rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Productivity growth and job creation
            in the development process of industrial clusters
Poor management has long been suspected
            as a major constraint on job creation in the manufacturing
            sector in low-income countries. In this sector, countless
            micro and small enterprises in industrial clusters account
            for a large share of employment. This paper examines the
            roles of industrial clusters, managerial capacities, and
            entrepreneurship in improving productivity and creating
            jobs, by reviewing the literature and case studies,
            including recent experiments. It finds that managerial
            capacities are a major determinant of firms' employment
            sizes and productivity growth, and that it is high
            innovative capacities, accompanied by high managerial
            capacities, that boost cluster-based industrial development.
Emissions trading with offset
            markets and free quota allocations
This paper studies interactions between
            a "policy bloc's" emissions quota market and
            an offset market where emissions offsets can be purchased
            from a non-policy "fringe" of countries (such as
            for the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto
            Protocol). Policy-bloc firms enjoy free quota allocations,
            updated according to either past emissions or past outputs.
            Both overall abatement and the allocation of given abatement
            between the policy bloc and the fringe are then inefficient.
            When the policy-bloc quota and offset markets are fully
            integrated, firms buying offsets from the fringe, and all
            quotas and offsets, must be traded at a single price; the
            policy bloc will either not constrain the offset market
            whatsoever, or ban offsets completely. These cases occur
            when free allocation of quotas is less (very) generous, and
            the offset market delivers large (small) quota amounts.
            Governments of policy countries would instead prefer to buy
            offsets directly from the fringe at a price below the
            policy-bloc quota price. The offset price is then below the
            marginal damage cost of emissions and the quota price in the
            policy bloc is above the marginal damage cost. This is also
            inefficient as the policy bloc, acting as a monopsonist,
            purchases too few offsets from the fringe.
Entrepreneurship training and
            self-employment among university graduates : evidence from a
            randomized trial in Tunisia
In economies characterized by low labor
            demand and high rates of youth unemployment,
            entrepreneurship training has the potential to enable youth
            to gain skills and create their own jobs. This paper
            presents experimental evidence on a new entrepreneurship
            track that provides business training and personalized
            coaching to university students in Tunisia. Undergraduates
            in the final year of licence appliquee were given the
            opportunity to graduate with a business plan instead of
            following the standard curriculum. This paper relies on
            randomized assignment of the entrepreneurship track to
            identify impacts on labor market outcomes one year after
            graduation. The analysis finds that the entrepreneurship
            track was effective in increasing self-employment among
            applicants, but that the effects are small in absolute
            terms. In addition, the employment rate among participants
            remains unchanged, pointing to a partial substitution from
            wage employment to self-employment. The evidence shows that
            the program fostered business skills, expanded networks, and
            affected a range of behavioral skills. Participation in the
            entrepreneurship track also heightened graduates optimism
            toward the future shortly after the Tunisian revolution.
Bank regulation and supervision
            around the world : a crisis update
This paper presents the latest update of
            the World Bank Bank Regulation and Supervision Survey, and
            explores two questions. First, were there significant
            differences in regulation and supervision between crisis and
            non-crisis countries? Second, what aspects of regulation and
            supervision changed significantly during the crisis period?
            The paper finds significant differences between crisis and
            non-crisis countries in several aspects of regulation and
            supervision. In particular, crisis countries (a) had less
            stringent definitions of capital and lower actual capital
            ratios, (b) faced fewer restrictions on non-bank activities,
            (c) were less strict in the regulatory treatment of bad
            loans and loan losses, and (d) had weaker incentives for the
            private sector to monitor banks' risks. Survey results
            also suggest that the overall regulatory response to the
            crisis has been slow, and there is room to improve
            regulation and supervision, as well as private incentives to
            monitor risk-taking. Specifically, comparing regulatory and
            supervisory practices before and after the global crisis,
            the paper finds relatively few changes: capital ratios
            increased (primarily among non-crisis countries), deposit
            insurance schemes became more generous, and some reforms
            were introduced in the area of bank governance and bank resolution.
Bank regulation and supervision
            around the world : a crisis update
WPS6286 Policy Research Working Paper 6286

# Bank Regulation and Supervision around the World

A Crisis Update _Martin Čihák Aslı Demirgüç-Kunt María Soledad Martínez Pería Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou_ The World Bank Office of the Chief Economist Finance and Private Sector Development Network & Development Research Group Finance and Private Sector Development Team December 2012
Is India's manufacturing sector
            moving away from cities
This paper investigates the urbanization
            of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise
            data from formal and informal sectors. It finds that plants
            in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into
            rural locations, while the informal sector is moving from
            rural to urban locations. Although the secular trend for
            India's manufacturing urbanization has slowed down, the
            localized importance of education and infrastructure has
            not. The results suggest that districts with better
            education and infrastructure have experienced a faster pace
            of urbanization, although higher urban-rural cost ratios
            cause movement out of urban areas. This process is
            associated with improvements in the spatial allocation of
            plants across urban and rural locations. Spatial location of
            plants has implications for policy on investments in
            education, infrastructure, and the livability of cities. The
            high share of urbanization occurring in the informal sector
            suggests that urbanization policies that contain
            inclusionary approaches may be more successful in promoting
            local development and managing its strains than those
            focused only on the formal sector. Cities are evolving in
            India from places of goods production to forges of human
            capital and coping mechanisms for survival.
