rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Finding a path to formalization in
            Benin : early results after the introduction of the
            entreprenant legal status
In April 2014, the Government of Benin
            launched the entreprenant status, a simplified and free
            legal regime offered to small informal businesses to enter
            the formal economy. This paper presents the short-term
            results of a randomized impact evaluation testing three
            different versions of the entreprenant status on business
            registration decisions, each version including incremental
            incentives to registration: (i) information on the new legal
            status and its benefits, (ii) business training, counseling
            services, and support to open a bank account, (iii) tax
            mediation services. The study included 3,600 informal
            businesses operating with a fixed location in Cotonou,
            Benin, which were randomly allocated between three treatment
            groups and one control group. One year after the program
            launch, all versions of the program had significant impact
            on formalization rates. The impact was 9.1 percentage points
            in the first treatment group; 13 percentage points in the
            second group; and 15.8 percentage points in the last group.
            The program had a higher impact on male business owners,
            with more education, operating outside Dantokpa Market, in
            sectors other than trade, and that before being offered the
            incentives to formalization had characteristics similar to
            businesses that were already formal. Data from a second
            follow-up survey, which is expected to take place in March
            2016, will explore the impacts on other outcomes, like
            business performances or access to banking.
Finding a path to formalization in
            Benin : early results after the introduction of the
            entreprenant legal status
WPS7510 Policy Research Working Paper 7510

# Finding a Path to Formalization in Benin

Early Results after the Introduction of the _Entreprenant_ Legal Status _Najy Benhassine David McKenzie Victor Pouli uen q Massimiliano Santini_ Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice Group December 2015
The strength of American federal
            democracy : lessons for global development
A review of the history of the United
            States from its colonial origins shows how America's
            successful development has always been guided by two basic
            principles: representative democracy, and a proper division
            of power between national and subnational governments. The
            United States of America was established as an independent
            nation by a congress of delegates from 13 provincial
            assemblies, each of which consisted of representatives
            elected by their communities. Since colonial times, local
            democratic rights have attracted immigrants to help build
            new towns in the growing nation. Responsible local
            governments in America have had the power and the incentive
            to make local public investments for developing prosperous
            communities. Democratic competition in America has been
            strengthened by the ability of successful local leaders to
            become competitive candidates for higher offices. But in
            spite of America's example, many nations since the
            French Revolution have instead been drawn to centralized
            democracy, as national elites may prefer to centralize power
            around themselves. America's successful growth
            ultimately depended on its citizens' basic
            understanding that their welfare and security were enhanced
            by a balanced federal division of power between their
            elected local governments and the higher sovereign
            government of their nation.
Services linkages and the value
            added content of trade
Services trade constitute roughly
            one-third of trade on a value added basis, and much of this
            is concentrated in margin services (transport, logistics)
            linked to trade in goods. However, producer services are
            also part of the value added contained in traded goods. This
            is especially true in high income countries, where services
            account for roughly 70 percent of value added. Working with
            data (a set of global social accounting matrices spanning
            intermittent years from 1992 to 2007) this paper examines
            the services embodied in trade on a value added basis. This
            includes not only the direct and indirect contribution of
            services to value added contained in a given countrys
            exports, but also the extent to which third-country value
            added in services, through intermediate linkages of imported
            goods and services, are also embodied in production and
            trade. This exercise serves to highlight not only the
            importance of non-tradables in trade, but also by extension
            the importance that productivity, foreign affiliates sales,
            and trade and investment in services may hold for
            interdependence and cross-border linkages.
