rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Hallward-Driemeier, Mary & Wallsten, Scott & Lixin Colin Xu, 2003. "The investment climate and the firm : firm-level evidence from China," Washington D.C.. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series 3003.

Iimi, Atsushi. 2008. "Effects of Improving Infrastructure Quality on Business Costs: Evidence from Firm-Level Data", http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1149084.

Jamasb, T., R. Mota, D. Newbery, and M. Pollitt. 2005. ‘‘Electricity Reform in Developing Countries: A Survey of Empirical Evidence on Determinants and Performance.’’ World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3549. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

Kirkpatrick, Colin, Parker, David, and Yin-Fang Zhang. 2002. "Electricity Sector Reform in Developing Countries: An Econometric Assessment of the Effects of Privatisation, Competition and Regulation." Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC) Working paper no. 30593.

Kumbhakara, Subal C. and Lennart Hjalmarsson. 1998. "Relative performance of public and private ownership under yardstick competition: electricity retail distribution", European Economic Review Volume 42, Issue 1, January 1998, Pages 97-122.

Klapper, Leora, Laeven, Luc, and Raghuram Rajan. 2004. "Business Environment and Firm Entry: Evidence from International Data". World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3232. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

La Porta, Rafael, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny. 1999. “The Quality of Government”, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 15(1): 222-279.

Lee, Kyu Sik. 1985. "An Evaluation of Decentralization Policies in Light of Changing Location Pattems of Employment in The Seoul Region." Urban Development Discussion Paper, UDD-60. The World Bank.

Lee, Kyu Sik. 1989. "The Location of Jobs in a Developing Metropolis : Patterns of Growth in Bogota and Cali, Colombia." Oxford University Press.

Lee, K.S., Anas, A. and Oh, G.T., 1996. “Cost of infrastructure deficiencies in manufacturing in Indonesia, Nigeria and Thailand,” Policy Research Working Paper Series 1604, Washington DC: World Bank.

McCotter, Brian. 2005. “Best Practices in Consumer Services. A Comparative Study.” USAID, Washington, DC.

Reinikka, Ritva, and Jakob Svensson. 1999. “Confronting Competition: Investment Response and Constraints in Uganda.” Washington, D.C.: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Series 2242.

22
# **Poverty Dynamics in Bhutan, 2017–2022:**

# **Evidence from Synthetic Panels**

Nicola Amendola<sup>*</sup> Federico Belotti<sup>*</sup> Alvin Etang<sup>**</sup> Giulia Mancini<sup>***</sup> Giovanni Vecchi<sup>*</sup>

**Keywords:** poverty dynamics, economic mobility, synthetic panel methods. **JEL:** I30, I32, C10, C23

> * Department of Economics and Finance, Tor Vergata University of Rome – nicola.amendola@uniroma2.it, federico.belotti@uniroma2.it, and giovanni.vecchi@uniroma2.it

> ** The World Bank - aetangndip@worldbank.org

> *** Department of Economics and Management, University of Sassari – gmancini@uniss.it
# **Introduction**

Decades of experimental and empirical work confirm that people derive satisfaction from own standard of living as well as their relative position in the comparison group (Veblen, 1989; Dusenberry, 1949; Easterlin, 1974, 1995; Blanchflower, et al., 2004; Luttmer, 2005), but relative position in one’s comparison group is more important than own standard of living (Clark and Oswald, 1996; Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2005). The fall of the Berlin wall almost 20 years ago initiated one of the most significant events in the twentieth century: the transition from socialist to democratic societies for hundreds of millions of people. Before reform, the socialist ideology claimed that almost every member of the society was satisfied (Andorka, 1999). As reform progressed, it created both early winners from partial reforms as well as gainers from more comprehensive reforms later on. All things considered, how do individuals participating in these changes judge their life satisfaction?

Earlier studies on life satisfaction had shown that people are more satisfied with life if there is lower unemployment and higher political freedom (Hayo, 2007), if they are younger, have experienced lesser macroeconomic volatility and better access to public goods (Guriev and Zhuravskaya, 2008), and lesser inequality and more advanced reform (Sanfey and Teksoz, 2007). Within the context of the transition, the broad consensus in the literature is that on average transition made people unhappy (see Veenhoven (2001) and Graham, Eggers and Sukhtankar (2004), Lelkes (2006), Sanfey and Teksoz (2007), Hayo (2007) and Guriev and Zhuravskaya (2008)).

