rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The Highways and Side Roads of
            Statistical Capacity Building
This paper proposes an approach to guide
            statistical capacity building in developing countries using
            an analysis based on components of the World Bank’s
            Statistical Performance Indicator on a sample of 215
            countries. The approach demonstrates the importance of
            expanding traditional capacity-building activities to
            include programs to strengthen and better monitor user
            demand for data. Based on this analysis, the paper
            recommends a two-step strategy for building and enhancing
            the sustainable statistical capacity of national statistical
            systems in developing countries. The strategy creates a
            sustainable trajectory for developing national statistical
            systems that meet the growing demands of local and global
            data users. The paper emphasizes the importance of donor
            coordination and South-South learning initiatives for
            international capacity-building efforts.
Individual Wealth and Time Use :
            Evidence from Cambodia
A better understanding of how individual
            wealth and time use are linked — across paid, unpaid, and
            leisure activities — is important for targeting widespread
            gender inequalities in time allocation, as well as in
            accessing economic opportunities. The lack of reliable,
            individual-level data on asset ownership across different
            subpopulations, however, has limited discussions of these
            issues in the literature. Using a unique nationally
            representative survey from Cambodia, this paper shows that
            individual wealth, as measured through self-reported
            ownership of physical and financial assets, is significantly
            associated with time allocation to different activities. The
            role of asset ownership in time use is also stronger,
            particularly among women, vis-à-vis the competing proxies
            for socioeconomic status. Ownership of financial accounts,
            motorized vehicles, and mobile phones — all of which can
            improve access to networks, markets, and services — is
            associated with less time in unpaid work, and in some cases
            greater time in paid work, specifically among women in
            off-farm jobs. There are also distinct gender differences in
            how men and women shift their time away from leisure and
            childcare, highlighting the importance of social norms in
            choices over time use. The analysis highlights the utility
            of integrated, intra-household, individual-disaggregated
            data collection on asset ownership, time use, and employment
            in lower-income contexts.
Intervention Size and Persistence
Do larger interventions improve longer
            run outcomes more cost effectively? And should poverty traps
            motivate increasing intervention size? This paper considers
            two approaches to increasing intervention size in the
            context of temporary unconditional cash transfers — larger
            transfers (intensity), and adding complementary graduation
            program interventions (scope). It does so leveraging 38
            experimental estimates of dynamic consumption impacts from
            14 developing countries. First, increasing intensity
            decreases cost effectiveness and does not affect persistence
            of impacts. This result can be explained by poverty traps or
            decreasing marginal return on investment in a standard
            buffer stock model. Second, increasing scope increases
            impacts and persistence, but reduces cost effectiveness at
            commonly evaluated time horizons and increases
            heterogeneity. In summary, larger interventions need not
            have more persistent impacts, and when they do, this may
            come at the expense of cost effectiveness, and poverty traps
            are neither necessary nor sufficient for these results.
The Aftermath of Debt Surges
Debt in emerging market and developing
            economies (EMDEs) is at its highest level in half a century.
            In about nine out of 10 EMDEs, debt is higher now than it
            was in 2010 and, in half of the EMDEs, debt is more than 30
            percentage points of gross domestic product higher.
            Historically, elevated debt levels increased the incidence
            of debt distress, particularly in EMDEs and particularly
            when financial market conditions turned less benign. This
            paper reviews an encompassing menu of options that have, in
            the past, helped lower debt burdens. Specifically, it
            examines orthodox options (enhancing growth, fiscal
            consolidation, privatization, and wealth taxation) and
            heterodox options (inflation, financial repression, debt
            default and restructuring). The mix of feasible options
            depends on country characteristics and the type of debt.
            However, none of these options comes without political,
            economic, and social costs. Some options may ultimately be
            ineffective unless vigorously implemented. Policy reversals
            in difficult times have been common. The challenges
            associated with debt reduction raise questions of global
            governance, including to what extent advanced economies can
            cast their net wider to cushion prospective shocks to EMDEs.
