rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Poverty and inequality maps for
            rural Vietnam: an application of small area estimation
The objective of the paper is to update
            the small area estimates of poverty and inequality for rural
            Vietnam. The new estimates of province and district level
            poverty for the year 2006, when combined with estimates
            available for 1999, allow for examination of how poverty has
            changed in rural Vietnam over the past seven years. The
            analysis finds that all provinces across the country
            experienced a noticeable reduction in rural poverty during
            the period 1999-2006. Some of the largest reductions in
            poverty are observed for provinces with poverty rates close
            to the national average. The poorest provinces have also
            experienced reductions in poverty, albeit at a more modest
            pace. Provinces and districts with lower levels of
            inequality in 2006 have seen above average poverty
            reductions. The authors consider both expenditure and income
            based measures of poverty and inequality, and find the
            results to be very similar.
Antiretroviral therapy awareness and
            risky sexual behaviors : evidence from Mozambique
This paper studies the effect of
            increased access to antiretroviral therapy on risky sexual
            behavior, using data collected in Mozambique in 2007 and
            2008. The survey sampled both households of randomly
            selected HIV positive individuals and households from the
            general population. Controlling for unobserved individual
            characteristics, the findings support the hypothesis of
            disinhibition behaviors, whereby risky sexual behaviors
            increase in response to the perceived changes in risk
            associated with increased access to antiretroviral therapy.
            Furthermore, men and women respond differently to the
            perceived changes in risk. In particular, risky behaviors
            increase for men who believe, wrongly, that AIDS can be
            cured, while risky behaviors increase for women who believe,
            correctly, that antiretroviral therapy can treat AIDS but
            cannot cure it. The findings suggest that scaling up access
            to antiretroviral therapy without prevention programs may
            not be optimal if the objective is to contain the disease,
            since people would adjust their sexual behavior in response
            to the perceived changes in risk. Therefore, prevention
            programs need to include educational messages about
            antiretroviral therapy, and address the changing beliefs
            about HIV in the era of increasing   antiretroviral therapy availability.
Tajikistan : key priorities for
            climate change adaptation
How should Tajikistan adapt to ongoing
            and future climate change, in particular given the many
            pressing development challenges it currently faces? The
            paper argues that for developing countries like Tajikistan,
            faster economic and social development is the best possible
            defense against climate change. It presents some key
            findings from a recent nationally representative household
            survey to illustrate the strong public support for more
            climate change related spending on better management of
            water resources, disaster management, agriculture, and
            public health--four key sectors that the government's
            latest poverty reduction strategy identifies as being
            especially important from a climate change perspective.
            Finally, the paper argues that, as important as
            project-based adaptation measures may be, it is imperative
            that they be supported by an overall policy framework that
            provides a truly enabling environment to facilitate faster
            climate change adaptation.
The development impact of a best
            practice seasonal worker policy
Seasonal migration programs are widely
            used around the world, and are increasingly seen as offering
            a potential "triple-win"-- benefiting the migrant,
            sending country, and receiving country. Yet there is a
            dearth of rigorous evidence as to their development impact,
            and concerns about whether the time periods involved are too
            short to realize much in the way of benefits, and whether
            poorer, less skilled households actually get to participate
            in such programs. This paper studies the development impacts
            of a recently introduced seasonal worker program that has
            been deemed to be "best practice." New
            Zealand's Recognized Seasonal Employer program was
            launched in 2007 with an explicit focus on development in
            the Pacific alongside the aim of benefiting employers at
            home. A multi-year prospective evaluation allows measurement
            of the impact of participation in this program on households
            and communities in Tonga and Vanuatu. Using a matched
            difference-in-differences analysis based on detailed surveys
            fielded before, during, and after participation, the authors
            find that the Recognized Seasonal Employer program has
            indeed had largely positive development impacts. It has
            increased income and consumption of households, allowed
            households to purchase more durable goods, increased the
            subjective standard of living, and had additional benefits
            at the community level. It also increased child schooling in
            Tonga. This should rank it among the most effective
            development policies evaluated to date. The policy was
            designed as a best practice example based on lessons
            elsewhere, and now should serve as a model for other
            countries to follow.
