rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Public and private investments in
            innovation capabilities : structural transformation in the
            Chilean wine industry
This paper assembles novel data on the
            Chilean wine industry to investigate the role of investments
            in knowledge capital on sales growth in domestic and
            international markets. The study uses archival data
            collected from the Government of Chile to compile and
            categorize public expenditures and programs supporting the
            Chilean wine industry over the period of 1990-2012 into
            investment in different types of knowledge capital. These
            spending categories are related to industry-level sales
            growth. The paper finds that the most important correlate is
            spending on research and development. The study also uses
            data from a new survey of Chilean wine firms to capture
            information on firm-specific investments in knowledge
            capital. The findings show that investments in collaboration
            capital, in particular hiring foreign consultants, as well
            as participation in international wine fairs are the
            strongest correlates of growth in export sales, while
            spending on aspects of branding (local advertising and brand
            design) are the strongest correlates of domestic market
            sales growth.
The drivers of non-revenue water :
            how effective are non-revenue water reduction programs
To many, reducing water losses is seen
            as key to more sustainable water management. The arguments
            to reduce water losses are compelling, but reducing water
            losses has turned out to be challenging. This paper applies
            a panel data analysis with fixed effects to determine the
            major drivers of non-revenue water, which is define as the
            volume of water losses per kilometer of network per day. The
            analysis uses data from the International Benchmarking
            Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities, covering
            utilities in 68 countries between 2006 and 2011. The
            analysis finds that non-revenue water is driven by many
            factors. Some of the most important drivers are beyond the
            control of the utility, such as population density per
            kilometer of network, the type of distribution network, and
            the length of the network, which are largely the result of
            urbanization and settlement patterns in the localities that
            the utility serves. The opportunity costs of water losses
            are also key in explaining what drives non-revenue water.
            The paper finds that very low opportunity costs of water
            losses have an adverse effect on the reduction of
            non-revenue water. Country fixed effects turn out to be
            important, meaning that the environment in which the utility
            operates has an important impact on non-revenue water
            levels. An important conclusion is that the design of
            non-revenue water reduction programs should study the main
            drivers of non-revenue water to provide utility managers
            with a better understanding of what can be achieved in terms
            of non-revenue water reduction and whether the benefits of
            these reductions exceed their costs.
Aid is good for the poor
Aid is good for the poor. This paper
            uses detailed aid data spanning 60 developing countries over
            the past two decades to show that social aid significantly
            and directly benefits the poorest in society, while economic
            aid increases the income of the poor through growth. This
            new and unequivocal finding distinguishes the current study
            from past studies that only utilized aggregate aid data and
            returned ambiguous results. The paper also confirms that
            none of the elements of globalization (trade, foreign direct
            investment, remittances), policies (government expenditure,
            inflation management), institutional quality, nor other
            plausibly pro-poor factors have systematic effects on the
            poor or any other income group, beyond their effects on
            average incomes. The paper finds that trade and foreign
            direct investment tend to benefit the richest segments of
            society more than other income groups. Therefore, the
            presented evidence suggests that aid can play a crucial role
            in enabling the poor to benefit more from globalization.
            These discoveries underscore the need to assist developing
            countries to find the mix of economic and social aid that
            jointly promotes the participation of the poor in the
            development process under globalization. In this manner, aid
            can make greater strides in spurring development.
Export performance and geography in Croatia
This paper uses the gravity model to
            analyze whether the varying export performance of Croatian
            counties can be explained by their proximity to border
            gates, ports, and other county-specific characteristics. The
            analysis finds that longer distances to border gates
            increase trade frictions significantly for many product
            categories, although these frictions have been decreasing
            between 2007 and 2012. The paper analyzes the county
            specific factors that are associated with variation in
            export performance, net of distance. Results show that
            exports are strongly and positively correlated with motorway
            and road density, the size of the labor force, low-skill
            ratio, and the number of patents. These variables are also
            associated with a greater diversity of exports in terms of
            products and destinations. Several general policy
            implications are highlighted. The significant association
            between motorway and road density and export volume, number
            of destinations, as well as the diversity of exported
            products may indicate that improvements in connectivity and
            facilitation of transport could still play a significant
            role in enhancing regional trade outcomes. Similarly, good
            performance in research and development may significantly
            help to spur competitiveness and allow local producers to
            enter new markets in products and destinations, which in
            turn can increase the level of diversification and boost
            resilience to global economic shocks.
Predicting World Bank project
            outcome ratings
A number of recent studies have
            empirically documented links between characteristics of
            World Bank projects and their ultimate outcomes as evaluated
            by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group. This
            paper explores the in-sample and out-of-sample predictive
            performance of empirical models relating project outcomes to
            project characteristics observed early in the life of a
            project. Such models perform better than self-assessments of
            project performance provided by World Bank staff during the
            implementation of the project. These findings are applied to
            the problem of predicting eventual Independent Evaluation
            Group ratings for currently active projects in the World
            Bank's portfolio.
