rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Risk sharing opportunities and
            macroeconomic factors in Latin American and Caribbean
            countries : A consumption insurance assessment
This paper evaluates the degree of
            consumption insurance enjoyed by Latin American and
            Caribbean countries, with respect to various reference
            areas, by estimating a parameter expressing the sensitivity
            of a country's consumption growth to a measure of
            idiosyncratic shocks to income. The paper surveys common
            econometric implementations of "consumption insurance
            tests." The author proposes some econometric procedures
            in order to detect the actual presence of international risk
            sharing, as well as to assess the relative impact of
            idiosyncratic versus aggregate shocks. The evidence suggests
            that Latin American and Caribbean economies have been hit by
            non-diversifiable income shocks, that idiosyncratic risk is
            relatively more important than aggregate risk, and that some
            countries in the region appear to enjoy a certain amount of
            international risk diversification. The paper also
            identifies some macroeconomic factors that may be
            responsible for a higher or lower degree of risk pooling
            (such as international openness, financial depth, and credit
            availability). The findings show that the financial
            development of an economy is a crucial factor in determining
            the amount of risk sharing opportunities, as well as public
            expenditure. The preliminary results also suggest that trade
            openness and shocks to terms of trade play an important role
            in determining the degree of insurability of such risks.
Risk-based supervision of pension
            funds : a review of international experience and preliminary
            assessment of the first outcomes
This paper provides a review of the
            design and experience of risk-based pension fund supervision
            in several countries that have been leaders in the
            development of these methods. The utilization of risk-based
            methods originates primarily in the supervision of banks.
            In recent years it has increasingly been extended to other
            types of financial intermediaries including pension funds
            and insurers. The trend toward risk-based supervision of
            pensions is closely associated with movement toward the
            integration of pension supervision with that of banking and
            other financial services into a single national authority.
            Although similar in concept to the techniques developed in
            banking, the application to pension funds has required
            modifications, particularly for defined contribution funds
            that transfer investment risk to fund members.  The
            countries examined provide a range of experiences that
            illustrate both the diversity of pension systems and
            approaches to risk-based supervision, but also a commonality
            of the focus on sound risk management and effective
            supervisory outcomes. The paper provides a description of
            pension supervision in Australia, Denmark, Mexico and the
            Netherlands, and an initial evaluation of the results
            achieved in relation to the underlying objectives.
Regulatory governance and sector
            performance : methodology and evaluation for Electricity
            distribution in Latin America
This paper contributes to the literature
            that explores the link between regulatory governance and
            sector performance. The paper develops an index of
            regulatory governance and estimates its impact on sector
            performance, showing that indeed regulation and its
            governance matter.  The authors use two unique databases:
            (i) the World Bank Performance Database, which contains
            detailed annual data for 250 private and public electricity
            companies in Latin America and the Caribbean; and (ii) the
            Electricity Regulatory Governance Database, which contains
            data on several aspects of the governance of electricity
            agencies in the region. The authors run different models to
            explain the impacts of change in ownership and different
            characteristics of the regulatory agency on the performance
            of the utilities. The results suggest that the mere
            existence of a regulatory agency, regardless of the
            utilities' ownership, has a significant impact on
            performance. Furthermore, after controlling for the
            existence of a regulatory agency, the ownership dummies are
            still significant and with the expected signs. The authors
            propose an experience measure in order to identify the
            gradual impact of the regulatory agency on utility
            performance. The results confirm this hypothesis. In
            addition, the paper explores two different measures of
            governance, an aggregate measure of regulatory governance,
            and an index based on principal components, including
            autonomy, transparency, and accountability. The findings
            show that the governance of regulatory agencies matters and
            has significant effects on performance.
