rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Growth in Low-Income Countries :
            Evolution, Prospects, and Policies
There are currently 31 countries
            classified as low income, less than half the number in 2001.
            Rapid growth in low-income countries from 2001 to 2018
            allowed many to progress to middle-income status, supported
            by the commodity price boom of 2001-11, debt relief under
            the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative and
            Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, increased investment in
            human and physical capital, improved economic policy
            frameworks, and recoveries from the deep recessions in
            transition economies during the 1990s. However, the
            prospects for current low-income countries appear much more
            challenging. Compared to the low-income countries in 2001
            that became middle-income countries, today's low-income
            countries are further below the middle-income country
            threshold and more often fragile; their heavy reliance on
            agriculture makes them vulnerable to climate change and
            extreme weather events; and their scope to boost external
            trade is limited by geography. Coordinated and multi-pronged
            policy efforts are required to address these challenges.
The Sovereign-Bank Nexus in EMDEs :
            What Is It, Is It Rising, and What Are the Policy Implications
This paper explores the sovereign-bank
            nexus in emerging markets and developing economies: the
            interconnectedness between the health of the sovereign and
            the banking system. Data from 140 emerging markets and
            developing economies suggest that this nexus is rising.
            First, banks have increased their exposure to their
            sovereigns in the past decade. Second, government debt has
            grown, and fiscal positions have deteriorated, raising the
            specter of sovereign stress. Third, banking system assets
            and bank credit to the private sector have steadily
            increased, which may restrict the sovereign's capacity
            to contain a banking crisis. Fourth, empirical evidence from
            36 emerging markets and developing economies documents the
            existence of the nexus and suggests that it has increased
            recently. However, deeper country analysis is required for a
            better understanding of the sovereign-bank nexus, given
            country idiosyncrasies, including the structure of sovereign
            debt and the composition of the investor base, and data lags
            and opacities. To minimize the adverse effects of the
            sovereign-bank nexus, efforts should be focused on
            maintaining fiscal and bank buffers, strengthening
            surveillance and supervision of the banking system,
            improving transparency and data quality of bank-sovereign
            linkages, better addressing the regulatory treatment of the
            sovereign exposures and government support of the banking
            sector, and carefully evaluating the policy trade-offs in
            the sovereign-bank nexus.
Incentivizing Quantity and Quality
            of Care : Evidence from an Impact Evaluation of
            Performance-Based Financing in the Health Sector in Tajikistan
This paper presents the results of an
            impact evaluation of a performance-based financing pilot in
            rural areas of two regions of Tajikistan. Primary care
            facilities were given financial incentives conditional on
            general quality and the quantity provided of selected
            services related to reproductive, maternal and child health,
            and hypertension-related services. The study relies on a
            difference-in-difference design and large-scale household
            and facility-based surveys conducted before the launch of
            the pilot in 2015 and after three years of implementation.
            The performance-based financing pilot had positive impacts
            on quality of care. Significant impacts are measured on
            facility infrastructure, infection prevention and control
            standards, availability of equipment and medical supplies,
            provider competency, provider satisfaction, and even some
            elements of the content of care, measured through direct
            observations of provider-patient interactions. While the
            communities in the performance-based financing districts
            reported higher satisfaction with the local primary care
            facilities, and despite the improvements in quality, the
            findings suggest moderate effects on utilization: among the
            incentivized utilization indicators, only timely postnatal
            care and blood pressure measurements for adults were
            significantly impacted.
Political Connections and Financial
            Constraints : Evidence from Transition Countries
This paper examines whether political
            connections ease financial constraints faced by firms. Using
            firm-level data from six Central and Eastern European
            economies, the paper shows that politically connected firms:
            (i) have high levels of leverage, (ii) have low levels of
            profitability, (iii) are less capitalized, (iv) have low
            marginal productivity of capital, and (v) do not invest more
            than unconnected firms. Next, the paper shows that connected
            firms borrow more because they have easier access to credit
            and that political connections lead to a misallocation of
            capital. The results are consistent with the idea that
            political connections distort capital allocation and may
            have welfare costs.