Despite the rapid expansion of happiness studies, there remain a number of unresolved issues in assessing the importance of reported subjective well-being to understand economic agents’ decision making process. One unresolved issue has been the ideal choice of an appropriate comparison group. Most of the existing studies use external comparison points such as same neighborhood, co-workers, country, race, family or siblings. In a recent study, Rayo and Becker (2005) develop a theory which incorporates 2
# **1 Introduction**

Crisis-driven migration flows have significantly increased in the past two decades (Bhabha, 2018). The arrival of a large number of migrants and refugees have triggered fierce political disputes over its impact on local labor markets and have been the center of much discussion in the academic literature, as well as in the media. While local’s perceptions about the effects of immigration on the labor market determine their behavior and attitudes towards immigrants, the way in which these perceptions are formed are much less well understood.

We study the economic underpinnings of hostility and discrimination against immigrants. The current crisis in Venezuela has led about 5.6 million people to emigrate (R4V, 2021). This migration wave intensified in 2017 when the country’s political instability added to the worsening economic situation in the country. While many Venezuelans chose neighboring Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador as their destinations, at the time, the Peruvian economy was experiencing sustained economic growth, thus about one million Venezuelans were attracted to the country. This large inflow of immigrants potentially put pressure on local labor markets, especially in large cities, and increased the negative public discourse against immigrants in the media (Winter, 2020; Freier et al., 2021). Some of these sources claiming, not only that the large wave of newcomers had led to an increase in unemployment, but it had also contributed to an upsurge in urban violence.

Our analysis has two parts. First, we use a specialized survey of Venezuelan immigrants in Peru to identify the causal effect of the quality of local labor markets on discrimination against immigrants. Then, we turn to the economic determinants of attitudes towards immigrants, and study the flip-side of the first analysis, namely, how does the presence of immigrants affect Peruvians’ labor market outcomes, overall criminal activity, and their perceptions about crime and their local community. In both analyses, the main identification issue is that Venezuelans are not randomly allocated to specific locations in Peru and hence unobserved characteristics of both the location and the Venezuelans there might be correlated with local economic conditions and individual outcomes for both Venezuelans and Peruvians in the same location. We account for this using different instrumental variables strategies combined with detailed controls on the local economic environment.

In our first analysis, we examine whether Venezuelans who live in local areas with a stronger informal sector experience different levels of discrimination. A large majority of Venezuelans
depth was constructed by fitting a curve to video analysis supplemented by a range of quantitative data that has been extracted from 36 experimental, observational, and modeling studies around the world spanning four continents, making it the best available model for understanding flood impact on travel speed at the global scale. The calculated speed is the maximum acceptable velocity that ensures safe control of the vehicle given the depth of flood water.

# **Results**

## Indirect impacts on mobility far exceed direct infrastructure exposure

We measure the direct impact of floods on the road network in terms of total road network length inundated across all settlement clusters and percent inundation per cluster. Our results show that more than 1 million kilometers of roads are exposed to greater than 1-meter floodwater inundation under the 100-year return period scenario. The exposure profile for all settlement clusters considered in this study, with respect to the length of road network inundation, consistently increases with flood return periods regardless of the inundation depth threshold (Fig. 6a). On average, 14.73% of road network is inundated under the 30 cm inundation threshold, 100-year return period scenario. In some extreme corner cases, almost all of the road network (99.04%) is inundated by flood water (1000-year return period, 15 cm inundation threshold).

In addition, we measure indirect disruptions on mobility: failed routes (unable to find viable paths between OD pairs), travel delay, and travel distance increase due to road closures and speed reduction under multiple flood return periods and floodwater inundation thresholds. Our results highlight the differences between direct and indirect flood impacts on roads. The interconnected nature of road networks allows local flood disruptions to propagate through the network extending far beyond the exposure areas and inducing regional travel delays and failures. In general, the percentage of roads that are directly exposed to floodwater measured as share of road length inundated by floodwater is relatively low compared with the percentage of route failure (Fig. 6b), especially for smaller flood return periods. The average flood exposure levels under 5-year and 1000-year return periods for the 30 cm inundation threshold are 3.64% and 24.84% respectively. By contrast, the results from the travel simulations show that on average 11.58% and 65.97% of routes from trip origins to destinations fail due to flood disruption under the 5-year and 1000-year flood return periods respectively. For complete summary statistics on flood exposure and route failures under 10 flood return periods and four inundation thresholds, refer to Supplementary Table 3.

13
2010) approximation in both estimation and comparative statics.

# 2.2 Studies on transport costs

Behar & Venables (2010) summarise the literature on the determinants of transport costs and their consequent impact on trade. These determinants include geography, hard infrastructure and procedural/institutional characteristics of a country. For example, Limão & Venables (2001) map information on road, rail and phone infrastructure to shipping cost information garnered from freight forwarders. They calculate that variation in infrastructure accounts for 40 per cent of variation in transport costs. In a gravity framework, they ...nd that a country improving its infrastructure from the median to the 75th percentile would increase its trade 68 per cent.

