rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
How important is the efficiency of
            government investment The case of the Republic of Congo
The Republic of Congo, an oil rich
            country in Central Africa, has made substantial progress in
            the past decade in stabilizing the economy and achieving
            high growth rates. However, despite reaching middle-income
            country status in 2006, the economy is not diversified,
            poverty remains pervasive, and social indicators are well
            below the average for countries with a similar income level.
            This paper analyzes aspects of an ambitious investment
            program on which the government has embarked to improve the
            provision of basic services and promote private sector
            development. The success of this program, however, is
            questionable given the low absorptive capacity of the
            country and in particular the poor efficiency of public
            investment management. The analysis is based on simulations
            with an economy-wide model for analysis of development
            strategies and government policies, MAMS (Maquette for MDG
            Simulations). The results of the simulations show that
            slightly delaying large investment projects, while
            simultaneously improving the efficiency of the investment
            program, would lead to significantly higher growth rates and
            lower poverty levels. The analysis therefore confirms the
            importance of efficient public investment management for the
            optimal use of the country's resources.
From growth to green growth -- a framework
Green growth is about making growth
            processes resource-efficient, cleaner and more resilient
            without necessarily slowing them. This paper aims at
            clarifying these concepts in an analytical framework and at
            proposing foundations for green growth. The green growth
            approach proposed here is based on (1) focusing on what
            needs to happen over the next 5-10 years before the world
            gets locked into patterns that would be prohibitively
            expensive and complex to modify and (2) reconciling the
            short and the long term, by offsetting short-term costs and
            maximizing synergies and economic co-benefits. This, in
            turn, increases the social and political acceptability of
            environmental policies. This framework identifies channels
            through which green policies can potentially contribute to
            economic growth. However, only detailed country- and
            context-specific analyses for each of these channels could
            reach firm conclusion regarding their actual impact on
            growth. Finally, the paper discusses the policies that can
            be implemented to capture these co-benefits and
            environmental benefits. Since green growth policies pursue a
            variety of goals, they are best served by a combination of
            instruments: price-based policies are important but are only
            one component in a policy tool-box that can also include
            norms and regulation, public production and direct
            investment, information creation and dissemination,
            education and moral suasion, or industrial and innovation policies.
Power tariffs : caught between cost
            recovery and affordability
This is the first paper to build a
            comprehensive empirical picture of power pricing practices
            across Sub-Saharan Africa, based on a new database of tariff
            structures in 27 countries for the years 2004-2008. Using a
            variety of quantitative indicators, the paper evaluates the
            performance of electricity tariffs against four key policy
            objectives: recovery of historic power production costs,
            efficient signaling of future power production costs,
            affordability to low income households, and distributional
            equity. As regards cost recovery, 80 percent of the
            countries in the sample fully recover operating costs, while
            only around 30 percent of the countries are practicing full
            recovery of capital costs. However, due to the fact that
            future power development may be based on a shift toward more
            economic technologies than those available in the past,
            existing tariffs look as though they would be consistent
            with Long Run Marginal Costs in nearly 40 percent of
            countries and hence provide efficient pricing signals. As
            regards affordability, today's average effective
            tariffs are affordable for 90 percent of today's
            customers. However, they would only be affordable for 25
            percent of households that remain unconnected to the grid.
            Tariffs consistent with full recovery of economic costs
            would be affordable for 70 percent of the population. As
            regards equity, the highly regressive patterns of access to
            power services, ensure that subsidies delivered through
            electricity tariffs are without exception also highly
            regressive in distributional incidence. The conclusion is
            that achieving all four of these policy objectives
            simultaneously is almost impossible in the context of the
            high-cost low-income environment that characterizes much of
            SSA today. Hence most countries find themselves caught
            between cost recovery and affordability.
