rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
more than 50% of the total, the actual number was small and played a minor role in the growth of permanent resident population (column 4’).

A survey of the evolution of the foreign population would be incomplete without considering the two main components of the outflow: Acquisitions of Swiss nationality and returns to the home country. Given the political turmoil in the region in the 1990s, it is easy to understand why the returns of Yugoslav citizens represent a relatively small portion of all returns (i.e., on average less than 10%, in column 6’). However, it is interesting to note that despite the improved political situation in much of the region, the outflow of permanent residents kept decreasing in recent years. In 2001, the number of returning nationals was at its lowest level since the mid 1980s (less than 3,500 people in column 6) and it is falling rapidly. In parallel, the number of acquisitions of Swiss nationality was at its highest ever with almost 12,000 in 2003, which represented 1/3 of all naturalizations, much more than its representation in the foreign population (columns 7 and 7’). This happens despite a cumbersome process and additional difficulties members of the Yugoslav community face in being recognized as worthy future citizens in some regions of Switzerland.<sup>8</sup> Moreover, to apply for citizenship, a person must have been residing in Switzerland for a minimum of 12 years with an establishment permit and considering the rise in the allocation of such permits in the late 1990s (column 5), one can only infer that naturalizations are likely to remain at a relatively high level in the future.

The evidence on the inflow and on the outflow combined, suggests that immigrants from the former Republic of Yugoslavia are more inclined than those from other countries to settle permanently in Switzerland. In fact, in 1995, 81% of foreign-born Yugoslavs had been in

> 8  In 2000 the Swiss citizenship was refused to all applicants from Eastern Europe in a municipality where it is awarded by popular vote (see Gross, 2006, for details). Nevertheless, a similar outcome is unlikely to happen

13
trade barrier (TTB) measure exhibits greater measured co-movement with macroeconomic variables than the antidumping measure used in the prior literature. Estimates on antidumping alone fail to capture the true impact of these shocks on import protection, especially with respect to movements in bilateral real exchange rates. The third point worth highlighting is that the estimated IRR for foreign real GDP growth is less than 1 in all specifications of Table 2. This is evidence that, on average, these economies tended to impose new import protection on trading partners that were themselves undergoing a period of weak economic growth or an economic contraction. This result is particularly important for understanding the _differential_ government policy responses during the Great Recession, as we discuss in section 4.

# **3.2 Pre-crisis estimates for subsamples of the US, EU and smaller economies**

Table 3 presents estimation results from the 1988:Q1-2008:Q3 period restricted to subsamples of data based on policy-imposing economies. We consider three subsamples in particular: estimates for the United States, European Union, and a combined sample of data jointly covering Australia, Canada, and South Korea. For each subsample of data, we present results from three different specifications. Columns (1), (4) and (7) of Table 3 present the same baseline model specification as Table 2, specification (1). We then consider robustness checks in columns (2), (5) and (8) in which we substitute the explanatory variables at the second lag ( _t-2_ ) for the first lag. Finally, in columns (3), (6) and (9), we consider the impact of these determinants on the antidumping policy alone, as opposed to the more comprehensive dependent variable that covers all TTBs.

The results for the United States in Table 3 are consistent with the overall results reported in Table 2. Import protection through TTBs is associated with a real appreciation of the US dollar, an increase in the US unemployment rate, and a decline in trading partner real GDP growth. Furthermore, while importer _j_ and exporter _i_ combined fixed effects were also included as part of the model estimates in Table 2, we did not report them to conserve space. We report one fixed effect estimate in Table 3 in order to highlight the policy-imposing economy’s relationship with China. In specification (1), the IRR of 22.66 is evidence that China was substantially more likely than the omitted trading partner (in this case, Australia) to face US import protection.<sup>23</sup> As has been well

> 23 The IRRs for the other trading partners are not reported in the table but are available from the authors upon request. In terms of scale, the estimated IRR for China in the US models, for example, is typically twice as large as that for the second-highest trading partner.

16
households and the different product shares in total expenditures when faced with a removal of the PDS. The implicit assumption here is that since PDS goods have predetermined quantities, households will procure these on the market in the absence in of the PDS. Thus, the removal of any of the subsidized products will yield a change in the consumption of their free market counterpart as well as in the corresponding free market prices. Consumers will react to the removal of the subsidized quota by adjusting their consumption of the other free market products consumed. This will yield a change in their total expenditure.

