rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Crisis in Latin America :
            infrastructure investment, employment and the expectations
            of stimulus
Infrastructure investment is a central
            part of the stimulus plans of the Latin American and the
            Caribbean (LAC) region as it confronts the growing financial
            crisis. This paper estimates the potential effects on
            direct, indirect, and induced employment for different types
            of infrastructure projects with LAC-specific variables. The
            analysis finds that the direct and indirect short-term
            employment generation potential of infrastructure capital
            investment projects may be considerable - averaging around
            40,000 annual jobs per US$1billion in LAC, depending upon
            such variables as the mix of subsectors in the investment
            program; the technologies deployed; local wages for skilled
            and unskilled labor; and the degrees of leakages to imported
            inputs. While these numbers do not account for substitution
            effect, they are built around an assumed "basket"
            of investments that crosses infrastructure sectors most of
            which are not employment-maximizing. Albeit limited in
            scope, rural road maintenance projects may employ 200,000 to
            500,000 annualized direct jobs for every US$1billion spent.
            The paper also describes the potential risks to effective
            infrastructure investment in an environment of crisis
            including sorting and planning contradictions, delayed
            implementation and impact, affordability, and corruption.
Does the village fund matter in Thailand
This paper evaluates the impact of the
            Thailand Village and Urban Revolving Fund on household
            expenditure, income, and assets. The revolving fund was
            launched in 2001 when the Government of Thailand promised to
            provide a million baht (about $22,500) to every village and
            urban community in Thailand as working capital for
            locally-run rotating credit associations. The money  about
            $2 billion in total  was quickly disbursed to locally-run
            committees in almost all of Thailands 74,000 villages and
            more than 4,500 urban (including military) communities. By
            May 2005, the committees had lent a total of about $8
            billion, with an average loan of $466. Using data from the
            Thailand Socioeconomic Surveys of 2002 and 2004, each of
            which surveys almost 35,000 households, the authors find
            that the borrowers were disproportionately poor and
            agricultural. A propensity score matching model finds that
            Fund borrowing in 2004 was associated with, on average, 1.9
            percent more income, 3.3 percent more expenditure, and about
            5 percent more ownership of durable goods. These results are
            broadly consistent with the results from instrumental
            variables models (where the identifying instrument was the
            inverse of village size), which however show a smaller
            (marginal) effect. Households that borrowed both from the
            revolving fund and from the Bank of Agriculture and
            Agricultural Cooperatives gained substantially more in terms
            of higher income than those who borrowed from either one or
            the other or from neither.
Too poor to grow
Recent theoretical literature has
            suggested a variety of mechanisms through which poverty may
            deter growth and become self-perpetuating. A few papers have
            searched for empirical regularities consistent with those
            mechanisms  such as aggregate non-convexities and
            convergence clubs. However, a seemingly basic implication of
            the theoretical models, namely that countries suffering from
            higher levels of poverty should grow less rapidly, has
            remained untested. This paper attempts to fill that gap and
            provide a direct empirical assessment of the impact of
            poverty on growth. The papers strategy involves including
            poverty indicators among the explanatory variables in an
            otherwise standard empirical growth equation. Using a large
            panel dataset, the authors find that poverty has a negative
            impact on growth that is significant both statistically and
            economically. This result is robust to a variety of
            specification changes, including (i) different poverty
            lines; (ii) different poverty measures; (iii) different sets
            of control variables; (iv) different estimation methods; (v)
            adding inequality as a control variable; and (vi) allowing
            for nonlinear effects of inequality on growth. The paper
            also finds evidence that the adverse effect of poverty on
            growth works through investment: high poverty deters
            investment, which in turn lowers growth. Further, the data
            suggest that this mechanism only operates at low levels of
            financial development, consistent with the predictions of
            theoretical models that underscore financial market
            imperfections as a key ingredient of poverty traps.
Subnational credit ratings : a
            comparative review
This paper surveys methodological issues
            in subnational credit ratings and highlights key challenges
            for developing countries. Subnational borrowing from capital
            markets has been on the rise owing to fiscal
            decentralization and demand for infrastructure investments.