Are Budget Rigidities a Source of
            Fiscal Distress and a Constraint for Fiscal Consolidation
This paper studies whether budget
            rigidities affect the probability of countries getting into
            fiscal distress and reduce the likelihood of governments
            performing fiscal adjustments. Budget rigidities are
            constraints that limit the ability of the government to
            change the size and structure of the public budget in the
            short term. Budget rigidities stem from different
            institutional arrangements and therefore can take different
            forms. To build an indicator of rigid spending that is
            comparable across a large set of countries, this paper
            employs a simple definition based on budget components that
            are naturally inflexible: the sum of public wages, pensions,
            and debt service. It decomposes this measure into a
            structural component and a nonstructural component. Then,
            the paper applies a linear probability model to a panel of
            182 advanced and developing countries. A key finding is that
            relatively high shares of rigid (observed) components of
            public spending contribute to countries getting into fiscal
            distress and are a constraint for fiscal consolidation. The
            paper finds evidence that a relatively high share of
            nonstructural rigid spending contributes to the probability
            of fiscal distress and reduces the probability of fiscal
            consolidation. Moreover, the effect of rigid expenditure
            seems to be more relevant for economies with high
            inequality, governments with lower margins of majority, and
            countries with lower institutional quality. In addition,
            when looking at the composition of the measure of rigid
            expenditure, there is also some evidence that higher
            expenditure on pensions reduces the probability of fiscal
            adjustment more robustly than higher expenditure on wages.
Location, Location, Location
            Revisited : Evidence from Antananarivo, Madagascar
Understanding how land prices are
            determined is of particular importance for policy makers;
            however, there is little evidence in African countries,
            which are currently experiencing rapid urbanization. The
            paper examines the relationship between land prices and
            locational characteristics using data from Antananarivo, the
            capital of Madagascar. It is found that the land value
            gradients are relatively steep, indicating that the land and
            housing prices tend to overshoot in the middle of the city,
            pushing the poor away from the city to suburban areas. It is
            also found that access to transport infrastructure and
            services, such as minibuses, is an important determinant of
            land value. Not only transport connectivity, but also other
            factors, such as proximity to amenities and administrative
            centers, are found to be important. Better land management
            and urban transport policies are called for to promote these
            aspects in the city.
Job Accessibility and Urban
            Transport Connectivity : Evidence from Antananarivo, Madagascar
In recent years, there has been renewed
            interest in access to jobs in relation to transport
            connectivity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 14 million
            working age people are added to the labor market every year.
            Ensuring sustained access to jobs seems to be a prerequisite
            for inclusive and robust economic growth. The paper examines
            the impact of public transit connectivity on access to jobs,
            especially focusing on wages. Using data from Antananarivo,
            Madagascar, it is shown that the wages earned by commuters
            are systematically higher than the wages earned by those who
            decided not to commute and are self-employed or engaged with
            family businesses around their neighborhood. Proximity to
            public transport, especially taxi-be, is important to
            promote people's access to jobs. It is also found that
            there is a substantial gender inequality in wages in the
            country: Women are more likely to use buses to commute, and
            yet, they earn less than men. In addition, the poor tend to
            benefit less from public transportation. Public bus services
            are affordable, however, the quality of the services may
            remain low.
Hidden Treasures in the Comoros :
            The Impact of Inter-Island Connectivity Improvement on
            Agricultural Production
The paper revisits the traditional
            transport-agricultural growth nexus. Connectivity is
            particularly challenging for small island developing states,
            such as the Comoros, where domestic markets are limited and
            transport and transaction costs tend to be high. Using
            household survey data from Comoros, the paper shows that
            significant untapped economic potential exists in the
            domestic market. The analysis shows that better transport
            connectivity increases crop production and market sales.
