rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The real exchange rate and export
            growth : are services different
This paper considers the determinants of
            exports of modern services and traditional services. It
            considers the growth of export volumes as well as export
            surges, that is, the periods of rapid sustained export
            growth. It asks whether the determinants of export growth
            rates and export surges differ between merchandise,
            traditional services, and modern services and whether
            developing countries are different. It confirm the
            importance of the real exchange rate for export growth. The
            paper finds that the effect of the real exchange rate is
            even stronger for exports of services than for exports of
            goods and that it is especially strong for exports of modern
            services. The results suggest that in the course of their
            development, as developing countries shift from exporting
            commodities and merchandise to exporting traditional and
            modern services, appropriate policies toward the real
            exchange rate become even more important.
Population, poverty, and climate change
The literature is reviewed on the
            relationships between population, poverty, and climate
            change. While developed countries are largely responsible
            for global warming, the brunt of the fallout will be borne
            by the developing world, in lower agricultural output,
            poorer health, and more frequent natural disasters. Carbon
            emissions in the developed world have leveled off, but are
            projected to rise rapidly in the developing world due to
            their economic growth and population growth -- the latter
            most notably in the poorest countries. Lowering fertility
            has many benefits for the poorest countries. Studies
            indicate that, in high fertility settings, fertility decline
            facilitates economic growth and poverty reduction. It also
            reduces the pressure on livelihoods, and frees up resources
            to cope with climate change. And it helps avert some of the
            projected global warming, which will benefit these countries
            far more than those that lie at higher latitudes and/or have
            more resources to cope with climate change. Natural
            experiments indicate that family planning programs are
            effective in helping reduce fertility, and that they are
            highly pro-poor in their impact. While the rest of the world
            wrestles with the complexities of reducing emissions, the
            poorest countries will gain much from simple programs to
            lower fertility.
From pawn shops to banks : the
            impact of formal credit on informal households
This paper examines the effects of
            expanding access to credit on the decisions and welfare of
            households. It focuses on the entry of Banco Azteca, the
            first bank in Mexico targeting households from the informal
            sector. Panel data suggest that informal households in
            municipalities with Banco Azteca branches experienced
            several changes in their saving, credit and consumption
            patterns. In order to estimate the impact of Azteca's
            entry, the paper develops a dynamic model of household
            choices in which the bank is endogenously selecting the
            municipalities for branch openings. The analysis finds that
            in municipalities in which the bank entered, households were
            better able to smooth their consumption and accumulate more
            durable goods even though the overall proportion of
            households that save went down by 6.6 percent. These results
            suggest that the use of savings as a buffer on income
            fluctuations declines once formal credit is available. What
            is more, these effects vary across households. Among
            informal households, those who never receive formal job
            offers have the highest decline in saving rates. The model
            is also used to evaluate a legislation to cap interest rates
            levied by formal credit institutions. Simulations suggest
            that if the Mexican government were to cap the interest rate
            of Azteca at the rate for traditional banks, Azteca would
            stop operating in the poorest and least populated municipalities.
Valuing global public goods : a
            European Delphi stated preference survey of population
            willingness to pay for Amazon rainforest preservation
The Amazon Rainforest is a global public
            good. As such, and given that 15 percent of the original
            Amazon forest area has already been lost, households
            worldwide might be willing to pay to reduce or avoid
            additional losses. A full elicitation of global preferences
            for valuing preservation of the current forest, using
            stated-preference population surveys, would be costly and
            time consuming. Alternatively, this paper uses a Delphi
            stated-preference technique in which 48 European
            environmental valuation experts were asked to provide
            "best guesses" on the possible outcomes of
            population surveys in their own countries and Europe as a
            whole. The expert judgments indicate willingness to pay in
            Europe for preserving the current Amazon Rainforest of about
            28 Euro per household per year on average; a slightly lower
            value is inferred for a plan that allows a 10 percent future
            reduction from the current rainforest area. The income
            elasticity of experts' stated willingness to pay with
            respect to per-capita income in their own countries is in
            the range 0.5-0.8. These findings indicate that Delphi
            studies might be used more widely as a tool for global
            benefit transfer.