Spending on Public Infrastructure :
            A Practitioner~^!!^s Guide : Spending on Public
            Infrastructure : A Practitioner's Guide
This paper provides a methodological
            tool to support the collection and preparation of
            standardized, comprehensive data regarding public spending
            on infrastructure services that can be rigorously compared
            across countries. Infrastructure is defined to cover six
            sectors: irrigation, energy (primarily power), transport,
            communication, wastewater management, and water supply. The
            guide is designed to provide a much richer and more complete
            measurement of infrastructure spending than the limited
            highly aggregated data currently available through the IMF
            Government Financial Statistics. Originally developed for
            Africa, the methodology is relevant and readily applicable
            to any developing country. With the aim of being as
            comprehensive as possible, the methodology covers central
            and sub-national government expenditures, non-budgetary
            vehicles (such as road funds), state-owned enterprises
            (SOEs), and public-private partnerships (PPPs). While the
            methodology focuses on collecting quantitative data on the
            level and composition of spending, this is complemented with
            qualitative data that provides the institutional context.
            Importantly, the methodology allows for cross-classification
            of infrastructure spending by purpose (power, roads, etc)
            and by function (operational versus capital spending). This
            guide provides practical guidance -- including concepts,
            definitions, and classifications -- for each of the three
            stages of work, namely: (i) pre-field, (ii) field, and (iii)
            back office.
The relative volatility of commodity
            prices : a reappraisal
This paper studies the volatility of
            commodity prices on the basis of a large dataset of monthly
            prices observed in international trade data from the United
            States over the period 2002 to 2011. The conventional wisdom
            in academia and policy circles is that primary commodity
            prices are more volatile than those of manufactured
            products, although most of the existing evidence does not
            actually attempt to measure the volatility of prices of
            individual goods or commodities. The literature tends to
            focus on trends in the evolution and volatility of ratios of
            price indexes composed of multiple commodities and products.
            This approach can be misleading. Indeed, the evidence
            presented in this paper suggests that on average prices of
            individual primary commodities are less volatile than those
            of individual manufactured goods. However, the challenges of
            managing terms of trade volatility in developing countries
            with concentrated export baskets remain.
Stress-testing croatian households
            with debt -- implications for financial stability
The purpose of this paper is to stress
            test the resilience of Croatian households with debt to
            economic shocks. The shocks not only impact a
            household's welfare, but also increase the probability
            of loan default. As a result, there is a direct link between
            these stress-testing exercises and financial stability
            risks. The authors find that very few households are at risk
            as a result of the shocks experienced over the past few
            years; new vulnerable households represent about 2 percent
            of all households, 6 percent of households with debt, and
            2-3 percent of aggregate banking system assets. This
            suggests that household over-indebtedness in Croatia is
            unlikely to become a drag on aggregate economic activity and
            that financial stability risks remain manageable. One caveat
            should be noted. Some 27-31 percent of households with debt,
            representing 8-9 of banking system assets, are vulnerable
            even before being subjected to an economic shock. Since NPLs
            were low before the global financial crisis, it can be
            argued that banks knew something about some of these
            households that is not captured by household budget surveys.
            It follows that the calculations in this paper should
            primarily focus on the increased vulnerability of households
            as a result of shocks and are likely to represent an upper
            bound to the financial stability risks faced by Croatia on
            account of household indebtedness.
Migration, remittances and forests :
            disentangling the impact of population and economic growth
            on forests
International migration has increased
            rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a
            remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their
            home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the
            rural economic growth brought about by migration and
            remittances on Nepal's Himalayan forests. The authors
            assemble a unique village-panel dataset combining remote
            sensing data on land use and forest cover change with data
            from the census and multiple rounds of living standards
            surveys to test various inter-relationships between
            population, economic growth and forests. The results suggest
            that rural economic growth spurred by remittances has had an
            overall positive impact on forests. The paper also finds
            that remittances caused an increase in rural wages and an
            increase in income, but a decrease in land prices.
            Considered together, however, the relationship between
            forests and remittances is driven largely through the income
            channel, indicating that the demand for amenities provided
            by forests in the rural Nepali setting may have been more
            important than factor prices in influencing land use changes
            for the period of the study.