            A prerequisite for accessing capital markets, subnational
            credit ratings have also emerged as a part of broader reform
            for fiscal sustainability. They facilitate a more
            transparent budgetary and financial management system. The
            global financial crisis makes subnational credit ratings
            more relevant, as they contribute to fiscal risk evaluations
            and fiscal adjustment. In addition to subnationals own
            credit strength, the creditworthiness of the sovereign and
            the intergovernmental fiscal system are among the most
            critical rating criteria. Implicit and contingent
            liabilities are integral to the rating process. Indirect
            debt instruments including off-balance-sheet financing
            create fiscal risks. The ongoing financial crisis has
            reinforced the rating focus on the management of liquidity,
            debt structure, and off-balance-sheet liabilities.
Lock-in effects of road expansion on
            CO2 emissions : results from a core-periphery model of Beijing
In the urban planning literature, it is
            frequently explicitly asserted or strongly implied that
            ongoing urban sprawl and decentralization can lead to
            development patterns that are unsustainable in the long run.
            One manifestation of such an outcome is that if extensive
            road investments occur, urban sprawl and decentralization
            are advanced and locked-in, making subsequent investments in
            public transit less effective in reducing vehicle kilometers
            traveled by car, gasoline use and carbon dioxide emissions.
            Using a simple core-periphery model of Beijing, the authors
            numerically assess this effect. The analysis confirms that
            improving the transit travel time in Beijings core would
            reduce the citys overall carbon dioxide emissions, whereas
            the opposite would be the case if peripheral road capacity
            were expanded. This effect is robust to perturbations in the
            models calibrated parameters. In particular, the effect
            persists for a wide range of assumptions about how location
            choice depends on travel time and a wide range of
            assumptions about other aspects of consumer preferences.
Who migrates overseas and is it
            worth their while an assessment of household survey data
            from Bangladesh
The paper assesses the costs and
            household level benefits of migrating overseas from
            Bangladesh. The authors survey households who have had
            overseas migrants to assess their characteristics compared
            to non-migrants. They also compute various types of
            migration and remittance related transaction costs and
            discuss the channels by which overseas migration is
            financed, remittances sent and the constraints faced by the
            poorest. Using the Propensity Score Matching method, the
            paper finds that overseas migration conveys substantial
            benefits to families as measured by household consumption,
            use of modern agricultural inputs, and level of household
            savings. The authors also offer some possible policy
            directions to strengthen the returns from migration as well
            as reduce some of the costs.
Determinants of globalization and
            growth prospects for Sub-Saharan African countries
Over the decades leading to the global
            financial crisis, the world witnessed a deepening
            integration of world economies, irrespective of a countrys
            geographical location on the spherical space. This process
            of increasing interdependence of world economies, most
            notably illustrated by the scale of financial flows and
            movements of goods and services now termed globalization,
            has been facilitated by research and development and
            advances in technology, especially in the area of
            information and communication technology. In spite of its
            global nature, its expected benefits have not been uniformly
            distributed, however. This paper shows that the countries
            and regions that are driving the process of knowledge
            creation and production of high-tech and manufactured goods,
            building on frontier technology, are benefiting the most
            from globalization, increasingly acting as drivers and
            relegating Sub-Saharan Africa to the end-user status. In
            this process, the income gap between Sub-Saharan Africa and
            the globalizers has increased even more. However, the paper
            also shows that raising the level of technological endowment
            in Sub-Saharan Africa to that of developed countries could
            go a long way to bridge Africa's output gaps and
            improve its export performance in the new globalization
            landscape of the post-financial crisis era.
