rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Chile : a strategy to promote
            innovative small and medium enterprises
With its strong export orientation and
            emphasis on competitiveness, the Chilean economic model has
            been the envy of its neighbors for more than a decade.
            However, there are underlying vulnerabilities. Historically,
            exports have been concentrated in mining and agriculture,
            sectors dominated by large firms that do not generate a
            large share of employment.  Small and medium enterprises
            play a key role in employment generation and economic
            decentralization in Chile, yet their employment was stagnant
            between 2000 and 2004. Based on work completed in 2003, this
            study provides a review of the Chilean government's
            substantial investment in programs that support small and
            medium enterprises. This review of government programs
            confirms the importance of coordination and an overarching
            strategy, in the form of a National Innovation System, led
            by a single institution. The review also finds that
            demand-driven programs were more likely to be sustainable.
            Finally, the study demonstrates that Chile (and other
            countries with many support programs for small and medium
            enterprises in place) needs an integrated management
            information system to analyze, assess, coordinate, and
            streamline the program portfolio for small and medium
            enterprises in the future.
The effects of local environmental
            institutions on perceptions of smoke and fire problems in Brazil
Environmental concern in developing
            countries has risen rapidly over the past decade. At the
            same time, decentralization and civic participation in
            environmental policy-making have also burgeoned. This paper
            uses data from the Brazilian Municipal Environmental Survey
            2001 to examine the causal effect of municipio (county)
            level environmental institutions on perceptions about
            environmental problems in Brazil. Consistent with models of
            public choice, the analysis assumes that the existence of an
            environmental secretary or an environmental council is
            related to characteristics of the municipio population. To
            control for endogeneity - the possibility that the presence
            of environmental institutions merely signals
            constituents' tastes rather than influences municipal
            actions - the authors construct a system of equations that
            identifies the causal impact of the institutions.
            Estimation via a trivariate probit model allows for
            correlation of unobserved determinants of problem
            perception, presence of an environmental secretary, and
            presence of an environmental council. The results suggest
            that the presence of environmental secretaries has a strong,
            highly significant, positive causal effect on environmental
            problem perception.  Presence of local environmental
            councils with civic participation has a significant but
            weaker impact on environmental problem perception. The
            authors conclude that local environmental institutions
            indeed shape local environmental awareness and that
            participatory institutions can influence local government.
Achieving accelerated and shared
            growth in Ghana : a MAMS-based analysis of costs and opportunities
This paper relies on the recently
            developed Maquette for Millennium Development Goals
            Simulations (MAMS) model to assess the consistency of
            alternative scaling-up and policy packages for growth and
            achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Ghana. In
            the baseline scenario, Ghana's strong near and
            medium-term growth outlook puts it in a good position to
            achieve the poverty Millennium Development Goal ahead of
            schedule, but other goals are likely to remain elusive
            before 2015. In the accelerated growth scenario-which
            addresses the major gaps in water and sanitation and other
            infrastructure-even more rapid growth and poverty reduction
            are possible, but important targets in the areas of
            education, health, and environment remain unattainable.
            Although growth is complementary to achievement of the
            Millennium Development Goals, the authors also find
            important growth-human development trade-offs in the near
            term. The estimates show that the resource requirements for
            achieving the key Millennium Development Goals by 2015 are
            large, reaching US$82 per capita in an illustrative
            foreign-grant financed scenario. Increased intake and
            retention of students contribute to rising scarcity of
            unskilled labor, buttressing unskilled wages, while high
            demand for skills from the sectors related to the Millennium
            Development Goals raises the returns to human capital. These
            developments lead to improvements in the welfare of the
            poorest members of Ghanaian society and contribute to a
            small reduction in overall inequality.
Credit chains and sectoral comovemen
            t: does the use of trade credit amplify sectoral shocks
This paper provides evidence of the
            presence and relevance of a credit-chain amplification
            mechanism by looking at its implications for the correlation
            of industries. In particular, it tests the hypothesis that
            an increase in the use of trade-credit along the
            input-output chain linking two industries results in an
            increase in their correlation. The analysis uses detailed
            data on the correlations and input-output relations of 378
            manufacturing industry-pairs across 44 countries with
            different degrees of use of trade credit. The results
            provide strong support for this hypothesis and indicate that
            the mechanism is quantitatively relevant.