Civil conflict and firm performance
            : evidence from Cote d'Ivoire
This paper investigates the impact of
            political instability and civil conflict on firms. It
            studies the unrest in Cote d'Ivoire that began in 2000,
            using a census of all registered firms for the years
            1998-2003. The analysis uses structural estimates of the
            production function and exploits spatial variations in
            conflict intensity to derive the cost of conflict on firms
            in terms of productivity loss. The results indicate that the
            conflict led to an average 16-23 percent drop in firm total
            factor productivity and the decline is 5-10 percentage
            points larger for firms that are owned by or employing
            foreigners. These results are consistent with anecdotal
            evidence of increasing violent attacks and looting of
            foreigners and their businesses during the conflict. The
            results suggest increases in operating costs is a possible
            channel driving this impact. Finally, the paper investigates
            whether firms responded by hiring fewer foreign workers and
            finds evidence supporting this hypothesis.
Labor migration and economic growth
            in east and southeast Asia
East and Southeast Asia face major
            demographic changes over the next few decades as many
            countries' labor forces will start to decline, while
            others will experience higher labor force growth as
            populations and participation rates increase. A well-managed
            labor migration strategy presents itself as a mechanism for
            ameliorating the impending labor shortages in some East-Asia
            Pacific countries, while providing an opportunity for other
            countries with excess labor to provide migrant workers that
            will contribute to the development of the home country
            through greater remittance flows. Although migration would
            be unable to offset the economic impacts of the declining
            labor forces in the countries with shrinking populations, a
            more flexible migration policy, allowing migrants to respond
            to the major demographic changes occurring in Asia over the
            next 50 years, would be beneficial to most economies in the
            region in terms of real incomes and real gross domestic
            product over the 2007-2050 period. Such a policy could
            deeply affect the net migration position of a country.
            Countries that were net recipients under current migration
            policies might become net senders under the more liberal
            policy regime.
A note on the simple algebra of the
            shared prosperity indicator
One of the two goals of the World Bank
            Group's new strategy is to promote shared prosperity,
            defined as the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the
            population. The simple monitoring indicator then is the
            income per capita of the bottom 40 percent of the
            population. The growth of this indicator can be decomposed
            into two components: the change in the share of total income
            accruing to the bottom 40 percent and the growth of the
            average income of the total population. This paper presents:
            (i) a brief discussion of the properties of the indicator;
            (ii) the simple decomposition in algebraic form; (iii) a
            graphical method for displaying the combinations of the two
            components of the decomposition; (iv) simulations of the
            decomposition for hypothetical countries; and (v) some
            illustrative data.
Can e-filing reduce tax compliance
            costs in developing countries
The purpose of this study is to
            investigate the association between electronic filing
            (e-filing) and the total tax compliance costs incurred by
            small and medium size businesses in developing countries,
            based on survey data from South Africa, Ukraine, and Nepal.
            A priori, most observers expect that use of e-filing should
            reduce tax compliance costs, but this analysis suggests that
            the assumption should be more nuanced. In particular,
            policies that require business taxpayers to submit
            paper-based information in addition to their e-filing
            roughly negate savings that would otherwise be realized. In
            addition, adoption of e-filing requires an up-front
            investment by the business not only in capital assets, but
            also in the time, effort, and resources required to learn
            how to use e-filing properly and efficiently. Small
            businesses, in particular, are likely to face a steep
            "learning curve" and should probably not be forced
            to use e-filing before the majority of them have access to
            computers (with reliable electricity service) and have had a
            chance to become familiar with both computer use and the Internet.
Regulation, renegotiation and
            capital structure : theory and evidence from Latin American
            transport concessions
The paper examines the capital structure
            of regulated infrastructure firms. The authors develop a
            model showing that leverage, the ratio of liabilities to
            assets, is lower under high-powered regulation and that
            firms operating under high-powered regulation make
            proportionally larger reductions in leverage when the cost
            of debt increases. They test the predictions of the model
            using an original panel dataset of 124 transport concessions
            in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru over 1992-2011, finding
            broad support for our predictions.