            Accessibility to Moroni, the primary market in the country,
            and inter-island connectivity are of particular importance.
            Not only transport infrastructure, but also services are
            important. Access to intermediary services, such as
            cooperatives and collectors, is also found to have a
            positive impact on crop production and market sales.
The Third Function of Law Is to
            Transform Cultural Categories
How does law change society? In the
            rational actor model, law affects behavior only by changing
            incentives and information -- the command and coordination
            function of law. Under the view that humans are social
            animals, law is also a guidepost for social norms that
            regulate behavior -- the expressive function of law. This
            paper proposes a third function of law—the schematizing
            function -- based on cognitive research that shows that
            individuals cannot think without categories. Law makes
            possible new kinds of exemplars, role models, and social
            interactions that give people prototypes that transform the
            categories they use, thereby reframing their options and
            influencing their behavior. This paper illustrates the
            schematizing power of law with examples from field and
            natural experiments. Like the one-two punch in a boxing
            match, the command and schematizing functions of law
            together can change society in situations where the command
            function alone would be ineffective or backfire.
What Determines the Size of Public
            Employment An Empirical Investigation
This paper explores the determinants of
            public employment across the world and finds that it is
            negatively associated with country size (by population) and
            positively associated with the income level. The findings
            show that a country's openness to trade is positively
            associated with public employment in low- and middle-income
            countries, but inversely related in high-income countries.
            The estimated models are used to predict the expected public
            employment for a country given its income, population, and
            openness to trade, and to compare the actual levels with the
            predicted ones. In general, public employment in Latin
            American countries is below the predicted levels, except for
            Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Suriname, Trinidad and
            Tobago, and the República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Public
            employment in the Middle East and North Africa is above the
            predicted levels, particularly in the Arab Republic of Egypt
            and the Islamic Republic of Iran. East Asian and Pacific
            countries' public employment is significantly below the
            predicted levels, particularly in Hong Kong SAR, China;
            Japan; the Republic of Korea; and Mongolia. Countries in
            Europe and Central Asia show higher than predicted public
            employment, mostly in Romania, Denmark, Sweden, Armenia, and
            Belorussia. Public employment in Sub-Saharan Africa appears
            to be below the predicted levels, with the notable
            exceptions of Botswana and South Africa. The deviations from
            predicted levels are positively correlated with the union
            density rate, which is negatively associated with private
            employment rates. Finally, the study finds no statistical
            association between public and private employment,
            suggesting the absence of crowding-out in the employment levels.
Why Some Countries Can Escape the
            Fiscal Pro-Cyclicality Trap and Others Cannot
This paper analyzes the procyclicality
            of fiscal policy on the tax and spending sides in a sample
            of 116 developing countries between 2000 and 2016. About 20
            percent of the countries in the sample switched from
            procyclical to countercyclical policy stance. In Sub-Saharan
            Africa, 30 of 39 countries remained caught in the
            procyclicality trap and the region has the highest degree of
            procyclicality. The Middle East and North Africa region
            switched from a countercyclical policy stance to a
            procyclical one over time. The Europe and Central Asia and
            Latin America and the Caribbean regions significantly
            reduced the degree of procyclicality. The main economic
            variables that affect procyclicality are financial depth,
            tax base variability, and natural resource dependence. In
            line with the political economy literature, the perception
            of corruption, social fragmentation, and inequality in
            resource distribution are positively associated with
            procyclicality. The findings also show that the quality of
            fiscal institutions is associated with procyclicality;
            countries with fiscal rules have smaller procyclical bias,
            but the effect is not homogeneous; and higher degrees of
            expenditure rigidity are associated with lower procyclical
            bias. The study finds asymmetric policy stances along the
            business cycle, with procyclicality being more pronounced
            during recessions. Similarly, the political cycle affects
            procyclicality, as procyclical bias increases in electoral
            years. From the tax management perspective, procyclical bias
            is still present, but there are significant changes: most of
            the political economy variables lose significance; the
            resource-dependence variable is not significant; external
            credit availability reduces procyclicality; tax base
            variability increases procyclical bias; and expenditure
            rigidity is no longer significant, but fiscal space becomes
            determinant of procyclical bias.
