rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Poverty and policy selectivity of
            World Bank trust funds
Over the past decade, donors of foreign
            aid quadrupled their annual contributions to trust funds at
            the World Bank. This earmarking of contributions to
            donors' preferred recipient countries and issues has
            raised concerns about the alignment of trust funds with the
            performance-based allocations of aid by the International
            Development Association, the World Bank's concessional
            lending arm, and raises the question of the role of this new
            "multi-bi" aid channel. This study finds that the
            cross-country allocations of aggregate trust fund aid are
            poverty- and policy-selective. In this respect, they are
            much more similar to allocations from the International
            Development Association than from bilateral donors. The
            allocations of trust fund types that are more closely
            controlled by donor countries—recipient-executed and
            single-donor trust funds—are more strongly related to the
            strategic interests of donor countries than trust fund aid
            in general. Trust funds for health and education aid are
            poverty selective and positively correlated with the World
            Bank's assessment of the quality of countries'
            sector policies, while environmental trust funds are neither
            poverty selective nor correlated with the assessed quality
            of countries' environmental policies. Overall, the
            evidence indicates that multi-bi funds administered by the
            World Bank do not undermine the International Development
            Association’s allocation criteria.
Financial regulation and government
            revenue : the effects of a policy change in Ethiopia
Financial regulation affects government
            revenue whenever it imposes both the mandatory quantity and
            price of government bonds. This paper studies a banking
            regulation adopted by the National Bank of Ethiopia in April
            2011, which forces all private banks to purchase a fixed
            negative-yield government bond in proportion to private
            sector lending. Having access to monthly bank balance
            sheets, a survey of branch costs and public finances
            documentation, the effect of the policy on government
            revenue can be tracked. This is compared to three plausible
            revenue-generating alternatives: raising funds at
            competitive rates on international markets; distorting the
            private lending of the state-owned bank; and raising new
            deposits through additional branches of the state-owned
            bank. Three main results emerge: the government revenue gain
            is moderate (1.5-2.6 percent of the tax revenue); banks
            comply with the policy and amass more safe assets;
            banks' profit growth slows without turning negative
            (from 10 percent to 2 percent).
Do fiscal multipliers depend on
            fiscal positions
This paper analyzes the relationship
            between fiscal multipliers and fiscal positions of
            governments using an Interactive Panel Vector Auto
            Regression model and a large data-set of advanced and
            developing economies. The methodology permits tracing the
            endogenous relationship between fiscal multipliers and
            fiscal positions while maintaining enough degrees of freedom
            to draw sharp inferences. The paper reports three major
            results. First, the fiscal multipliers depend on fiscal
            positions: the multipliers tend to be larger when fiscal
            positions are strong (i.e. when government debt and deficits
            are low) than weak. For instance, the long-run multiplier
            can be as large as unity when the fiscal position is strong,
            while it can be negative when the fiscal position is weak.
            Second, these effects are separate and distinct from the
            impact of the business cycle on the fiscal multiplier.
            Third, the state-dependent effects of the fiscal position on
            multipliers is attributable to two factors: an interest rate
            channel through which higher borrowing costs, due to
            investors' increased perception of credit risks when
            stimulus is implemented from a weak initial fiscal position,
            crowd out private investment; and a Ricardian channel
            through which households reduce consumption in anticipation
            of future fiscal adjustments.
The development impact of financial
            regulation: evidence from Ethiopia and antebellum USA
In absence of deposit insurance,
            underdeveloped financial systems can exhibit a coordination
            failure between banks, unable to commit on safe asset
            holding, and depositors, anticipating low deposit repayment
            in bad states. This paper shows conditions under which a
            government can solve this failure by imposing safe asset
            purchases, which boosts deposits by increasing depositor
            repayment in bad states. In so doing, financial regulation
            stimulates bank profits if subsequent deposit growth exceeds
            the intermediation margin decline. As a result, it also
            promotes loans and branch installation with deposits. Two
            empirical tests are presented: 1) a regulation change by the
            National Bank of Ethiopia in 2011; 2) the introduction of
            bank taxes in Antebellum USA (1800-1861). Analyzing bank
            balance sheets and long-term branch installation, the
            regulation effects are isolated exploiting heterogeneity in
            bank size and policies introduction respectively, and find
            increases in branches, deposits, loans, and safe assets,
            with no decline in overall profits.