Two sets of reform scenarios for the PDS are implemented to illustrate its distributional impact. Both sets consider the complete removal of the PDS only in urban households – in other words, urban households will no longer be able to purchase wheat, rice, sugar and oil up to their quota at the subsidized prices. Such a scenario, with phased implementation of reform beginning with urban areas, is plausible for logistical and implementation reasons, and for welfare considerations. We focus only on households living in urban areas because these have relatively better initial conditions than their rural counterparts, which might ease the implementation of the reform. Even though the reduction in rural poverty has been significantly higher than in urban areas between 2007 and 2012, rural poverty levels remain double those in urban areas [World Bank (2014a)]. Moreover, urban households presumably have better access to free market products than those living in rural areas. This would make the implicit assumption of being able to substitute PDS goods for their free market counterparts reasonable.

The first set of scenarios (i.e. Scenarios A) focuses on removing the rations products from the highest two income quintiles in urban areas. The implementation of such a scenario assumes the ability to relatively welltarget PDS beneficiaries in urban areas and exclude the top 40% of the welfare distribution from the program. This extreme case would have no impact on rural areas or on the urban poor. In other words, we are excluding the public transfer from those segments of the population which may need them the least or who could reasonably adjust their consumption or a combination of both, given their relative better-off welfare conditions. To measure the household responses to changes in the PDS, we gradually remove the quotas in increasing order of the share of each ration item in the total expenditure. More precisely, scenarios A are defined as follows:

- Scenario A1: decrease the ration rice quota by 100% for the two highest quintiles in urban areas;

- Scenario A2: Scenario A1 in addition to the decrease of the ration vegetable oil quota by 100% for the two highest quintiles in urban areas;

- Scenario A3: Scenario A2 in addition to the decrease of the sugar quota by 100% for the two highest quintiles in urban areas;

- Scenario A4: scenario A3 in addition to the decrease of the brown flour quota by 100% for the two highest quintiles in urban areas.

14
# Returns to Soft Skills Training in Rwanda

Andrew Brudevold-Newman and Diego Ubfal<sup>*</sup> _JEL Codes: I26, J16, J24, 015_

## Keywords: soft skills, labor market entry, transition from school to work, networks, RCT.

> *Brudevold-Newman: World Bank, abrudevoldnewman@worldbank.org. Ubfal: World Bank, dubfal@worldbank.org. This paper greatly benefited from comments by Sofia Amaral, Edward Kadozi, Estelle Koussoub ́e, David McKenzie, Francois Ngoboka, and Adam Osman. Baba-Ali Mwango and Leodomir Mfura provided excellent research assistance and project coordination. We gratefully acknowledge financial support, through a grant to Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) from Deutsche Gesellschaft f ̈ur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH as part of the Special Initiative “Decent Work for a Just Transition” and on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). We also acknowledge support from the World Bank’s Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality. The Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE) is a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. This paper is a product of the Gender Innovation Lab, Office of the Chief Economist, Africa Region. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank Group, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The project received ethical approval by Innovations for Poverty Action Institutional Review Board and the Rwanda National Ethics Committee. AEA RCT Registry ID: AEARCTR-0009714. All errors and omissions are our own.
Evans, Chris (2003), “Studying the Studies: An overview of recent research into taxation operating costs” _eJournal of Tax Research, Volume 1, Number 1, Atax/UNSW_ <u>http://www.atax.unsw.edu.au/ejtr</u> Gatti, Roberta and Maddalena Honorati (2008) "Informality among Formal Firms: Firm- level, Cross-country Evidence on Tax Compliance and Access to Credit" _World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. 4476._ Government of New Zealand, (2007), "Reducing tax compliance costs for small and medium enterprises: A government discussion document" http://www.taxpolicy.ird.govt.nz/publications/files/smeddoc.doc