An empirical analysis of Mexican
            merger policy
A newly created dataset including 239
            decisions made by the Mexican Federal Competition Commission
            on horizontal mergers between 1997 and 2001 is used to
            estimate the different factors affecting the
            Commission's resolution. The paper approximates the
            decision making process using two different discrete choice
            models. The results indicate that, contrary to the
            Commission's objective, the presence of efficiency
            gains increases the probability of a case being issued. The
            findings also show that factors different from the ones
            explicitly mentioned by the Commission have a significant
            effect on the Commission's final decision. In
            particular, the presence of a foreign company among the
            would-be merger firms significantly increases the likelihood
            of observing an allowed merger.
Does poverty research in Russia
            follow the scientific method
This paper presents the first critical
            review of literature on poverty published in Russia between
            1992 and 2006. Using a dataset of about 250 publications in
            Russian scientific journals, the authors assess whether the
            poverty research in Russia satisfies the general criteria of
            a scientific publication and if such studies could provide
            reliable guidance to the Russian government as it maps out
            its anti-poverty policies. The findings indicate that only a
            small proportion of papers on poverty published in Russia in
            1992-2006 follow the universally-recognized principles of
            the scientific method. The utility of policy advice based on
            such research is questionable. The authors also suggest
            steps that could, in their view, improve the quality of
            poverty research in Russia.
How to interpret the growing
            phenomenon of private tutoring : human capital deepening,
            inequality increasing, or waste of resources : How to
            interpret the growing phenomenon of private tutoring : human
            capital deepening, inequality increasing, or waste of resources
Private tutoring is now a major
            component of the education sector in many developing
            countries, yet education policy too seldom acknowledges and
            makes use of it. Various criticisms have been raised against
            private tutoring, most notably that it exacerbates social
            inequalities and may even fail to improve student outcomes.
            This paper surveys the literature for evidence on private
            tutoring-the extent of the tutoring phenomenon, the factors
            that explain its growth, and its cost-effectiveness in
            improving student academic performance. It also presents a
            framework for assessing the efficiency and equity effects of
            tutoring. It concludes that tutoring can raise the
            effectiveness of the education system under certain
            reasonable assumptions, even taking into account equity
            concerns, and it offers guidance for attacking corruption
            and other problems that diminish the contributions of the
            tutoring sector.
Valuing access to water - a spatial
            hedonic approach applied to Indian cities
An important infrastructure policy issue
            for rapidly growing cities in developing countries is how to
            raise fiscal revenues to finance basic services in a fair
            and efficient manner. This paper applies hedonic analysis
            that explicitly accounts for spatial spillovers to derive
            the value of improved access to water in the Indian cities
            of Bhopal and Bangalore. The findings suggest that by
            looking at individual or private benefits only, the analysis
            may underestimate the overall social welfare from investing
            in service supply especially among the poorest residents.
            The paper further demonstrates how policy simulations based
            on these estimates help prioritize spatial targeting of
            interventions according to efficiency and equity criteria.
Valuing access to water - a spatial
            hedonic approach applied to Indian cities
WPS4533 Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4533 Valuing Access to Water – A Spatial Hedonic Approach Applied to Indian Cities _Luc Anselin Nancy Lozano-Gracia Uwe Deichmann Somik Lall_ The World Bank Development Research Group Sustainable Rural and Urban Development Team February 2008
Brazil within Brazil : testing the
            poverty map methodology in Minas Gerais
The small-area estimation technique
            developed for producing poverty maps has been applied in a
            large number of developing countries. Opportunities to
            formally test the validity of this approach remain rare due
            to lack of appropriately detailed data. This paper compares
            a set of predicted welfare estimates based on this
            methodology against their true values, in a setting where
            these true values are known. A recent study draws on Monte
            Carlo evidence to warn that the small-area estimation
            methodology could significantly over-state the precision of
            local-level estimates of poverty, if underlying assumptions
            of spatial homogeneity do not hold.  Despite these concerns,
            the findings in this paper for the state of Minas Gerais,
            Brazil, indicate that the small-area estimation approach is
            able to produce estimates of welfare that line up quite
            closely to their true values. Although the setting
            considered here would seem, a priori, unlikely to meet the
            homogeneity conditions that have been argued to be essential
            for the method, confidence intervals for the poverty
            estimates also appear to be appropriate.  However, this
            latter conclusion holds only after carefully controlling for
            community-level factors that are correlated with household
            level welfare.
