rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The External Wealth of Arab Nations
            : Structure, Trends, and Policy Implications
The paper makes two main contributions.
            First, it analyzes net foreign assets and liabilities in
            selected Arab countries over the past two decades,
            emphasizing the relative significance of direct versus
            portfolio investment. It distinguishes between foreign
            direct investment, portfolio equity investment, official
            reserves, and external debt. Second, the paper examines the
            effects of policy variables that affect the accumulation of
            net foreign assets and its components, analyzing how the
            existence of a sovereign wealth fund, the country's
            exchange rate regime, and the development of its financial
            system affect its net foreign assets. The main findings show
            that the presence of a sovereign wealth fund is positively
            and statistically significantly associated with foreign
            direct investment in Arab countries. Financial development
            (defined as credit to the private sector as a percentage of
            gross domestic product) is also statistically significant
            across various regressions. The more financially developed a
            country is, the more it should invest in riskier assets,
            such as portfolio assets. But Arab investors are more risk
            averse than investors elsewhere. Oil-exporting countries
            tend to invest more in debt assets than in portfolio assets.
            For oil-importing countries, financial development is the
            most important determinant of foreign direct investment.
Stages of Development of Payment
            Systems : Leapfrogging across Countries and MENA's
            Place in the World
This paper studies the relationship
            between the level of economic development and the incidence
            of three forms of payments across countries, namely the
            incidence of bank accounts, digital payments, and mobile
            money accounts among the adult populations across countries.
            It presents simple statistical tests of leapfrogging, the
            phenomenon by which poor countries surpass rich countries in
            the provision of payments mechanisms. It contributes to a
            broader and long-standing literature on stages of
            development, as well as to the literature on financial
            development and access to finance. The findings suggest that
            there is evidence of "absolute" and
            "relative" leapfrogging, with both terms defined
            in the paper. In addition, the Middle East and North Africa
            region, on average, suffers from a notable underperformance
            gap across all observed stages of payment-systems
            development. This finding suggests that the region suffers
            from structural impediments to the development of its
            financial and banking systems that go well beyond the
            adoption of digital-technology tools.
What Aspects of Formality Do Workers
            Value Evidence from a Choice Experiment in Bangladesh
This study uses a choice experiment
            among 2,000 workers in Bangladesh to elicit willingness to
            pay (WTP) for job attributes: a contract, termination
            notice, working hours, paid leave, and a pension fund. Using
            a stated preference method allows calculation of WTP for
            benefits in this setting, despite the lack of data on worker
            transitions, and the fact that many workers are
            self-employed, which makes it difficult to use revealed
            preference methods. Workers highly value job stability: the
            average worker would be willing to forego a 27 percent
            increase in income to obtain a 1-year contract (relative to
            no contract), or to forego a 12 percent increase to obtain
            thirty days of termination notice. There is substantial
            heterogeneity in WTP by type of employment and gender: women
            value shorter working hours more than men, while government
            workers place a higher value on contracts than do private
            sector employees.
Macro-Financial Aspects of Climate Change
This paper examines the interaction
            between macro-financial and climate-related risks. It brings
            together different strands of the literature on
            climate-related risks and how these relate to
            macro-financial management and risks. Physical impacts of
            climate change as well as the transition toward a resilient
            low-carbon economy pose significant challenges for
            macro-financial management, as they can damage the balance
            sheets of governments, households, firms, and financial
            institutions due to the adverse and possibly abrupt impacts
            on investment and economic growth, fiscal revenue and
            expenditure, debt sustainability, and the valuation of
            financial assets. In turn, macro-financial risks translate
            into weakened resilience to physical climate risks and
            constrained capacity for climate adaptation and mitigation
            efforts. The paper finds that many countries face the
            "double jeopardy" of simultaneous elevated
            climate-related and macro-financial risks. Reducing
            macro-financial risks in countries under double jeopardy is
            an important component of international efforts to tackle
            climate change to complement and support country-specific efforts.
Migration in Libya : A Spatial
            Network Analysis
This paper provides the first systematic
            analysis of migration to, within, and from Libya. The data
            used in the analysis are from the Displacement Tracking
            Matrix data set of the International Organization for
            Migration. The analysis uses this unique source of data,
            combining several techniques to analyze various dimensions
            of migration in Libya. First, the paper provides a detailed
            description of the demographic characteristics and national
            composition of the migrant populations in Libya. Next, it
            discusses the determinants of migration flow within Libya.
            The findings show that migration in Libya can be
            characterized as forced migration, because conflict
            intensity is the main determinant of the decision to
            relocate across provinces. Finally, the paper describes the
            direction, composition, and evolution of international
            migration flows passing through Libya and identifies the
            mechanisms of location selection by migrants within Libya by
            identifying hotspots and cluster provinces.
