rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Improving credit information, bank
            regulation, and supervision : on the role and design of
            public credit registries
The authors analyze how data in public
            credit registries can be used both to strengthen bank
            supervision and to improve the quality of credit analysis by
            financial institutions. Empirical tests using public credit
            registry (PCR) data were performed in collaboration with the
            central banks in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The results
            of the empirical tests confirm the value of the data for
            credit risk evaluation and provide insights regarding its
            use in supervision, including in calculations of credit risk
            for capital and provisioning requirements, or as a check on
            a bank's internal ratings for the Basel II's
            internal rating-based approach. The authors also define a
            set of critical design parameters and use the results to
            comment on appropriate public registry design. Finally, they
            discuss the relationship between the different objectives of
            a PCR and how they influence the registry's design.
Education decentralization and
            accountability relationships in Latin America
The author analyzes decentralization
            reforms in the education sector in Latin America (their
            status, impact, and ongoing challenges) by making use of the
            accountability framework developed by the World Development
            Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People. She
            starts by identifying three main groups of models according
            to the subnational actors involved, the pattern adopted in
            the distribution of functions across subnational actors, and
            the accountability system central to the model. She then
            reviews the impact of these models according to the
            available empirical evidence, and explores determinants of
            this impact, extracting lessons useful to the design of
            future reforms. The author concludes that the single most
            important factor in ensuring the success or failure of a
            reform is the way the accountability relationships are set
            to work within each of the models and provides some lessons
            on how to get these relationships to work effectively. She
            also provides three main general lessons for selecting
            "successful" models: (1) avoid complicated models;
            (2) increase school autonomy and the scope for "client
            power," maintaining a clear role for the other
            accountability relationships; and (3) place more emphasis on
            the "management" accountability relationship and
            the sustainability of the models.
Education decentralization and
            accountability relationships in Latin America
WPS3453

# **Education Decentralization and Accountability Relationships in Latin America**

## **Emanuela di Gropello**

## World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3453, November 2004

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._ Emanuela di Gropello is a Senior Economist with the Latin American and Caribbean Human Development Department at the World Bank. This paper was prepared as a background paper for the World Bank Report: “Making Services Work for Poor People: a LAC Companion to the 2004 World Development Report.” The paper incorporates comments from Ariel Fiszbein and the team preparing the LAC Companion report. It also benefited from the comments received by education economists of the LAC education group.
PPI partnerships versus PPI divorces
            in developing countries (or are we switching from PPPI to PPDI)
Thirty years ago, in 1974, Chile
            launched the first large-scale privatization in a developing
            country. About 15 years later, Argentina provided a new
            model of global infrastructure management. Since then a
            variety of public-private partnerships in infrastructure
            have been adopted throughout the developing and transition
            world. These experiences add up to a large and heterogeneous
            enough sample of experiences from which some fairly robust
            conclusions on who benefited from the reforms and who did
            not. Because many of these experiences are also turning sour
            and the "privatization" fad of the 1990s seems to
            be turning into an "anti-privatization" fad, it
            seems important to separate facts from emotions. The author
            argues that the wide differences in interpretations of the
            facts can be explained by wide differences in the assessment
            criteria used by analysts, including the definition of the
            baseline data chosen to assess the incremental effect of
            reforms. It is also driven by the sectors, the regions, and
            probably most important, the actors on which the analysis
            tends to focus. Once all these factors have been considered,
            a relatively fair and quantitative assessment of the
            prospects of the public-private relationship in
            infrastructure is possible.
Using an asset-based approach to
            identify drivers of sustainable rural growth and poverty
            reduction in Central America : a conceptual framework
The asset-based approach considers links
            between households' productive, social, and locational
            assets; the policy, institutional, and risk context;
            household behavior as expressed in livelihood strategies;
            and well-being outcomes. For sustainable poverty reducing
            growth, it is critical to examine household asset portfolios
            and understand how assets interact with the context to
            influence the selection of livelihood strategies, which in
            turn determine well-being. Policy reforms can change the
            context and income-generating potential of assets.
            Investments can add new assets or increase the efficiency of
            existing household assets, and also improve households'
            risk management capacity to protect assets. After all is
            said and done, a household's asset portfolio will
            determine whether growth and poverty reduction can be
            achieved and sustained over time. The asset-based framework
            is amendable to different analytical techniques. Siegel
            suggests combining quantitative and qualitative spatial and
            household level analyses (and linked spatial and household
            level analyses) to deepen understanding of the complex
            relationships between assets, context, livelihood
            strategies, and well-being outcomes.
Choosing formulas for market access
            negotiation : efficiency and market access considerations
An important issue in multilateral trade
            negotiations is the approach taken to reduce tariffs.  The
            authors believe that there are important advantages in
            formula approaches and survey a range of options between the
            sharply top-down Swiss formula and proportional cuts in
            tariffs. Over the range the authors consider, they find that
            the economic efficiency impacts for the importer are not
            greatly influenced by the extent to which higher tariffs
            face bigger cuts. However, top-down approaches appear to be
            more effective in reducing tariff escalation, and provide
            greater market access gains to poor countries.
Choosing formulas for market access
            negotiation : efficiency and market access considerations
WPS 3474

