rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
An analysis of physical and monetary
            losses of environmental health and natural resources in India
This study provides estimates of social
            and financial costs of environmental damage in India from
            three pollution damage categories: (i) urban air pollution;
            (ii) inadequate water supply, poor sanitation, and hygiene;
            and (iii) indoor air pollution. It also provides estimates
            based on three natural resource damage categories: (i)
            agricultural damage from soil salinity, water logging, and
            soil erosion; (ii) rangeland degradation; and (iii)
            deforestation. The estimates are based on a combination of
            Indian data from secondary sources and on the transfer of
            unit costs of pollution from a range of national and
            international studies. The study estimates the total cost of
            environmental degradation in India at about 3.75 trillion
            rupees (US$80 billion) annually, equivalent to 5.7 percent
            of gross domestic product in 2009, which is the reference
            year for most of the damage estimates.  Of this total,
            outdoor air pollution accounts for 1.1 trillion rupees,
            followed by the cost of indoor air pollution at 0.9 trillion
            rupees, croplands degradation cost at 0.7 trillion rupees,
            inadequate water supply and sanitation cost at around at 0.5
            trillion rupees, pasture degradation cost at 0.4 trillion
            rupees, and forest degradation cost at 0.1 trillion rupees.
Weathering the storm : responses by
            Cambodian firms to the global financial crisis
Firms have various ways to cope with
            external risks. This paper analyzes the risk coping behavior
            that entails the smoothing of inputs (labor, raw materials,
            or capital). The theoretical framework shows that, if they
            face adjustment costs, firms prefer to smooth their inputs,
            especially if they expect a demand shock to be temporary.
            However, credit constrained firms will be adversely affected
            by the presence of liquidity constraints, and this will
            create a welfare loss due to incomplete smoothing. The
            authors estimate this behavior using a panel of Cambodian
            firms at the time of the 2008 global economic crisis. The
            survey shows that these firms were hard hit by the economic
            crisis between 2008 and 2009, with an average fall in demand
            (sales) of 30 percent. Based on the theoretical framework,
            the analysis can estimate the responsiveness of labor,
            capital, and raw materials input demand to demand shocks. It
            finds that firms try to smooth in particular if they believe
            the shock is temporary; in fact non-credit constrained firms
            reduce their inputs much less than firms that were credit
            constrained when the demand shock is expected to be
            temporary. The paper estimates that the welfare loss from
            incomplete smoothing due to credit constraints is many
            multiples of the adjustment costs of the firms that were not
            credit constrained. This has important policy implications
            about the role of financial sector development and
            regulations beyond the capital market. This micro analysis
            also has macro implications: if all firms expect a shock to
            be permanent, their combined limited smoothing of inputs
            will indeed make the shock more likely to be permanent.
Health costs and benefits of ddt use
            in malaria control and prevention
The Millennium Development Goal of
            achieving near-zero malaria deaths by 2015 has led to a
            re-examination of wider use of DDT
            (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane) in indoor residual
            spraying as a prevention tool in many countries. However,
            the use of DDT raises concerns of potential harm to the
            environment and human health, mainly because of the
            persistent and bio-accumulative nature of DDT and its
            potential to magnify through the food chain. This paper
            quantifies the adverse effects of DDT on human health based
            on treatment costs and indirect costs caused by illnesses
            and death in countries that use or are expected to
            re-introduce DDT in their disease vector control programs.
            At the global level where the total population exposed to
            DDT is estimated around 1.25 billion, the findings indicate
            that while the use of DDT can lead to a significant
            reduction in the estimated $69 billion in 2010 U.S. dollars
            economic loss caused by malaria, it can also add more than
            $28 billion a year in costs from the resulting adverse
            health effects. At the country level, the results suggest
            that Sub-Saharan African countries with high malaria
            incidence rates are likely to see relatively larger net
            benefits from the use of DDT in malaria control. The net
            health benefits of reintroducing DDT in malaria control
            programs could be better understood by weighing the costs
            and benefits of DDT use based on a country's circumstances.