Why is voluntary financial education
            so unpopular Experimental evidence from Mexico
Take-up of voluntary financial education
            programs is typically extremely low. This paper reports on
            randomized experiments around a large financial literacy
            course offered in Mexico City to understand the reasons for
            low take-up, and to measure the impact of financial
            education. It documents that the general public displays
            little interest in such courses and that participation is
            low even among individuals who express interest in financial
            education. The paper experimentally investigates barriers to
            take-up, and finds no impact of relaxing reputational or
            logistical constraints and no evidence that time
            inconsistency is the reason for limited participation. Even
            relatively sizeable monetary incentives get less than 40
            percent of interested individuals invited to training to
            attend. Using a randomized encouragement design, the authors
            measure the impact of the course on financial knowledge and
            behavior. Attending training results in a 9 percentage point
            increase in financial knowledge and a 9 percentage point
            increase in saving outcomes, but no impact on borrowing
            behavior. Administrative data indicate that the savings
            impact is relatively short-lived. The results suggest people
            are making optimal choices not to attend financial education
            courses, and point to the limits of using general purpose
            courses to improve financial behavior for the general population.
Poverty reduction during the
            rural-urban transformation : the role of the missing middle
As countries develop, they restructure
            away from agriculture and urbanize. But structural
            transformation and urbanization patterns differ
            substantially, with some countries fostering migration out
            of agriculture into rural off farm activities and secondary
            towns, and others undergoing rapid agglomeration in mega
            cities. Using cross-country panel data for developing
            countries spanning 1980-2004, the analysis in this paper
            finds that migration out of agriculture into the missing
            middle (the rural nonfarm economy and secondary towns)
            yields more inclusive growth patterns and faster poverty
            reduction than agglomeration in mega cities. This suggests
            that patterns of urbanization deserve much more attention
            when striving for faster poverty reduction.
Jobs, wellbeing, and social cohesion
            : evidence from value and perception surveys
Recent events, including the Arab
            Revolutions and protest movement of unemployed youths in
            OECD countries, have contributed to the popular sentiment
            that access to good jobs is an important driver of social
            cohesion. While economic dimensions of labor market outcomes
            are relatively well documented, evidence on the link between
            social cohesion and employment conditions is still
            surprisingly scarce. This paper, a background report for the
            WDR 2013 on Jobs, presents descriptive evidence that
            illustrates possible linkages between labor market outcomes
            and social cohesion. The findings suggest that, once one
            passes the threshold from low to lower middle income
            countries, formal employment emerges as a determinant of a
            range of outcomes relating to social cohesion, such as
            membership in social associations or levels of political
            activism. There are also indications of an increasing
            association between work and life satisfaction across higher
            and lower middle income countries. The paper concludes with
            a discussion of the study's implications for emerging
            economies whose labor market and social institutions are
            still in transition.
Jobs, wellbeing, and social cohesion
            : evidence from value and perception surveys
WPS6447 Policy Research Working Paper 6447 Background Paper to the 2013 World Development Report Jobs, Wellbeing, and Social Cohesion Evidence from Value and Perception Surveys _Frank-Borge Wietzke Catriona McLeod_ The World Bank Development Economics Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist May 2013
The inequality possibility frontier
            : extensions and new applications
This paper extends the Inequality
            Possibility Frontier approach in two methodological
            directions. It allows the social minimum to increase with
            the average income of a society, and it derives all the
            Inequality Possibility Frontier statistics for two other
            inequality measures besides the Gini. Finally, it applies
            the framework to contemporary data, showing that the
            inequality extraction ratio can be used in the empirical
            analysis of post-1960 civil conflict around the world. The
            duration of conflict and the casualty rate are positively
            associated with the inequality extraction ratio, that is,
            with the extent to which elite pushes the actual inequality
            closer to its maximum level. Inequality, albeit slightly
            reformulated, is thus shown to play a role in explaining
            civil conflict.
Non-farm diversification, poverty,
            economic mobility and income inequality : a case study in
            village India
This paper assembles data at the
            all-India level and for the village of Palanpur, Uttar
            Pradesh, to document the growing importance, and influence,
            of the non-farm sector in the rural economy between the
            early 1980s and late 2000s. The suggestion from the combined
            National Sample Survey and Palanpur data is of a slow
            process of non-farm diversification, whose distributional
            incidence, on the margin, is increasingly pro-poor.  The
            village-level analysis documents that the non-farm sector is
            not only increasing incomes and reducing poverty, but
            appears as well to be breaking down long-standing barriers
            to mobility among the poorest segments of rural society.