Impacts of carbon pricing in
            reducing the carbon intensity of China's GDP
In contributing to global climate change
            mitigation efforts as agreed in Paris in 2015, China has set
            a target of reducing the carbon dioxide intensity of gross
            domestic product by 60-65 percent in 2030 compared with 2005
            levels. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model
            of China, this study analyzes the economic and greenhouse
            gas impacts of meeting those targets through carbon pricing.
            The study finds that the trajectory of carbon prices to
            achieve the target depends on several factors, including how
            the carbon price changes over time and how carbon revenue is
            recycled to the economy. The study finds that carbon pricing
            that starts at a lower rate and gradually rises until it
            achieves the intensity target would be more efficient than a
            carbon price that remains constant over time. Using carbon
            revenue to cut existing distortionary taxes reduces the
            impact on the growth of gross domestic product relative to
            lump-sum redistribution. Recycling carbon revenue through
            subsidies to renewables and other low-carbon energy sources
            also can meet the targets, but the impact on the growth of
            gross domestic product is larger than with the other
            policies considered.
Impact of climate change and aquatic
            salinization on mangrove species and poor communities in the
            Bangladesh Sundarbans
This paper investigates possible impacts
            of climate change on the poor communities of the Bangladesh
            Sundarbans via changes in aquatic salinity and mangrove
            species.  The implications for poor communities are assessed
            by computing changes in high-value mangrove species for the
            five sub-districts in the Sundarbans. The results of the
            impact analysis indicate highly varied patterns of gain and
            loss across the five sub-districts.   Overall, however, the
            results indicate that salinity-induced mangrove migration
            will have a strongly regressive impact on the value of
            timber stocks because of the loss of the highest value
            timber of Heretiera fomes. In addition, augmented potential
            for honey production is likely to increase conflicts between
            humans and wildlife in the region.
Sectoral productivity gaps and
            aggregate productivity
This paper examines the role of changes
            in sectoral productivity gaps over time in accounting for
            growth realized by countries over the past few decades. To
            quantify the productivity impact of the sectoral gaps, a
            simple model of resource allocation is developed in which
            the gaps arise due to distortions in the form of
            asymmetrical taxes across sectors. The paper finds a limited
            role of changes in distortions over time in accounting for
            actual growth. Implied growth from changes in distortions
            accounts for less than 2.5 percent of actual growth for the
            median country. To check if the lower contribution of
            changes in distortions is because of unrealized gains
            suggested by high levels of present distortions,
            productivity gains are estimated when distortions across
            countries are reduced to the US levels. Barring a couple of
            cases, the gains in aggregate productivity are modest across
            the sample of countries.
Euro currency risk and the geography
            of debt flows to peripheral European monetary union members
The pattern of debt flows to peripheral
            European Monetary Union members seems puzzling: they are
            mostly indirect and channeled through the large countries of
            the European Monetary Union. This paper examines to what
            extent the introduction of the euro and the elimination of
            the intra-area currency risk can explain this puzzle. A
            three-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium
            framework with endogenous portfolio choice and two
            currencies is developed. In the equilibrium, the core
            members of the European Monetary Union emerge as the main
            group of lenders to the peripheral European Monetary Union
            members. Outside lenders are pushed from the periphery debt
            markets because of currency risk. The model generates a
            pattern of debt flows consistent with the data despite the
            absence of any exogenous frictions or market segmentations.
