rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Redressing grievances and complaints
            regarding basic service delivery
Redress procedures are important for
            basic fairness. In addition, they can help address
            principal-agent problems in the implementation of social
            policies and provide information to policy makers regarding
            policy design. To function effectively, a system of redress
            requires a well-designed and inter-linked supply of redress
            procedures as well as, especially if rights consciousness is
            not well-developed in a society, a set of organizations that
            stimulate and aggregate demand for redress. On the supply
            side, this paper identifies three kinds of redress
            procedures: administrative venues within government
            agencies, independent institutions outside government
            departments, and courts. On the demand side, the key
            institutions are nongovernmental organizations/civil society
            organizations and the news media, both of which require a
            receptive political and economic climate to function
            effectively. Overall, procedures for redressing grievances
            and complaints regarding basic service delivery are
            under-developed in many countries, and deserve further
            analysis, piloting, and support.
Export quality dynamics
Country export quality (measured by unit
            values) is correlated with income level suggesting that
            studying quality dynamics potentially offers insights into
            the development process. This paper uses highly
            disaggregated trade data to explore the export quality (unit
            value) dynamics of goods exported to the United States over
            the 1990-2000 period. In addition to finding considerable
            heterogeneity in the relative quality of exports across
            countries and across goods within countries, the authors
            find that the rate of quality growth varies substantially
            across countries, as well. Specifically, the fastest growth
            is seen in exports from the richer (OECD) countries,
            implying an evolving divergence in product quality across
            regions. This divergence obtains despite evidence of
            conditional convergence in quality over time- goods with
            lower initial relative quality levels experience faster
            growth in quality. The data suggest that part of this
            divergence is driven by the product mix itself -- OECD
            exported products experience intrinsically higher growth
            rates. This is consistent with the argument of Hausmann,
            Hwang and Rodrik (2007) that what countries export does
            matter for growth. However, it is partly driven by a higher
            growth rate of quality in the richer countries independent
            of convergence effects, suggesting that other
            country-specific factors impeding overall convergence are at
            work. Finally, there is very limited technological
            "leap-frogging" by countries across product lines
            as the relative quality of new exports, on average, is
            roughly the same as incumbent exports, both in richer
            countries and elsewhere.
When is capital enough to get female
            enterprises growing evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana
Standard models of investment predict
            that credit-constrained firms should grow rapidly when given
            additional capital, and that how this capital is provided
            should not affect decisions to invest in the business or
            consume the capital. The authors randomly gave cash and
            in-kind grants to male- and female-owned microenterprises in
            urban Ghana. Their findings cast doubt on the ability of
            capital alone to stimulate the growth of female
            microenterprises. First, while the average treatment effects
            of the in-kind grants are large and positive for both males
            and females, the gain in profits is almost zero for women
            with initial profits below the median, suggesting that
            capital alone is not enough to grow subsistence enterprises
            owned by women. Second, for women they strongly reject
            equality of the cash and in-kind grants; only in-kind grants
            lead to growth in business profits. The results for men also
            suggest a lower impact of cash, but differences between cash
            and in-kind grants are less robust. The difference in the
            effects of cash and in-kind grants is associated more with a
            lack of self-control than with external pressure. As a
            result, the manner in which funding is provided affects
            microenterprise growth.
Where on earth is everybody the
            evolution of global bilateral migration 1960-2000
Global matrices of bilateral migrant
            stocks spanning 19602000 are presented, disaggregated by
            gender and based primarily on the foreign-born definition of
            migrants. More than one thousand census and population
            register records are combined to construct decennial
            matrices corresponding to the five census rounds between
            1960 and 2000. For the first time, a comprehensive picture
            of bilateral global migration over the second half of the
            20th century emerges. The data reveal that the global
            migrant stock increased from 92 million in 1960 to 165
            million in 2000. Quantitatively, migration between
            developing countries dominates, constituting half of all
            international migration in 2000. When the partition of India
            and the dissolution of the Soviet Union are accounted for,
            migration between developing countries is remarkably stable
            over the period. Migration from developing to developed
            countries is the fastest growing component of international
            migration in both absolute and relative terms. The United
            States has remained the most important migrant destination
            in the world, home to one fifth of the worlds migrants and
            the top destination for migrants from some 60 sending
            countries. Migration to Western Europe has come largely from
            elsewhere in Europe. The oil-rich Persian Gulf countries
            emerge as important destinations for migrants from the
            Middle East and North Africa and South and Southeast Asia.
