rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Encouraging Service Delivery to the
            Poor : Does Money Talk When Health Workers Are Pro-Poor
Do service providers respond to
            pecuniary incentives to serve the poor? Service delivery to
            the poor is complicated by the extra effort required to
            deliver services to them and the intrinsic incentives of
            service providers to exert this effort. Incentive schemes
            typically fail to account for these complications. A
            lab-in-the-field experiment with nearly 400 health workers
            in rural Burkina Faso provides strong evidence that the
            interaction of effort costs, ability, and intrinsic and
            extrinsic incentives significantly influences service
            delivery to the poor. Health workers reviewed video
            vignettes of medical cases involving poor and nonpoor
            patients under a variety of bonus schemes. Bonuses to serve
            the poor have less impact on effort than bonuses to serve
            the nonpoor; health workers who receive equal bonuses to
            serve poor and nonpoor patients see fewer poor patients than
            workers who receive only a flat salary; and bonuses operate
            largely through their influence on the behavior of pro-poor
            workers. The paper also presents novel evidence on the
            selection effects of contract type: pro-poor workers prefer
            the flat salary contract to the variable salary contract.
Non-Linear Effects of Tax Changes on
            Output : The Role of the Initial Level of Taxation
This paper estimates the effect of
            worldwide tax changes on output following the narrative
            approach developed for the United States by Romer and Romer
            (2010). The analysis uses a novel dataset on value-added
            taxes for 51 countries (21 industrial and 30 developing) for
            the period 1970-2014 to identify 96 tax changes. It then
            uses contemporaneous economic records to classify such
            changes as endogenous or exogenous to current (or
            prospective) economic conditions. In line with theoretical
            distortionary and disincentive-based arguments, and using
            only exogenous tax changes, the main finding is that the
            effect of tax changes on output is highly non-linear. The
            tax multiplier is essentially zero under relatively
            low/moderate initial tax rate levels and more negative as
            the initial tax rate and the size of the change in the tax
            rate increase. Based on a global sample, these novel
            non-linear findings suggest that the recent consensus
            pointing to large negative tax multipliers in industrial
            countries, particularly in Europe (e.g., Alesina, Favero,
            and Giavazzi, 2015), (i) is not a robust empirical
            regularity, and (ii) is mainly driven by high initial tax
            rates in these countries. The paper also shows that the bias
            introduced by misidentification of tax shocks critically
            depends on the procyclical or countercyclical nature of
            endogenous tax changes. The relevance of the arguments is
            evaluated both for the novel global sample and for Romer and
            Romer's U.S. dataset.
Be Wary of Those Who Ask : A
            Randomized Experiment on the Size and Determinants of the
            Enumerator Effect
During survey data collection,
            respondents' answers may be influenced by the behavior
            and characteristics of the enumerator, the so-called
            enumerator effect. Using a large-scale experiment in Uganda
            randomly pairing enumerators and respondents, the study
            explores for which types of questions the enumerator effect
            may exist. It is found that the enumerator effect is minimal
            in many questions, but is large for political preference
            questions, for which it can account for over 30 of the
            variation in responses. The study then explores which
            enumerator characteristics, and which of their combination
            with respondent characteristics, could account for this
            effect. Finally, the conclusion provides some practical
            suggestions on how to minimize enumerator effects, and
            potential bias, in various types of data collections.
Survey of the Nepal Private Equity
            and Venture Capital Environment
This paper discusses the landscape for
            private equity and venture capital financing in Nepal. It
            provides an overview of the nascent private equity and
            venture capital market in the country, describing key
            players, including funds, fund managers, investors, and
            public sector entities. The paper provides an analysis of
            key market drivers and impediments, as well as
            legal/regulatory/taxation drivers and impediments that
            affect Nepal’s private equity and venture capital industry.