Timeliness and contract
            enforceability in intermediate goods trade
This paper shows that the institutional
            environment and the ability to export on time are sources of
            comparative advantage as important as factors of production.
            In particular, the ability to export on time is crucial to
            explain comparative advantage in intermediate goods. These
            findings underscore the importance of investing in
            infrastructure and fostering trade facilitation to boost a
            country's participation in production networks.
            Furthermore, the paper contributes to the so-called
            "distance puzzle" by showing that the increasing
            importance of distance over time is in part driven by trade
            in intermediate goods.
The role of trade costs in global
            production networks : evidence from China's processing
            trade regime
In a seminal contribution, Yi (2003) has
            shown that vertically specialized trade should be more
            sensitive to changes in trade costs than regular trade. Yet
            empirical evidence of this remains remarkably scant. This
            paper uses data from China's processing trade regime to
            analyze the role of trade costs on trade within global
            production networks (GPNs). Under this regime, firms are
            granted duty exemptions on imported inputs as long as they
            are used solely for export purposes. As a result, the data
            provide information on trade between three sequential nodes
            of a global supply chain: the location of input production,
            the location of processing (in China) and the location of
            further consumption. This makes it possible to examine the
            role of both trade costs related to the import of inputs
            (upstream trade costs) and trade costs related to the export
            of final goods (downstream trade costs) on intra-GPN trade.
            The authors show that intra-GPN trade differs from regular
            trade in that it not only depends on downstream trade costs,
            but also on upstream trade costs and the interaction of
            both. Moreover, intra-GPN trade is more sensitive to oil
            price movements and business cycle movements than regular
            trade. Finally, the paper analyzes three channels through
            which intra-GPN trade have amplified the trade collapse
            during the recent Global Recession.
Natural disasters and household
            welfare : evidence from Vietnam
As natural disasters hit with increasing
            frequency, especially in coastal areas, it is imperative to
            better understand how much natural disasters affect
            economies and their people. This requires disaggregated
            measures of natural disasters that can be reliably linked to
            households, the first challenge this paper tackles. In
            particular, a methodology is illustrated to create natural
            disaster and hazard maps from first hand, geo-referenced
            meteorological data. In a second step, the repeated
            cross-sectional national living standard measurement surveys
            (2002, 2004, and 2006) from Vietnam are augmented with the
            natural disaster measures derived in the first phase, to
            estimate the welfare effects associated with natural
            disasters. The results indicate that short-run losses from
            natural disasters can be substantial, with riverine floods
            causing welfare losses of up to 23 percent and hurricanes
            reducing welfare by up to 52 percent inside cities with a
            population over 500,000. Households are better able to cope
            with the short-run effects of droughts, largely due to
            irrigation. There are also important long-run negative
            effects, in Vietnam mostly so for droughts, flash floods,
            and hurricanes. Geographical differentiation in the welfare
            effects across space and disaster appears partly linked to
            the functioning of the disaster relief system, which has so
            far largely eluded households in areas regularly affected by
            hurricane force winds.
On gender and growth : the role of
            intergenerational health externalities and women's
            occupational constraints
This paper studies the growth effects of
            externalities associated with intergenerational health
            transmission, health persistence, and women's
            occupational constraints-- with particular emphasis on the
            role of access to infrastructure. The first part provides a
            review of the evidence on these issues. The second and third
            parts present an overlapping generations model of endogenous
            growth that captures these interactions, and characterize
            its properties. The model is then used to perform several
            gender-based or gender-related experiments -- a reduction in
            the cost of child rearing, improved wage equality in the
            market place, and better access to infrastructure. The last
            part draws together the implications of the analysis for
            promoting the role of women in growth strategies.