On Promoting Fiscal Discipline : The
            Role of Exchange Rate Regimes, Fiscal Rules and Institutions
This paper examines how fiscal rules,
            exchange rate regimes, and institutional quality affect the
            cyclical behavior of fiscal policy (how government spending
            responds to fluctuations in gross domestic product). The
            analysis is performed on a panel of 153 advanced, emerging,
            and developing countries over 1993-2015 using local
            Gaussian-weighted ordinary least squares and two-stage least
            squares estimators. The findings show that the adoption of
            fiscal rules alone is not sufficient to promote
            countercyclical fiscal policy and should be combined with
            strong institutions. Moreover, fiscal rules seem to limit
            procyclicality, especially in countries with flexible
            exchange rate regimes rather than in countries with fixed
            exchange rates. The analysis also finds that the
            disciplining effect of fiscal rules depends on the type of rule.
Growth after War in Syria
This paper addresses three questions: 1)
            what would have been the growth and income trajectory of
            Syria in the absence of war; 2) given the war, what explains
            the reduction in economic growth in terms physical capital,
            labor force, human capital, and productivity; and 3) what
            potential growth scenarios for Syria there could be in the
            aftermath of war. Estimates of the impact of conflict point
            to negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth of -12
            percent on average over 2011-18, resulting in a GDP
            contraction to about one-third of the 2010 level. In
            post-conflict simulation scenarios, the growth drivers are
            affected by the assumed levels of reconstruction assistance,
            repatriation of refugees, and productivity improvements
            associated with three plausible political settlement
            outcomes: a baseline (Sochi-plus) moderate scenario, an
            optimistic (robust political settlement) scenario, and a
            pessimistic (de facto balance of power) scenario.
            Respectively for these scenarios, GDP per capita average
            growth in the next two decades is projected to be 6.1, 8.2,
            or 3.1 percent, assuming that a final and stable resolution
            of the conflict is achieved.
Lessons from Power Sector Reforms :
            The Case of Morocco
Morocco charted its own distinctive path
            of power sector reform. It selectively introduced private
            sector participation for generation capacity expansion and
            electricity distribution, while retaining a strong,
            state-owned and vertically-integrated national power utility
            operating as a single buyer at the core of the sector. Until
            recently, the country eschewed an independent regulatory
            entity. The power sector has been guided by strong top-down
            policy mandates that have served to align the disparate
            actions of political parties and sector institutions.
            Ambitious targets for electricity access, liberalization,
            and renewable energy investments were conceived as an
            integrated approach to contribute to economic development by
            relieving fiscal pressures, reducing external dependence on
            fossil fuels, and positioning the country as a regional
            leader in renewable energy. The results have been
            impressive. Since 1990, Morocco has more than tripled its
            power supply, while growing renewable energy to account for
            one-third of the total and relying on the private sector to
            supply just over half of the electricity generated. Rural
            electrification has accelerated rapidly from 18 percent in
            1995 to virtually 100 percent in 2017. While operational
            efficiency has been broadly adequate, performance has
            fluctuated over time. Moreover, the sector’s achievements
            through this selective approach to reform have come somewhat
            at the expense of the financial viability of the incumbent
            utility, the National Office for Electricity and Water
            (ONEE), which has suffered from lack of cost-reflective
            tariff-setting and an array of entrenched cross-subsidies.
            Other vulnerabilities include the continued but declining
            dependence on electricity imports, external price
            volatilities of imported fossil fuels, and a territorialized
            electricity distribution model that could be disrupted by
            grid integration of renewable energy.