Migration and Remittances in the
            Former Soviet Union Countries of Central Asia and the South
            Caucasus : What Are the Long-Term Macroeconomic Consequences
Armenia, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic,
            and Tajikistan have all experienced substantial
            out-migration of workers and an associated inflow of
            workers' remittances over the past two decades. These
            four countries have much higher human capital, as measured
            by the Human Capital Index, than is typical for countries
            with similar levels of per capita income, and this may
            enable migrant workers to exploit opportunities to work in
            economies where labor productivity is higher. The inflow of
            workers' remittances has had effects analogous to those
            of Dutch disease in the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan,
            which have experienced a large rise in expenditure to output
            and the share of services in gross domestic product,
            appreciation of the Balassa-Samuelson adjusted real exchange
            rates, and poor trade performance. In Armenia and Georgia,
            where remittances are a smaller share of gross domestic
            product, the effects were much more muted and their trade
            performance was much better.
Does Democratization Promote
            Competition Evidence from Indonesia
Does democratization promote economic
            competition? This paper documents that the disruption of
            political connections associated with Suharto's fall
            had a modest pro-competitive effect on Indonesian
            manufacturing industries. Firms with connections to Suharto
            lost substantial market share following his resignation.
            Industries in which Suharto family firms had larger market
            share during his tenure exhibited weak improvements in
            broader measures of competition in the post-Suharto era
            relative to industries in which Suharto firms had not been
            important players.
Gender Differences in Agricultural
            Productivity in Cote d'Ivoire : Changes in Determinants
            and Distributional Composition over the Past Decade
This paper analyzes changes in
            agricultural productivity gender gaps in Côte d'Ivoire
            between 2008 and 2016 using decomposition methods. The
            analysis finds that the unconditional gender gap between
            male- and female-headed households has decreased by 14
            percent over the past decade. The conditional gender gap has
            decreased by 32 percent and becomes statistically
            insignificant once accounting for whether households farm
            export crops. This transition is driven by improvements
            across crop types, but it is particularly remarkable for
            export crop productivity, likely due to increased adoption
            of fertilizer and pesticide by female-headed households.
            Despite these substantial improvements, female-headed
            households in the bottom half of the distribution remain
            disadvantaged. Moreover, over the past decade, female-headed
            households did not transition into commercial agriculture
            and have witnessed greater reductions in land area compared
            with their male counterparts. The results show that helping
            these female-headed households access agricultural labor,
            strengthen their land rights, and adopt export crops are the
            three most promising policy options to reach gender parity
            in agriculture in Côte d'Ivoire.
Conceptual Aspects of Global Value Chains
The paper offers an overview of some key
            conceptual aspects associated with the rise of global value
            chains (GVCs). It outlines a series of alternative
            interpretations and definitions of what the rise of GVCs
            entails, and it traces the implications of these alternative
            conceptualizations for the measurement of the phenomenon, as
            well as for elucidating the key determinants and
            implications of GVC participation, both at the country level
            and at the firm level. In the process, the paper offers some
            speculative thoughts about the future of GVCs in light of
            the advent of an array of new technologies.
Heterogeneous Effects of the de jure
            and de facto Business Environment : Findings from Multiple
            Data Sets on the Business Environment
Using multiple sources of national- and
            firm-level data around the world, this paper investigates
            how the effects of the business environment depend on
            whether the  measure is de jure or de facto, and how
            business environment effects differ by ownership and size.
            The paper compares estimates of business environment effects
            from three data sources, and modifies the priors on the
            relative importance of various elements of the business
            environment. Among four aspects of the business environment,
            at least two sets are robust and a third set does not
            contradict the other two: access to finance, electricity,
            internet, and human capital. The effects of de jure business
            environment indicators on firm performances depend on
            measures of contract enforcement. Foreign-owned firms
            benefit more from the maintenance of physical safety and
            ease in obtaining construction permits, and gain competitive
            advantage in productivity when domestic infrastructure or
            access to finance is worse. Relatively small firms benefit
            more from corruption control, basic and modern
            infrastructure, human capital, and land access. Relatively
            large firms benefit more from physical safety. Access to
            finance is important for the expansion of smaller firms and
            the productivity of large firms.
Regional Integration in South Asia :
            Implications for Green Growth, Female Labor Force
            Participation, and the Gender Wage Gap
The study aims to provide insights to
            policy makers in measuring the impact of trade
            liberalization and regional integration measures on gender
            employment and wages. The study incorporates
            gender-differentiated employment and wages for selected
            South Asian economies across sectors to identify targeted
            value chains and economic activities, particularly among
            green trade sectors. This is the first major attempt to
            develop a gender-differentiated data set for South Asian
            countries, within the widely used Global Trade Analysis
            Project framework, to examine the nexus between trade, green
            economy, and gender. Two illustrative scenarios are
            examined. The first scenario examines a complete tariff
            elimination among the Bhutan-Bangladesh-India-Nepal grouping
            of countries in all sectors. The second scenario involves
            complete tariff elimination among countries in South Asia.
            The results indicate that a free trade agreement signed by
            all countries is likely to be more beneficial compared with
            only some countries signing the free trade agreement.
            Women's employment grows faster than men's
            employment, as most of the sectors that benefit due to these
            free trade agreements are women intensive. Growth in
            women's employment and wages in South Asia is
            consistent with growth in green sectors.