Demystifying China's fiscal stimulus
China's government economic
            stimulus package in 2008-09 appears to have worked well. It
            seems to have been about the right size, included a number
            of appropriate components, and was well timed. Its
            subnational component was designed to maximize the impact of
            the stimulus package on the economy and minimize the
            potential procyclical elements that are usually built into
            subnational fiscal mechanisms in federal countries.
            Moreover, China's massive fiscal stimulus played an
            important role in the overall recovery of the global
            economy. Using a simple analytical framework, this paper
            focuses on two key factors behind the success of the
            stimulus: investments in bottleneck-easing infrastructure
            projects and countercyclical nature of subnational spending
            based on the assumption that well-chosen infrastructure
            projects could improve business climate and thereby crowd in
            the private investment. The paper concludes that the
            expansionary subnational government spending played a key
            role in strengthening the overall impact of the stimulus and
            sustaining growth. It also highlights the importance of
            public investment quality and cautions about the
            sustainability of local government financing through the
            domestic banking system and increases in local governments
            off balance sheet or contingent liabilities. These lessons
            may be of particular relevance today for China, as well as
            other countries, in formulating policy response to another
            global economic slowdown or crisis, possibly as a result of
            the Eurozone turmoil. For China, investing in urban
            infrastructure and green economy, as well as in higher
            quality and better targeted social services, will be crucial
            for improving income inequality and inducing a more
            inclusive growth path.
Export superstars
This paper shows that the top 1 percent
            of exporters critically shape trade patterns, using
            firm-level data from 32 countries. In particular, variation
            in average firm size (the intensive margin) explains over
            two thirds of the variation in the sector distribution of
            exports across countries, the remaining share is explained
            by variation in the number of firms (the extensive margin).
            Variation in average firm size across sectors is largely
            driven by variation in the sectoral distribution of exports
            from the top 1 percent of firms in a country -- export
            superstars. In contrast, the sectoral distribution of
            exports from the remaining 99 percent of firms is more
            similar across countries, and the distribution of the total
            number of firms across sectors is very similar across
            countries. This paper also finds that current export
            superstars typically entered the export market relatively
            large, reached the top 1 percent after less than three years
            of exporting, and account for more than half of a
            country's total exports, export growth and
            diversification. The results underscore the role of
            individual firms in determining both trade volumes and trade patterns.
Making up people -- the effect of
            identity on preferences and performance in a modernizing society
It is typically assumed that being
            hard-working or clever is a trait of the person, in the
            sense that it is always there, in a fixed manner. However,
            in an experiment with almost 600 boys in India, cues to
            one's place in the traditional caste order turn out to
            influence the expression of these traits. The experiment
            assigned students to different treatments with respect to
            the salience of caste and had them solve mazes under
            incentives. It turned out that making caste salient can
            reduce output by about 25 percent, which is equivalent to
            twice the effect on output of being one year younger. The
            channels through which this occurs differ by caste status.
            For the upper castes, the decline in performance under piece
            rates can only be explained by a shift in preferences
            regarding the provision of effort. When the ascriptive caste
            order is cued, upper-caste individuals may think, "I
            don't need to excel." In contrast, for the lower
            castes, which were traditionally "untouchables,"
            publicly revealing caste identity impairs the ability to
            learn and may lead individuals to think, "I can't
            (or don't dare to) excel." This paper provides a
            measure of the impact that ascriptive, hierarchized
            identities can have on preferences and performance after a
            society -- in its public pronouncements and legislation --
            has adopted norms of equality in a formal sense. The
            findings are important because they suggest that when
            contexts cue identities founded on the superseded rules of a
            hierarchical institution, the effects on human capital
            formation and development can be first-order. Contexts that
            make traditional identities salient are an underemphasized
            source of impediments to institutional change.