Fact or artefact : the impact of
            measurement errors on the farm size - productivity relationship
This paper revisits the role of land
            measurement error in the inverse farm size and productivity
            relationship. By making use of data from a nationally
            representative household survey from Uganda, in which
            self-reported land size information is complemented by plot
            measurements collected using Global Position System devices,
            the authors reject the hypothesis that the inverse
            relationship may just be a statistical artifact linked to
            problems with land measurement error. In particular, the
            paper explores: (i) the determinants of the bias in land
            measurement, (ii) how this bias varies systematically with
            plot size and landholding, and (iii) the extent to which
            land measurement error affects the relative advantage of
            smallholders implied by the inverse relationship. The
            findings indicate that using an improved measure of land
            size strengthens the evidence in support of the existence of
            the inverse relationship.
Economic integration in the lower
            Congo region : opening the Kinshasa-Brazzaville bottleneck
This working paper assesses cross-border
            economic integration in the Lower Congo region. It focuses
            on the Kinshasa-Brazzaville conurbation, which is projected
            to become Africa's largest urban area by 2025, and is
            already serving as the gateway to large hinterlands. Despite
            their size and proximity, formal economic exchanges between
            the two cities are extremely limited. The volume of recorded
            passenger travel between Kinshasa and Brazzaville
            corresponds to about one-fifth of the volume of traffic
            between East and West Berlin during the time of the Berlin
            Wall, and formal trade volumes are derisorily small. As a
            consequence, the authors find evidence of statistically
            significant differences in retail prices, indicating
            unexploited scope for cross-river arbitrage. Through a
            survey of firms, they find that local traders perceive
            substantial scope for increasing cross-border economic
            activity if cross-river trade costs were reduced. Trade in
            locally produced goods and by small firms would especially
            benefit from such reductions. Existing high trade costs
            mainly result from a lack of competition in cross-river
            transport services, which are dominated by a duopoly of
            state-controlled operators. High administrative border
            costs, exacerbated by the presence of multiple government
            agencies at the border, act as a further obstacle.
            Liberalization of cross-river transport and customs reform
            could yield large economic benefits for local producers and consumers.
An attempt to measure the trends in
            shadow employment in Poland : An attempt to measure the
            trends in shadow employment in Poland
This paper presents the results of an
            attempt to use the combined results of the dedicated survey
            performed by CASE in 2007 and Polish LFS data in order to:
            (a) analyze the development of the shadow employment in
            Poland in years 2003-2008 and, (b) analyze the transition
            probabilities in and out of shadow employment. The estimated
            share of shadow workers in total employment in Poland in
            years 2003-2008 was increasing until 2006 and then started
            to decrease in the years 2007 and 2008. Other results are in
            line with one of the main conclusions of the CASE study from
            2007 suggesting that shadow employment is more a way of
            coping with lack of other employment opportunities than an
            equivalent or even superior alternative to any legal
            employment contracts. On the other hand those who enter
            shadow employment are more active part of the group having
            problems with finding full time/open term employment. They
            are much more inclined to cope with their situation by
            entering some form of self-employment than to stay passive
            and depend on social assistance.
Tax morale, eastern Europe and
            European enlargement
This study tries to remedy the current
            lack of tax compliance research analyzing tax morale in 10
            Eastern European countries that joined the European Union in
            2004 or 2007. By exploring tax morale differences between
            1999 and 2008, it shows that tax morale has decreased in 7
            out of 10 Eastern European countries. This lack of
            sustainability may support the incentive based
            conditionality hypothesis that the European Union only has a
            limited ability to influence tax morale over time. The
            author observes that events and processes at the country
            level are crucial to understanding tax morale. Factors such
            as perceived government quality and trust in the justice
            system and the government are positively correlated with tax
            morale in 2008.
