rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Policy Research Working Paper 8872

# **Abstract**

Mental health, well-being, and lasting economic outcomes are intimately connected. However, in geographies marked by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV), entrepreneurs of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) experience chronic stress and poor mental health on a regular basis. These issues can hamper performance and quality of life for the entrepreneurs, and can dampen the benefits of existing financial and business assistance programs. Few proven rigorous interventions are known. This study tests the hypothesis that a five-week group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) training called Problem Management Plus for Entrepreneurs (PM+E), in combination with financial assistance, could be more effective at reducing psychological stressors of SME entrepreneurs in FCV contexts than financial assistance alone. Meaningful and statistically significant improvements in mental health were achieved, with improvements persisting and increasing beyond the immediate post-intervention period. Based on analysis of pooled data across two follow-up rounds (at five weeks and three months post-intervention), entrepreneurs in the treatment group experienced statistically significant reduction in the intensity and prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms (measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire Anxiety and Depression Scale) and higher levels of well-being (measured by the World Health Organization Well-Being Index) compared with the control group. The effect was marked for those experiencing mild/moderate levels of depression and anxiety, suggesting the clinical value of such low touch interventions. Overall, the study demonstrates that empirical research through Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) can be conducted in challenging, FCV settings through appropriate rapid training of local researchers and non-specialist providers (NSPs) at a low cost, yielding scalable programmatic and policy level lessons.

This paper is a product of the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice in collaboration with the Mind, Behavior and Development Unit. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at psaraf@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
for participants with higher levels of income, loss aversion is likely to be an issue. Therefore, we limited the levels for monthly income to current income or increases from current income. In future work, it would be worth exploring what levels of nonwage benefits would induce workers to take even small wage cuts.

> xv Individual characteristics cannot be included directly in the conditional logit model, because these characteristics do not vary across alternatives; they can, however, be included when interacted with regressors that vary across alternatives.

xvi We attempted to include all men from several small employment categories, as discussed in Section 2; however, since these categories were so small, they do not affect the overall distribution of characteristics among men, or create substantial differences between the weighted and unweighted results.

xvii The level of female labor force participation implied by our roster is lower than the national average for Bangladesh (33 percent, according to the 2013 Labour Force Survey). However, our sample was focused on two urban and peri-urban cities, and is not meant to be representative of Bangladesh as a whole. xviii We asked workers who had multiple jobs to focus on the job in which they spent the most hours. xix As noted above, the weighting makes little difference when examining the distribution of employment types by gender, since all women received a sampling weight of one, and nearly all men received a sampling weight of 2.52.

xx Individuals either provided us with an estimate of their monthly income, or a range into which their income fell. For those who provided a range, we used the midpoint of the range. We were unable to collect information about income (an estimate or a range) for 36 individuals. Another 21 reported zero income. xxi As a comparison, the World Bank estimates that annual per-capita income in Bangladesh was about $1,359 USD in 2016, or about $113 USD per month.

xxii Among the 65 respondents in our sample who indicated that they were household members working in a family business, 6 reported earning no income. 11 self-employed respondents also reported zero income, as did 1 domestic worker, 1 day laborer, and 2 paid employees. In the case of the 4 wage workers who reported zero income, it is not clear if this reflected a failure to be paid by their employers recently, or a refusal to respond to the income question. In addition, income information was missing for 36 respondents. xxiii We thank an anonymous referee for this suggestion.

31
- Holmstrom, B. & Milgrom, P. (1991). “Multitask principal‐agent analyses: Incentive contracts, asset ownership, and job Design,” _Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization_ , _7_ (Special Issue), 24‐ 52.

- Hudak, B. B., O'Donnell, J., & Mazyrka, N. (1995). “Infant sleep position: pediatricians' advice to parents,” _Pediatrics_ , _95_ (1), 55‐58.

- Huillery, E. & Seban, J. (2014). “Pay‐for‐Performance, motivation and final output in the health sector: Experimental evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo,” W _orking Paper,_ Department of Economics, Sciences Po, Paris.

- Imbens, G. W. & Angrist, J. D. (1994). “Identification and estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects,” _Econometrica_ , _62_ (2), 467‐475.

- John, L. K., Loewenstein, G., Troxel, A. B., Norton, L., Fassbender, J. E., & Volpp, K. G. (2011). “Financial incentives for extended weight loss: a randomized, controlled trial,” _Journal of General Internal Medicine_ , _26_ (6), 621‐626.

- Kahneman, D. (2012). “Thinking, fast and slow,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

- Karlan, D., M. McConnell, S. Mullainathan & Jonathan Zinman (2015). “Getting to the top of mind: How reminders increase savings,” _Management Science_ , forthcoming.