Floods and Their Impacts on Firms :
            Evidence from Tanzania
This study explores how businesses in
            Tanzania are impacted by floods, and which strategies they
            use to cope and adapt. These insights are based on firm
            survey data collected in 2018 using a tailored
            questionnaire, covering a sample of more than 800 firms. To
            assess the impact of disasters on businesses, the study
            considers direct damages and indirect effects through
            infrastructure systems, supply chains, and workers. While
            direct on-site damages from flooding can be substantial,
            they tend to affect a relatively small share of firms.
            Indirect impacts of floods are more prevalent and sizable.
            Flood-induced infrastructure disruptions—especially
            electricity and transport—obstruct the operations of firms
            even when they are not directly located in flood zones. The
            effects of such disruptions are further propagated and
            multiplied along supply chains. The study estimates that
            supply chain multipliers are responsible for 30 to 50
            percent of all flood-related delivery delays. To cope with
            these impacts, firms apply a variety of strategies. Firms
            mitigate supply disruptions by adjusting the size and
            geographical reach of their supply networks, and by
            adjusting inventory holdings. By investing in costly backup
            capacity (such as water tanks and electricity generators),
            firms mitigate the impact of infrastructure disruptions. The
            study estimates that only 13 percent of firms receive
            government support in the aftermath of floods.
Measuring Untapped Revenue Potential
            in Developing Countries : Cross-Country Frontier and Panel
            Data Analysis
Efforts aimed at supporting domestic
            revenue mobilization in developing countries are often
            designed and evaluated based on empirical indicators, such
            as revenue-to-GDP ratios, which capture differences in
            achieved outcomes across countries. This paper studies a
            complementary approach to estimate domestic revenue
            potential that also takes into account differences in
            countries’ fundamental economic structures and constraints
            associated with different capacities to raise domestic
            revenues, which are not captured by simple revenue-to-GDP
            ratios. Specifically, nonparametric data envelopment
            analysis is applied to estimate domestic revenue potential
            in a panel of 118 low- and middle-income countries from 2008
            to 2019. The analysis addresses the following research
            questions: (i) How efficient are low-income countries
            compared with richer countries in mobilizing domestic
            revenues given the national economic conditions and
            resources available to each country? (ii) What factors
            account for the variation in relative domestic revenue
            mobilization efficiency, that is, the fact that some
            countries generate more revenues than other countries with
            comparable economic structures? The paper discusses the
            policy implications of the findings and demonstrates how the
            proposed method can be used to identify countries that are
            already performing close to their limit and those that still
            feature large untapped potential for further increasing
            revenues (and thus likely higher marginal benefits to
            external support for domestic revenue mobilization).
            Finally, the paper provides insights on the extent to which
            existing international support for domestic revenue
            mobilization is targeted at countries with larger untapped
            revenue potential.
Shared Decision-Making : Can
            Improved Counseling Increase Willingness to Pay for Modern Contraceptives
Long-acting reversible contraceptives
            are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies,
            but take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized
            controlled trial of interventions addressing two barriers to
            long-acting reversible contraceptive adoption, credit, and
            informational constraints. The study offered discounts to
            the clients of a women’s hospital in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and
            cross-randomized a counseling strategy that encourages
            shared decision-making using a tablet-based app that ranks
            modern methods.   Discounts increased uptake by 50 percent,
            with larger effects for adolescents. Shared decision-making
            tripled the share of clients adopting a long-acting
            reversible contraceptive at full price, from 11 to 35
            percent, and discounts had no incremental impact in this group.
Mind the Gap : Disparities in
            Assessments of Living Standards Using National Accounts and
            Household Surveys
Estimates of average per capita
            consumption and income from national accounts differ
            substantially from corresponding measures of consumption and
            income from household surveys. Using a new compilation of
            more than 2,000 household surveys matched to national
            accounts data, this study finds that the gaps between the
            data sources are larger and more robust than previously
            established. Means of household consumption estimated from
            surveys are, on average, 20 percent lower than corresponding
            means from national accounts. The gap with gross domestic
            product per capita is nearly 50 percent. The gaps have
            increased in recent decades and are largest in middle-income
            countries, where annualized growth rates for consumption
            surveys are systematically lower than national accounts
            growth rates. The paper shows that the gaps in measures
            across these two sources have implications for assessments
            of economic growth, poverty, and inequality. The study finds
            that typical survey measures of consumption and income may
            exaggerate poverty reduction and underestimate inequality.
