regulated
            markets than in monopolistic markets. Conversely, in the
            liberalized markets of the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa,
            productivity has been higher in than in monopolistic markets
            but highly competitive markets seem to have produced less
            than monopolistic sectors.
Wage rigidity and disinflation in
            emerging countries
This paper examines the consequences of
            rapid disinflation for downward wage rigidities in two
            emerging countries, Brazil and Uruguay, relying on high
            quality matched employer-employee administrative data.
            Downward nominal wage rigidities are more important in
            Uruguay, while wage indexation is dominant in Brazil. Two
            regime changes are observed during the sample period,
            1995-2004: (i) in Uruguay wage indexation declines, while
            workers' resistance to nominal wage cuts becomes more
            pronounced; and (ii) in Brazil, the introduction of
            inflation targeting by the Central Bank in 1999 shifts the
            focal point of wage negotiations from changes in the minimum
            wage to expected inflation. These regime changes cast doubts
            on the notion that wage rigidity is structural in the sense
            of Lucas (1976).
What drives the global "land rush"
The 2007-2008 upsurge in agricultural
            commodity prices gave rise to widespread concern about
            investors causing a "global land rush". Large land
            deals can provide opportunities for better access to
            capital, transfer of technology, and advances in
            productivity and employment generation. But they carry risks
            of dispossession and loss of livelihoods, corruption,
            deterioration in local food security, environmental damage,
            and long-term social polarization that led some countries to
            recently pass legislation restricting foreign land
            acquisition. To stimulate evidence-based debate, this paper
            explores determinants of foreign land acquisition for
            large-scale agriculture. It quantifies demand for land
            deals, showing it focused on Africa where land expansion is
            about 20 times the level it was in the past. The analysis
            uses data on bilateral investment relationships, together
            with newly constructed indicators of agro-ecological
            suitability in non-protected and forested areas with low
            population density as well as land rights security. It
            estimates gravity models that can help identify determinants
            of foreign land acquisition dedicated to large-scale
            agriculture. The results confirm the central role of
            agro-ecological potential as a pull factor. In contrast to
            the literature on foreign investment in general, the quality
            of the business climate is insignificant, whereas weak land
            governance and tenure security for current users make
            countries more attractive for investors. Implications for
            policy are discussed.
Can social safety nets alleviate
            seasonal deprivation evidence from northwest Bangladesh
This paper examines the role of social
            safety-net programs in Bangladesh run by the government and
            nongovernmental organizations to mitigate seasonal
            deprivation in the country's highly vulnerable
            northwest region. Specifically, the paper explores whether
            social safety nets are limited to averting seasonal
            deprivation or can also address seasonality of income and
            employment more generally. Using a recent survey from the
            greater Rangpur (northwest) region, the paper finds that
            social safety nets have a positive effect on mitigating both
            seasonal and non-seasonal food deprivation. The results are
            robust, owing to the recent expanded coverage of social
            safety-net programs run by nongovernmental organizations
            active in the region. But given the annual recurrence of
            monga (seasonal food insecurity) in the northwest region
            owing to agricultural seasonality and an overwhelming
            dependence on agriculture for livelihoods, social safety
            nets are not a reliable tool for monga eradication. Programs
            are also needed to promote the income and productivity of
            the poor through diversification of income and employment.
Is informality welfare-enhancing
            structural transformation evidence from Uganda
While Africa's recent decade of
            growth and poverty reduction performance has been lauded,
            concern has been expressed regarding the structure of this
            growth. In particular, questions have been raised about
            whether the growth is based on a commodities boom, or
            whether it is the beginning of a structural transformation
            that will lift workers from low-productivity jobs into
            higher-productivity ones. Macro evidence has suggested that
            the structural transformation has not started. But macro
            analysis misses the evidence that the process of
            transformation has started, because this process begins at
            the household level. Household livelihoods do not move from
            ones based on subsistence farming and household level
            economic activities into livelihoods based on individual
            wage and salary employment away from the household in one
            leap -- this process takes generations. The intermediate
            step is the productive informal sector. It is income gains
            at the household level in this sector that fuel productivity
            increases, savings, and investment in human capital in this
            sector. Ensuring that most households are able to diversify
            their livelihoods into the non-farm sector through
            productive informality not only increases growth, but also
            allows the majority of the population to share in the growth
            process. This paper illustrates this point with the case of
            Uganda which followed this path and experienced two decades
            of sustained growth and poverty reduction.
