rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The middle-income trap turns ten
Since we introduced the term
            “middle-income trap” in 2006, it has become popular among
            policy makers and researchers. In May 2015, a search of
            Google Scholar returned more than 3,000 articles including
            the term and about 300 articles with the term in the title.
            This paper provides a (non-exhaustive) survey of this
            literature. The paper then discusses what, in retrospect, we
            missed when we coined the term.  Today, based on
            developments in East Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe
            during the past decade, we would have paid more attention to
            demographic factors, entrepreneurship, and external
            institutional anchors. We would also make it clearer that to
            us, the term was as much the absence of a satisfactory
            theory that could inform development policy in middle-income
            economies as the articulation of a development phenomenon.
            Three-quarters of the people in the world now live in
            middle-income economies, but economists have yet to provide
            a reliable theory of growth to help policy makers navigate
            the transition from middle- to high-income status. Hybrids
            of the Solow-Swan and Lucas-Romer models are not unhelpful,
            but they are poor substitutes for a well-constructed growth framework.
Business practices in small firms in
            developing countries
Management has a large effect on the
            productivity of large firms. But does management matter in
            micro and small firms, where the majority of the labor force
            in developing countries works? This study developed 26
            questions that measure business practices in marketing,
            stock-keeping, record-keeping, and financial planning. These
            questions have been administered in surveys in Bangladesh,
            Chile, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, and Sri Lanka. This
            paper shows that variation in business practices explains as
            much of the variation in outcomes — sales, profits, and
            labor productivity and total factor productivity — in
            microenterprises as in larger enterprises. Panel data from
            three countries indicate that better business practices
            predict higher survival rates and faster sales growth. The
            effect of business practices is robust to including many
            measures of the owner’s human capital. The analysis finds
            that owners with higher human capital, children of
            entrepreneurs, and firms with employees employ better
            business practices. Competition has less robust effects.
Are large firms born or made
            evidence from developing countries
This paper uses survey data from 120
            developing countries to compare the role of institutions
            with firm characteristics at the time of creation of the
            firm in explaining the size, growth, and productivity of
            firms over their lifecycle. The study finds that firm-level
            characteristics have comparable, and sometimes even larger,
            power than institutional factors in predicting size and
            growth, but not productivity. In particular, size at birth
            plays a key role in predicting variation in firm size and
            growth since birth over the firm lifecycle, whereas country
            factors dominate in predicting variation in labor
            productivity over the firm lifecycle. The study also finds
            that older firms are larger, partly because of the selection
            of more efficient firms. The findings point to the
            importance of initial founding conditions in explaining
            variations in size and growth over the firm lifecycle across countries.
The cost of road infrastructure in
            low and middle income countries
The connections between transport
            infrastructure and economic development have been
            extensively analyzed in previous research, but little is
            known about the cost of infrastructure investments in poor
            countries. This paper examines drivers of unit costs of
            construction and maintenance of transport infrastructure in
            low and middle income countries and documents that: (i)
            there is a large dispersion in unit costs for comparable
            road work activities; (ii) after accounting for
            environmental drivers of costs, residual unit costs are
            significantly higher in conflict countries; (iii) there is
            evidence that costs are higher in countries with higher
            levels of corruption; (iv) these effects are robust to
            controlling for a country’s public investment capacity and
            business environment. Our findings have implications for
            governments aiming to increase connectivity in poor countries.
On the effects of enforcement on
            illegal markets : evidence from a quasi-experiment in Colombia
This paper studies the effects of
            enforcement on illegal behavior in the context of a large
            aerial spraying program designed to curb coca cultivation in
            Colombia. In 2006, the Colombian government pledged not to
            spray a 10 km band around the frontier with Ecuador due to
            diplomatic frictions arising from the possibly negative
            collateral effects of this policy on the Ecuadorian side of
            the border. This variation is used to estimate the effect of
            spraying on coca cultivation by regression discontinuity
            around the 10 km threshold and by conditional differences in
            differences. The results suggest that spraying one
            additional hectare reduces coca cultivation by 0.022 to 0.03
            hectares; these effects are too small to make aerial
            spraying a cost-effective policy for reducing cocaine
            production in Colombia.
Volunteerism after the Tsunami : the
            effects of democratization
Using three waves of survey data from
            fishing villages in Aceh, Indonesia for 2005–09, the paper
            examines the determinants of local volunteer labor after the
            tsunami. Volunteer labor is the village public sector labor
            force for maintenance, clean-up and renovation of public
            capital. While also examining the effects on volunteerism of
            village destruction and trauma, pre-existing social capital,
            diversity, and aid delivery, the papers focuses on the
            effects of democratization. The tsunami and massive
            international aid effort prompted the settlement of the
            insurgency movement in Aceh, which had led to suspension of
            local elections over the prior twenty or more years. Until
            2006, village heads who call volunteer days were effectively
            selected by village elites, who may highly value the public
            facilities maintained by volunteer labor. With elections,
            volunteer days fall under the new regime, with
            democratically elected village heads calling fewer volunteer
            days, which may appeal more to the typical villager.
            Identification comes from pseudo-randomized differential
            timing of elections.