Political Selection and Bureaucratic Productivity
Economic theory of public bureaucracies
            as complex organizations predicts that bureaucratic
            productivity can be shaped by the selection of different
            types of agents, beyond their incentives. This theory
            applies to the institutions of local government in the
            developing world, where nationally appointed bureaucrats and
            locally elected politicians together manage the
            implementation of public policies and the delivery of
            services. Yet, there is no evidence on whether (which)
            selection traits of these bureaucrats and politicians matter
            for the productivity of local bureaucracies. This paper
            addresses the empirical gap by gathering rich data in an
            institutional context of district governments in Uganda,
            which is typical of the local state in poor countries. The
            paper measures traits such as the integrity, altruism,
            personality, and public service motivation of bureaucrats
            and politicians. It finds robust evidence that higher
            integrity among locally elected politicians is associated
            with substantively better delivery of public health services
            by district bureaucracies. Together with the theory, this
            evidence suggests that policy makers seeking to build local
            state capacity in poor countries should take political
            selection seriously.
Robots, Tasks and Trade
This paper examines the effects of
            robotization on trade patterns, wages and welfare. It
            develops a Ricardian model with two-stage production and
            trade in intermediate and final goods in which robots can
            take over some tasks previously performed by humans in a
            subset of industries. An increase in robot adoption in the
            North reduces the cost of production and thereby impacts
            trade in final and intermediate goods with the South. The
            empirical analysis uses ordinary least squares and
            instrumental variable regressions exploiting variation in
            exposure to robots across countries and sectors. Both reveal
            that greater robot intensity in own production leads to: (i)
            a rise in imports sourced from less developed countries in
            the same industry; and (ii) an even stronger increase in
            exports to those countries. Counterfactual simulations
            indicate that Northern robotization raises domestic welfare,
            but initially depresses wages. However, this adverse effect
            is likely to be reversed by further reductions in robot
            prices. Northern robotization may lead to higher wages and
            welfare in the South.
Explaining the WAEMU Growth Spurt --
            The Role of Financial Deepening and Macro Policy
Most countries of the West African
            Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) experienced a growth
            acceleration in 2011-17. This paper identifies the
            determinants of this growth by combining country-specific
            information with the results of a cross-country regression
            model. Growth was characterized by capital accumulation and
            driven by structural factors, including financial deepening
            and infrastructure development. What sets WAEMU countries
            apart from other African countries is the very sharp
            increase in private sector credit supporting private
            investment. This was facilitated by a prudent and
            accommodative regional monetary policy and improved
            financial regulation. Pro-cyclical fiscal policies supported
            public infrastructure investment but led to a buildup of
            public debt. Going forward, growth may lose some steam,
            given the renewed policy emphasis on fiscal consolidation
            and monetary tightening.
How Much Would Bangladesh Gain from
            the Removal of Subsidies on Electricity and Natural Gas
As in many countries around the world,
            subsidies to energy in Bangladesh impose a significant
            fiscal burden, with benefits that disproportionately accrue
            to high-income households. Any reforms of energy subsidies
            should benefit the overall economy rather than those who use
            energy the most. Using a computable general equilibrium
            model, this study investigates the economywide impacts of
            the removal of direct subsidies in the electricity sector
            and indirect subsidies in natural gas in Bangladesh. The
            study finds that removal of energy subsidies would be
            beneficial to the economy and would increase gross domestic
            product. The magnitude of the economic impact depends on how
            the budgetary savings from the removal of the electricity
            subsidies and increased revenues due to the removal of
            indirect subsidies to natural gas are reallocated to the
            economy. Recycling the savings (or the new revenues) to fund
            investment would benefit the country most, followed by the
            case of utilizing them to fund cuts in income taxes, and
            finally to fund cuts in indirect taxes. Although the
            reallocation of budgetary savings to households through
            lump-sum transfers is found to be inferior to the other
            recycling options considered, it would be the preferred
            option from the distributional perspective.