            Efforts by the government of India to accelerate the process
            of diversification could thus yield significant returns in
            terms of declining poverty and increased income mobility.
            The evidence from Palanpur also shows, however, that at the
            village-level a significant increase in income inequality
            has accompanied diversification away from the farm.  A
            growing literature argues that such a rise in inequality
            could affect the fabric of village society, the way in which
            village institutions function and evolve, and the scope for
            collective action at the village level.  Failure to keep
            such inequalities in check could thus undermine the pro-poor
            impacts from the process of structural transformation
            currently underway in rural India.
Long-term drivers of food prices
It is becoming increasingly apparent
            that the post-2004, across-the-board, commodity price
            increases, which initially appeared to be a spike similar to
            the ones experienced during the early 1950s (Korean War) and
            the 1970s (oil crises), have a more permanent character.
            From 1997-2004 to 2005-12 nominal prices of energy,
            fertilizers, and precious metals tripled, metal prices went
            up by more than 150 percent, and most food prices doubled.
            Such price increases, especially in food commodities, not
            only fueled a debate on their key causes, but also alarmed
            government officials, leading to calls for coordinated
            policy actions. This paper examines the relative
            contribution of various sector and macroeconomic drivers to
            price changes of five food commodities (maize, wheat, rice,
            soybeans, and palm oil) by applying a reduced-form
            econometric model on 1960-2012 annual data. The drivers
            include stock-to-use ratios, crude oil and manufacturing
            prices, the United States dollar exchange rate, interest
            rate, and income. Based on long-run elasticity estimates
            (approximately -0.25 for the stock-to-use ratios, 0.25 for
            the oil price, -1.25 for the exchange rate, and much less
            for others), the paper estimates the contribution of these
            drivers to food price increases from 1997-2004 to 2005-12.
            It concludes that most of the price increases are accounted
            for by crude oil prices (more than 50 percent), followed by
            stock-to-use ratios and exchange rate movements, which are
            estimated at about 15 percent each. Crude oil prices
            mattered most during the recent boom period because they
            experienced the largest increase.
The labor market impact of mobility
            restrictions : evidence from the West Bank
Using data on Israeli closures inside
            the West Bank, this paper provides new evidence on the labor
            market effects of conflict-induced restrictions to mobility.
            To identify the effects, the analysis exploits the fact that
            the placement of physical barriers by Israel was exogenous
            to local labor market conditions and uses a measure of
            conflict intensity to control for the likely spurious
            correlation between local unrest, labor market conditions,
            and the placement of barriers. The study finds that these
            barriers to mobility have a significant negative effect on
            employment, wages, and days worked per month. The barriers
            had a positive impact on the number of hours per working
            day. These effects are driven mainly by checkpoints while
            other barriers, such as roadblocks and earth mounds, have a
            much more limited impact. Only a tiny portion of the effects
            is due to direct restrictions on workers' mobility,
            suggesting that these restrictions affect the labor market
            mainly by depressing firms' production and labor
            demand. Despite being an underestimation of the actual
            effects, the overall costs of the barriers on the West Bank
            labor market are substantial: in 2007, for example, these
            costs amounted to 6 percent of gross domestic product. Most
            of these costs are due to lower wages, thus suggesting that
            the labor market has adjusted to the restrictions more
            through prices than quantities.
Engaging for results in civil
            service reforms : early lessons from a problem-driven
            engagement in Sierra Leone
Two related propositions have been
            central in the recent debates on public sector reforms. The
            first of these is that the appropriate measure of
            institutional strength is the ability of public sector
            management systems to deliver ("functionality")
            rather than the institutional "form" or what these
            institutions look like. This is a central idea in the World
            Bank's Public Sector Management (PSM) Approach
            2011-2020. Second, and consistent with this, is the
            recognition that the process of engagement matters in the
            sense that how problems, solutions, and reform approaches
            are identified matters at least as much as what the solution
            is. This suggests that development institutions should focus
            on bringing a broad range of stakeholders together and
            facilitate a process of collective problem and solution
            identification.  Recent contributions to the literature
            describe a "Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation"
            approach as a means of putting this idea into practice.