Specialization, diversity, and
            Indian manufacturing growth
This paper examines the specialization
            and diversity of manufacturing industries within Indian
            districts. Prior to India's recent economic growth and
            liberalization, specialization levels in 1989 were
            substantially higher than similar metrics calculated for the
            United States. From 1989 to 2010, average specialization
            levels for Indian districts declined to a level that is now
            quite comparable to the United States. Diversity levels
            similarly increased. Specialization and diversity levels in
            India are becoming more persistent with time. Manufacturing
            plants display higher productivity in districts that display
            both properties. From 1989 to 2010, manufacturing employment
            growth was higher in districts that were more specialized at
            the start of the period.
Addressing household air pollution :
            a case study in rural Madagascar
Household air pollution is the second
            leading cause of disease in Madagascar, where more than 99
            percent of households rely on solid biomass, such as
            charcoal, wood, and crop waste, as the main cooking fuel.
            Only a limited number of studies have looked at the
            emissions and health consequences of cook stoves in Africa.
            This paper summarizes an initiative to monitor household air
            pollution in two towns in Madagascar, with a stratified
            sample of 154 and 184 households. Concentrations of fine
            particulate matter and carbon monoxide in each kitchen were
            monitored three times using UCB Particle Monitors and
            GasBadge Pro Single Gas Monitors. The average concentrations
            of both pollutants significantly exceeded World Health
            Organization guidelines for indoor exposure. A fixed-effect
            panel regression analysis was conducted to investigate the
            effects of various factors, including fuel (charcoal, wood,
            and ethanol), stove (traditional and improved ethanol),
            kitchen size, ventilation, building materials, and ambient
            environment. Judging by its effect on fine particulate
            matter and carbon monoxide, ethanol is significantly cleaner
            than biomass fuels and, for both pollutants, a larger
            kitchen significantly improves the quality of household air.
            Compared with traditional charcoal stoves, improved charcoal
            stoves were found to have no significant impact on air
            quality, but the improved wood stove with a chimney was
            effective in reducing concentrations of carbon monoxide in
            the kitchen, as was ventilation.
Up in smoke agricultural
            commercialization, rising food prices and stunting in Malawi
Diversification into high-value cash
            crops among smallholders has been propagated as a strategy
            to improve welfare in rural areas. However, the extent to
            which cash crop production spurs projected gains remains an
            under-researched question, especially in the context of
            market imperfections leading to non-separable production and
            consumption decisions, and price shocks to staple crops that
            might be displaced on the farm by cash crops. This study is
            a contribution to the long-standing debate on the links
            between commercialization and nutrition. It uses
            nationally-representative household survey data from Malawi,
            and estimates the effect of household adoption of an export
            crop, namely tobacco, on child height-for-age z-scores.
            Given the endogenous nature of household tobacco adoption,
            the analysis relies on instrumental variable regressions,
            and isolates the causal effect by comparing impact estimates
            informed by two unique samples of children that differ in
            their exposure to an exogenous domestic staple food price
            shock during the early child development window (from
            conception through two years of age). The analysis finds
            that household tobacco production in the year of or the year
            after child birth, combined with exposure to an exogenous
            domestic staple food price shock, lowers the child
            height-for-age z-score by 1.27, implying a 70-percent drop
            in z-score. The negative effect is, however, not
            statistically significant among children who were not
            exposed to the same shock. The results put emphasis on the
            food insecurity and malnutrition risks materializing at
            times of high food prices, which might have
            disproportionately adverse effects on uninsured cash crop producers.