> 1IFC (2009) _A Handbook for Tax Simplification_

IFC (2009), “The Costs of Tax Compliance in Ukraine” Available at: <u>http://www1.ifc.org/wps/wcm/connect/725f0b804b5f7ae59f06bf6eac26e1c2/UT CCS_eng.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=725f0b804b5f7ae59f06bf6eac26e1c2</u> IFC (2012) “Nepal Tax Compliance Cost Survey Report - 2012” Available at: <u>https://www.wbginvestmentclimate.org/publications/loader.cfm?csModule=securi ty/getfile&pageid=33942</u> Heckman, J. James (1979), “Sample Selection Bias as Specification Error” _Econometrica, Vol 47, No 1, P. 153 – 161_ Heckman, J. James (1990), “Varieties of Selection Bias” The American Economic Review, Vol. 80, No. 2, Jacobs, Hartog and Vijverberg (2009), “ Self-selection bias in estimated wage premiums for earnings risk” _Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 271-286_ James, S. (2003) “Book review of Taxation Compliance Costs” A Festschrift for Cedric Sandford”, _British Tax Review_ Lileeva, A and Trefler, D (2007) “Improved Access to Foreign Markets Raises PlantLevel Productivity ... for Some Plants” _National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper Series, 13297_ <u>http://www.nber.org/papers/w13297</u> OECD (2008) “Programs to Reduce the Administrative Burden of Tax Regulations in Selected Countries” http://www.oecd.org/tax/administration/39947998.pdf Sandford, C. (1994), “International Comparisons of Administrative and Compliance Costs of Taxation”, _Australian Tax Forum_ 55
# Reviewed Papers

Afridi, F., Mukhopadhyay, A., & Sahoo, S. (2016). Female labor force participation and child education in India: Evidence from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. _IZA Journal of Labor & Development_ , _5_ (1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40175-016-0053-y Agiro, B. T., & Huang, W.-C. (2020). Re-Examining the Effect of Maternal Employment on Child Overweight: The Case of School-Age Children. _Journal of Family and Economic Issues_ , _41_ (1), 140–157. <u>https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-019-09658-8</u> Anderson, P. M., Butcher, K. F., & Levine, P. B. (2003). Maternal employment and overweight children. _Journal of Health Economics_ , _22_ (3), 477–504. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-6296(03)00022-5 Aughinbaugh, A., & Gittleman, M. (2004). Maternal employment and adolescent risky behavior. _Journal of Health Economics_ , _23_ (4), 815–838. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2003.11.005 Baum, C. L. (2015). Does Early Maternal Employment Harm Child Development? An Analysis of the Potential Benefits of Leave Taking. _Journal of Labor Economics_ . https://doi.org/10.1086/345563 Bishop, J. (2011). The Effect of Maternal Employment on Youth Overweight in Australia. _Economic Record_ , _87_ (s1), 92–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2011.00747.x Del Boca, D., Pasqua, S., & Suardi, S. (2016). Child Care, Maternal Employment, and Children’s School Outcomes. An Analysis of Italian Data. _European Journal of Population_ , _32_ (2), 211–229. <u>https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-015-9370-0</u> Dervisevic, E., Perova, E., & Lo Bue, M. C. (2021). _Maternal employment and children’s outcomes: Evidence from Indonesia_ . The World Bank.

Dunifon, R., Kalil, A., Crosby, D., & Su, J. H. (2013). Mothers’ Night Work and Children’s Behavior Problems. _Developmental Psychology_ , _49_ (10), 1874–1885. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031241 Ermisch, J., & Francesconi, M. (2013). The Effect of Parental Employment on Child Schooling. _Journal of Applied Econometrics_ , _28_ (5), 796–822. https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.2260 Felfe, C., & Hsin, A. (2012). Maternal work conditions and child development. _Economics of Education Review_ , _31_ (6), 1037–1057. <u>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2012.06.008</u> Gennetian, L. A., Hill, H. D., London, A. S., & Lopoo, L. M. (2010). Maternal employment and the health of low-income young children. _Journal of Health Economics_ , _29_ (3), 353–363. <u>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2010.02.007</u> Greve, J. (2011). New results on the effect of maternal work hours on children’s overweight status: Does the quality of child care matter? _Labour Economics_ , _18_ (5), 579–590. <u>https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2011.03.003</u> 8
WPS4249 where _lac_ is a dummy variable that takes the value of 1 if the country in question is in the Latin American region and 0 otherwise. Thus the impact of remittances on growth for Latin America would be given by β _1+_ β _2_ .

As for the impact of remittances on inequality, we follow a similar strategy and estimate the following specification:

> where _g_ is the (logged) Gini coefficient, and<sup>μ</sup> _i_<sup>and</sup> ε _it_ are a country-specific effect, and an _i.i.d._ error term. Analogous to equation (5), the impact of remittances on the changes in inequality for Latin America would be given by α _1+_ α _2_ .

# _(c) Econometric issues_

In equations (5) and (6) above, the variable for remittances is pre-determined, which in principle should help alleviate concerns with simultaneity. This in turn should offer some reassurance that empirical estimates of β and α capture the effect of remittances on growth and inequality rather than the impact of growth or inequality on migration and hence on remittances.