Measuring Urban Economic Density
Agglomeration economies are at the heart
            of urban economics, driving the existence and extent of
            cities and are central to structural transformation and the
            urbanization process. This paper evaluates the use of
            different measures of economic density in assessing urban
            agglomeration effects, by examining how well they explain
            household income differences across cities and neighborhoods
            in six African countries. The paper examines simple scale
            and density measures and more nuanced ones that capture the
            extent of clustering within cities. The evidence suggests
            that more nuanced measures attempting to capture within-city
            differences in the extent of clustering do no better than a
            simple density measure in explaining income differences
            across cities, at least for the current degree of accuracy
            in measuring clustering. However, simple city scale
            measures, such as total population, are inferior to density
            measures and to some degree misleading. The analysis finds
            large household income premiums from being in bigger and
            particularly denser cities over rural areas in Africa,
            indicating that migration pull forces remain very strong in
            the structural transformation process. Moreover, the
            marginal effects of increases in urban density on household
            income are very large, with density elasticities of 0.6. In
            addition to strong city-level density effects, the analysis
            finds strong neighborhood effects. For household incomes,
            overall city density and density of the neighborhood matter.
The Economic Case for Education in Vietnam
Education is central to the development
            of human capital. Vietnam has made significant progress.
            This paper reviews existing research on the returns to
            education and makes the case for investment in schooling. In
            Vietnam, the returns to schooling are 10 percent overall.
            The returns to primary and secondary education have declined
            over time and are lower than the regional average. The
            returns to secondary education are low, but not much lower
            than the regional average. The returns to tertiary education
            are high, have increased considerably, and are about 20
            percent. Therefore, investing in higher education makes
            sense for the individual and her family.
Green Sukuk, Energy Poverty, and
            Climate Change : A Roadmap for Sub-Saharan Africa
The climate change challenge and the
            growth of the Islamic finance industry, together with the
            increase in socially responsible investing, could position
            green sukuk as a key instrument for financing clean energy
            and resilient infrastructure projects as well as
            shorter-term energy efficiency projects. Expansion of a
            green sukuk market could promote environment-friendly
            projects and improve livelihoods, helping Islamic finance
            achieve its moral objectives. A roadmap shows how policy
            makers could create a green sukuk market in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Minimum Wages and Labor Supply in an
            Emerging Market : The Case of Mauritius
This paper investigates the effect of
            multiple minimum wages, known as remuneration orders, on
            employment and working hours in Mauritius. Using data
            between 2004 and 2014, the analysis indicates that a 10
            percent increase in the minimum wages brings about a
            slightly positive effect on employment in the covered
            sector, with an estimated employment elasticity of 0.113,
            which is within the range of elasticities found in previous
            studies of employment effects of minimum wages in low- and
            middle-income countries. The positive employment effect of
            minimum wages is also associated with a 2.3 percent increase
            in average working hours for men but a 1.8 percent decline
            in average working hours for women in the covered sector. In
            the uncovered sector, the significant positive effect along
            the intensive margin, estimated at 4.2 percent, is driven by
            changes in labor supply among men.
Intervening at Home and Then at
            School : A Randomized Evaluation of Two Approaches to
            Improve Early Educational Outcomes in Tonga
This paper evaluates and compares two
            randomized interventions in Tonga, one targeting the home
            environment of children up to age 5 and one targeting the
            school environment for first and second grade students. The
            first intervention supports communities to set up and run
            playgroups that aim to improve caregiver-child interaction
            at home and ultimately improve children's readiness for
            school. Among children of mothers without high school
            education, being in a treatment community positively affects
            the school readiness literacy domains and overall score by
            0.19 and 0.2 standard deviation, respectively, for girls and
            the literacy domains for boys by 0.17 standard deviation.
            The second intervention provides teachers with training,
            materials, and coaching to improve reading instruction
            practices and students’ reading ability. It increased
            average early grade reading scores by approximately 0.18
            standard deviation per year of exposure. Two cohorts of
            children were potentially exposed to both interventions,
            providing an opportunity to compare, for the same population
            of children, the effects of an early childhood intervention
            with a school-based intervention using a common measure of
            learning achievement. The school readiness intervention is
            found to have positive effects on early grade reading scores
            only among children in the reading intervention’s control
            group; effect sizes of approximately 0.29 standard deviation
            were found at the end of second grade for children exposed
            to one year of the school readiness intervention and at the
            end of first grade for girls exposed to two years of the intervention.