Estimating the long-term impacts of
            rural roads : a dynamic panel approach
Infrastructure investments are typically
            long-term. As a result, observed benefits to households and
            communities may vary considerably over time as short-term
            outcomes generate or are subsumed by longer-term impacts.
            This paper uses a new round of household survey as part of a
            local government engineering department's rural road
            improvement project financed by the World Bank in Bangladesh
            to compare the short-term and long-term effects of rural
            roads over eight years. A dynamic panel model, estimated by
            generalized method of moments, is applied to estimate the
            varying returns to public road investment accounting for
            time-varying unobserved characteristics. The results show
            that the substantial effects of roads on such outcomes as
            per capita expenditure, schooling, and prices as observed in
            the short run attenuate over time. But the declining returns
            are not common for all outcomes of interest or all
            households. Employment in the rural non-farm sector, for
            example, has risen more rapidly over time, indicating
            increasing returns to investment. The very poor have failed
            to sustain the short-term benefits of roads, and yet the
            gains accrued to the middle-income groups are strengthened
            over time because of changing sectors of employment, away
            from agriculture toward non-farm activity. The results also
            show that initial state dependence -- or initial community
            and household characteristics as well as road quality --
            matters in estimating the trajectory of road impacts.
Export growth and diversification :
            the case of Peru
The rapid growth of exports since the
            early 1990s is a central feature in the extraordinary rise
            of Peru's economy in recent years. This study puts a
            lens on this export growth episode, with special attention
            to two issues. The first one is the role of international
            price levels as well as export volumes in explaining this
            growth. The second one is whether Peru has seen a
            diversification of its exports during this growth episode.
            The empirical analysis finds that although the increase in
            international mineral prices has exerted a significant
            impact in recent years, much of the growth of Peru's
            export revenues has also been related to an increase in
            volumes. This finding applies to traditional and non-
            traditional exports, although the importance of volumes is
            more predominant for the latter. The analysis does not
            reveal a trend toward greater diversification of Peru's
            exports since 1993. On the contrary, some of the evidence
            suggests that the rises in price and volumes in the mining
            components could be leading to greater concentration.
            Nonetheless, there is a clear trend toward diversification
            among non-traditional exports due to the significant
            emergence of new export products in recent years.
Do crises catalyze creative
            destruction firm-level evidence from Indonesia
Using Indonesian manufacturing census
            data (1991-2001), this paper rejects the hypothesis that the
            East Asian crisis unequivocally improved the reallocative
            process. The correlation between productivity and employment
            growth did not strengthen and the crisis induced the exit of
            relatively productive firms. The attenuation of the
            relationship between productivity and survival was stronger
            in provinces with comparatively lower reductions in minimum
            wages, but not due to reduced entry, changing loan
            conditions, or firms connected to the Suharto regime
            suffering disproportionately. On the bright side, firms that
            entered during the crisis were relatively more productive,
            which helped mitigate the reduction in aggregate productivity.
Cross border banking supervision :
            incentive conflicts in supervisory information sharing
            between home and host supervisors
The global financial crisis has
            uncovered a number of weaknesses in the supervision and
            regulation of cross border banks. One such weakness was the
            lack of effective cooperation among banking supervisors.
            Since then, international bodies, such as the G-20, the
            Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee have
            actively promoted the use of supervisory colleges. The
            objective of this paper is to explore the obstacles to
            effective cross border supervisory information sharing. More
            specifically, a schematic presentation illustrating the
            misalignments in incentives for information sharing between
            home and host supervisors under the current supervisory
            task-sharing anchored in the Basel Concordat is developed.