However, the estimation of equations (5) and (6) still has to overcome two main challenges, namely the presence of (unobserved) country-specific effects potentially correlated with the explanatory variables, and the possible simultaneity of some of the control variables with growth. To address the first of these issues Arellano and Bond (1991) propose differencing the equations to eliminate the country specific effect so that, after rearranging, (5), say, can be rewritten as: which relates changes in the growth rate to changes in remittances and the control variables. If δ = 0 and the _x_ variables are exogenous, OLS on (7) will yield consistent estimates. But if δ is not equal to zero, and/or some or all of the _x_ are determined simultaneously with _y,_ the OLS estimates will be inconsistent, and an instrumental variable procedure is needed to obtain consistent estimates of the parameters.

Absent exogenous variables that can provide external instruments, a GMM estimator based only on internal instruments can be constructed along the lines of Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998), who propose a system estimator combining the regressions in differences and levels. To compute the system estimator, predetermined and endogenous variables in first differences are instrumented with suitable lags of their own levels, while variables in levels are instrumented with suitable lags of their own first differences.<sup>10</sup>

> 10 A well-known shortcoming of panel GMM estimators in small samples is their tendency to result in over-fitting and downward-biased standard errors —a consequence of the large number of instruments available for estimation

7
Policy Research Working Paper 5521

# **Abstract**

Using panel data from labor force surveys in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, the paper maps out young people’s paths from the classroom to the work place during the 1980s through the early 2000s. By decomposing transition matrices into propensity to move and rate of separation and estimating duration matrices, the authors follow young people’s movements between school and work and between employment sectors to better understand the dynamics of youth employment, including where youth go upon leaving school, how long they spend in each state, and where they go upon leaving various employment states. The main conclusion of the study is that young people across all three countries follow a similar trend over their life cycle: they leave school to spend a short time in the informal sector, move to a formal position for longer spells, and finally become self-employed. The authors find evidence of decreasing segmentation between formal and informal sectors as workers age, a lower propensity for formal sector employees to return to school than workers in the same age cohort who are not in the This paper is a product of the Children and Youth Unit, Human Development Network. 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://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at Wcunningham@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
“Non-Economic”. Additionally, a large set of legislation regulates the public sector – in particular public administrations and municipalities, as well as courts and judges. We combined these laws and regulations under “Public_Administration_and_Judiciary” and remove them for the sectoral analysis of legislative predictability. Second, legislation can tackle multiple sectors at the same time without any NACE category dominating. To account for such laws and regulations, we added the category “multisector”. Third, taxation and budgetary legislation plays a significant role for businesses and households in a horizontal, cross-cutting manner, e.g. changing VAT rates impacts all sectors similarly from mining to IT. This was considered by creating a dedicated taxation and budget category. The resulting modified NACE classification will be called GCO sectoral categorization which allows us to select those laws which have economic relevance and apportion them into specific sectors where legislative activities are likely to differ. (Table 2). While this task is automatized for the broader GCO dataset, we additionally manually checked and corrected all Jordanian laws since 2000 and a subset of Jordanian regulations since 2000 for assuring the highest quality analysis in this paper.

**Table 2. Sectoral Classification labels. NACE original labels and modified/additional labels (GCO categorization)**

|**GCO**|**NACE**|
|---|---|
|Agriculture, forestry and fishing|Agriculture, forestry and fishing|
|Mining and quarrying|Mining and quarrying|
|Manufacturing|Manufacturing|
|Energy|Electricity, gas steam and air conditioning supply|
|Water and waste|Water supply; sewerage; waste management and remediation<br>activities|
|Construction|Construction|
|Wholesale and retail|Wholesale and retail trade repair of motor vehicles and<br>motorcycles|
|Transportation|Transporting and storage|
|Tourism and hospitality|Accommodation and food service activities|
|Information and communication|Information and communication|
|Finance|Financial and insurance activities|
|Real estate|Real estate activities|
|Professional services|Professional scientific and technical activities|
|Business support activities|Administrative and support service activities|
|Public administration and judiciary|Administration of the State and the economic and social<br>policy of the community|
|Defence and police|Provision of services to the community as a whole|
|International affairs and trade|Provision of services to the community as a whole|
|Social security|Compulsory social security activities|
|Education|Education|
|Health care|Human health and social work activities|

9