            Finally, although the global migrant stock is predominantly
            male, the proportion of female migrants increased noticeably
            between 1960 and 2000. The number of women rose in every
            region except South Asia.
Growth poles and multipolarity
This paper develops an empirical measure
            of growth poles and uses it to examine the phenomenon of
            multipolarity. The authors formally define several
            alternative measures, provide theoretical justifications for
            these measures, and compute polarity values for nation
            states in the global economy. The calculations suggest that
            China, Western Europe, and the United States have been
            important growth poles over the broad course of world
            history, and in modern economic history the United States,
            Japan, Germany, and China have had prominent periods of
            growth polarity. The paper goes on to analyze the economic
            and institutional determinants, both at the proximate and
            fundamental level, that underlie this measure of polarity,
            as well as compute measures of dispersion in growth polarity
            shares for the major growth poles.
Does female empowerment promote
            economic development
Empirical evidence suggests that money
            in the hands of mothers (as opposed to their husbands)
            benefits children. Does this observation imply that
            targeting transfers to women is good economic policy? The
            authors develop a series of noncooperative family bargaining
            models to understand what kind of frictions can give rise to
            the observed empirical relationships. Then they assess the
            policy implications of these models. The authors find that
            targeting transfers to women can have unintended
            consequences and may fail to make children better off.
            Moreover, different forms of empowering women may lead to
            opposite results. More research is needed to distinguish
            between alternative theoretical models.
Trends and socioeconomic gradients
            in adult mortality around the developing world
The authors combine data from 84
            Demographic and Health Surveys from 46 countries to analyze
            trends and socioeconomic differences in adult mortality,
            calculating mortality based on the sibling mortality reports
            collected from female respondents aged 15-49. The analysis
            yields four main findings. First, adult mortality is
            different from child mortality: while under-5 mortality
            shows a definite improving trend over time, adult mortality
            does not, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The second main
            finding is the increase in adult mortality in Sub-Saharan
            African countries. The increase is dramatic among those most
            affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Mortality rates in the
            highest HIV-prevalence countries of southern Africa exceed
            those in countries that experienced episodes of civil war.
            Third, even in Sub-Saharan countries where HIV-prevalence is
            not as high, mortality rates appear to be at best
            stagnating, and even increasing in several cases. Finally,
            the main socioeconomic dimension along which mortality
            appears to differ in the aggregate is gender. Adult
            mortality rates in Sub-Saharan Africa have risen
            substantially higher for men than for womenespecially so in
            the high HIV-prevalence countries. On the whole, the data do
            not show large gaps by urban/rural residence or by school attainment.
Can diaries help improve
            agricultural production statistics Evidence from Uganda
Although good and timely information on
            agricultural production is critical for policy-decisions,
            the quality of underlying data is often low and improving
            data quality could have a high payoff. This paper uses data
            from a production diary, administered concurrently with a
            standard household survey in Uganda to analyze the nature
            and incidence of responses, the magnitude of differences in
            reported outcomes, and factors that systematically affect
            these. Despite limited central supervision, diaries elicited
            a strong response, complemented standard surveys in a number
            of respects, and were less affected by problems of
            respondent fatigue than expected. The diary-based estimates
            of output value consistently exceeded that from the
            recall-based production survey, in line with reported
            disposition. Implications for policy and practical
            administration of surveys are drawn out.