Job opportunities along the
            rural-urban gradation and female labor force participation
            in India
The recent decline in India’s rural
            female labor force participation is generally attributed to
            higher rural incomes in a patriarchal society. Together with
            the growing share of the urban population, where female
            participation rates are lower, this alleged income effect
            does not bode well for the empowerment of women as India
            develops. This paper argues that a traditional supply-side
            interpretation is insufficient to account for the decline in
            female participation rates, and the transformation of the
            demand for labor at local levels needs to be taken into
            account as well. A salient trait of this period is the
            collapse in the number of farming jobs without a parallel
            emergence of other employment opportunities considered
            suitable for women. The paper develops a novel approach to
            capture the structure of employment at the village or town
            level, and allow for differences along six ranks in the
            rural-urban gradation. It also considers the possible
            misclassification of urban areas as rural, as a result of
            household surveys lagging behind India’s rapid urbanization
            process. The results show that the place of residence along
            the rural-urban gradation loses relevance as an explanation
            of female labor force participation once local job
            opportunities are taken into account. Robustness checks
            confirm that the main findings hold even when taking into
            account the possibility of spurious correlation and
            endogeneity. They also hold under alternative definitions of
            labor force participation and when sub-samples of women are
            considered. Simulations suggest that for India to reverse
            the decline in female labor force participation rates it
            needs to boost job creation.
The ABCs of financial education :
            experimental evidence on attitudes, behavior, and cognitive biases
This paper uses a large scale field
            experiment in India to study attitudinal, behavioral, and
            cognitive constraints that stymie the link between financial
            education and financial outcomes. The study complements
            financial education with (i) participant classroom
            motivation with pay for performance on a knowledge test,
            (ii) intensity of treatment with personalized financial
            counseling, and (iii) behavioral nudges with financial goal
            setting. The analysis finds no impact of pay for performance
            but significant effects of both counseling and goal setting
            on real financial outcomes. These results identify important
            complements to financial education that can bridge the gap
            between financial knowledge and financial behavior change.
Oral democracy and women’s oratory
            competency in Indian village assemblies : a qualitative analysis
In democracies, innovative political
            institutions have opened up scope for direct public
            participation often in the form of talk: citizens talking to
            the state and mutual talk among citizens on matters
            concerning community development. A prominent example is the
            Indian gram sabha, or village assembly, which occurs in a
            highly stratified context. This paper undertakes a
            talk-centered analysis of the gram sabha with a focus on
            examining the oral participation of women in general and
            women affiliated with microcredit self-help groups who have
            access to an associational life. The qualitative analysis of
            255 gram sabha transcripts from four South Indian states
            finds that women associated with microcredit self-help
            groups employ a wider variety of narrative styles and
            utilize a more multilayered structure to convey their
            messages compared with all women taken together. Thus, the
            difference is not so much in the numerical instances of
            talking or in the types of issues raised, but rather in the
            quality of participation. The paper makes an important
            theoretical contribution by proposing the concept of oral
            democracy as an alternative to deliberative democracy, and
            urges an analytical focus on the oral or oratory competency
            of subordinated groups as they participate in these
            important institutions.
Pronatal property rights over land
            and fertility outcomes : evidence from a natural experiment
            in Ethiopia
This study exploits a natural experiment
            to investigate the impact of land reform on the fertility
            outcomes of households in rural Ethiopia. Public policies
            and customs created a situation where Ethiopian households
            could influence their usufruct rights to land via a
            demographic expansion of the family. The study evaluates the
            impact of the abolishment of these pronatal property rights
            on fertility outcomes. By matching aggregated census data
            before and after the reform with administrative data on the
            reform, a difference-in-differences approach between reform
            and non-reform districts is used to assess the impact of the
            reform on fertility outcomes. The impact appears to be
            large. The study estimates that women in rural areas reduced
            their life-time fertility by 1.2 children due to the reform.
            Robustness checks show that the impact estimates are not
            biased by spillovers or policy endogeneity.
Moral incentives : experimental
            evidence from repayments of an Islamic credit card
This paper studies the role of morality
            in the decision to repay debts. Using a field experiment
            with a large Islamic bank in Indonesia, the paper finds that
            moral appeals strongly increase credit card repayments. In
            this setting, all of the bank's late-paying credit card
            customers receive a basic reminder to repay their debt one
            day after they miss the payment due date. In addition, two
            days before the end of a ten-day grace period, clients in a
            treatment group also receive a text message that cites an
            Islamic religious text and states that “non-repayment of
            debts by someone who is able to repay is an injustice.” This
            message increases the share of customers meeting their
            minimum payments by nearly 20 percent. By contrast, sending
            either a simple reminder or an Islamic quote that is
            unrelated to debt repayment has no effect on the share of
            customers making the minimum payment. Clients also respond
            more strongly to this moral appeal than to substantial
            financial incentives: receiving the religious message
            increases repayments by more than offering a cash rebate
            equivalent to 50 percent of the minimum repayment. Finally,
            the paper finds that removing religious aspects from the
            quote does not change its effectiveness, suggesting that the
            moral appeal of the message does not necessarily rely on its
            religious connotation.
