rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Alternatives to infrastructure
            privatization revisited : public enterprise reform from the
            1960s to the 1980s
Frustration with the performance of
            State-owned enterprises (SOEs) has led to two rounds of
            reform: the first round, from the 1960s through the 1980s,
            attempted to improve SOE performance while maintaining
            public ownership while the second, beginning in the late
            1980s, viewed privatization as the answer.  Interest in the
            earlier round of reform has increased recently as
            controversy has slowed or halted privatization in many
            countries, especially for SOEs providing infrastructure
            services that are basic to everyday life and are thought to
            have elements of monopoly.  This paper reexamines the
            earlier round of reforms, focusing particularly on efforts
            to increase the firms' capacity with infusions of human
            and physical capital, to strengthen managerial incentives
            through performance contracts and corporatization and to
            alter the mix of political and economic forces that impinge
            on the firm by strengthening the involvement of taxpayers,
            customers or private investors.  The review suggests that
            these earlier approaches generated only modest success but
            that some of them, selectively applied, may be helpful in
            improving the performance of infrastructure firms that
            remain in public hands.
Global growth and distribution : are
            China and India reshaping the world
Over the past 20 years, aggregate
            measures of global inequality have changed little even if
            significant structural changes have been observed. High
            growth rates of China and India lifted millions out of
            poverty, while the stagnation in many African countries
            caused them to fall behind. Using the World Bank's
            LINKAGE global general equilibrium model and the newly
            developed Global Income Distribution Dynamics (GIDD) tool,
            this paper assesses the distribution and poverty effects of
            a scenario where these trends continue in the future. Even
            by anticipating a deceleration, growth in China and India is
            a key force behind the expected convergence of per-capita
            incomes at the global level. Millions of Chinese and Indian
            consumers will enter into a rapidly emerging global middle
            class-a group of people who can afford, and demand access
            to, the standards of living previously reserved mainly for
            the residents of developed countries. Notwithstanding these
            positive developments, fast growth is often characterized by
            high urbanization and growing demand for skills, both of
            which result in widening of income distribution within
            countries. These opposing distributional effects highlight
            the importance of analyzing global disparities by taking
            into account - as the GIDD does - income dynamics between
            and within countries.
Product market regulation in
            Bulgaria : a comparison with OECD Countries
Less restrictive product market policies
            are crucial in promoting convergence to higher levels of GDP
            per capita. This paper benchmarks product market policies in
            Bulgaria to those of OECD countries by estimating OECD
            indicators of Product Market Regulation (PMR). The PMR
            indicators allow a comprehensive mapping of policies
            affecting competition in product markets. Comparison with
            OECD countries reveals that Bulgaria has made substantial
            progress towards less restrictive product market policies
            but also emphasizes a number of areas where further reform
            is needed. These include adoption of a regulatory process
            based on incentive-based rather than command-and-control
            approach, reduction of state interference in the decision of
            state-owned enterprises, further streamlining of business
            licensing procedures, and improvement in the communication
            of rules and procedures to affected parties.
The incidence of graft on
            developing-country firms
This paper measures the extent to which
            firms in developing countries are the target of bribes.
            Using new firm-level survey data from 33 African and Latin
            American countries, we first show that perceptions adjust
            slowly to firms' experience with corrupt officials and
            hence are an imperfect proxy for the true incidence of
            graft. We then construct an experience-based index that
            reflects the probability that a firm will be asked for a
            bribe in order to complete a specified set of business
            transactions. On average, African firms are three times as
            likely to be asked for bribes as are firms in Latin America,
            although there is substantial variation within each region.
            Last, we show that graft appears to be more prevalent in
            countries with excessive regulation and where democracy is
            weak. In particular, our results suggest that the incidence
            of graft in Africa would fall by approximately 85 percent if
            countries in the region had levels of democracy and
            regulation similar to those that exist in Latin America.
Public transport subsidies and
            affordability in Mumbai, India
This paper describes the role of public
            transport and the nature and incidence of transport
            subsidies in Mumbai, India.  Mumbai has an extensive rail
            and bus network, and public transport is used for over 75
            percent of all motorized trips in Greater Mumbai.  Both rail
            and bus fares in Mumbai are subsidized:  BEST, which
            operates public buses in Mumbai, is also an electric
            utility, and subsidizes bus fares from electricity revenues.