Heterogenous peer effects,
            segregation and academic attainment
Socioeconomic segregation is often
            decried for denying poorer children the benefits of positive
            'peer effects'. Yet standard, linear-in-means
            models of peer effects (a) implicitly assume that
            segregation is zero sum, with gains and losses to rich and
            poor perfectly offsetting, and (b) rule out theories of
            'social distance' whereby peer effects are
            strongest among similar pairings. The paper exploits the
            random assignment of pupils between classes to identify more
            general peer effects in Argentine test-score data. Estimates
            violate both assumptions (a) and (b), and provide micro
            foundations for the correlations between school segregation,
            average test-scores, and test-score inequality in
            municipality-level data.
The correlation between human
            capital and morality and its effect on economic performance
            : theory and evidence
This paper incorporates morality --
            defined as lower utility from consuming goods obtained
            through appropriative rather than productive activities --
            into a simple static general equilibrium model in which
            agents choose whether to be producers or appropriators. The
            authors analyze the relationship between the correlation
            between morality and human capital on the one hand, and
            aggregate economic performance on the other. They show that
            there is a main effect that tends to cause this relationship
            to be positive, and that there can be secondary effects that
            can either rein-force or oppose (or even overbalance) the
            main effect. They test the theory using the World Val-ues
            Survey as a source of proxies for morality. Using their
            preferred proxy, they find evidence that higher
            within-country correlation between morality and ability,
            holding constant the levels of morality and ability,
            increases per-capita income levels. Under the preferred
            specification, a one-standard-deviation increase in the
            correlation between morality and ability raises the log of
            per-capita income by about one-fourth of a standard
            deviation, equal to approximately $3,600 for the median
            income country in the sample. The results are robust to
            correcting for endogeneity and to changes in sample and
            specification. The results are mixed when the analysis uses
            alternative morality proxies, but the coefficient on the
            morality-ability correlation is still usually positive and
            statistically significant.
Diaspora effects in international
            migration : key questions and methodological issues
This paper reviews the existing
            literature on the impact of migrants networks on the
            patterns of international migration. It covers the
            theoretical channels at stake in the global effect of the
            networks. It identifies the key issues, namely the impact on
            size, selection and concentration of the migration flows.
            The paper also reviews the empirical hurdles that the
            researchers face in assessing the importance of networks.
            The key issues concern the choice of micro vs a macro
            approach, the definition of a network, the access to
            suitable data and the adoption of econometric methods
            accounting for the main features of those data. Finally, the
            paper reports a set of estimation outcomes reflecting the
            main findings of the macro approach.
Low-level versus high-level
            equilibrium in public utility service
Heterogeneity of public utility services
            is common in developing countries. In a
            "high-level" equilibrium, the quality of utility
            services is high, consumer willingness to pay for services
            is high, the utility is well funded and staff well paid in
            order to induce high quality of performance. In a
            "low-level" equilibrium the opposite is the case.
            Which alternative occurs depends on both the quality of
            utility management, and public perceptions about service
            quality. If a utility administration has the potential to
            offer high-quality service, and the public is aware of this,
            high-quality equilibrium also requires the publics service
            payments to be high enough to fund the needed pay incentives
            for the utility staff. When the public lack knowledge about
            the utility administrations quality, the publics initial
            beliefs about the utility administrations quality also will
            influence their willingness to make adequate service
            payments for a high-quality equilibrium. This paper shows
            that, with low confidence, only a low-level equilibrium may
            exist; while with higher initial confidence, a high-level
            equilibrium become possible. "Intermediate" (in
            between the low- and high-level) outcomes also can occur in
            early periods, with "high-level" outcomes later on.
Nature, socioeconomics and
            adaptation to natural disasters: new evidence from floods
The authors analyze the determinants of
            fatalities in 2,194 large flood events in 108 countries
            between 1985 and 2008. Given that socioeconomic factors can
            affect mortality right in the aftermath of a flood, but also
            indirectly by influencing flood frequency and magnitude,
            they distinguish between direct and indirect effects of
            development on flood mortality. The authors find that income
            is negatively associated with the frequency of floods and,
            conditional on their magnitude, the fatalities they cause in
            developing countries. However, for developed countries they
            find that increased income is associated with more
            fatalities, both directly (conditional on flood occurrence
            and magnitude) and indirectly through an increase in the
            frequency and magnitude of flood events. Also in contrast to
            the literature, they find that the effect of governance on
            flood frequency and fatalities in developing countries is
            U-shaped, with improvements in governance reducing the
            numbers of floods and deaths when governance is weaker but
            raising them when governance is stronger.