Technology strategies for low-carbon
            economic growth : a general equilibrium assessment
This paper investigates the potential
            for developing countries to mitigate greenhouse gas
            emissions without slowing their expected economic growth. A
            theoretical frame- work is developed that unifies bottom-up
            marginal abatement cost curves and partial equilibrium
            techno-economic simulation modeling with computational
            general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The framework is then
            applied to engineering assessments of energy efficiency
            technology deployments in Armenia and Georgia. The results
            facilitate incorporation of bottom-up technology detail on
            energy-efficiency improvements into a CGE simulation of the
            economy-wide economic costs and mitigation benefits of
            technology deployment policies. Low-carbon growth
            trajectories are feasible in both countries, enabling
            reductions of up to 4 percent of baseline emissions while
            generating slight increases in GDP (1 percent in Armenia and
            0.2 percent in Georgia). The results demonstrate how MAC
            curves can paint a misleading picture of the true potential
            for both abatement and economic growth when technological
            improvements operate within a system of general equilibrium
            interactions, but also highlight how using their underlying
            data to identify technology options with high opportunity
            cost elasticities of productivity improvement can lead to
            more accurate assessments of the macroeconomic consequences
            of technology strategies for low-carbon growth.
Structural transformation in Africa
            : a historical view
This paper presents evidence suggesting
            that the relationship between income and economic structure
            is shifting over time, with countries across the income
            distribution uniformly increasing the share of labor in
            service sectors and an increasingly less stark relationship
            between manufacturing intensity and gross value added per
            capita. The paper then assesses historical patterns of
            productivity convergence at a more detailed sector
            disaggregation than has been previously available. The
            analysis finds suggestive evidence that, at least in recent
            decades, convergent pressures in services industries are
            stronger than in manufacturing. Focusing on African
            economies, the paper presents a country-by-country
            historical analysis of structural change over the past four
            decades. Given the varied patterns and trends in structural
            change across African countries, it is difficult to
            characterize structural change from a single, continent-wide
            perspective. Some countries saw an early transition of labor
            out of agriculture, with manufacturing absorbing this labor
            in the decades prior to the 1990s, while another group of
            countries saw a later transition out of agriculture, where
            the services sector played a large role in labor
            reallocations in the 1990s and 2000s. Finally, the paper
            provides a country-by-country structural transformation
            scorecard to assess patterns of structural change in jobs
            and growth.
Do consumers benefit from supply
            chain intermediaries evidence from a policy experiment in
            the edible oils market in Bangladesh
Commodity traders are often the focus of
            popular resentment. Food price hikes in 2007-2008 resulted
            in protests and food riots, and spurred governments to
            regulate traders. In March 2011, Government of Bangladesh
            banned delivery order traders in the edible oils market,
            citing cartelization, and replaced them with a dealer's
            network appointed by upstream refiners. The reform provides
            a natural experiment to test alternative models of marketing
            intermediaries. This paper develops three models and derives
            testable predictions about the effects of the reform on the
            intercept of the margin equation and pass-through of
            international price. Using wheat as a comparison commodity,
            a difference-of-difference analysis of high frequency price
            data shows that the reform led to (i) an increase in
            domestic prices and marketing margins, and (ii) a weakening
            of the pass-through of imported crude prices. The evidence
            is inconsistent with the standard
            double-marginalization-of-rents model wherein intermediaries
            exercise market power while providing no value-added
            services, or with a model where delivery order traders
            provide credit to wholesalers at below-market interest
            rates. The evidence supports a model where delivery order
            traders relax binding credit constraints faced by the
            wholesale traders.
On minimizing the risk of bias in
            randomized controlled trials in economics
Estimation of empirical relationships is
            prone to bias. Economists have carefully studied sources of
            bias in structural and quasi-experimental approaches, but
            the randomized control trial (RCT) has only begun to receive
            such scrutiny. This paper argues that several lessons from
            medicine, derived from analysis of thousands of RCTs
            establishing a clear link between certain practices and
            biased estimates, can be used to reduce the risk of bias in
            economics RCTs. It identifies the subset of these lessons
            applicable to economics and uses them to assess risk of bias
            in estimates from economics RCTs published between 2001 and
            2011. In comparison to medical studies, most economics
            studies examined do not report important details on study
            design necessary to assess risk of bias. Many report
            practices that suggest risk of bias, though this does not
            necessarily mean bias resulted. The paper concludes with
            suggestions on how to remedy these issues.
Do returns to education depend on
            how and who you ask
Returns to education remain an important
            parameter of interest in economic analysis. A large
            literature estimates returns to education in the labor
            market, often carefully addressing issues such as selection,
            into wage employment and in terms of completed schooling.