The extent of the market and stages
            of agricultural specialization
This paper provides empirical evidence
            of nonlinearity in the relationship between crop
            specialization in a village economy and the extent of the
            market (size of the urban market) relevant for the village.
            The results suggest that the portfolio of crops in a village
            economy becomes more diversified initially as the extent of
            the market increases. However, after the market size reaches
            a threshold, the production structure becomes specialized
            again. This evidence on the stages of agricultural
            diversification is consistent with the stages of
            diversification identified in the recent literature for the
            economy as a whole and also for the manufacturing sector.
            The evidence highlights the importance of improving
            farmers' access to markets through investment in
            transport infrastructure and removal of barriers to trading.
Isolation and subjective welfare :
            evidence from South Asia
Using detailed geographical and
            household survey data from Nepal, this article investigates
            the relationship between isolation and subjective welfare.
            This is achieved by examining how distance to markets and
            proximity to large urban centers are associated with
            responses to questions about income and consumption
            adequacy. Results show that isolation is associated with a
            significant reduction in subjective assessments of income
            and consumption adequacy, even after controlling for
            consumption expenditures and other factors. The reduction in
            subjective welfare associated with isolation is much larger
            for households that are already relatively close to markets.
            These findings suggest that welfare assessments based on
            monetary income and consumption may seriously underestimate
            the subjective welfare cost of isolation, and hence will
            tend to bias downward the assessment of benefits to
            isolation-reducing investments such as roads and
            communication infrastructure.
Preferential liberalization and its
            economy-wide effects in Honduras
This paper quantifies the likely
            benefits of trade and investment liberalization in a small,
            poor, open economy, using the accession of Honduras to the
            Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement as
            a case study. The results show that bilateral trade
            liberalization with the United States is likely to have
            almost no effect on welfare in Honduras, while the
            reciprocal removal of protection vis-a-vis the rest of
            Central America would lead to significantly larger gains.
            Potential gains from increased net foreign direct investment
            inflows overwhelm those expected from trade reform alone,
            particularly if the new foreign direct investment generates
            productivity spillovers. However, if it is to replace
            Honduran investment rather than complement domestic capital
            formation, growth performance is unlikely to improve and may
            even suffer. The paper's results identify several areas
            for policy attention by Honduran policy makers to make the
            Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement
            more development-friendly. These include carefully
            considering the budgetary implications of trade reform,
            widening social safety nets to counter the trends toward
            increasing income inequality, and sequencing the reforms to
            ensure a close alignment of Honduras' comparative
            advantage on the regional and global markets.
Heterogeneous technology and panel
            data : the case of the agricultural production function
The paper presents empirical analysis of
            a panel of countries to estimate an agricultural production
            function using a measure of capital in agriculture absent
            from most studies. The authors employ a heterogeneous
            technology framework where implemented technology is chosen
            jointly with inputs to interpret information obtained in the
            empirical analysis of panel data. The paper discusses the
            scope for replacing country and time effects by observed
            variables and the limitations of instrumental variables. The
            empirical results differ from those reported in the
            literature for cross-country studies, largely in augmenting
            the role of capital, in combination with productivity gains,
            as a driver of agricultural growth. The results indicate
            that total factor productivity increased at an average rate
            of 3.2 percent, accounting for 59 percent of overall growth.
            Most of the remaining gains stem from large inflows of fixed
            capital into agriculture. The results also suggest possible
            constraints to fertilizer use.