Health and civil war in rural Burundi
This paper combines household survey
            data with event data on the timing and location of armed
            conflicts to examine the impact of Burundi's civil war
            on children's health status.  The identification
            strategy exploits exogenous variation in the war's
            timing across provinces and the exposure of children's
            birth cohorts to the fighting.  After controlling for
            province of residence, birth cohort, individual and
            household characteristics, and province-specific time
            trends, the authors find that children exposed to the war
            have on average 0.515 standard deviations lower
            height-for-age z-scores than non-exposed children.  This
            negative effect is robust to specifications exploiting
            alternative sources of exogenous variation.
The quality of medical advice in
            low-income countries
This paper provides an overview of
            recent work on quality measurement of medical care and its
            correlates in four low and middle-income countries-India,
            Indonesia, Tanzania, and Paraguay. The authors describe two
            methods-testing doctors and watching doctors-that are
            relatively easy to implement and yield important insights
            about the nature of medical care in these countries. The
            paper discusses the properties of these measures, their
            correlates, and how they may be used to evaluate policy
            changes. Finally, the authors outline an agenda for further
            research and measurement.
A short note on the ATP fund of Denmark
The Danish ATP (Arbejdmarkedets
            TillaegsPension or Labor Market Supplementary Pension) fund
            is a public pension fund that was created in 1964 to
            complement the universal pension benefit that is financed
            from general tax revenues and is paid to all old-age
            residents. When it was created, participation in ATP was
            compulsory on most working people. But over the last decade
            or so compulsory coverage has been expanded to most
            recipients of transfer income. Contribution amounts are set
            in absolute terms, but are low relative to earnings (less
            than 1 percent of average earnings). ATP has benefited from
            scale economies and compulsory worker participation and has
            been able to operate with high efficiency and low costs. Its
            investment performance has been uneven over the years,
            reflecting the applied investment policies and rules as well
            as prevailing financial conditions. In recent years, it has
            been a leader among Danish pension institutions in adopting
            innovative investment policies and has enjoyed an enviable
            record of high investment returns and low operating costs.
            In addition, it has long offered deferred group annuities
            with guaranteed benefits and periodic bonuses (with profits
            policies). However, ATP also suffers from several weaknesses
            and shortcomings. It has a cumbersome governance structure,
            rooted in labor market relations and the role of social
            partners, while its group annuities have been based on
            rather 'idiosyncratic' risk-sharing arrangements.
            Nevertheless, it took the lead in using long-dated
            interest-rate swaps in euro markets and recently created a
            department that specializes in hedging its pension
            liabilities. And it is in the process of adopting a new plan
            for guaranteed benefits that aims to enhance the management
            of both investment and longevity risks.
Measuring the performance and
            achievement of social objectives of development finance institutions
This paper develops and tests a proposed
            methodology that puts forward a new integrated method for
            evaluating the performance of development finance
            institutions. This methodology applies assessment criteria
            that take into account both the social objective that the
            development finance institution addresses and the subsidies
            it received in order to achieve such an objective. This
            methodology is applied to two pilot case studies-Banadesa
            (Honduras) and Banrural (Guatemala). The authors calculate
            the previously tested subsidy dependence index, which
            measures the degree of an institution's subsidy
            dependence. The paper develops and estimates a new
            measure-the output index- which indicates the level to which
            the institution fulfills the social objectives of the state.
            The analysis integrates the subsidy dependence index and the
            output index to assess the effectiveness associated with
            meeting the social objective. The findings suggest that the
            integration of the two indexes can constitute the basis of a
            meaningful evaluation framework for the performance of
            development finance institutions. This new methodology can
            also be a useful metric for policy makers who are seeking to
            decide on an optimal allocation of scarce funds for
            development finance institutions that pursue social goals
            and for management that seeks improved performance outcomes.