            While both of these propositions have considerable
            intellectual and intuitive appeal, they are based on an
            inductive logic and neither is currently backed with a large
            body of robust evidence. This paper contributes to this
            literature by documenting the experience of a civil service
            reform project -- the World Bank-financed Sierra Leone Pay
            and Performance Project -- the objective of which is to
            improve the performance of the civil service in Sierra Leone
            by targeting a narrowly defined set of critical reforms. The
            paper concludes that intensive, client-led engagement
            together with use of a results-based lending instrument
            provide a promising way forward on a difficult reform agenda.
How to move the exchange rate if you
            must: the diverse practice of foreign exchange intervention
            by central banks and a proposal for doing it better
The paper is about the art of exchange
            rate management by central banks. It begins by reviewing the
            diversity of objectives and practices of central bank
            intervention in the foreign exchange market. Central banks
            typically exercise discretion in determining when and to
            what extent to intervene. Some central banks use publicly
            declared rules of intervention, with the aim of increasing
            visibility and strengthening the signaling channel of
            policy. There is tentative evidence that the volatility of
            foreign exchange reserves is comparatively lower in emerging
            market economies where central banks follow some form of
            rules-based foreign exchange intervention. The paper goes on
            to argue that when the foreign exchange market includes some
            large strategic participants, the central bank can achieve
            superior outcomes if intervention takes the form of a rule,
            or "schedule," indicating commitments to buying
            and selling different quantities of foreign currency
            conditional on the exchange rate. Exchange rate management
            and reserve management can then be treated as two
            independent objectives by the central bank. In line with the
            stylized facts reviewed, this would enable a central bank to
            pursue exchange rate objectives with minimum reserve
            changes, or achieve reserve targets with minimum impact on
            the exchange rate.
Credit-less recoveries : neither a
            rare nor an insurmountable challenge
This paper examines why some countries
            experience economic recoveries without pick-up of bank
            credit (credit-less) and how different this recovery pattern
            is from the case where credit is increased as an economy
            recovers (credit-with). To answer these questions, the paper
            uses quarterly data covering 96 countries and identifies 272
            recovery episodes. It finds that more than 25 percent of all
            recoveries are credit-less and around 45 percent of all
            credit-less recoveries occurred in 2009-10. It also finds
            that output and investment growth tends to be lower in
            credit-less events but, by eight quarters after the trough
            date, the gap between credit-less and credit-with episodes
            is mostly exhausted. Results of the probit estimations show
            that the size of the downturn and the extent of external
            adjustment are associated with the likelihood of credit-less
            recoveries. Moreover, fiscal loosening tends to be related
            to credit-less events while monetary easing and a
            country's decision to seek an International Monetary
            Fund-supported program reduce the probability of credit-less
            recoveries. Finally, the model suggests that many countries
            in the Europe and Central Asia region were likely to
            experience credit-less recoveries following the global
            financial crisis in 2008/09. What is more worrisome for them
            is the fact that they are facing another negative external shock.
International liquidity rents
This paper presents a model of global
            liquidity shortages. Liquid claims are enforceable promises
            that play a transaction role. Since developed economies have
            a comparative advantage in creating liquidity, they export
            liquid claims to emerging economies, resulting in a
            permanent current account deficit. This model suggests that
            unrestricted liquidity flows are (a) welfare reducing for
            emerging economies and (b) Pareto inefficient. The
            inefficiency results both from excessive investment for the
            purpose of creating collateral-backed liquid claims, and
            from excessive global fragility with respect to collateral shocks.