The full economic cost of
            groundwater extraction
When a groundwater basin is exploited by
            a large number of farmers, acting independently, each farmer
            has little incentive to practice conservation that would
            primarily benefit other farmers. This can lead to excessive
            groundwater extraction. When farmers pay less than the full
            cost of electricity used for groundwater pumping, this
            problem can be worsened; while the problem can be somewhat
            relieved by rationing the electricity supply. The research
            in this paper constructs an analytical framework for
            describing the characteristics of economically efficient
            groundwater management plans, identifying how individual
            water use decisions by farmers collectively depart from
            efficient resource use, and examining how policies related
            to both water and electricity can improve on the efficiency
            of the status quo. It is shown that an optimal scheme for
            pricing electricity used for pumping groundwater includes
            two main elements: 1) the full (marginal) economic cost of
            electricity must be covered; and 2) there must be an extra
            charge, reflected in the electricity price, corresponding to
            the externality cost of groundwater pumping. The analysis
            includes a methodology for calculating the latter
            externality cost, based on just a few parameters, and a
            discussion of how electricity pricing could be modified to
            improve efficiency in both power and water use.
Why multi-stakeholder groups succeed
            and fail
Anti-corruption initiatives increasingly
            use multi-stakeholder groups, comprised of representatives
            from government, private sector, and civil society
            organizations, to drive implementation at the local level
            and serve as a force for transparency. In theory, the
            multi-stakeholder groups ideal is quite appealing -- each
            stakeholder has its own interest in the initiative and
            contributes its unique capacities. In practice, many
            multi-stakeholder groups have fallen short of expectations.
            This paper considers two separate but related questions.
            First, what are the unique barriers to implementation facing
            multi-stakeholder groups? Second, what policy measures can
            be taken to improve the likelihood that multi-stakeholder
            groups will succeed? The authors use existing research in
            political science and economics to develop a multi-level
            framework that accounts for the "nested nature" of
            multi-stakeholder groups. The framework is then applied to
            experiences of MSGs from the Construction Sector
            Transparency Initiative, a new pilot program that aims to
            promote transparency in construction through the release of
            material project information. The evidence shows that the
            barriers facing multi-stakeholder groups are substantial,
            but once the level (individual incentives, organizational
            dynamics, country context, or international pressures) of
            the challenge confronting a multi-stakeholder group is
            identified, the specific barrier, its root causes, and
            appropriate solutions can be identified. More broadly, the
            Construction Sector Transparency Initiative experiences
            suggest that multi-stakeholder groups are best used as a
            means of promoting dialogue and building consensus, not as
            the locus of policy implementation and oversight.
How do women weather economic shocks
            a review of the evidence
Do women weather economic shocks
            differently than men? The evidence shows this to be the
            case, especially in low-income countries. The first-round
            impacts of economic crises on women's employment should
            be particularly salient in the current downturn, since women
            have increased their participation in the globalized
            workforce and therefore are more directly affected by the
            contraction of employment than in the past. Crises also have
            second-round impacts, as vulnerable households respond to
            declining income with coping strategies that can vary
            significantly by gender. In the past, women from low-income
            households have typically entered the labor force, while
            women from rich households have often exited the labor
            market in response to economic crises. In contrast,
            men's labor force participation rates have remained
            largely unchanged. Evidence also suggests that women defer
            fertility during economic crises and that child schooling
            and child survival are adversely affected, mainly in
            low-income countries, with adverse effects on health being
            greater for girls than for boys. In middle-income countries,
            by contrast, the effects on children's schooling and
            health are more nuanced, and gender differences less
            salient. Providing women in poor households with income
            during economic downturns makes economic sense. This paper
            reviews workfare programs and cash transfers and finds that
            the former provide poor women with income only when they
            include specific design features. The latter have been
            effective in providing mothers with income and protecting
            the wellbeing of children in periods of economic downturn.