            There has been much less exploration of whether estimated
            returns are robust to survey design. Specifically, do
            returns to education differ depending on how information
            about wage work is collected? Using a survey experiment in
            Tanzania, this paper investigates whether survey methods
            matter for estimating mincerian returns to education. The
            results show that estimated returns vary by questionnaire
            design, but not by whether the information on employment and
            wages is self-reported or collected by a proxy respondent
            (another household member). The differences due to
            questionnaire type are substantial varying from 6 percentage
            points higher returns to education for the highest educated
            men, to 14 percentage points higher for the least educated
            women, after allowing for non-linearity and endogeneity in
            the estimation of these parameters. These differences are of
            similar magnitudes as the bias in OLS estimation, which
            receives considerable attention in the literature. The
            findings underline that survey design matters for the
            estimation of structural parameters, and that care is needed
            when comparing across contexts and over time, in particular
            when data is generated by different surveys.
Financial (Dis-)information :
            evidence from a multi-country audit study
An audit study was conducted in Ghana,
            Mexico and Peru to understand the quality of financial
            information and products offered to low-income customers.
            Trained auditors visited multiple financial institutions,
            seeking credit and savings products. Consistent with Gabaix
            and Laibson (2006), staff only provides information about
            the cost when asked, disclosing less than a third of the
            total cost voluntarily. In fact, the cost disclosed
            voluntarily is uncorrelated with the expensiveness of the
            product. In addition, clients are rarely offered the
            cheapest product, most likely because staff is incentivized
            to offer more expensive and thus more profitable products to
            the institution. This suggests that clients are not provided
            enough information to be able to compare among products, and
            that disclosure and transparency policies may be ineffective
            because they undermine the commercial interest of financial institutions.
Subsidy reforms in the Middle East
            and North Africa Region : a review
The paper takes stock of eight country
            studies and a cross-country analysis to review the
            experience with subsidy reforms in the Middle East and North
            Africa region between 2010 and 2014. This unprecedented
            period of subsidy reforms occurred during a period of
            extraordinary political changes, which makes this particular
            experience unique. The paper reviews the facts and the
            different paths to reforms taken by different countries
            faced with different challenges, and discusses the pros and
            cons of alternative policy options. It concludes with an
            assessment of the experiences and a discussion on future prospects.
A comparative analysis of subsidy
            reforms in the Middle East and North Africa Region
The paper compares the distribution of
            energy and food subsidies across households and the impact
            of subsidy reforms on household welfare in the Middle East
            and North Africa region. The analysis uses a unified model
            and harmonized household data. The results show that the
            distribution of subsidies and the welfare effects of subsidy
            reforms are quite diverse across countries and products.
            Energy subsidies tend to be pro-rich in terms of absolute
            amounts, but tend to be more important for the poor in terms
            of expenditure shares. Instead, food subsidies are larger
            for the poor in absolute and relative terms. These findings
            do not apply everywhere, and the scale of these phenomena
            are different across countries and products. The welfare
            effect of a 30 percent reduction in subsidies can be
            important, especially considering the cumulated effect
            across products, but the cost of compensating the loss in
            welfare for the poor is generally low compared with the
            budget benefits of decreasing subsidies.
Firm financing and growth in the
            Arab region
This paper documents how firms in Arab
            countries issue equity, corporate bonds, and syndicated
            loans in domestic and international markets to obtain
            financing and grow. Using a new data set on issuance
            activity and firm performance, the paper finds that capital
            raising through these markets has grown rapidly since the
            early 1990s and involved an increasing number of issuing
            firms. Whereas the amounts raised (relative to gross
            domestic product) in equity and loan markets stand well with
            respect to international standards, bond issuance activity
            lags behind. Yet, bond financing has gained importance over
            time. Equity issuances primarily take place domestically,
            while bonds and loans are mostly issued internationally,
            display long maturities, and entail low levels of credit
            risk. Issuing firms are larger, grow faster, and are more
            leveraged than non-issuers. While issuers tend to be larger
            ex ante than non-issuers, the size gap between them seems to
            widen over time.