Finance in Africa - Achievements and
            Challenges : Finance in Africa - Achievements and Challenges
In spite of shallow financial markets,
            Sub-Saharan Africa will not escape the repercussions of the
            global financial crisis. The global turmoil threatens the
            progress Sub-Saharan Africa has made in financial sector
            deepening and broadening over the recent years and
            underlines the importance of continuing and deepening the
            necessary institutional reforms.  In this context it is
            important to define the role of government in expanding
            financial sectors in a sustainable and market-friendly
            manner.  Foreign banks have brought more benefits than risks
            for their host economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, but are
            certainly not a panacea and not a substitute for
            institutional and policy reform. The profile of foreign
            banks, however, has changed, with more and more regional
            banks emerging. This trend toward regional integration is
            promising as it might allow the small African financial
            system to reap benefits from scale economies, but it also
            requires regulatory and supervisory improvements and
            coordination across the region.
Banking crises and exports : lessons
            from the past
This paper analyzes the impact of
            banking crises on manufacturing exports exploiting the fact
            that sectors differ in their needs for external financing.
            Relying on data from 23 banking crises episodes involving
            both developed and developing countries during the period
            1980-2000 the authors separate the impact of banking crises
            on export growth from that of other exogenous shocks (i.e.
            demand shocks). Their findings show that during a crisis the
            export of sectors more dependent on external finance grow
            significantly less than other sectors. However, this result
            holds only for sectors depending more heavily on banking
            finance as opposed to inter-firm finance. Furthermore,
            sectors characterized by higher degree of assets tangibility
            appear to be more resilient in the face of a banking crisis.
            The effect of the banking crises on exports is robust and
            additional to external demand shocks. The effect of the
            latter is independent and additional to that of a banking
            shock, and is particularly significant for sectors producing
            durable goods.
When do sudden stops really hurt
This paper analyzes the drivers and
            consequences of sudden stops of capital flows. It focuses on
            the impact of external vulnerability on the depth and length
            of sudden stop crises. The authors analyze 43 developing and
            developed countries between 1993 and 2006. They find
            evidence that external vulnerability not only significantly
            impacts the probability of a sudden stop crisis, but also
            prolongs the time it takes for growth to revert to its
            long-term trend once a sudden stop occurs. Interestingly,
            external vulnerability does not significantly impact the
            size of the instantaneous output effect in case of a sudden
            stop but prompts a cumulative output effect through
            significantly diminishing the speed of adjustment of output
            to its trend. This finding implies that countries financing
            a large part of their absorption externally do not suffer
            more ferocious output losses in a sudden stop crisis, but
            take longer to adapt afterward and are hence expected to
            suffer more protracted crises periods. Compared with
            previous literature, this paper makes three contributions:
            (i) it extends the country and time coverage relative to
            datasets that have previously been used to analyze related
            topics; (ii) it specifically accounts for time-series
            autocorrelation; and (iii) it provides an analysis of the
            adjustment path of economic growth after a sudden stop.
How many more infants are likely to
            die in Africa as a result of the global financial crisis
The human consequences of the current
            global financial crisis for the developing world are
            presumed to be severe yet few studies have quantified such
            impact. The authors estimate the additional number of infant
            deaths in sub-Saharan Africa likely due to the crisis and
            discuss possible mitigation strategies. They pool
            birth-level data as reported in female adult retrospective
            birth histories from all Demographic and Health Surveys
            collected in sub-Saharan Africa nations. This results in a
            data set of 639,000 births to 264,000 women in 30 countries.
            The authors use regression models with flexible controls for
            temporal trends to assess an infants likelihood of death as
            a function of fluctuations in national income. They then
            apply this estimated likelihood to expected growth
            shortfalls as a result of the crisis. At current growth
            projections, their estimates suggest there will be 30,000 -
            50,000 excess infant deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of
            these additional deaths are likely to be poorer children
            (born to women in rural areas and lower education levels)
            and are overwhelmingly female. If the crisis continues to
            worsen the number of deaths may grow much larger, especially
            those to girls. Policies that protect the income of poor
            households and that maintain critical health services during
            times of economic contraction should be considered.
            Interventions targeted at female infants and young girls may
            be particularly beneficial.