Eradicating poverty in fragile
            states: prospects of reaching the "high-hanging"
            fruit by 2030
As the world approaches the target year
            of the Millennium Development Goals and passes into the new,
            post-2015 era, the development community has made a call for
            a new international development goal of eradication of
            extreme poverty by 2030. How feasible is that? For most of
            the developing world, the goal seems ambitious, yet
            achievable -- but what about the prospects for fragile
            states in which an increasingly large share of the global
            poor will live (estimated at nearly four in 10 by 2030)?
            This paper presents a base case scenario with the
            International Futures model that forecasts a 32 percent
            poverty rate for fragile states by 2030 given current
            conditions and trends. The paper considers alternative
            scenarios to identify a range of possible outcomes.  In the
            most optimistic scenario, the paper steps beyond the search
            for realistic policy levers and simply assumes exceptional
            economic growth and decreased inequality for fragile states.
            This extremely optimistic scenario produces a forecast of a
            20 percent extreme poverty rate for this group of countries.
            The paper then explores the effects of improved institutions
            and improved security in fragile states and of a set of
            poverty reduction policies that would be conditional on
            security and good governance to be effective. The resulting
            aggressive but reasonably attainable poverty rate in fragile
            states is 24 percent in 2030. With newly revised Purchasing
            Power Parity values (rebased to 2011 by the International
            Comparison Project in May of 2014), the 2030 forecasts of
            fragile state poverty rates are lower by 5 to 6 percent
            across all scenarios, still leaving them significantly above
            the 3 percent threshold for poverty eradication.
Food prices, road infrastructure,
            and market integration in Central and Eastern Africa
Market integration is key to ensuring
            sufficient and stable food supplies. This paper assesses the
            impediments to market integration in Central and Eastern
            Africa for three food staples: maize, rice, and sorghum. The
            paper uses a large database on monthly consumer prices for
            150 towns in 13 African countries and detailed data on the
            length and quality of roads linking the towns. The analysis
            finds a substantial effect of distance and share of paved
            road on the level of market integration, as measured by
            relative prices. Furthermore, the paper evaluates the
            additional domestic and cross-border impediments to market
            integration in the region and represents them on a regional
            map. The analysis finds heterogeneous levels of domestic
            market integration across countries and significant
            "border effects" for the majority of contiguous
            countries in the sample, which reveal that markets are more
            integrated within than between countries. Countries that are
            members of the same regional trade agreement have
            substantially "thinner" borders with other
            members. Finally, the analysis shows that countries with
            less integrated domestic markets and "thicker"
            borders with their neighbors also have a higher prevalence
            of food insufficiency. These findings support policy efforts
            in tackling domestic and border impediments to transactions
            such as reforming customs, simplifying nontariff measures,
            addressing corruption, improving the quality of roads, and
            deepening regional trade agreements.
Do export promotion agencies promote
            new exporters
Do export promotion agencies impact the
            probability of non-exporting firms to export? In the last
            decade many countries have introduced export promotion
            agencies to support their firms to deal with asymmetric
            information problems and make feasible additional gains from
            trade. Some recent studies have found that the support of
            these agencies has been effective with respect to the
            intensive and extensive margins of trade. Nevertheless,
            because of the lack of information on non-exporting firms,
            few of them analyze their impact on the probability of
            promoting new exporters. This paper evaluates the impact of
            the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency
            (Apex-Brasil) on firms' export status using a unique
            firm-level dataset that covers the full manufacturing sector
            in Brazil. To identify the impact of Apex's assistance
            on firms' export propensity, the paper relies on a
            procedure of matching difference-in-difference estimators.
            The empirical results show evidence of the program's
            positive impact on the probability of promoting new
            exporters. The effect is heterogeneous according to
            firms' size categories and sectors. Furthermore, the
            findings suggest that the program has spillover effects.
            Although the evidence of positive effect is robust, the low
            propensity to export for both the treated and the control
            groups reinforces the importance of other firms'
            determinants (for example, productivity), which is widely
            emphasized by the trade literature.
Poverty impacts of the volume-based
            special safeguard mechanism
The volume-based Special Safeguard
            Mechanism was proposed as essential for small, poor farmers
            and became the proximate cause of the collapse of the Doha
            Agenda negotiations in 2008. But is it helpful for these
            farmers, given that it is likely to be applied when farm
            output is depressed and many poor farmers in developing
            countries need to buy food? Stochastic simulations for 31
            countries suggest that use of this safeguard in line with
            the proposed World Trade Organization rules would raise the
            world poverty headcount by an average of 24 million. The
            adverse poverty impact of the duty is larger when the
            quantity safeguard is triggered than it would be in other
            years, because lower farm output levels reduce or reverse
            the benefits to poor farm households from higher prices.
The effect of climate and
            technological uncertainty in crop yields on the optimal path
            of global land use
The pattern of global land use has
            important implications for the world's food and timber
            supplies, bioenergy, biodiversity and other eco-system
            services. However, the productivity of this resource is
            critically dependent on the world's climate, as well as
            investments in, and dissemination of improved technology.