Climate Modeling for Macroeconomic
            Policy : A Case Study for Pakistan
As the effects of climate change become
            increasingly evident, the design and implementation of
            climate-aware policies have assumed a more central role in
            the macroeconomic policy debate. With this has come an
            increasing recognition of the importance of introducing
            climate into the economic policy making tools used by
            central economic policy making agencies (such as ministries
            of finance and ministries of planning). This paper
            integrates climate outcomes into a macro-structural model
            for Pakistan, the kind of model that is suitable for use on
            a regular basis by ministry staff. The model includes the
            standard set of variables and economic logic that are
            necessary for the kinds of forecasting, economic policy, and
            budgetary planning analysis typically conducted by central
            ministries. In addition to standard outputs (unemployment,
            inflation, gross domestic product growth, and fiscal and
            current accounts), the model generates climate outcomes
            (tons of carbon emitted and economic and health damages due
            to higher temperatures and pollution). These outcomes are
            generated when specific climate policies such as mitigation
            are analyzed, but also when other policies are analyzed that
            might have unanticipated climate impacts. The paper
            describes the changes made to the World Bank’s standard
            macro structural model, MFMod, in integrated climate
            outcomes, climate policies, and the economic impacts of
            climate on Pakistan’s economy. Notably, carbon-tax scenarios
            show that a $20 carbon tax can reduce emissions in Pakistan
            by 36 percent by 2050. Gross domestic product impacts could
            also be positive, if the revenues from the carbon tax were
            used to reduce reliance on heavily distorting taxes. The
            model also quantifies associated co-benefits from reduced
            local air pollution and better health and productivity
            outcomes. In the absence of action to restrain climate
            change, the model suggests that increased temperatures and
            rain variability could reduce output by as much as 10
            percent compared with a scenario where global temperature
            rises were minimized.
Do Illicit Financial Flows Hurt Tax
            Revenues Evidence from the Developing World
Recent work draws attention to the
            fragility of domestic tax revenues—a vital resource for the
            developing world—to illicit financial flows. To cope with
            two major challenges in the illicit financial flows–tax
            revenues relationship—related to the mere illicit financial
            flows measurement and reverse causality—this paper exploits
            the Financial Action Task Force data using an impact
            assessment analysis. Estimations reveal a significant tax
            revenue loss in countries associated with important illicit
            financial flows with respect to comparable countries without
            important illicit financial flows. Moreover, this causal
            effect—estimated as being economically meaningful—is
            supported by a large robustness section, and in particular
            remains unchanged when using several “doubly robust”
            estimators. Lastly, it unveils heterogeneities in the impact
            of illicit financial flows on tax revenues, related to the
            type of tax—a significant loss for indirect but not for
            direct taxes—and the considered environment. Therefore,
            policies combating illicit financial flows—for example, by
            developing institutions or a sound financial system, as
            shown by the estimations—may provide additional tax revenues
            for the developing world.