# **Choosing Formulas for Market Access Negotiations: Efficiency and Market Access Considerations***

Joseph François _Tinbergen Institute and CEPR_ Will Martin _World Bank_ and Vlad Manole _World Bank_

## World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3474, January 2005

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at http://econ.worldbank.org._

* We would like to thank numerous friends and colleagues, and particularly Elwyn GraingerJones, Bernard Hoekman, Richard Newfarmer, Marcelo Olarreaga, Ernie Preeg, and Alan Winters for valuable comments. This paper is forthcoming as Chapter 5 in Jayasuriya, S. (ed. _), Trade Policy Reforms and Development: Essays in Honour of Professor Peter Lloyd_ : Vol.2, Edward Elgar.

Correspondence addresses: J.F. François, Burg Oudlaan 50-H8-18, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 3000DR Rotterdam NL francois@few.eur.nl; Will Martin, World Bank, 1818 H St NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA. <u>wmartin1@worldbank.org;</u> Vlad Manole, World Bank, 1818 H St NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA. <u>vmanole@worldbank.org</u>
Regulation and macroeconomic performance
Regulation is purportedly enacted to
            serve specific social purposes. In reality, however, it
            follows a more complex political economy process, where
            legitimate social goals are mixed with the objectives of
            particular interest groups. Whatever its justification and
            objectives, regulation can have potentially significant
            macroeconomic consequences, by helping or hampering the
            dynamics of economic restructuring and resource reallocation
            that underlie the growth process. This paper provides an
            empirical analysis of the macroeconomic impact of
            regulation. It first characterizes the stylized facts on
            regulation across the world, using a set of newly
            constructed, comprehensive indicators of regulation in a
            large number of countries in the 1990s. Using these
            indicators, the paper studies the effects of regulation on
            economic growth and macroeconomic volatility employing
            cross-country regression analysis. In particular, the paper
            considers whether the effects of regulation are affected by
            the country's level of institutional development.
            Finally, the analysis controls for the likely endogeneity of
            regulation with respect to macroeconomic performance. The
            paper concludes that a heavier regulatory burden reduces
            growth and increases volatility, although these effects are
            smaller the higher the quality of the overall institutional framework.
Microeconomic evidence of creative
            destruction in industrial and developing countries
In this paper the authors provide an
            analysis of the process of creative destruction across 24
            countries and 2-digit industries over the past decade. They
            rely on a newly assembled dataset that draws from different
            micro data sources (business registers, census, or
            representative enterprise surveys). The novelty of their
            approach is in the harmonization of firm-level data across
            countries, which enables international comparisons and the
            identification of country-specific factors as opposed to
            sector and time effects. All countries display a massive
            reallocation of resources, with the entry and exit of many
            firms in all markets, the failure of many newcomers and the
            expansion of successful ones. This process of creative
            destruction affects productivity directly by reallocating
            resources toward more productive uses, but also indirectly
            through the effects of increased market contestability.
            There are also large differences across groups of countries.
            While entry and exit rates are fairly similar across
            industrial countries, post-entry performance differs
            markedly between Europe and the United States, a potential
            indication of the importance of barriers to firm growth as
            opposed to barriers to entry. Transition economies show an
            even more impressive process of creative destruction and,
            those that have progressed the most toward a market economy
            show better outcomes from this process. Finally, Mexico
            shows large firm dynamics with many new firms entering the
            battle but also many failing rapidly, while Argentina
            resembles Continental Europe with smaller flows and less
            impressive post-entry growth of successful firms.
Outgrowing resource dependence
            theory and some recent developments
Many policy makers are concerned about
            dependence on resource exports. This paper examines four
            changes that reduce this dependence: (i) accumulation of
            capital and skills; (ii) changes in protection policy,
            particularly reductions in the burden of protection on
            exporters; (iii) differential rates of technical change; and
            (iv) declines in transport costs. Developing countries as a
            group have made enormous progress in diversifying their
            exports away from resources in recent decades, a development
            that appears to have been aided by accumulation of capital
            and skills and by dramatic reductions in the cost of
            protection to exporters, but slowed down by technological
            advances that favored agriculture.
Financial dependence, banking sector
            competition, and economic growth
The relationships among competition in
            the financial sector, access of firms to external financing,
            and associated economic growth are ambiguous in theory.
            Moreover, measuring competition in the financial sector can
            be complex. In this paper the authors first estimate for 16
            countries a measure of banking system competition based on
            industrial organization theory.  They then relate this
            competition measure to growth of industries and find that
            greater competition in countries' banking systems
            allows financially dependent industries to grow faster.
            These results are robust under a variety of tests.  Their
            results suggest that the degree of competition is an
            important aspect of financial sector functioning.
Infrastructure services in
            developing countries : access, quality, costs and policy reform
The authors review the evidence on the
            state of infrastructure in the developing world, emphasizing
            the investment needs and the emerging policy issues. While
            their assessment is seriously constrained by data gaps, they
            provide useful insights on the main challenges ahead,