            We analyze the incidence of these subsidies, and their
            effect on mode choice, using data from a survey of
            households in Greater Mumbai.  In Mumbai, as in many cities,
            the middle class is more likely to use public transport for
            travel than the poor.  The poor, however, also use public
            transit, and their expenditure on public transit
            constitutes, on average, a larger share of their income than
            it does for the middle class.  It is, therefore, the case
            that the poor benefit from transit subsidies in Mumbai, as
            well as the middle and upper-middle classes; however, the
            poorest 27 percent of the population receives only 19
            percent of bus subsidies and 15.5 percent of rail subsidies.
            Indeed, 26 percent of the lowest income households surveyed
            do not use rail, while 10 percent do not use bus, implying
            that they receive no transit subsidies. Expenditure on
            transport accounts for 16 percent of income in the lowest
            income category (<5000 Rs./month), with 10 percent of
            income, on average, spent on bus and rail fares. This
            percentage, however, is not evenly distributed: it is much
            higher than 10 percent for households in which workers take
            the bus or train to work, and lower for households in which
            the main earner walks to work.  Even in these households,
            however, 12.5 percent of income is spent on transportation.
            Expenditure on public transport would be even higher if bus
            fares in Mumbai were not subsidized.  In 2005-2006,
            transport revenues of BEST fell below total costs by 30
            percent and below operating costs by 20 percent. Rail fares,
            which are much lower than bus fares per km traveled,
            officially covered operating costs and almost covered
            depreciation expenses.
Growth diagnostics for a
            resource-rich transition economy : the case of Mongolia
This paper uses a growth diagnostics
            approach à la Hausmann, Rodrik, and Velasco (HRV) to
            identify the most 'binding' constraints to private
            sector growth in Mongolia - a small, low-income,
            mineral-rich, transition economy. The approach of applying
            the HRV methodology is useful in those cases where a lack of
            data prevents us from estimating shadow prices to identify
            the most 'binding' constraint to growth. We find
            that although Mongolia is not liquidity constrained and has
            grown rapidly in recent years, economic growth has been
            narrowly based. Investment has flowed mainly into a small
            number of firms operating in mining and construction. The
            low level of private investment in sectors outside mining
            and construction has been due to low returns - a result of
            costly and unreliable transportation services; lengthy and
            complex transit procedures, including customs and trade
            rules; distortionary taxes; coordination failures, at both
            domestic and international levels; and growing corruption.
            Poor financial intermediation is also a problem that has
            kept the cost of finance high, although lower than in
            previous years. Alleviating these binding constraints will
            ensure that Mongolia maintains the path towards sustained,
            broad-based growth.
Analyzing the impact of legislation
            on child labor in Pakistan
This paper exploits a natural experiment
            approach to identify the impact of legislation (Employment
            of Children Act 1991) in Pakistan on participation of
            children in the labor markets. The law prohibits employment
            of children less than 14 years of age in sectors other than
            agriculture or household enterprises. With micro-data,
            making use of regression discontinuity data design, the
            study finds some evidence that the Employment of Children
            Act 1991 helped in reducing the employment of children
            immediately after its implementation.
Patterns of long term growth in
            Sub-Saharan Africa
Using the most recent purchasing power
            parity data for 44 sub-Saharan African countries, this paper
            examines the characteristics of long run growth in Africa
            between 1975 and 2005.  The authors investigate the
            following issues: cross-country income structure, income
            convergence, the country level distribution of income,
            growth and income persistence, and formation of convergence clubs.
Help or hindrance the impact of
            harmonized standards on african exports
The authors test the hypothesis that
            product standards harmonized to de facto international
            standards are less trade restrictive than ones that are not.