Mental health patterns and
            consequences : results from survey data in five developing countries
The social and economic consequences of
            poor mental health in the developing world are presumed to
            be significant, yet are largely under-researched. The
            authors argue that mental health modules can be meaningfully
            added to multi-purpose household surveys in developing
            countries, and used to investigate this relationship. Data
            from nationally representative surveys in Bosnia and
            Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Mexico, along with special
            surveys from India and Tonga, show similar patterns of
            association between mental health and socioeconomic
            characteristics across countries. Individuals who are older,
            female, widowed, and report poor physical health are more
            likely to report worse mental health outcomes. Individuals
            living with others with poor mental health are also
            significantly more likely to report worse mental health
            themselves. In contrast, there is little observed
            relationship between mental health and poverty or education,
            common measures of socio-economic status. The results
            instead suggest that economic and multi-dimensional shocks
            such as illness or crisis can have a greater impact on
            mental health than overall levels of poverty. This may have
            important implications for social protection policy. The
            authors also find significant associations between poor
            mental health and lowered labor force participation
            (especially for women) and higher frequency visits to health
            centers, suggesting that poor mental health can have
            significant economic consequences for households and the
            health system. Finally, the paper discusses how measures of
            mental health are distinct from general subjective welfare
            measures such as happiness and indicate useful directions of
            future research.
Regulatory agencies : impact on firm
            performance and social welfare
The authors explore the relation between
            the establishment of a regulatory agency and the performance
            of the electricity sector. The authors exploit a unique
            dataset comprising firm-level information on a
            representative sample of 220 electric utilities from 51
            development and transition countries for the years 1985 to
            2005. Their results indicate that regulatory agencies are
            associated with more efficient firms and with higher social welfare.
Poisoning the mind : arsenic
            contamination and cognitive achievement of children
Bangladesh has experienced the largest
            mass poisoning of a population in history owing to
            contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring
            inorganic arsenic. Continuous drinking of such
            metal-contaminated water is highly cancerous; prolonged
            drinking of such water risks developing diseases in a span
            of just 5-10 years.  Arsenicosis-intake of
            arsenic-contaminated drinking water-has implications for
            children's cognitive and psychological development.
            This study examines the effect of arsenicosis at school and
            at home on cognitive achievement of children in rural
            Bangladesh using recent nationally representative school
            survey data on students. Information on arsenic poisoning of
            the primary source of drinking water-tube wells-is used to
            ascertain arsenic exposure. The findings show an
            unambiguously negative and statistically significant
            correlation between mathematics score and arsenicosis at
            home, net of exposure at school. Split-sample analysis
            reveals that the effect is only specific to boys; for girls,
            the effect is negative but insignificant. Similar
            correlations are found for cognitive and non-cognitive
            outcomes such as subjective well-being, that is, a
            self-reported measure of life satisfaction (also a direct
            proxy for health status) of students and their performance
            in primary-standard mathematics. These correlations remain
            robust to controlling for school-level exposure.
Does participation in productive
            associations signal trust and creditworthiness evidence for Nicaragua
This article studies the extent to which
            participation in productive associations in Nicaragua
            contributes to increase individuals' access to social
            programs and credit services.  By participating in
            productive associations, individuals give a good signal to
            firms and are rewarded with better transactions and more
            access to the services they provide, ceteris paribus.
            Estimates using 2005 data indicate that households that
            participate in productive associations display higher access
            to credit and to social programs that promote investment.
            Additionally, participation in productive associations is
            weakly associated to more favorable credit outcomes among
            those households that receive loans, such as lower interest
            rates and a lower probability of wanting more credit than
            what was accessible to them.