Import protection, business cycles,
            and exchange rates : evidence from the great recession
This research estimates the impact of
            macroeconomic fluctuations on import protection policies
            over 1988:Q1-2010:Q4 for five industrialized economies --
            the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada and
            South Korea. There is evidence of a strong countercyclical
            trade policy response in the pre-Great Recession period of
            1988:Q1-2008:Q3 during which increases in domestic
            unemployment rates, real appreciations in bilateral exchange
            rates, and declines in the GDP growth rates of bilateral
            trading partners led to substantial increases in new
            temporary trade barriers. It then applies this pre-Great
            Recession empirical model to realized macroeconomic data
            from 2008:Q4-2010:Q4 and find it predicts a surge of new
            import protection during the Great Recession -- e.g., for
            the US and EU, the model predicts new trade barriers would
            cover an additional 15 percentage points of nonoil imports,
            well above the baseline level of 2-3 percent of import
            coverage immediately preceding the crisis. Finally, the
            research examines why the realized trade policy response
            differed from model predictions. While exchange rate
            movements played an important role in limiting new import
            protection during the Great Recession, there is also
            evidence of one particularly important change in trade
            policy responsiveness; i.e., in this period, governments
            refrained from imposing new temporary trade barriers against
            foreign trading partners experiencing their own weak or
            negative economic growth.
The evolution and impact of bank regulations
This paper reassesses what works in
            banking regulation based on the new World Bank survey
            (Survey IV) of bank regulation and supervision around world.
            The paper briefly presents new and official survey
            information on bank regulations in more than 125 countries,
            makes comparisons with earlier surveys since 1999, and
            assesses the relationship between changes in bank
            regulations and banking system performance. The data suggest
            that many countries made capital regulations more stringent
            and granted greater discretionary power to official
            supervisory agencies over the past 12 years, but most
            countries have not enhanced the ability and incentives of
            private investors to monitor banks rigorously -- and several
            have weakened such private monitoring incentives. Although
            it is difficult to draw causal inferences from these data,
            and while there are material cross-country differences in
            the evolution of regulatory reforms, existing evidence
            suggests that many countries are making counterproductive
            changes to their bank regulations by not enhancing the
            ability and incentives of private investors to scrutinize banks.
Incomplete, slow, and asymmetric
            price transmission in ten product markets of Bolivia
With food prices on the rise,
            understanding the transmission of price shocks, both
            internationally and domestically, is central for trade
            policy analysis. This paper examines spatial market
            integration and its determinants for ten key food products
            in Bolivia, across the four most important cities, and with
            the world, over the period 1991-2008. Within Bolivia,
            markets for onions, chicken, sugar, and to a lower extent
            for potatoes, cooking oil, wheat flour, and rice are
            integrated. However, only chicken, sugar, cooking oil, and
            rice are integrated with world markets, with incomplete and
            slow transmission. The perennial result of asymmetric price
            adjustment to foreign shocks also holds for Bolivia:
            domestic prices respond faster when the world price
            increases than when it decreases. This points to a perennial
            recommendation: the importance of stimulating competitive
            practices to avoid welfare redistribution due to imperfect
            competition. Infrastructure improvements will also
            contribute to accessible food prices for the poor.
Rethinking the form and function of
            cities in post-Soviet countries
Eurasian cities, unique in the global
            spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest
            experiment in urban development. The challenges they now
            face because of their history offer valuable lessons to
            urban planners and policymakers across the world from places
            that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. Today,
            Eurasian cities must respond to three big changes: the
            breakup of the Soviet Union, the return of the market as the
            driving force of society, and the emergence of regional
            powers such as the European Union, China, and India that are
            competing with the Russian Federation for markets and
            influence in its former satellites. Several methods of
            analysis indicate an imbalance across Eurasia, implying a
            need to readjust Eurasia's urban structure. National
            policies in Eurasia are still preoccupied with spatial
            equity. But the concentration of economic activity in large
            cities is fundamental to national competitive advantage:
            they foster innovation through their diversity of industries
            -- and reduce production costs through their economies of
            scale. This paper suggests some ideas on how policymakers
            can harness the economic power of cities to drive national
            economic development, by focusing on four themes: planning,
            connecting, greening, and financing cities.
Does sharecropping affect
            productivity and long-term investment evidence from West
            Bengal's tenancy reforms
Although transfer of agricultural land
            ownership through land reform had positive impacts on
            productivity, investment, and political empowerment in many
            cases, institutional arrangements in West Bengal -- which
            made tenancy heritable and imposed a prohibition on
            subleasing -- imply that early land reform benefits may not
            be sustained and gains from this policy remain well below
            potential. Data from a listing of 96,000 households in 200
            villages, complemented by a detailed survey of 1,800
            owner-cum tenants, point toward binding policy constraints
            and large contemporaneous inefficiency of share tenancy that
            is exacerbated by strong disincentives to investment. A
            conservative estimate puts the efficiency losses from such
            arrangements in any period at 25 percent.