            To do this, the authors construct a new database of European
            Union (EU) product standards.  The authors identify
            standards that are aligned with ISO standards (as a proxy
            for de facto international norms). The authors use a
            sample-selection gravity model to examine the impact of EU
            standards on African textiles and clothing exports, a sector
            of particular development interest. The authors find robust
            evidence that non-harmonized standards reduce African
            exports of these products. EU standards which are harmonized
            to ISO standards are less trade restricting.  Our results
            suggest that efforts to promote African exports of
            manufactures may need to be complemented by measures to
            reduce the cost impacts of product standards, including
            international harmonization.  In addition, efforts to
            harmonize national standards with international norms,
            including through the World Trade Organization Technical
            Barriers to Trade Agreement, promise concrete benefits
            through trade expansion.
Transparency, trade costs, and
            regional integration in the Asia Pacific
The authors show in this paper that
            increasing the transparency of the trading environment can
            be an important complement to traditional liberalization of
            tariff and non-tariff barriers. Our definition of
            transparency is grounded in a transaction cost analysis.
            The authors focus on two dimensions of transparency:
            predictability (reducing the cost of uncertainty) and
            simplification (reducing information costs). Using the Asia
            Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies as a
            case study, the authors construct indices of importer and
            exporter transparency for the region from a wide range of
            sources.  Our results from a gravity model suggest that
            improving trade-related transparency in APEC could hold
            significant benefits by raising intra-APEC trade by
            proximately USD 148 billion or 7.5 pecent of baseline trade
            in the region.
Product market regulation in Romania
            : a comparison with OECD countries
Less restrictive product market policies
            are crucial in promoting convergence to higher levels of GDP
            per capita. This paper benchmarks product market policies in
            Romania to those of OECD countries by estimating OECD
            indicators of Product Market Regulation (PMR). The PMR
            indicators allow a comprehensive mapping of policies
            affecting competition in product markets. Comparison with
            OECD countries reveals that Romania's product market
            policies are less restrictive of competition than most
            direct comparators from the region and not far from the OECD
            average. Nonetheless, this achievement should be interpreted
            in light of the fact that PMR approach measures officially
            adopted policies.  It does not capture implementation and
            enforcement, the area where future reform efforts should be
            directed if less restrictive policies are to have an
            effective impact on long-term growth prospects.
Ideas and innovation in East Asia
The generation, diffusion, absorption
            and application of new technology, knowledge or ideas are
            crucial drivers of development.  This paper surveys the
            diverse approaches to innovation adopted by East Asian
            economies, the problems faced and outcomes achieved, as well
            as possible policy lessons. Knowledge flows from advanced
            countries remain the primary source of new ideas in
            developing economies. The authors evaluate the role of three
            main channels for knowledge flows to East Asia -
            international trade, acquisition of disembodied knowledge
            and foreign direct investment.  The paper then looks at the
            exceptionally fast growth in domestic innovation efforts in
            Korea, Taiwan (China), Singapore and China, drawing on
            information about R&D as well as original analysis of
            patent and patent citation data.  Citation analysis shows
            that while East Asian innovations continue to draw heavily
            on knowledge flows from the US and Japan, citations to the
            same or to other East Asian economies are quickly rising,
            indicating the emergence of national and regional knowledge
            stocks as a foundation for innovation. A last section pulls
            together findings about policies and institutions to foster
            innovation, under three heads:  the overall business
            environment for innovation (macroeconomic stability,
            financial development, openness, competition, intellectual
            property rights and the quality of communications
            infrastructure), human capital development, and government
            fiscal support for innovation.
Gauging the welfare effects of
            shocks in rural Tanzania
Studies of risk and its consequences
            tend to focus on one risk factor, such as a drought or an
            economic crisis.  Yet 2003 household surveys in rural
            Kilimanjaro and Ruvuma, two cash-crop-growing regions in
            Tanzania that experienced a precipitous coffee price decline
            around the turn of the millennium, identified health and
            drought shocks as well as commodity price declines as major
            risk factors, suggesting the need for a comprehensive
            approach to analyzing household vulnerability. In fact, most
            coffee growers, except the smaller ones in Kilimanjaro,
            weathered the coffee price declines rather well, at least to
            the point of not being worse off than non-coffee growers.
            Conversely, improving health conditions and reducing the
            effect of droughts emerge as critical to reduce
            vulnerability. One-third of the rural households in
            Kilimanjaro experienced a drought or health shocks,
            resulting in an estimated 8 percent welfare loss on average,
            after using savings and aid.  Rainfall is more reliable in
            Ruvuma, and drought there did not affect welfare.