            This creates massive uncertainty about future land use
            requirements which compound the challenge faced by
            individual investors and governments seeking to make long
            term, sometimes irreversible investments in land conversion
            and land use. This study assesses how uncertainties
            associated with underlying biophysical processes and
            technological change in agriculture affect the optimal
            profile of land use over the next century, taking into
            account the potential irreversibility in these decisions. A
            novel dynamic stochastic model of global land use is
            developed, in which the societal objective function being
            maximized places value on food production, liquid fuels
            (including bio-fuels), timber production, and biodiversity.
            While the uncertainty in food crop yields has anticipated
            impact, the resulting expansion of crop lands and decline in
            forest lands is relatively small.
Small business tax policy,
            informality, and tax evasion -- evidence from Georgia
Using a panel of administrative data and
            regression discontinuity analysis, this paper examines how
            the introduction of preferential tax regimes for Georgian
            micro and small businesses in 2010 affects formal firm
            creation and tax compliance. The results show that the new
            tax regime for micro businesses increased the number of
            newly registered formal firms by 18-30 percent below the
            eligibility threshold during the first year of the reform,
            but not in subsequent years. The analysis does not find an
            effect of the new tax regime for small businesses on formal
            firm creation in any year. Policy makers are often concerned
            about abuse risks stemming from differentiated tax treatment
            of micro and small businesses. The analysis in this paper
            reveals reduced tax compliance in 2010 around the micro
            business eligibility threshold, but does not find
            significant evidence of reduced compliance by Georgian firms
            in later years. The results also do not show any significant
            evidence of strategic sorting around the regime eligibility thresholds.
The impact of credit information
            sharing reforms on firm financing
This paper analyzes the impact of
            introducing credit information-sharing systems on
            firms' access to finance. The analysis uses multi-year,
            firm-level surveys for 63 countries covering more than
            75,000 firms over the period 2002-13. The results reveal
            that credit bureau reforms, but not credit registry reforms,
            have a significant and robust effect on firm financing.
            After the introduction of a credit bureau, the likelihood
            that a firm has access to finance increases, interest rates
            drop, maturity lengthens, and the share of working capital
            financed by banks increases. The effects of credit bureau
            reforms are more pronounced the greater the coverage of the
            credit bureau and the scope and accessibility of the credit
            information-sharing scheme. Credit bureau reforms also have
            a greater impact on firms' access to finance in
            countries where contract enforcement is weaker. Finally,
            there is some evidence that the effects of credit bureau
            reform are more pronounced for smaller, less experienced,
            and more opaque firms.
Understanding the agricultural input
            landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa : recent plot, household,
            and community-level evidence
Conventional wisdom holds that
            Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite
            the fact that most growth-inducing and poverty-reducing
            agricultural growth in the region is expected to come
            largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved
            technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and
            other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet
            following several years of high food prices, concerted
            policy efforts to intensify fertilizer and hybrid seed use,
            and increased public and private investment in agriculture,
            how low is modern input use in Africa really? This paper
            revisits Africa's agricultural input landscape,
            exploiting the unique, recently collected, nationally
            representative, agriculturally intensive, and cross-country
            comparable Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated
            Surveys on Agriculture covering six countries in the region
            (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda).
            The study uses data from more than 22,000 households and
            62,000 plots to investigate a range of commonly held
            conceptions about modern input use in Africa, distilling the
            most striking and important findings into 10 key takeaway
            descriptive results.
Comparable estimates of returns to
            schooling around the world
Rates of return to investments in
            schooling have been estimated since the late 1950s. In the
            60-plus year history of such estimates, there have been
            several attempts to synthesize the empirical results to
            ascertain patterns. This paper presents comparable
            estimates, as well as a database, that use the same
            specification, estimation procedure, and similar data for
            139 economies and 819 harmonized household surveys. This
            effort to compile comparable estimates holds constant the
            definition of the dependent variable, the set of control
            variables, the sample definition, and the estimation method
            for all surveys in the sample. The results of this study
            show that (1) the returns to schooling are more concentrated
            around their respective means than previously thought; (2)
            the basic Mincerian model used is more stable than may have
            been expected; (3) the returns to schooling are higher for
            women than for men; (4) returns to schooling and labor
            market experience are strongly and positively associated;
            (5) there is a decreasing pattern over time; and (6) the
            returns to tertiary education are highest.
The permanent input hypothesis : the
            case of textbooks and (no) student learning in Sierra Leone
A textbook provision program in Sierra
            Leone demonstrates how volatility in the flow of
            government-provided learning inputs to schools can induce
            storage of these inputs by school administrators to smooth
            future consumption. This process in turn leads to low
            current utilization of inputs for student learning. A
            randomized trial of a public program providing textbooks to
            primary schools had modest positive impacts on teacher
            behavior but no impacts on student performance. In many
            treatment schools, student access to textbooks did not
            actually increase because a large majority of the books were
            stored rather than distributed to students. At the same
            time, the propensity to save books was positively correlated
            with uncertainty on the part of head teachers regarding
            government transfers of books. The evidence suggests that
            schools that have high uncertainty with respect to future
            transfers are more likely to store a high proportion of
            current transfers. These results show that reducing
            uncertainty in school input flows could result in higher
            current input use for student learning. For effective
            program design, public policy programs must take
            forward-looking behavior among intermediate actors into account.