A flaw in the model ... that defines
            how the world works
The authors of this paper claim that
            modeling financial markets based on probability theory is a
            severe systematic mistake that led to the global financial
            crisis. They argue that the crisis was not just the result
            of risk managers using outdated financial data, but that the
            employed efficiency model -- also referred to as the
            stochastic model -- is basically flawed. In an exemplary
            way, the analysis proves that this model is unable to
            account for interactions between market participants,
            neglects strategic interdependences, and hence leads to
            erroneous solutions. The central message is that the
            existing efficiency model should be replaced by an approach
            using agent-based scenario analysis.
Firms operating under infrastructure
            and credit constraints in developing countries : the case of
            power generators
Many developing countries are unable to
            provide their industrial sector with reliable power and many
            enterprises have to contend with electricity that is
            insufficient and of poor quality. Because of these
            constraints, firms in developing countries opt for
            self-generation even though it is widely considered a second
            best solution. This paper develops a theoretical model of
            investment behavior in remedial infrastructure when physical
            and credit constraints are present. It then tests
            econometrically some implications from this model using a
            large sample of enterprises from 87 countries from the World
            Bank Enterprise Survey Database. After showing that these
            constraints interact and have non-linear effects depending
            on the industrial sector's degree of reliance on
            electricity and size of firms, the paper draws
            differentiated policy recommendations. Credit constraints
            appear to be the priority in sectors very reliant on
            electricity to spur entry and convergence to the
            technological frontier, while in other sectors, firms would
            benefit more widely from marginal improvements in electrical supply.
A framework for analyzing
            competition in the banking sector : an application to the
            case of Jordan
This paper proposes a framework to
            analyze competition in the banking sector using Jordan as an
            example. In particular, the paper pursues a multi-pronged
            approach to analyze competition including (i) an examination
            of the extent to which the market is contestable (that is,
            has low barriers to bank entry and exit), (b) an evaluation
            of the behavior of bank spreads, and (iii) an assessment of
            non-structural and direct measures of bank competition such
            as the H-statistic and the Lerner Index. This approach
            provides a more comprehensive framework to examine
            competition in the banking sector, compared with the
            commonly used alternative of looking only at bank
            concentration figures. In the case of Jordan, the analysis
            indicates that although concentration has declined,
            competition in the country is low and has decreased over time.
How large is the government spending
            multiplier evidence from World Bank lending
This paper proposes a novel method of
            isolating fluctuations in public spending that are likely to
            be uncorrelated with contemporaneous macroeconomic shocks
            and can be used to estimate government spending multipliers.
            The approach relies on two features unique to many
            low-income countries: (1) borrowing from the World Bank
            finances a substantial fraction of public spending, and (2)
            actual spending on World Bank-financed projects is typically
            spread out over several years following the original
            approval of the project. These two features imply that
            fluctuations in spending on World Bank projects in a given
            year are in large part determined by fluctuations in project
            approval decisions made in previous years, and so are
            unlikely to be correlated with shocks to output in the
            current year. World Bank project-level disbursement data are
            used to isolate the component of public spending associated
            with project approvals from previous years, which in turn
            can be used to estimate government spending multipliers, in
            a sample of 29 aid-dependent low-income countries. The
            estimated multipliers are small, reasonably precisely
            estimated, and rarely significantly different from zero.
Barriers to household risk
            management : evidence from India
Why do many households remain exposed to
            large exogenous sources of non-systematic income risk? This
            paper uses a series of randomized field experiments in rural
            India to test the importance of price and non-price factors
            in the adoption of an innovative rainfall insurance product.
            The analysis finds that demand is significantly
            price-elastic, but that even if insurance were offered with
            payout ratios similar to US, widespread coverage would not
            be achieved. The paper identifies key non-price frictions
            that limit demand: liquidity constraints, particularly among
            poor households, lack of trust, and limited salience. The
            authors suggest potential improvements in contract design to
            mitigate these frictions.