Determinants of Tanzanian export prices
. This paper uses firm-level data to
            study the pricing-behavior of Tanzanian exporters. The
            important question of how exporting firms make pricing
            decisions has not received significant attention in the
            trade literature, which is more focused on factors that
            determine export flows. The results of the paper show that
            the free on board price of Tanzanian exports is
            differentiated both across exporters -- within
            product-destination pairs -- and across markets -- within
            firm-product pairs. Moreover, contrasting with existing
            evidence, price differentiation across destinations seems to
            be mainly relevant for homogenous goods. This result could
            indicate either that goods classified as homogeneous can
            potentially be differentiated by their intrinsic quality
            (such as coffee), or that firms charge different mark-ups in
            different markets. Although further work is needed to
            confirm what leads to price dispersion, allowing for the
            possibility that food products can be vertically
            differentiable amplifies the spectrum of existing
            opportunities for developing countries to exploit product
            differentiation and market niches. The study also discusses
            the implications of the empirical findings in light of the
            predictions of price and quality competition models, but
            finds that the results cannot be explained by a single trade
            model of quality or price competition.
Innocent bystanders : how foreign
            uncertainty shocks harm exporters
The failure of trade economists to
            anticipate the extreme drop in trade post Lehman Brothers
            bankruptcy suggests that the behavior of trade in
            exceptional circumstances may still be poorly understood.
            This paper explores whether uncertainty shocks have
            explanatory power for movements in trade. VAR estimations on
            United States data suggest that domestic uncertainty is a
            strong predictor of movements in imports, but has little
            effect on exports. Guided by these results, the paper
            estimates a bilateral model with focus on the impact of
            importer uncertainty  on foreign suppliers. It finds that
            there is a strong negative relationship between uncertainty
            and trade and that this relationship is non-linear.
            Uncertainty matters most when its levels are exceptionally
            high. The paper does not find evidence of learning from past
            turmoils, suggesting that prior experience with major
            uncertainty shocks does not reduce the effect on trade. In
            line with the expectations, the negative effect of
            uncertainty shocks on trade is higher for trade
            relationships more intensive in durable goods. Surprisingly,
            however, the effect of durability is non-linear. Supply
            chain considerations or the possibility that the
            relationships with the highest durability lead to important
            compositional effects may have a bearing on the results. The
            results are robust to excluding the post Lehman shock,
            suggesting that the trade response during the 2008-2009
            crisis has been similar to  past uncertainty events.
Oil price risks and pump price adjustments
Between 1999 and 2008, world oil prices
            more than quadrupled in real terms. For oil importers,
            vulnerability to oil price increases, defined as the share
            of gross domestic product spent on net oil imports, rose
            considerably. Considering medians, low-income countries had
            the highest vulnerability in 2008 and the highest increase
            in vulnerability between 1999 and 2008. When changes in
            vulnerability were decomposed into several contributing
            factors, more than two-thirds of 170 countries studied were
            found to have offset the increase in the value of oil
            consumption by reducing the oil intensity of gross domestic
            product. Oil intensity fell in more than half the countries
            in every income group and in every region of the world,
            driven by falling energy intensity and, to a lesser extent,
            the oil share of energy. This study also examines the degree
            of pass-through to consumers of increases in world prices of
            gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas
            between January 2009 and January 2012, when oil prices in
            nominal U.S. dollars more than doubled. Retail fuel prices
            varied by two orders of magnitude in 2012, and oil-exporting
            countries were far less likely to pass on price increases.
            Gasoline had the highest pass-through, followed by diesel,
            liquefied petroleum gas, and kerosene. The median
            pass-through increased with income for gasoline, diesel, and
            kerosene, but was highest in low-income countries for
            liquefied petroleum gas. Despite divergent pricing policies,
            the pass-through coefficients of different fuels were
            strongly positively correlated, suggesting that the degrees
            to which domestic prices tracked world prices were
            comparable for the four fuels in many countries.