Managing post-disaster
            reconstruction finance -- international experience in public
            financial management
In recent years, natural and man-made
            disasters have confronted the international community with
            its most demanding reconstruction challenges since the
            aftermath of World War II.  Managing the inflow of resources
            and spending those resources well have proven to be two of
            the main difficulties in such reconstruction projects,
            particularly after large-scale disasters. A central dilemma
            of the public financial management of reconstruction is the
            need for very high levels of accountability to demonstrate
            fiduciary credibility, while at the same time ensuring the
            rapid implementation of recovery programs. This paper
            identifies options and lessons for managing post-disaster
            reconstruction finance in three key areas: (i) the
            establishment of special institutions to manage the
            reconstruction process; (ii) the selection of public
            financial management systems with respect to the application
            of country systems, special fiduciary arrangements, or
            donor/NGO execution; and (iii) monitoring and evaluation
            systems.  The authors synthesize the phasing of assistance
            and approaches in eight recent post-natural disaster
            reconstruction efforts (Aceh-Indonesia,
            Yogyakarta-Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan,
            Colombia, Grenada, and Honduras) to help guide the
            priorities and options for future instances of public
            financial management for disaster reconstruction. The paper
            also compares the challenges posed by post-conflict versus
            post-natural disaster public financial management.
Managing post-disaster
            reconstruction finance -- international experience in public
            financial management
WPS4475 Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4475 Managing Post-Disaster Reconstruction Finance International Experience in Public Financial Management _Wolfgang Fengler Ahya Ihsan Kai Kaiser_ The World Bank East Asia and the Pacific Poverty Reduction and Economic Management & Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network Public Sector Unit January 2008
Competition and demographics
Mainstream economics views demographic
            changes in the structure of households as of little
            relevance for the behavior of firms or the functioning of
            markets. The present paper dispels this view by arguing that
            changes in the number of non-workers could affect the
            intensity with which consumers search for best prices and
            therefore the level of competition. The author also analyzes
            the relationship between income and competition, which some
            studies suggest is negative. The author argues that the
            negative relationship is most likely due to the demographic
            factors discussed.
Remittances, consumption and
            investment in Ghana
This paper uses a new,
            nationally-representative household survey from Ghana to
            analyze within a rigorous econometric framework how the
            receipt of internal remittances (from within Ghana) and
            international remittances (from African or other countries)
            affects the marginal spending behavior of households on a
            broad range of consumption and investment goods, including
            food, education and housing.  Contrary to other studies,
            which find that remittances are spent disproportionately on
            consumption (food and consumer goods/durables) or investment
            goods (education and housing), the findings show that
            households receiving remittances in Ghana do not spend more
            at the margin on food, education and housing than households
            with similar income levels and characteristics that do not
            receive remittances.  When the analysis controls for
            endogeneity and selection bias, the findings show that any
            differences in the marginal spending behavior between
            remittance-receiving and non-receiving households are
            explained completely by the observed and unobserved
            characteristics of households.  Households in Ghana treat
            remittances just like any other source of income, and there
            are no changes in marginal spending patterns for households
            with the receipt of remittance income.
Determinants of a digital divide in
            Sub-Saharan Africa : a spatial econometric analysis of cell
            phone coverage
Most discussions of the digital divide
            treat it as a "North-South" issue, but the
            conventional dichotomy doesn't apply to cell phones in
            Sub-Saharan Africa. Although almost all Sub-Saharan
            countries are poor by international standards, they exhibit
            great disparities in coverage by cell telephone systems.
            Buys, Dasgupta, Thomas and Wheeler investigate the
            determinants of these disparities with a
            spatially-disaggregated model that employs locational
            information for cell-phone towers across over 990,000 4.6-km
            grid squares in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Using probit
            techniques, a probability model with adjustments for spatial
            autocorrelation has been estimated that relates the
            likelihood of cell-tower location within a grid square to
            potential market size (proximate population); installation
            and maintenance cost factors related to accessibility
            (elevation, slope, distance from a main road, distance from
            the nearest large city); and national competition policy.
            Probit estimates indicate strong, significant results for
            the supply-demand variables, and very strong results for the
            competition policy index.  Simulations based on the
            econometric results suggest that a generalized improvement
            in competition policy to a level that currently
            characterizes the best-performing states in Sub-Saharan
            Africa could lead to huge improvements in cell-phone area
            coverage for many states currently with poor policy
            performance, and an overall coverage increase of nearly 100 percent.