- Kirmani, A. & Rao, A. R. (2000). “No pain, no gain: A critical review of the literature on signaling unobserved product quality,” _Journal of Marketing_ , _64_ (2), 66–79.

- Kolstad, J. T. (2013). “Information and quality when motivation is intrinsic: Evidence from surgeon report cards,” _The American Economic Review_ , _103_ (7), 2875‐2910.

- Lazear, E. P. (2000). “Performance pay and productivity,” _The American Economic Review_ , _90_ (5), 1346‐1361.

- Leonard, K. L. & Masatu, M. C. (2010), “Professionalism and the know‐do gap: Exploring intrinsic motivation among health workers in Tanzania,” _Health Economics, 19_ (12), 1461‐1477.

- Main, D. S., Cohen, S. J., & DiClemente, C. C. (1995). “Measuring physician readiness to change cancer screening: preliminary results,” _American Journal of Preventive Medicine_ .

- Miller, G. & Babiarz, K. S. (2013). “Pay‐for‐performance incentives in low‐ and middle‐income country health programs,” _NBER Working Papers_ 18932, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

- Mohanan, M., Vera‐Hernández, M., Das, V., Giardili, S., Goldhaber‐Fiebert, J. D., Rabin, T. L., & Seth, A. (2015). “The know‐do gap in quality of health care for childhood diarrhea and pneumonia in rural India,” _JAMA Pediatrics_ .

- Musgrove, P. (2010). “Plan Nacer, Argentina: Provincial maternal and child health insurance using Results‐Based Financing (RBF),” Mimeo.

- National Ministry of Health (2009). "Informe de gestión Plan Nacer," Área Técnica, Unidad Ejecutora Central. Buenos Aires, Argentina.

- National Ministry of Health (2010). "Informe de gestión Plan Nacer," Área Técnica, Unidad Ejecutora Central. Revised version March. Buenos Aires, Argentina.

- National Ministry of Health (2010b). ”Nomenclador único 2010,” Plan Nacer, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

- Nelson, R. & S. Winter (1982). “An evolutionary theory of economic change,” Harvard University Press.

25
# **Relative Price Changes and the Growth of the Public Sector**

by **M.** Shahbaz Khan

# **Table of Contents**

|Introduction|1|
|---|---|
|**Methodology**|**4**|
|**Estimation Results**|6|
|GDP-Deflato:<br>Elast.city of Government-Expenditure<br>Deflato,|7|
|3aumol's Hypothesis|8|
|Wagner's Law|11|
|Summary and Conclusions|14|
|Bibliography|16|
|Anrex Table 1|17|

Thanks are due to the team members of the World Development Report 1988 for providing the intellectual stimulus for this exercise.
sorghum output for female-headed households in Rwanda. We do not find any further instances of significance for level of education or for female-headed households.

Turning to recall of cash crop sales, we assume that farmers will report cash crop sales more accurately than quantities, and in Table 2 we find some evidence of recall effects, although limited to tobacco sales in Malawi. The direction of the bias, however, goes against our initial intuition, with respondents reporting higher sales for longer recall periods. This finding holds even when we drop outliers in sales. Introducing the land interaction terms suggests that such bias among tobacco farmers in Malawi is driven by smaller landholders. Since we found no impact on the kilograms produced for Malawi tobacco (Table 1 results), this finding could be the result of an overestimate of either the recall of the portion of total harvest sold or it may reflect differences in the recall of prices received from sales. Regressions using the amount sold, measured in kilograms as opposed to local currency units, show similar results, therefore indicating that the source of this bias in the Malawi tobacco recall data is at least partly tied to reports of the quantity sold (results not presented). No differences from the base model are detected after introducing the other two interaction terms in Malawi. Male-headed households growing coffee in Kenya also seem to overestimate sales when interviewed further from harvest.

Turning now to inputs, using a probit specification, we explore the recall bias in reporting any hired labor for staple and cash crops (Table 3). One might expect that hiring labor would be an event of high salience, especially for low-income smallholders for whom there is some payment (cash or in-kind) necessary for this input, resulting in less recall effects. However, if little is expended on hired labor (that is, few days of hired labor particularly in relation to the household’s own labor input levels), it might be a decision of low salience and hence there will be recall bias in reporting. There is some evidence of recall bias in reporting for maize in Kenya and Malawi, but with different signs. In the case of Kenya, longer recall is associated with approximately a 32 percentage point increase in the probability of reporting any hired labor. This is an increase of nearly 100 percent from the mean. Conversely, in Malawi, longer recall is associated with a decrease in the probability of reporting any hired labor of about 36 percentage points, an even more drastic decline from the mean. This recall decay for maize in Malawi is offset with education level of the head, but it grows for larger landholders. There are generally no significant recall effects for Rwanda sorghum and coffee, although small coffee farmers under-report when asked further from the event. There is a small effect for female heads hiring labor for maize plots in Malawi (who underestimate with longer recall).