            Surprisingly, neither did health shocks, plausibly because
            of lower medical expenditures given limited health care provisions.
Patterns of rainfall insurance
            participation in rural India
This paper describes the contract design
            and institutional features of an innovative rainfall
            insurance policy offered to smallholder farmers in rural
            India, and presents preliminary evidence on the determinants
            of insurance participation. Insurance takeup is found to be
            decreasing in basis risk between insurance payouts and
            income fluctuations, increasing in household wealth and
            decreasing in the extent to which credit constraints bind.
            These results match with predictions of a simple
            neoclassical model appended with borrowing constraints.
            Other patterns are less consistent with the
            "benchmark" model; namely, participation in
            village networks and measures of familiarity with the
            insurance vendor are strongly correlated with insurance
            takeup decisions, and risk-averse households are found to be
            less, not more, likely to purchase insurance. We suggest
            that these results reflect household uncertainty about the
            product itself, given their limited experience with it.
what is missing between agricultural
            growth and infrastructure development cases of coffee and
            dairy in Africa
Although it is commonly believed that
            aggregate economic growth must be associated with public
            infrastructure stocks, the possible infrastructure needs and
            effects are different from industry to industry. The
            agriculture sector is typical. Various infrastructures would
            affect agriculture growth differently depending on the type
            of commodity. This paper finds that a general transport
            network is essential to promote coffee and cocoa production,
            perhaps along with irrigation facilities, depending on local
            rainfall. Conversely, along with the transport network, the
            dairy industry necessitates rural water supply services as
            well. In some African countries, a 1 percent improvement in
            these key aspects of infrastructure could raise GDP by about
            0.1-0.4 percent, and by possibly by several percent in some cases.
Cote d'Ivoire : from success to
            failure a story of growth, specialization, and the terms of trade
Real GDP per capita and capital stock in
            Cote d'Ivoire grew strongly from 1960 to 1979, but have
            declined ever since, for twenty-five years. As a result, the
            country has traveled a full circle from economic success to
            failure in little more than a generation. What are the
            long-term factors behind this dismal growth story? Are the
            Ivorian development problems mostly of recent origin? Or
            there are more fundamental, economic factors that explain
            its long term performance? Four principal conclusions are as
            follows: First, Cote d'Ivoire's long-term growth
            performance is not fully explained by temporary factors
            (e.g., CFA overvaluation or recent conflict). Longer term
            factors such as capital accumulation, productivity, and
            terms of trade are key to understanding the country's
            performance as is the policy of specialization in a single
            commodity--cocoa. Second, the long-term decline in per
            capita output started well before the currency
            overvaluation, and at a time of political stability, and is
            related to a major, secular deterioration in terms of trade
            that started after 1976. Third, total factor productivity
            estimates indicate that TFP per capita also grew until it
            hit a plateau in 1976-78, and then shrank thereafter,
            despite gains in human capital accumulation. Fourth, Cote
            d'Ivoire has pursued a policy of specialization in
            cocoa beans but this bet on a single commodity has
            ultimately failed. The strategy that brought prosperity
            during the 1970s resulted in a growth failure when cocoa
            prices began declining since 1976.
Measuring ancient inequality
Is inequality largely the result of the
            Industrial Revolution? Or, were pre-industrial incomes and
            life expectancies as unequal as they are today?  For want of
            sufficient data, these questions have not yet been answered.
            This paper infers inequality for 14 ancient, pre-industrial
            societies using what are known as social tables, stretching
            from the Roman Empire 14 AD, to Byzantium in 1000, to
            England in 1688, to Nueva España around 1790, to China in
            1880 and to British India in 1947. It applies two new
            concepts in making those assessments - what the authors call
            the inequality possibility frontier and the inequality
            extraction ratio. Rather than simply offering measures of
            actual inequality, the authors compare the latter with the
            maximum feasible inequality (or surplus) that could have
            been extracted by the elite. The results, especially when
            compared with modern poor countries, give new insights in to
            the connection between inequality and economic development
            in the very long run.