            emphasizing that, in addition to the widely discussed access
            problems, the poorest also face major affordability and
            service quality issues which were not well addressed by the
            reforms of the 1990s. The authors make a case for a stronger
            commitment of the international community to generate the
            information needed to assess and monitor infrastructure
            needs and policies.
Localization and corruption :
            panacea or pandora's box
An extensive literature on the
            relationship between decentralization (or localization) and
            corruption has developed in recent years. While some authors
            argue that there is a positive relationship between
            decentralization and corruption, others claim that
            decentralization in fact leads to a reduction in the level
            of corruption. This important policy question has not yet
            been laid to rest, since previous empirical work simply uses
            eclectic regressions and lacks a conceptual framework to
            discover the root causes of corruption. This paper attempts
            to fill this void by presenting a framework in identifying
            the drivers of corruption both conceptually and empirically
            in order to isolate the role of centralized decision-making
            on corruption. The following results emerge: 1) For a sample
            of 30 countries (developing and industrial), corruption is
            caused by: a lack of service-orientation in the public
            sector, weak democratic institutions, economic isolation
            (closed economy), colonial past, internal bureaucratic
            controls and centralized decision making. 2)
            Decentralization is found to have a negative impact on
            corruption, with the effect being stronger in unitary than
            in federal countries.
Environmental factors and
            children's malnutrition in Ethiopia
Ethiopia has one of the highest child
            malnutrition rates in the world. A considerable effort to
            monitor child malnutrition rates over the last two decades
            shows that, despite some improvements, approximately half of
            the children under five are still malnourished. Much of the
            burden of deaths resulting from malnutrition, estimated to
            be over half of childhood deaths in developing countries,
            can be attributed to just mild and moderate malnutrition.
            Several biological and social economic factors contribute to
            malnutrition. Using the 2000 Ethiopia Demographic and Health
            Survey data, this study examines the impact of access to
            basic environmental services, such as water and sanitation
            on the probability children are stunted and underweight. The
            focus is on the impact of externalities associated with
            access to these services. We find that biological factors,
            such as child's age and mother's height, and
            social economic factors, such as household wealth and
            mother's education, are important determinants of a
            child's nutritional status. This is consistent with the
            findings of most studies in this literature. With respect to
            the environmental factors, we find that there are indeed
            significant externalities associated with access to water
            and sanitation at the community level. The external impacts
            of community level of access to these services are an
            important determinant of the probability a child is
            underweight. Our results also show that the external impact
            of access to water is larger for children living in rural areas.
Employment regulations through the
            eyes of employers - do they matter and how do firms respond
            to them
The authors present evidence on how
            employers perceive labor regulations and react when these
            are perceived to constrain the operation of their firm. They
            draw from harmonized surveys of (up to) 17,000 firms around
            the world and compare employers' responses with actual
            labor legislation. The authors find that employers'
            concerns about labor regulations are closely matched by the
            relative stringency of de jure labor laws. Countries that
            have, from an international perspective, tight labor
            regulations tend to have higher proportions of employers
            reporting these regulations as severe constraints. But not
            all firms are affected in the same way by onerous labor
            regulations. Medium sized firms are those whose business and
            prospects for growth are most negatively affected.
            Similarly, innovating firms are disproportionally affected
            by tight labor regulations. There is also clear evidence in
            the data that firms facing tight regulations invest more in
            training and make greater use of temporary employment. Small
            firms mainly rely on temporary employment, while medium and
            large firms, as well as innovating firms, tend to rely more
            on on-the-job training if labor regulations make hiring and
            firing very costly.
Parental education and
            children's schooling outcomes : is the effect nature,
            nurture, or both evidence from recomposed families in Rwanda
Educated parents tend to have educated
            children. But is intergenerational transmission of human
            capital more nature, more nurture, or both? The author uses
            household survey data from Rwanda that contains a large
            proportion of children living in households without their
            biological parents. The data allows him to separate genetic
            from environmental parental influences. The nonrandom
            placement of children is controlled by including the
            educational attainment of the absent biological parents and
            the type of relationship that links the children to their
            "adoptive" families. The results of the analysis
            suggest that the nurture component of the intergenerational
            transmission of human capital is important for both parents,
            contrary to recent evidence proposed by Behrman and
            Rosenzweig (2002) and Plug (2004). The author concludes that
            mothers education had no environmental impact on childrens
            schooling. Interestingly, mothers education matters more
            for girls, while fathers education is more important for
            boys. Finally, an important policy recommendation in the
            African context emerges from the analysis: the risk for
            orphans or abandoned children to lose ground in their
            schooling achievements is minimized if they are placed with relatives.