Narrow Incumbent Victories and
            Post-Election Conflict : Evidence from the Philippines
Post-election violence is a common form
            of conflict, but its underlying mechanisms are not well
            understood. Using data from the 2007 Philippine mayoral
            elections, this paper provides evidence that post-election
            violence is particularly intense after narrow victories by
            incumbents. Using a density test, the study shows that
            incumbents were substantially more likely to win narrow
            victories than their challengers, a pattern consistent with
            electoral manipulation. There is no evidence that the
            increase in post-election violence is related to the
            incumbent's political platform or their performance in
            past elections. These results provide support for the notion
            that post-election violence is triggered by election fraud
            or by the failure of democratic ways of removing unpopular
            incumbents from office.
Do Weak Institutions Prolong Crises
            On the Identification, Characteristics, and Duration of
            Declines During Economic Slumps
This paper studies periods of prolonged
            contractions in output per capita in a sample of 145
            countries from 1950 to 2014. Economic slumps are defined as
            abrupt interruptions of a period of growth by several regime
            switches. Slumps start with a sharp contraction along with a
            trend break, which is followed by another switch when growth
            stabilizes again. The paper then analyzes the correlates of
            these slumps, focusing on the length and depth of the
            contraction, from the beginning of the slump to its trough.
            The results establish three new stylized facts: (i) weak
            political institutions predate crises whereas political
            reforms tend to follow them, (ii) the length and depth of
            economic declines are robustly correlated with executive
            constraints and ethnic heterogeneity, and (iii) there is a
            robust interaction between these two variables, suggesting
            that institutions constraining leaders are important for
            stabilizing growth. This is particularly relevant for
            Sub-Saharan Africa, where politics are often ethnic and
            decision makers are comparatively unconstrained.
Recall Length and Measurement Error
            in Agricultural Surveys
This paper assesses the relationship
            between the length of recall and nonrandom error in
            agricultural survey data. Using data from the World
            Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated
            Surveys on Agriculture in Malawi and Tanzania, the paper
            shows that key input and output variables are systematically
            related to the length of the recall period, indicating the
            presence of nonrandom measurement error. With longer recall
            periods, farmers report greater quantities of harvest,
            labor, and fertilizer inputs. Farmers list fewer plots as
            the recall period increases. The paper argues that it is
            plausible that farmers overestimate plot-level outcomes, or
            they forget some of their more marginal plots due to longer
            recall periods. The analysis also finds evidence of
            measurement error related to the length of recall in common
            measures of agricultural productivity. The size of the
            recall effect typically varies between 2 and 5 percent per
            additional month of recall length, which is economically
            significant. With data reliability affecting policy
            effectiveness, improving agricultural survey data quality
            remains an important concern. Mainstreaming objective
            measures where possible and reducing the risk of recall
            error through shorter recall periods appear to be promising
            avenues to improve the quality of key variables in
            agricultural surveys.
Religion and Sanitation Practices
Infant mortality among Hindus is higher
            than among Muslims in India, and religious differences in
            sanitation practices have been cited as a contributing
            factor. To explore whether religion itself is associated
            with differences in sanitation practices, this study
            compares sanitation practices of Hindus and Muslims living
            in the same locations using three nationally-representative
            data sets from India. Across all three data sets, the
            unconditional religion-specific gap in latrine ownership and
            latrine use declines by approximately two-thirds when
            conditioning on location characteristics or including
            location fixed effects. Further, the estimates do not show
            evidence of religion-specific differences in other
            sanitation practices, such as handwashing or observed fecal
            material near homes. Household sanitation practices vary
            substantially across areas of India, but religion itself has
            less direct influence when considering differences between
            Hindus and Muslims within the same location.
Toward Successful Development
            Policies : Insights from Research in Development Economics
What major insights have emerged from
            development economics in the past decade, and how do they
            matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was
            recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass
            to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper
            assembles a set of 13 short, nontechnical briefing notes
            prepared in response to this request, summarizing a
            selection of major insights in development economics in the
            past decade. The notes synthesize evidence from recent
            research on how policies should be designed, implemented,
            and evaluated, and provide illustrations of what works and
            what does not in selected policy areas.
Reverse Mortgages, Financial
            Inclusion, and Economic Development : Potential Benefit and Risks
This paper examines the state of reverse
            mortgage markets in selected countries around the world and
            considers the potential benefits and risks of these products
            from a financial inclusion and economic benefit standpoint.
            Despite potentially increasing demand from aging societies
            -- combined with limited pension income -- a series of
            market failures constrain supply and demand. The paper
            discusses a series of market failures on the supply side,
            such as adverse selection, moral hazard, and the costly
            regulation established to address these problems, leading to
            only a small number of providers, even in developed markets.
            Demand-side constraints are equally relevant, in particular
            high non-interest costs, abuse concerns, and the inability
            of reverse mortgages to cover key risks facing the elderly,
            particularly health and elder care. In developing countries,
            constraints are likely to be even higher than in advanced
            economies, due to high transaction costs and lack of
            consumer knowledge and protection. The enabling conditions
            for such markets to develop are outlined, along with
            examples of regulatory oversight. The paper concludes that
            these still seem to be largely products of last resort
            rather than well-considered purchases as part of good
            retirement planning.