Drivers of Utilization, Quality of
            Care, and RMNCH-N Services in Bangladesh : A Comparative
            Analysis of Demand and Supply-Side Determinants Using
            Machine Learning for Investment Decision-Making
Amid noticeable improvements and
            achievements in the reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child
            health, and nutrition landscape in Bangladesh, existing
            evidence suggests that further accelerated progress hinges
            on strategic investment decision making. Addressing the top
            service utilization determinants that are both context- and
            time-specific is one cost-effective way of improving the
            unmet reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child health, and
            nutrition outcomes in a short timeframe. Against this
            backdrop, using machine learning analysis, the overall aim
            of this study was to help Bangladesh identify priority
            investment areas that could accelerate reproductive,
            maternal, neonatal, child health, and nutrition utilization,
            quality, and outcomes over the short run, by comparing the
            relative importance of demand- and-supply-side determinants
            of key reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child health, and
            nutrition indicators over the past decade (across two time
            points). Two rounds of the Bangladesh Health Facility Survey
            and the Demographic and Health Survey (2014 and 2017) were
            analyzed. The findings indicate that the relative importance
            of the demand-side determinants (except wealth and education
            status) have recently declined. Conversely, investments in
            key supply-side determinants (for example, availability of
            skilled staff, readiness for care, and quality of care)
            could provide a thrust toward further increases in
            utilization. Immediate attention is needed to address the
            regressive role of wealth status on utilization through, for
            example, demand-side financing that goes beyond user fee
            exemptions. Further, developing strategies to improve the
            engagement of community health workers in reproductive,
            maternal, neonatal, child health, and nutrition utilization
            and tapping into the potential of mobile health technology
            to support community health workers’ performance and women’s
            awareness could help to boost utilization patterns.
Human Capital Accumulation at Work :
            Estimates for the World and Implications for Development
In this paper, the authors: (i) study
            wage-experience profiles and obtain measures of returns to
            potential work experience using data from about 24 million
            individuals in 1,084 household surveys and census samples
            across 145 countries; (ii) show that returns to work
            experience are strongly correlated with economic
            development—workers in developed countries appear to
            accumulate twice more human capital at work than workers in
            developing countries; (iii) use a simple accounting
            framework to find that the contribution of work experience
            to human capital accumulation and economic development might
            be as important as the contribution of education itself; and
            (iv) employ panel regressions to investigate how changes in
            the returns over time correlate with several factors such as
            economic recessions, transitions, and human capital stocks.
International Sourcing and Firm
            Learning : Evidence from Serbian Firms
This paper uses merged customs and
            administrative data from Serbian firms to quantify the
            impact of neighboring firms’ importing experience on the
            decision to start sourcing inputs from new markets. The
            analysis finds that firms are more likely to start importing
            from a new market if neighboring firms in the same industry
            and location have experience importing from that market and
            if those firms are increasing their imports over time.
            Further, the results support a distinction between imports
            and exports for the decision to enter foreign markets;
            unlike exports, import sourcing choices are not independent
            across countries. The analysis finds that imports across
            origins are substitutes, not complements. The paper also
            investigates origin-country and firm heterogeneity. The
            results indicate that the impact of neighboring firms’
            importing experience is greater for source countries in the
            European Union market and for firms that are high
            productivity, foreign owned, and previous importers.
            Together, these findings suggest that a firm’s spatial
            connections are an important contributor to its access to
            global markets as sources for inputs.
A Simple Method to Quantify the
            ex-ante Effects of “Deep” Trade Liberalization and “Hard”
            Trade Protection
This paper proposes a simple and
            flexible econometric approach to quantify ex-ante the “deep”
            impact of trade liberalization and the “hard” effects of
            protection with the empirical structural gravity model.
            Specifically, the paper argues that the difference between
            the estimates of border indicator variables for affected and
            non-affected countries can be used as a comprehensive
            measure of the change in bilateral trade costs in response
            to a hypothetical policy change. To demonstrate the
            effectiveness of these methods, the paper focus on the
            integration between the countries from the Central European
            Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) and the European Union (EU),
            which is an important policy application that has not been
            studied before due to lack of data. This analysis overcomes
            this challenge by utilizing a new dataset on trade and
            production that covers all EU countries and all CEFTA
            members (except for Kosovo). The partial equilibrium
            estimates that we obtain confirm the validity of our
            methods, while the corresponding general equilibrium effects
            point to significant and heterogeneous potential gains for
            the CEFTA countries from joining the EU. The proposed
            methods can also be extended to ex-post analysis and are
            readily applicable to other applications, for example,
            “hard” Brexit.