Clarke, Dollar & Micco (2004) study the importance of ports. A deterioration in port facilities and general infrastructure from the 25th to 75th percentile is associated with a 12% rise in ocean freight costs. They ...nd that these costs, which are based on containerization, the regulatory environment, seaport infrastructure and other variables also materially impact trade. Nordås & Piermartini (2004) adopt a similar approach to Limão & Venables but use more infrastructure measures. They have separate speci...cations for a number of indicators –airports, roads, telephone lines, port e¢ ciency and the median port clearance time –which are estimated separately. They ...nd all components are signi...cant determinants of trade, with port e¢ ciency being the most in‡uential.

Moving beyond infrastructure, Djankov, Freund & Pham (2010) calculate that a transit delay of one day reduced trade by 1%, which is equivalent to an additional bilateral distance of about 70km. Hummels (2001) ...nds that improvements in customs clearance su¢ cient to reduce waiting times by a day would be equivalent to a 0.8 per cent reduction in ad valorem tari¤s.

These papers make important contributions to our understanding of the relationship between transport costs and trade ‡ows. A number control for MR in estimation indirectly through the use of ...xed e¤ects. However, they do not explicitly control for MR or ...rm heterogeneity<sup>4</sup> in estimation and comparative statics. As suggested by the methodological discussion in this section, this means the e¤ects of reforms on trade can be severely miscalculated. We are particularly concerned with grand simulations of worldwide trade e¤ects based on gravity models. For example, Wilson et al (2005) ...nd that improvements in all four di¤erent trade facilitation measures would have material impacts on world trade but the simulations are aggregates of simulations for 75 individual countries and take no account of the issues on which we focus in this study.

> 4 Drawing on an earlier version of our paper, Portugal-Perez & Wilson (2010) follow our estimation approach but do not fully explore the comparative static implications.

7
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|---|---|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Botswana - Morupule B Generation and Transmission Project|Vladislav Vucetic|
|Nigeria: BuildingStatistical Capacityat State Level|Gloria Aitalohi Joseph-Raji|
|Nigeria: BuildingStatistical Capacityat State Level|Gloria Aitalohi Joseph-Raji|
|Nigeria: BuildingStatistical Capacityat State Level|Gloria Aitalohi Joseph-Raji|
|Nigeria: BuildingStatistical Capacityat State Level|Gloria Aitalohi Joseph-Raji|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|EAST-WEST HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT 3|Mustapha Benmaamar|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
|Agriculture and Rural Development|Silvia Mauri|
- Trujillo, L. and Nombela, G. _Privatization and regulation of the seaport industry_

of container traffic are located in Southeast Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Kaohsiung (Taiwan) and Pusan (South Korea).

**_Box 5._ Container world regional traffic (million TEUS)**

||**1980**|**1986**|**1990**|**1995**|**Change**<br>**1980-1995**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Southeast Asia**|9.08|19.10|32.42|61.84|581%|
|**Europe**|11.49|17.76|23.25|33.06|188%|
|**North America**|9.92|13.42|16.49|21.85|120%|
|**Caribbean/Central America**|0.96|2.68|_3.56_|5.39|461%|
|**South America**|0.38|1.04|1.44|2.76|626%|
|**Middle East**|1.38|2.32|2.90|5.40|291%|
|**India**|0.26|1.08|1.83|3.17|1,119%|
|**Australia**|1.61|1.95|2.33|3.46|115%|
|**Africa**|1.27|1.74|2.42|4.66|267%|
|**Total**|**36.35**|**61.09**|**86.64**|**141.59**|**290%**|

_Source: Ocean Shipping Consultants (1996)._ The changes in the types of ships used can be perceived by studying the increase in the size of ships performing long-haul services. There are now economies of scale evident in the use of larger specialized ships, which allows them to transport larger volumes of cargo at lower unit costs. This has led to spectacular rises in the capacity of ships, and at present, the last generations of container ships (Post-Panamax) oscillates between 5,000-6,000 TEUS', with a width of more than 16 containers abreast on deck and a draft of more than 12 meters (Hayuth and Hilling, 1992). For the transport of oil and other liquid cargoes, most of the world fleet of tankers is now above 300,000 GRT<sup>2</sup> .

These two 'revolutions' in the maritime transport industry have forced seaports to start a fast renovation of their facilities, in order to be able to provide services to the new needs of shipping companies and, in particular, to a growing demand for container handling services. Seaports now face a more competitive situation than in the past, and so they must have the required facilities as well as low prices, or they risk losing traffic to rival ports. On the other hand, these companies are increasingly working with hub-and-spoke networks, therefore they demand the services of large ports that act as connection nodes (hubs) at which cargoes are transferred to smaller ships that perform services on a regional basis (feeder services).