Youth out of school and out of work
            in Latin America : a cohort approach
This paper examines the phenomena of
            high rates of youth that are out of school and out of work
            in Latin America. The analysis pursues a dynamic approach by
            constructing a pseudo-panel from 234 household surveys for
            18 countries in the region that allow tracing the life cycle
            trajectories of different cohorts over time. The
            trajectories are associated with a series of variables
            characterizing the household, community, and macro
            environment in which schooling and labor market
            participation decisions take place. The most important
            result obtained is that the persistently high rates of being
            out of school and out of work among males are strongly
            associated with greater labor force participation by women,
            which can be generating a “crowding out” effect against men,
            given slow job creation rates across the region. The
            analysis also explores the possibility of scarring effects,
            and finds that higher shares of out of school and out of
            work youth at ages 15–20 years are associated with lower
            wages for the same cohorts later in life, at ages 35–40
            years, for males and females. As for employment prospects,
            the analysis finds scarring effects only for females, with
            greater out of school and out of work youth shares being
            related to lower proportions of women in the labor market
            later in the life cycle.
The Heterogeneous effect of
            information on student performance : evidence from a
            randomized control trial in Mexico
A randomized control trial was conducted
            to study whether providing 10th grade students with
            information about the returns to upper secondary and
            tertiary education, and a source of financial aid for
            tertiary education, can contribute to improve student
            performance. The study finds that the intervention had no
            effects on the probability of taking a 12th grade national
            standardized exam three years after, a proxy for on-time
            high school completion, but a positive and significant
            impact on learning outcomes and self-reported measures of
            effort. The effects are larger for girls and students from
            households with a relatively high income. These findings are
            consistent with a simple model where time discount
            determines the increase in effort and only students with
            adequate initial conditions are able to translate increased
            effort into better outcomes.
Value of improved information about
            forest protection values, with application to rainforest valuation
What is the utility from obtaining more
            precise values of natural resource objects (rainforests),
            through surveys or other similar information gathering? In
            the value of information problems studied here, a principal
            who wishes to preserve a resource sets a price to offer to a
            seller without knowing precisely the protection value or
            opportunity value, to the seller. The value of information
            related to more precise information about the protection
            value for the principal is a key issue in environmental and
            natural resource valuation, but it is in most cases implicit
            and not analyzed. More precise resource values reduce the
            frequency of two types of mistakes (saving the resource when
            it should not be saved, and not saving the resource when it
            should be saved), and increases the principal’s ex ante
            expected utility value. This paper applies the model to
            Amazon rainforest protection and considers the hypothetical
            value of perfect information. The analysis finds that the
            value of perfect information can easily exceed realistic
            information costs, thus perhaps justifying significant
            expenditures for valuation studies, given that all available
            information is used efficiently for conservation decision
            purposes. The value of perfect information also depends on
            the nature of buyer-seller interactions, and is higher in
            the altruistic case, where the principal has full concern
            for the outcome for the seller.
Analyzing food price trends in the
            context of Engel’s law and the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis
Income growth in emerging economies has
            often been cited as a key driver of the past decade’s
            com-modity price boom—the longest and broadest boom since
            World War II. This paper shows that income has a negative
            and highly significant effect on real food commodity prices,
            a finding that is consistent with Engel’s Law and
            Kindleberger’s thesis, the predecessors of the
            Prebisch-Singer hypothe-sis. The paper also shows that, in
            the long run, income influences real food prices mainly
            through the manufacturing price channel (the deflator),
            hence weakening the view that income growth exerts strong
            upward pressure on food prices. Other (short-term) drivers
            of food prices include energy costs, inventories, and
            monetary conditions.
Sources of volatility during four
            oil price crashes
Previous sharp oil price declines have
            been accompanied by elevated ex post volatility. In
            contrast, volatility was much less elevated during the oil
            price crash in 2014/15. This paper provides evidence that
            oil prices declined in a relatively measured manner during
            2014/15, with dispersion of price changes that was
            considerably smaller than comparable oil price declines.
            This finding is robust to nonparametric and GARCH measures
            of volatility. Further, the U.S. dollar appreciation exerted
            a strong influence on volatility during the recent crash; in
            contrast, the impact of shocks on equity markets was muted.
Civil service recruitment in Comoros
            : a case of political clientelism in a decentralized state
Professional civil service recruitment
            is a core component of governance for development, as it is
            necessary for ensuring the capacity of civil servants,
            service delivery, fiscal sustainability, and proper salary
            management. Through an ambitious mixed method approach, this
            study seeks to provide a political economy analysis of civil
            service recruitment in Comoros—a fragile and decentralized
            state with a relatively large portion of spending on
            government salaries. More specifically, it aims to explain
            the recent dramatic increases in the number of civil
            servants in Comoros. The paper presents three main findings
            from the analysis. First, in 2010, elections at the national
            and local levels were associated with the largest
            recruitment in the past decade, due in part to the interplay
            of informal institutions such as political clientelism with
            the current public financial management system. Second, the
            institutions involved in recruitment are not permanent; they
            are evolving with the balance of power between the national
            and island governments. Third, civil service recruitment
            respects qualification standards.