License to sell : the effect of
            business registration reform on entrepreneurial activity in Mexico
This paper studies the effect of
            business registration regulation on economic activity using
            micro-level data. The identification strategy exploits the
            fact that a recent business registration reform in Mexico
            was introduced in different municipalities at different
            points in time. Using panel data from the Mexican employment
            survey, I find that the reform increased the number of
            registered businesses by 5 percent in eligible industries.
            This increase was due to former wage earners opening
            businesses. Former unregistered business owners were not
            more likely to register their business after the reform.
            Moreover, employment in eligible industries went up by 2.8
            percent, and people who were previously unemployed or out of
            the labor force were more likely to work as wage earners
            after the reform. Finally, the results imply that the
            competition from new entrants lowered prices by 0.6 percent
            and decreased the income of incumbent businesses by 3.2 percent.
Risk-based supervision of pension
            institutions in Denmark
This paper examines the move towards
            risk-based supervision of pension institutions in Denmark.
            Although Denmark has not adopted a comprehensive model to
            assess risk it has developed a number of building blocks
            which it uses for risk-based assessment.  The motivations
            for improving risk assessment include a desire to identify
            emerging problems, and concerns about the solvency of
            pension institutions. In Denmark there is extensive use of
            guaranteed minimum returns in both the accumulation and
            payout phases which create substantial obligations on
            pension institutions, and focus attention on the integrity
            and solvency of the institutions which provide them.  In
            conjunction with freeing up investment restrictions and
            moving towards market valuation of assets, the supervisor
            has introduced a 'traffic light' stress test model
            which calculates the effect of several market scenarios -
            the red test which is the more plausible and the yellow test
            which is possible but less likely. In addition to the use of
            the traffic light system, there has been a growing emphasis
            on the adequacy of internal risk control systems and greater
            reliance on market discipline.  Pension institutions have
            sought to reduce their exposure to market volatility by
            better matching of assets and liabilities.  There is a much
            better understanding of the risks inherent in the pension
            institutions' portfolios, and there has been a
            substantial increase in the use of hedging instruments.
Can China continue feeding itself
            the impact of climate change on agriculture
Several studies addressing the supply
            and demand for food in China suggest that the nation can
            largely meet its needs in the coming decades.  However,
            these studies do not consider the effects of climate change.
            This paper examines whether near future expected changes in
            climate are likely to alter this picture. The authors
            analyze the effect of temperature and precipitation on net
            crop revenues using a cross section consisting of both
            rainfed and irrigated farms.  Based on survey data from
            8,405 households across 28 provinces, the results of the
            Ricardian analysis demonstrate that global warming is likely
            to be harmful to China but the impacts are likely to be very
            different in each region.  The mid latitude region of China
            may benefit from warming but the southern and northern
            regions are likely to be damaged by warming.  More
            precipitation is beneficial to Chinese farmers except in the
            wet southeast.  Irrigated and rainfed farmers have similar
            responses to precipitation but not to temperature.  Warmer
            temperatures may benefit irrigated farms but they are likely
            to harm rainfed farms.  Finally, seasonal effects vary and
            are offsetting.  Although we were able to measure the direct
            effect of precipitation and temperature, we could not
            capture the effects of change in water flow which will be
            very important in China.  Can China continue feeding itself
            if climate changes?  Based on the empirical results, the
            likely gains realized by some farmers will nearly offset the
            losses that will occur to other farmers in China.  If future
            climate scenarios lead to significant reductions in water,
            there may be large damages not addressed in this study.
Exiting a lawless state
An earlier paper showed that an economy
            could be trapped in an equilibrium state in which the
            absence of the rule of law led to asset-stripping, and the
            prevalence of asset-stripping led to the absence of a demand
            for the rule of law, highlighting a coordination failure.
            This paper looks more carefully at the dynamics of
            transition from a non-rule-of-law state. The paper
            identifies a commitment problem as the critical feature
            inhibiting the transition:  the inability, under a rule of
            law, to forgive theft. This can lead to the perpetuation of
            the non-rule-of-law state, even when it might seem that the
            alternative is Pareto-improving.