Therefore, there are now strong capital needs in the seaport industry, in order to make the necessary investments to attend to a growing demand. Some large ports have the possibility Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit: standard measure commonly used in the container industry. 2 Gross Registered Tons.

15
**Credit-less Recoveries: Neither a Rare nor an Insurmountable Challenge**<sup>*</sup>

Naotaka Sugawara<sup>†</sup> Juan Zalduendo JEL Classification: E32; E51; E52; E62; G01 Keywords: Credit; recoveries; fiscal policies; monetary policies; probit model Sector Board: Economic Policy (EPOL)

> * The authors thank Yvonne M. Tsikata, Zeljko Bogetic, Abebe Adugna Dadi, Simon Davies, Roumeen Islam, Ivailo V. Izvorski, and participants of World Bank ECA PREM Economics Seminar in June 2012 for helpful comments and suggestions. The findings, interpretations and views expressed in this article are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the World Bank, its Executive Directors or the governments they represent. This paper was written while Juan Zalduendo was in the Office of the Chief Economist for the Europe and Central Asia Region at the World Bank.

> † World Bank.
**Table 14: Restricting Sample to Parliamentary Countries, GOVFRAC model**

||(1)|(2)|(3)|
|---|---|---|---|
||Total<br>Expenditure|Total<br>Tax<br>Revenues|Deficit|
|GOVFRAC|-0.084<br>(0.049)*|-0.037<br>(0.038)|-0.003<br>(0.017)|
|Ethno-linguistic<br>Fragmentation|-0.166<br>(0.083)**|-0.11<br>(0.069)|0.088<br>(0.024)***|
|Turnout|0.21<br>(0.074)***|0.16<br>(0.06)***|0.061<br>(0.025)***|
|Majoritarian System<br>(=1, 0 if Proportional)|0.027<br>(0.024)|0.012<br>(0.016)|-0.009<br>(0.008)|
|Regular|-0.017|-0.004|-0.033|
|Elections<br>(=1, 0 otherwise)|(0.027)|(0.02)|(0.017)**|
|Observations|79|79|93|
|R-squared|0.65|0.67|0.46|

Robust standard errors in parentheses, clustered by country.

* significant at 10%; ** significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. Controls as in Table 1. Countries as in Table 13.

40
## **Figure 4**

<!-- Start of picture text --> Graphic Derivation of Crossover Discount Rate, Choice<br>Between Chika and Hollow Concrete Block Alternatives in<br>Ethiopia<br>250,000<br>200,000<br>Chika<br>150,000<br>HCB<br>Crossover discount rate<br>100,000<br>10 15 20 25<br>Discount rate<br>(percent)<br>)<br>birr<br>(<br>Present value<br><!-- End of picture text -->

# **Lose the Social Benefits: Cost-effectiveness analysis in the Philippines**

Another practical method that can be used when social benefits are not estimable is to use cost-effective analysis. Cost-effectiveness is appropriate whenever the project has a single goal that is not measurable in monetary terms: for example, to provide education to as many children as possible but through several interventions that simultaneously increase reading speed, comprehension, and vocabulary, but that are not equally effective in achieving each of the goals. Comparing among methods to achieve these aims requires that we reduce the three goals to a single measure, for which we need some weighting scheme.

34
7 _monopoly when it is less costly to produce any level of output of this product within a single firm than with two or more firms_ ”. This definition corresponds to the property of subadditivity of the cost function (Sharkey, 1982), which (in the single product case) is equivalent to economies of scale. Consequently, in the single product case, economies of scale are a sufficient but not necessary condition for natural monopoly (Joskow, 2005).

The conditions for a natural monopoly in the multi-product case are quite complex and will not be detailed here since the empirical application is made in the single product context.<sup>7</sup> Interested readers should refer to Sharkey (1982).

It is important to keep in mind that natural monopoly characteristics according to the above technological definition (i.e. subadditivity of the cost function) does not by definition imply market or monopoly power. The latter has to do with the existence of close substitutes and the geographic area supplied by the firm. Hence, even if an industry has natural monopoly characteristics, it does not by definition implies that the industry has monopoly power.

# **3. Specification of the cost function**

We choose the Translog functional form (see Christensen, Jorgenson, and Lau, 1973) which has been widely used in cost studies. The Translog is a flexible form in the sense of providing a second-order approximation to any unknown cost function.

The generalized Translog cost function for a representative water utility, including time- and utility-specific effects, has the following form:<sup>8</sup>

> 7 This is also the reason why we do not discuss, in this section, the concept of _economies of scope_ , which is relevant in the multi-product case only. _Economies of scope_ exist if the same firm can produce several commodities at a lower cost than would firms specialized in each product. 8 The utility index is not shown in order to avoid extra indices.