Implications of a lowered damage
            trajectory for mitigation in a continuous-time stochastic model
This paper provides counterexamples to
            the idea that mitigation of greenhouse gases causing climate
            change, and adaptation to climate change, are always and
            everywhere substitutes. The author considers optimal policy
            for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions when climate damages
            follow a geometric Brownian motion process with positive
            drift, and the trajectory for damages can be down-shifted by
            adaptive activities, focusing on two main cases: 1) damages
            are reduced proportionately by adaptation for any given
            climate impact ("reactive adaptation"); and 2) the
            growth path for climate damages is down-shifted
            ("anticipatory adaptation"). In this model
            mitigation is a lumpy one-off decision. Policy to reduce
            damages for given emissions is continuous in case 1, but may
            be lumpy in case 2, and reduces both expectation and
            variance of damages. Lower expected damages promote
            mitigation, and reduced variance discourages it (as the
            option value of waiting is reduced). In case 1, the last
            effect may dominate. Mitigation then increases when damages
            are dampened: mitigation and adaptation are complements. In
            case 2, mitigation and adaptation are always substitutes.
Productivity effects of land rental
            markets in Ethiopia : Evidence from a matched
            tenant-landlord sample
As countries increasingly strive to
            transform their economies from agriculture-based into a
            diversified one, land rental will become of greater
            importance. It will thus be critical to complement research
            on the efficiency of specific land rental arrangements --
            such as sharecropping -- with an inquiry into the broader
            productivity impacts of the land rental market. Plot-level
            data for a matched landlord-tenant sample in an environment
            where sharecropping dominates allows this paper to explore
            both issues. The authors find that pure output sharing leads
            to significantly lower levels of efficiency that can be
            attenuated by monitoring while the inefficiency disappears
            if inputs are shared as well. Rentals transfer land to more
            productive producers but realization of this productivity
            advantage is prevented by the inefficiency of contractual
            arrangements, suggesting changes that would prompt adoption
            of different contractual arrangements could have significant benefits.
Aid to the services sector : does it
            affect manufacturing exports
This paper evaluates the impact of
            foreign aid to five service sectors (transportation,
            information and communications technologies, energy,
            banking/financial services, and business services) on
            exports of downstream manufacturing sectors in developing
            countries. To address the reverse causality between aid and
            exports, the analysis relies on an original identification
            strategy that exploits (i) the variation of aid flows to
            service sectors, and (ii) the variation of
            service-intensities across industrial sectors and countries
            using input-output data. The authors find a positive effect
            of aid to services, in general, on downstream manufacturing
            exports of developing countries across regions and
            income-level groups.
Political economy of the mining
            sector in Ghana
With a focus on the institutional set-up
            and the political environment as central to understanding
            and rectifying the poor impact of mining on Ghana's
            economic development, this paper highlights the
            vulnerabilities in mining sector governance along the
            industry value chain. The authors explain why it has been
            difficult to implement policies that would have improved
            social welfare. They find that incentive problems in
            institutions directly or peripherally involved in mining
            governance are a major factor, as are an excessively
            centralized policy-making process, a powerful executive
            president, strong party loyalty, a system of political
            patronage, lack of transparency, and weak institutional
            capacity at the political and regulatory levels. The paper
            argues that the net impact of mining on economic development
            is likely to be enhanced with appropriate reforms in
            governance. Most importantly, there should be a greater
            awareness of incentive problems at the political level and
            their possible implications for sector performance and the
            economy at large. The set of checks and balances, as
            stipulated by the Constitution, have to be reinforced.
            Furthermore, capacity building at different levels and
            institutions is needed and should be combined with efforts
            to enhance incentives for institutional performance.