14
**Figure 2: The Reallocation of Manufacturing Exports Across Major Two-digit Sectors***

<!-- Start of picture text --> Apparel Textiles Misc. Man. Footwear Electric. Machinery Metals Telecom Machinery Office Macnines<br>(SITC 84) (SITC 65) (SITC 89) (SITC 85) (SITC 77) (SITC 69) (SITC 76) (SITC 74) (SITC 75)<br>1992 2005<br>.3<br>.2<br>Share of Total Exports<br>.1<br>0<br><!-- End of picture text -->

* A sector is defined as major if the sector’s share of total trade is above 3% in 1992 and/or 2005.  These sectors account for about 70 percent of manufacturing exports.

20
# **3 Benchmarking Exporter Dynamics in Argentina**

This section describes and benchmarks aggregate export patterns in Argentina. We rely on estimates from cross-country regressions whose dependent variables are different indicators of export performance to benchmark exporters in Argentina against those in comparator countries. The regression controls for the size (GDP) and the level of development (GDP per capita) of each country and for time trends, which are critical to consider given that the sample period encompasses commodity price shocks that have affected many of the countries in the sample. The cross-country regressions are estimated on a panel of country-year exporter competitiveness indicators covering the 2000–17 period and encompassing all developing and developed countries included in the Exporter Dynamics Database. Each regression includes a dummy variable identifying the observations for Argentina, whose estimate will determine how Argentina performs relative to the benchmark countries. Table 1 displays the results from the cross-country regressions that provide the foundation for the analysis described in this section.

We begin by characterizing the export sector in Argentina in terms of the number of firms and their size. The results indicate that after controlling for country size and level of development, Argentina has significantly fewer exporters than comparator countries (column 1, table 1), as shown in the previous section. The average size of exporters is statistically higher (columns 2) than in similar countries, whereas the median is not statistically different, indicating a higher concentration of export value in Argentina than in other countries. This is confirmed when using the Herfindahl index of exporter shares (column 4).<sup>4</sup> Indeed, Argentina is one of the most concentrated countries in the region, with a Herfindahl index similar to that in Peru but higher than those in all other comparators. The same result is obtained when considering the share of exports accounted for by the top 1 percent or top 5 percent of exporters as the measure of concentration (columns 5–6).

Next, we examine export diversification. The average number of exported products

> 4The Herfindahl Index is calculated as the sum across all exporters of the squared export shares per exporter.

6
agricultural land, and other real estate as this “core” set of assets has been found to comprise the majority of personal wealth. Additionally, the guidelines advised countries to determine additional assets (including non-agricultural enterprise assets, livestock, large and small agricultural equipment, financial assets and liabilities, valuables, and consumer durables such as vehicles) to collect data based on the policy needs and prevalence of assets within the country.

In line with these recommendations, LSMS+ supported national surveys have focused on the following asset classes on a cross-country basis: residential and non-residential (which, in these countries, was primarily agricultural) land; mobile phones; and financial accounts. A module on livestock ownership was also included in Ethiopia and Cambodia, and the Cambodia LSMS+ Survey additionally included a module on individual-level ownership of durables, such as computers as well as motorized and non-motorized vehicles, including bicycles, motorcycles, cars, tractors, boats and _tuk tuks_ (rickshaws).

Table 1. LSMS+ supported surveys used in the analysis

||Malawi|Tanzania|Ethiopia|Cambodia|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Survey|2016 Integrated<br>Household Panel<br>Survey|2019/20 Tanzania<br>National Panel<br>Survey|2018/19 Ethiopia<br>Socioeconomic Survey|2019/20 Cambodia LSMS+<br>Survey|
|Implementing agency<sup>(1)</sup>|Malawi National<br>Statistical Office|Tanzania National<br>Bureau of Statistics|Ethiopia Central<br>Statistical Agency|National Institute of<br>Statistics of Cambodia|
|Sample size for individual<br>interviews supported by<br>LSMS+<sup>(2)</sup>|2,508 households|1,184 households|6,770 households|1,512 households|
|Fieldworkperiod|4/2016-1/2017|1/2019-1/2020|9/2018-8/2019|10/2019-12/2019|
|Asset classes included in<br>individual-level data<br>collection|Non-residential<br>(primarily<br>agricultural) and<br>residential land,<br>financial accounts,<br>mobilephones|Non-residential<br>(primarily<br>agricultural) and<br>residential land,<br>financial accounts,<br>mobilephones|Non-residential<br>(primarily agricultural)<br>and residential land,<br>financial accounts,<br>mobile phones,<br>livestock|Non-residential (primarily<br>agricultural) and residential<br>land, financial accounts,<br>mobile phones, livestock,<br>apartments/condos,<br>consumer durables|
|Other topics of individual-<br>disaggregated data collection|Employment, non-<br>farm enterprises,<br>education, health,<br>food insecurity|Employment, non-<br>farm enterprises,<br>education, health,<br>subjective well-<br>being|Employment, non-<br>farm enterprises,<br>education, health,<br>savings|Employment, non-farm<br>enterprises, education,<br>health, 24-hour time use<br>diary; domestic and<br>international migration|