Demand collapse or credit crunch to
            firms evidence from the world bank's financial crisis
            survey in Eastern Europe
While there is a consensus that the
            2008-2009 crisis was triggered by financial market
            disruptions in the United States, there is little agreement
            on whether the transmission of the crisis and the subsequent
            prolonged recession are due to credit factors or to a
            collapse of demand for goods and services. This paper
            assesses whether the primary effect of the global crisis on
            Eastern European firms took the form of an adverse demand
            shock or a credit crunch. Using a unique firm survey
            conducted by the World Bank in six Eastern European
            countries during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the paper
            shows that the drop in demand for firms' products and
            services was overwhelmingly reported as the most damaging
            adverse effect of the crisis. Other "usual
            suspects," such as rising debt or reduced access to
            credit, are reported as minor. The paper also finds that the
            changes in firms' sales and installed capacity are
            significantly and robustly correlated with the demand
            sensitivity of the sector in which the firms operate.
            However, they are not robustly correlated with various
            proxies for firms' credit needs.
Shared prosperity : links to growth,
            inequality and inequality of opportunity
Focusing on the welfare of the less well
            off as a measure of real societal progress is the
            fundamental principle underlying the WBG indicator of
            "shared prosperity", namely income growth of the
            bottom 40 percent in every country. This paper uses a
            database assembled by the World Bank Group to investigate
            some basic characteristics of shared prosperity,
            particularly its relationship with overall economic growth
            and inequality. Initial estimates using this dataset of 79
            countries show that median income growth of the bottom 40
            percent (circa 2005-2010) was 4.2 percent, a high number in
            comparison to the 3.1 percent per capita income growth of
            the overall population. In addition, the low and
            lower-middle income countries appear to be trailing the
            upper middle and high income countries in boosting shared
            prosperity. Establishing conceptual links between income
            growth of the bottom 40 percent, the overall growth rate and
            reviewing existing evidence on how these relate to
            inequality, the paper discusses two main ideas. First,
            shared prosperity is strongly correlated with overall
            prosperity implying that the whole host of policies that are
            important to generate and sustain growth remain relevant.
            Second, boosting shared prosperity will also require a
            concerted effort to strengthen the social contract,
            particularly in the area of promoting equality of
            opportunity. Growing evidence suggests that improving access
            for all and reducing inequality of opportunities --
            particularly those related to human capital development of
            children -- are not only about "fairness" and
            building a "just society", but also about
            realizing a society's aspirations of economic prosperity.
Political budget cycles and the
            organization of political parties
This paper introduces a new explanation
            for political budget cycles: politicians have stronger
            incentives to increase spending around elections in the
            presence of younger political parties. Previous research has
            shown that political budget cycles are larger when voters
            are uninformed about politician characteristics and when
            politicians are less credible. The effects of party age can
            be traced to organizational differences between younger and
            older parties that also affect voter information and
            politician credibility. Parties organized around particular
            individuals, rather than around policy labels or a party
            machine, are less likely to survive the departure of party
            leaders, to adopt organizational attributes that promote
            voter information and political credibility, and to limit
            political budget cycles. Previous research has also shown
            larger political budget cycles in younger democracies.
            Evidence presented here indicates that party age accounts
            for this effect.
Where is the cheese synthesizing a
            giant literature on causes and consequences of financial
            sector development
A likely image of the current state of
            the literature on financial sector development is that of a
            Swiss cheese with many holes inside important areas of
            knowledge. The aim of this synthesis paper is to map the
            current knowledge and ignorance (i.e., holes) in the
            literature by providing a narrative for the empirical
            findings of a comprehensive literature review concerning the
            quantitative effects of financial development on economic
            growth and employment, and various determinants of financial
            sector development. The literature was restricted mostly to
            high-quality academic research that focuses on developing
            countries over the period 1960-2012. Because of data
            constraints, this review also includes cross-country
            analyses, in which developed and developing countries are
            considered together. The main findings include (i) a
            positive relationship between financial development and
            economic growth and employment, subject to a number of
            qualifications; (ii) a complicated relationship of
            regulations and supervision to financial sector development;
            and (iii) a positive relationship between an enabling
            institutional environment and financial sector development.
            This review also identifies some missing avenues in the
            literature and provides a number of suggestions for future work.