Potential gains from capital flight
            repatriation for Sub-Saharan African countries
Despite the recent increase in capital
            flows to Sub-Saharan Africa, the region remains largely
            marginalized in financial globalization and chronically
            dependent on official development aid. And with the
            potential decline in the level of official development
            assistance in a context of global financial crisis, the need
            to increase domestic resources mobilization as well as
            non-debt generating external resources is critical now more
            than ever before. However, the debate on resource
            mobilization has overlooked an important untapped source of
            funds consisting of the massive stocks of private wealth
            stashed in Western financial centers, a substantial part of
            which left the region in the form of capital flight. This
            paper argues that the repatriation of flight capital should
            take a more prominent place in this debate from a moral
            standpoint and for clear economic reasons. On the moral
            side, the argument is that a large proportion of the capital
            flight legitimately belongs to the Africans and therefore
            must be restituted to the legitimate claimants. The economic
            argument is that repatriation of flight capital will propel
            the sub-continent on a higher sustainable growth path while
            preserving its financial stability and without mortgaging
            the welfare of its future generations through external
            borrowing. The analysis in the paper demonstrates
            quantitatively that the gains from repatriation are large
            and dominate the expected benefits from other sources such
            as debt relief. It is estimated that if only a quarter of
            the stock of capital flight was repatriated to Sub-Saharan
            Africa, the region would go from trailing to leading other
            developing regions in terms of domestic investment, thus
            initiating a big-push-led sustainable long-term economic
            growth. The paper proposes some strategies for inducing
            capital flight repatriation, but cautions that the success
            of this program is contingent on strong political will on
            the part of African and Western governments and effective
            coordination and cooperation at the global level.
Africa and Arab Gulf states :
            divergent development paths and prospects for convergence
In spite of the similarities between
            Sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab Gulf region (Gulf
            Cooperation Council states), development policies
            implemented in these two regions of the world have produced
            markedly different and even divergent outcomes. While Gulf
            Cooperation Council states have drawn on hydrocarbon
            revenues to dramatically transform their economic landscape,
            Sub-Saharan African countries have exhibited abysmal
            economic and social outcomes. The remarkable increase in
            personal income and large current account surpluses in Arab
            Gulf states is in sharp contrast with widespread poverty and
            recurrent balance of payments crises in Sub-Saharan Africa.
            This paper reviews the possible causes of these divergent
            development paths and discusses the prospects for economic
            convergence in the new globalization landscape of growing
            trade ties between the two regions. In particular, it shows
            that development models underpinned by institutional
            continuity and intergenerational accountability could
            enhance long-run growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and income
            convergence between the two regions.
Ex-ante methods to assess the impact
            of social insurance policies on labor supply with an
            application to Brazil
This paper solves and estimates a
            stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to
            assess how changes in the design of the unemployment
            benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings
            rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of
            the formal sector, and retirement decisions.  Dynamics
            depend on five main parameters: preferences regarding
            consumption and leisure, preferences regarding formal Vs.
            informal work, attitudes towards risks, the rate of time
            preference, and the distribution of an exogenous shock that
            affects movements in and out of the social security system
            (given individual decisions). The yearly household survey is
            used to create a pseudo panel by age-cohorts and estimate
            the joint distribution of model parameters based on a
            generalized version of the Gibbs sampler. The model does a
            good job in replicating the distribution of the members of a
            given cohort across states (in or out of the social security
            / active or retired). Because the parameters are related to
            individual preferences or exogenous shocks, the joint
            distribution is unlikely to change when the social insurance
            system changes.  Thus, the model is used to explore how
            alternative policy interventions could affect behaviors and
            through this channel benefit levels and fiscal costs. The
            results from various simulations provide three main
            insights: (i) the Brazilian SI system today might generate
            distortions (lower savings rates and less formal employment)
            that increase the costs of the system and might generate
            regressive redistribution; (ii) there are important
            interactions between the unemployment benefits and pension
            systems, which calls for joint policy analysis when
            considering reforms; and (iii) current distortions could be
            reduced by creating an actuarial link between contributions
            and benefits and then combining matching contributions and
            anti-poverty targeted transfers to cover individuals with
            limited or no savings capacity.