7
16 it is difficult to determine 'market prices' for such shares. Taken by itself, the net asset value of an average individual investment portfolio could be very misleading. Although it might be difficult to form an 'average individual portfolio' at the current moment or in the 20 future , a comparison between find and individual performance could be attempted at a later time when more market liquidity is attained.

How did the top ten funds perform since the beginning of their activity in 1992 until June 30, 1994? In general, the non-bank - and to a lesser extent the foreign bank sponsored - funds outperformed the domestic bank sponsored funds. The net asset value of the portfolio (at market prices, per voucher book invested) of the most successful fund is more than twice that of the least successful fund in this survey. In other words, shares owned by domestic bank sponsored funds are relatively cheaper than shares of funds that belong to the other two fund categories. In the group of domestic bank sponsored funds, the funds of Investicni Banka seem to have attained the best result, perhaps largely due to the fact that 21 this fund invested strongly in the financial sector and energy (compare Table 7) . After trading started on the stock exchange share prices of banks and energy companies have increased faster than the market average.

**Table 9: Rank of funds by net asset value per voucher book on June 30, 1994 (in CZK)**

|YSE|| HCC||<br>IB|PPF|ZB|CA<br>KB | CS|| AB | CP|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|47,620|1 37,000|1 34,770|1 33,080|28,950|28,460 26,640 23,680|21,330 20,760|
|Remark|: for fund n|ames and|fund clas|sification<br>s|<br>ee Table 3.||
||Source<br>|.<br>Fund inter|views.|||||

20 From a global data source, share ownership of individuals is only known after the five bidding rounds. Since then, many individuals sold their shares on the stock exchange (either to funds, strategic investors or other individuals). For a more precise assessment of individual ownership today, the ownership structure of all participating enterprises would have to be analyzed.

'II 2 There is some doubt on the prices used to calculate the net asset value of this fund in particular, but also of funds in general because the shares of many companies have never been traded or trading took place only rarely or in fairly low volume. Some funds evaluate shares that have not been traded by their book value, which is misleading since the 'real' price would be far below.
# <u>Introduction</u>

In 2002, David McGee wrote a comprehensive report on two important elements in the system of public financial accountability, namely the office of the Auditor General and the parliamentary oversight committee commonly referred to as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)<sup>5</sup> . Based on the deliberations of a Study Group organized by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA)<sup>6</sup> , he examined current practice across the Commonwealth regarding the roles and functions of Auditors General and PACs and the interaction between these two institutions.

The purpose of the Study Group was “to assess how PACs are working in practice and whether they are fulfilling expectations as important guarantors of good governance. The group ... tried to distil the practices ... into checklists of considerations for Parliaments, always recognizing that social, economic and political factors within each country mean that there is no one organizational form that a PAC will take. The group... also discussed and tried to define a modern rationale for PACs ...[which] is necessitated by and is based on the international dimension that results from a greater inter-dependability of nations today ... [which] ... has brought in its wake greater challenges to good (and honest) government.”<sup>7</sup> McGee sought to identify possible courses of action to improve outcomes through more effective use of PACs. Three main priorities were identified: • _Capacity building_ – the need to improve the ability of Parliaments and their PACs to carry out their functions by being provided with adequate resources, training and access to relevant expertise • _Independence_ – that they be free from political or legal constraints that could inhibit them from carrying out their duties diligently<sup>8</sup> • _Information exchange_ – that PACs have the means to exchange information and ideas so as to keep them up-to-date with important developments, changing standards and best practices as they emerge<sup>9</sup> .

The individual conclusions and recommendations of the Study Group are summarized in Annex 1.

The purpose of the present paper is to deepen McGee’s analysis of PACs. In particular, we seek to attempt to define successful PAC performance and to identify those factors which facilitate or hinder such successful performance. We use data that were collected by the World Bank Institute (WBI)<sup>10</sup> in 2002, when a survey questionnaire was sent to 52 national and state/provincial parliaments in Commonwealth countries in Asia and Australasia and

> 5 McGee, David : The Overseers – Public Accounts Committees and Public Spending, Pluto Press, London 2002.

> 6 and supported by WBI

> 7 op cit, p.4-5; from the Study Group organized by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association

> 8 this priority was noted to be particularly important for Auditors General

> 9 op. cit, p. 6

> 10 In collaboration with the World Bank’s South Asia Financial Management group

1