What explains big gender disparities
            in India local industrial structures and female entrepreneurship
Despite rapid economic growth, gender
            disparities in women's economic participation have
            remained deep and persistent in India. What explains these
            huge gender disparities? Is it poor infrastructure, limited
            education, and gender composition of the labor force and
            industries? Or is it deficiencies in social and business
            networks and a low share of incumbent female
            entrepreneurs?This paper analyzes the spatial determinants
            of female entrepreneurship in India in the manufacturing and
            services sectors. Good infrastructure and education predict
            higher female entry shares. There are strong agglomeration
            economies in both manufacturing and services, where higher
            female ownership among incumbent businesses within a
            district-industry predicts a greater share of subsequent
            entrepreneurs will be female. Moreover, higher female
            ownership of local businesses in related industries (similar
            labor needs, input-output markets) predicts greater relative
            female entry rates. Gender networks thus clearly matter for
            women's economic participation. However, there is a
            need to develop a better understanding of how gender
            networks influence aggregate efficiency. There is no doubt
            that gender empowerment can be the escalator to realizing
            human potential and for creating a robust platform for
            growth and job creation.
Natural capital, ecological scarcity
            and rural poverty
Much of the rural poor -- who are
            growing in number -- are concentrated in ecologically
            fragile and remote areas. The key ecological scarcity
            problem facing such poor households is a vicious cycle of
            declining livelihoods, increased ecological degradation and
            loss of resource commons, and declining ecosystem services
            on which the poor depend. In addition, developing economies
            with high concentrations of their populations on fragile
            lands and in remote areas not only display high rates of
            rural poverty, but also are some of the poorest countries in
            the world today. Policies to eradicate poverty therefore
            need to be targeted at the poor where they live, especially
            the rural poor clustered in fragile environments and remote
            areas. The specific elements of such a strategy include
            involving the poor in payment for ecosystem services schemes
            and other measures that enhance the environments on which
            the poor depend; targeting investments directly to improving
            the livelihoods of the rural poor, thus reducing their
            dependence on exploiting environmental resources; tackling
            the lack of access of the rural poor in less favored areas
            to well-functioning and affordable markets for credit,
            insurance, and land; and reducing the high transportation
            and transaction costs that prohibit the poorest households
            in remote areas from engaging in off-farm employment and
            limit smallholder participation in national and global markets.
International trade and green growth
            : International trade and green growth
This paper reviews the challenges and
            opportunities raised by international trade for developing
            countries considering a green growth strategy. A key concern
            is the effect of environmental policies on international
            competitiveness. For production-generated pollution, there
            is evidence that stringent environmental policy reduces some
            indicators of competitiveness, but the effect is small in
            most sectors. However, tightening up environmental standards
            is unlikely to reduce international competitiveness when
            pollution is generated by consumption. And where depletion
            of natural capital is a threat, effective environmental
            policy is an important component of a policy aimed at
            developing long-run international competitiveness. The
            effects of trade on environmental policy, the interaction
            between trade and technology transfer, and the interaction
            between trade and transboundary environmental problems are
            also reviewed. An emerging issue is the potential use of
            border taxes to curtail carbon leakage. The paper discusses
            some of the possible responses by developing countries. Some
            work has indicated that export taxes or voluntary export
            restraints applied to carbon-intensive production in
            non-coalition countries may be preferable to a carbon tariff
            regime. The paper concludes by suggesting some topics for
            further research.
The role of technological change in
            green growth
By reducing the costs of environmental
            protection, technological change is important for promoting
            green growth. This entails both the creation of new
            technologies and more widespread deployment of existing
            green technologies. This paper reviews the literature on
            environmentally friendly technological change, with a focus
            on lessons relevant to developing countries. It begins with
            a discussion of the data available for measuring the various
            steps of technological change. It continues with a
            discussion of sources of environmental innovation. Given
            that most innovation is concentrated in a few rich
            countries, this leads to a discussion of the remaining role
            for lower-income countries, followed by a discussion of
            technology transfer. Because of the importance of market
            failures, the paper discusses the role of both technology
            policy and environmental policy for promoting
            environmentally friendly technological change. The review
            concludes with a discussion of what environmental economists
            can learn from other fields.