            This paper finds that in the absence of an ex ante agreed
            upon resolution and burden-sharing mechanism and
            deteriorating health of the bank, incentive conflicts
            escalate and supervisory cooperation breaks down. The
            promotion of good practices for cooperation in supervisory
            colleges is thus not sufficient to address the existing
            incentive conflicts. What is needed is a rigorous analysis
            and review of the supervisory task-sharing framework, so
            that the right incentives are secured during all stages of
            the supervisory process. For this purpose, it is essential
            that policy makers integrate and harmonize the current
            debates on crisis management, resolution policy and good
            supervisory practices for cross border banking supervision.
The impact of climate change on
            global tropical storm damages
This paper constructs an integrated
            assessment model of tropical cyclones in order to quantify
            the impact that climate change may have on tropical cyclone
            damages in countries around the world. The paper relies on a
            tropical cyclone generator in each ocean and several climate
            models to predict tropical cyclones with and without climate
            change. A damage model is constructed to compute the
            resulting damage when a cyclone strikes each country.
            Economic development is expected to double global tropical
            cyclone damages because more will be in harm's way.
            Climate change is expected to double global damage again,
            causing an additional $54 billion of damage per year. The
            damage is projected to be concentrated in North America and
            eastern Asia but many Caribbean islands will suffer the
            highest damages per unit of GDP. Most of the increased
            damage will be caused by rare but very powerful storms.
The impact of climate change on
            hurricane damages in the United States
This paper quantifies hurricane damage
            caused by climate change across the US. A damage function is
            estimated from historic hurricane data to measure the
            impacts at each location given the storm's strength.
            The minimum barometric pressure of each storm turns out to
            be a better indicator of damages than the traditional
            measure of maximum wind speed. A hurricane generator in the
            Atlantic Ocean is then used to create 5000 storms with and
            without climate change. Combining the location and intensity
            of each storm with the income and population projected for
            each location, it is possible to estimate a detailed picture
            of how hurricanes will impact each state with and without
            climate change. Income and population growth alone increase
            expected baseline damage from $9 to $27 billion per year by
            2100. Climate change is expected to increase damage by
            another $40 billion. Over 85 percent of these impacts are in
            Florida and the Gulf states. The 10 percent most damaging
            storms cause 93 percent of expected damage.
Is there such thing as middle class
            values Class differences, values and political orientations
            in Latin America
Middle class values have long been
            perceived as drivers of social cohesion and growth. This
            paper investigates the relation between class (measured by
            position in the income distribution), values, and political
            orientations using comparable values surveys for six Latin
            American countries. The analysis finds that both a
            continuous measure of income and categorical measures of
            income-based class are robustly associated with values. Both
            income and class tend to display a similar association to
            values and political orientations as education, although
            differences persist in some important dimensions. Overall,
            there is no strong evidence of any "middle class
            particularism": values appear to gradually shift with
            income, and middle class values are between the ones of
            poorer and richer classes. If any, the only peculiarity of
            middle class values is moderation. The analysis also finds
            changes in values across countries to be of much larger
            magnitude than the ones dictated by income, education, and
            individual characteristics, suggesting that individual
            values vary primarily within bounds dictated by each society.
Should cash transfers be confined to
            the poor implications for poverty and inequality in Latin America
This paper compares for 13 Latin
            American countries the poverty and inequality impacts of
            cash transfer programs that are given to all children and
            the elderly (that is, "categorical" transfers), to
            programs of equal budget that are confined to the poor
            within each population group (that is, "poverty
            targeted" transfers). The analysis finds that both the
            incidence of poverty and the depth of the poverty gap are
            important factors affecting the relative effectiveness of
            categorical versus poverty targeted transfers. The
            comparison of transfers to children and the elderly also
            supports the view that choosing carefully categories of
            beneficiaries is almost as important as targeting the poor
            for achieving a high poverty and inequality impact. Overall,
            the findings suggest that although in the Latin American
            context poverty targeting tends to deliver higher poverty
            impacts, there are circumstances under which categorical
            targeting confined to geographical regions (sometimes called
            "geographic targeting") may be a valid option to
            consider. This is particularly the case in low-income
            countries with widespread pockets of poverty.