International Comparisons of Poverty
            in South Asia
This paper explores the methodological
            differences underlying the construction of the national
            consumption aggregates that are used to estimate
            international poverty rates for all countries in the South
            Asia region, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan,
            India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The
            analysis draws on a regional dataset of standardized
            consumption aggregates to assess the sensitivity of
            international poverty rates to the items included in
            national consumption aggregates. A key feature of the
            standardized aggregate is that it includes the reported
            value of housing rent for urban Indian homeowners. Using the
            standardized consumption aggregates reduces the
            international poverty rate in South Asia by 1.3 percentage
            points, or about 18.5 million people. Comparing standardized
            and non-standardized monetary welfare indicators to other
            nonmonetary indicators suggests that the latter are more
            consistent with the standardized consumption aggregates.
            Overall, the results strongly suggest that harmonizing the
            construction of welfare measures, particularly the treatment
            of imputed rent, can meaningfully improve the accuracy of
            international poverty comparisons.
The Relationship between Conflicts,
            Economic Shocks, and Death with Depression, Economic
            Activities, and Human Capital Investment in Nigeria
This paper examines the links between
            adverse events, depression, and decision making in Nigeria.
            It investigates how events such as conflicts, shocks, and
            deaths can affect short-term perceptions of welfare, as well
            as longer term decisions on economic activities and human
            capital investments. First, the findings show that exposure
            to conflict has the largest and strongest relationship with
            depression, associated with a 15.3 percentage point increase
            in the probability of reporting depressive symptoms (from a
            base of 22 percent). This is equivalent to a reduction in
            annual per capita income of around US$52 (in present day
            terms). Second, the study randomized the timing of the
            module on adverse events with respect to the mental health
            module. The analysis finds that individuals who were
            reminded about their history of adverse events (provided
            that they had one) have a 6.5 percentage point higher
            probability of reporting depressive symptoms. The final sets
            of results show that depression is associated with lower
            labor force participation and child educational investment.
            People with depressive symptoms are 8 percentage points less
            likely to work; this is driven by a reduction in engagement
            in agricultural activities for men and self-employment for
            women. In addition, households with a parent exhibiting
            depressive symptoms spend 20 percentage points less on
            education. These results suggest that there is a direct link
            between mental health, welfare perceptions, and decision
            making, beyond the indirect link via exposure to adverse effects.
Beyond Capital : Monitoring
            Development Outcomes of Multinational Enterprises
This study presents a novel set of
            indicators on outcomes of foreign direct investment spanning
            63 developing countries and 10 areas that matter for
            development. Building on decade-long data collection by the
            World Bank Enterprise Surveys, the indicators highlight
            systematic differences between foreign multinational
            enterprises and domestic firms across countries in
            competitiveness outcomes such as productivity, innovation,
            export orientation, as well as the extent to which they
            promote inclusiveness through job creation, gender
            empowerment, or supply linkages. Although there appears to
            be no striking trade-off between competitiveness and
            inclusiveness of foreign multinational enterprises, their
            premia differ substantially across regions and income
            groups. Differences in some key drivers of competitiveness,
            such as productivity, innovation, and skills transfer,
            appear to be increasing with income, although premia in most
            outcomes are stronger in lower-middle-income or low-income
            markets, highlighting the relevance of foreign multinational
            enterprises for socioeconomic progress in these contexts.
            Moreover, outcomes of foreign multinational enterprises in
            areas such as export orientation, skills transfer, and
            physical capital accumulation are more consistent across
            countries, whereas in other areas the outcomes display wide
            variation, suggesting potentially higher sensitivity to
            investor motivations, sectors, seasonal trends, and business
            environments. Policy efforts should take these differences
            into account, to devise investment strategies that not only
            seek to increase capital flows, but also enhance the
            benefits that could be derived from them.