Informal workers across Europe :
            evidence from 30 European countries
The European Social Survey data are used
            to analyze informal employment in 30 countries, focusing on
            employees without contracts and on informal self-employed
            workers (who are distinguished from formal workers). Overall
            the size of informal employment decreases from South to West
            to East to North. However, working without a contract is
            more prevalent in Eastern Europe than in the West, except
            for Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Austria. Between 2004
            and 2009, no cases were found when unemployment and
            dependent informality rates in a country went up together,
            suggesting that working without a contract is pro-cyclical
            in Europe. The dependent informality rate is inversely
            related to skills (measured by either schooling or
            occupation). Both in Southern and in Western Europe, the
            highest dependent informality rate is found among immigrants
            from Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union,
            while in Eastern Europe this group is second after
            minorities without immigrant background. In the Southern and
            part of Western Europe, immigrants not covered by European
            Union free mobility provisions are much more likely to work
            without a contract than otherwise similar natives. The paper
            provides evidence that exclusion and discrimination plays an
            important role in pushing employees into informality, while
            this seems not to be the case for informal self-employed
            workers. Both on average and after controlling for a rich
            set of individual characteristics, informal employees in all
            parts of Europe are having the largest financial
            difficulties  among all categories of the employed
            population (yet they fare much better than the unemployed
            and discouraged), while informal self-employed workers are
            at least as well off as formal employees. Finally, there is
            a negative and significant effect of individual-level
            satisfaction with the national government on the propensity
            to work without a contract in Eastern Europe, as well as in
            Western Europe.
Investing across borders with
            heterogeneous firms : do FDI-specific regulations matter
This paper revisits the institutional
            determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) using a
            comprehensive new data set on the regulations that govern
            FDI in more than 80 countries. It exploits the presence of
            confirmed zero investment flows between countries to
            estimate productivity cut-offs of firms that invest abroad
            profitably. This approach corrects likely biases arising
            from firm heterogeneity and country selection in a
            theoretically derived gravity-type model. The analysis finds
            inward FDI to be highly responsive to cross-country
            variation in specific institutional provisions, such as
            arbitration of disputes and legal procedures to establish
            foreign subsidiaries. The importance of FDI-specific
            provisions stands out even after controlling for the general
            quality of institutions. Statutory openness to FDI, however,
            has no association with actual inflow of investment. These
            results are found to be robust to different specifications.
Does financial structure matter for
            poverty evidence from developing countries
Although there has been research looking
            at the relationship between the structure of the financial
            system and economic growth, much less work has dealt with
            the importance of bank-based versus market-based financial
            systems for poverty and income distribution. Empirical
            evidence has indicated that the structure of the financial
            system has little relevance for economic growth, suggesting
            that the same could be true for poverty since growth is an
            important driver in reducing poverty. Some theories,
            however, claim that, by reducing information and transaction
            costs, the development of bank-based financial systems could
            exert a particularly large impact on the poor. This paper
            looks at a sample of 47 developing economies from 1984
            through 2008. The results suggest that when institutions are
            weak, bank-based financial systems are better at reducing
            poverty and, as institutions develop, market-based financial
            systems can turn out to be beneficial for the poor.
Intra-generational mobility and
            repeated cross-sections : a three-country validation exercise
This paper validates a recently proposed
            method to estimate intra-generational mobility through
            repeated cross-sectional surveys. The technique allows the
            creation of a "synthetic panel" -- done by
            predicting future or past household income using a set of
            simple modeling and error structure assumptions -- and thus
            permits the estimation of lower and upper bounds on
            directional mobility measures. The authors validate the
            approach in three different settings where good panel data
            also exist (Chile, Nicaragua, and Peru). In doing so, they
            also carry out a number of refinements to the validation
            procedure. The results are broadly encouraging: the
            methodology performs well in all three settings, especially
            in cases where richer model specifications can be estimated.
            The technique does equally well in predicting short and
            long-term mobility patterns and is robust to a broad set of
            additional "stress" and sensitivity tests.
            Overall, the paper lends support to the application of this
            approach to settings where panel data are absent.