Climate change policies and
            employment in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
This paper analyzes the differential
            impact of climate change policies on employment in Eastern
            Europe and Central Asia. In particular, the paper examines
            (i) how vulnerable labor markets are in Eastern European and
            Central Asian countries to future carbon regulation, and
            (ii) what countries can do to mitigate some of the potential
            negative effects of these regulatory changes on employment.
            In many aspects, the nature of the shock associated with
            climate regulation is similar to that associated with an
            increase in energy prices. Constraints on carbon emissions
            put a price on climate-damaging activities and make
            hydrocarbon-based energy production and consumption more
            expensive. As a result, firms in energy-intensive industries
            may react to higher energy prices by reducing production,
            which in turn would lead to lower employment. In the
            presence of frictions in labor markets, these sector shifts
            will cause resources to be unemployed, at least in the short
            term. Using principal component analysis, the paper finds
            that Eastern European and Central Asian countries vary
            greatly in their vulnerability and adaptability of
            employment to carbon regulation. Since the economy takes
            time to adjust, policy-makers will need to ensure that the
            incentives are there for new firms to emerge and employ
            workers, and that workers have the skills to respond to that
            demand. Moreover, governments have a role to play in
            ensuring that workers that are displaced have a proper
            safety net that will not only help in protecting their
            welfare, but will also allow workers to make more efficient
            labor market transitions.
Learning from the experiments that
            never happened : lessons from trying to conduct randomized
            evaluations of matching grant programs in Africa
Matching grants are one of the most
            common policy instruments used by developing country
            governments to try to foster technological upgrading,
            innovation, exports, use of business development services
            and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since
            they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could
            crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that
            firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure
            private gains, rather than generating the public gains that
            justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous
            evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. The
            authors attempted to implement randomized experiments to
            evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered
            in six African countries, but in each case were unable to
            complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of
            randomized experiments is publication bias, whereby only
            those experiments with "interesting" results get
            published. The hope is to mitigate this bias by learning
            from the experiments that never happened. This paper
            describes the three main proximate reasons for lack of
            implementation: continued project delays, politicians not
            willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up;
            and then delves into the underlying causes of these
            occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility
            criteria that do not take account of where value-added may
            be highest, a lack of attention to detail in "last
            mile" issues, incentives facing project implementation
            staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all
            help explain the failure of randomization. Lessons are drawn
            from these experiences for both the implementation and the
            possible evaluation of future projects.
On the fungibility of spending and
            earnings -- evidence from rural China and Tanzania
A common behavioral assumption of
            micro-economic theory is that income is fungible. Using
            household panel data from rural China and Tanzania, this
            study finds however that people are more likely to spend
            unearned income on less basic consumption goods such as
            alcohol and tobacco, non-staple food, transportation and
            communication, and clothing, while they are somewhat more
            likely to spend earned income on basic consumption goods
            such as staple food, and invest it in education. This
            resonates with the widespread cultural notion that money
            that is easily earned is also more easily spent.
            Cognitively, the results could be understood within the
            context of emotional accounting, whereby people classify
            income based on the emotions it evokes, prompting them to
            spend hard earned money more wisely to mitigate the negative
            connotations associated with its acquisition. The policy
            implications are real, bearing for example on the choice
            between employment guarantee schemes and cash transfers in
            designing social security programs.
Insurance risk transfer and
            categorization of reinsurance contracts
Despite the existence of numerous
            quantitative approaches to the categorization of financial
            reinsurance contracts, often insurance regulators may find
            the practical implementation of the task to be technically
            challenging. This research paper develops a simple,
            affordable, and robust regulatory method that can help
            insurance regulators to categorize financial reinsurance
            contracts as reinsurance or financial instruments. By
            reviewing real examples of different categorization methods,
            this paper explains how the proposed method standardizes
            such categorization. It also summarizes the existing
            pertinent literature on the subject with the view to helping
            insurance regulators to first apply some simple indicators
            to flag the main issues with financial reinsurance contracts
            that may need further reviews. Having identified the
            suspicious reinsurance contracts, supervisors may consider
            several solutions provided by the authors and, in some
            cases, requiring further quantitative testing of risk
            transfer contracts for categorization purposes, supervisors
            may also consider adopting the Standardized Expected
            Reinsurer's Deficit approach to contract testing
            presented in this paper. The approach advocates the use of a
            simple standardized stochastic method that would allow
            market participants and regulators to perform robust
            quantitative tests quickly and at an affordable cost.
            Besides addressing the obvious drawbacks of the
            "10-10" test, the proposed alternative method
            allows a great reduction in the technical challenges posed
            to the users of the Expected Reinsurer's Deficit
            approach based on full stochastic models with only a minimum
            loss of predictive accuracy.