rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Impact of lower oil prices on
            renewable energy technologies
The impacts of reduced oil prices on the
            economic viability of selected technologies which utilize
            solar, wind and biomass energy sources are examined. The
            technologies include dendrothermal, bagasse, fuel alcohol,
            wind electric, biomass gasifiers, solar water heaters,
            photovoltaic water pumps, and wind pumps. Specific projects
            in each of these categories are reviewed with oil prices
            above US$28 bbl, and their economic justifications
            recalculated at a range of lower oil prices. The findings
            indicate that the economic sensitivity of renewable energy
            technologies is mainly a function of scale and project
            location. Renewable energy technologies that compete
            directly in the modern large scale sector, such as
            dendrothermal are the most adversely affected by falling oil
            prices. Remote and rural applications are less affected
            because of their generally smaller sizes, and the reduced
            availablility and consequently greater costs of petroleum fuels.
Revenue raising taxes : general
            equilibrium evaluation of alternative taxation in U.S.
            petroleum industries
Should the United States increase taxes
            and tariffs in the energy sector to reduce its federal
            deficit? This paper uses a twelve sector general equilibrium
            model to estimate the fiscal effects, and the effects on
            welfare and employment, of : (i) a 25 percent import tax on
            imported crude petroleum oil; (ii) a 15 percent excise tax
            on petroleum products; and (iii) a combination of the two.
            The excise tax would be the most efficient revenue raising
            instrument. The 25 percent import tariff would raise US$7.3
            billion, while the 15 percent excise tax would raise US$35
            billion. Moreover, each dollar raised through a tariff would
            come at a loss of 25 cents in welfare. Each dollar raised
            through an excise tax would come at a loss of only one cent
            in welfare. A combination of excise taxes, subsidies, and
            import tariffs would be the least costly way (in terms of
            welfare) to raise US$20 billion. The optimal tax structure
            would involve a tariff and a small subsidy on petroleum
            products to counteract the distortion induced by a tax on
            oil - the most important input for petroleum products.
Product differentiation and foreign
            trade in CGE models of small economies
In recent years, two classes of
            computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade models have been
            used to investigate external sector policies: single country
            and and multicountry trade models. The authors examine the
            treatment of exports and imports in recent single country
            CGE models of small economies. They present a simple, one
            sector analytical model that captures the major features of
            the multi sector counterpart used in applied models. They
            show that applying the same assumption about product
            differentiation to imports as to exports gives rise to a
            well behaved, price taking economy and normally shaped offer
            curves. They illustrate the one-sector model with a
            numerical example which shows the implications of the choice
            of weights used as a proxy for the domestic price index in
            computations of real exchange rate indices. The model also
            shows the role of foreign trade elasticities in the popular
            Australian model, with traded and nontraded goods. Trade
            substitution elasticities on the import side play a crucial
            role in determining the direction of change in real exchange
            rate during terms of trade perturbations.
Building educational evaluation
            capacity in developing countries
Relatively few developing countries have
            established a sustainble capacity for educational monitoring
            and evaluation. As a result, the efforts of governments and
            assistance agencies to improve education have been hampered
            by lack of information on outcomes and costs. World Bank
            experience with educational evaluation has been
            disappointing, emphasizing monitoring of project inputs with
            little attention to outcomes or costs. In the United States,
            educational evaluation has become an integral part of
            education management. Large scale research studies have
            given way to student achievement testing and localized
            evaluations that provide decision makers with information
            useful in improving the quality of schools. These results
            were achieved through federal policy and funding support for
            evaluation. Similar investment strategies can be used in
            developing countries. However the strategies should be
            incremental, first putting systems in place at relatively
            low levels of technical sophistication, then raising the
            technical level as institutional capacity is developed.
The management of public
            expenditures : an evolving Bank approach
World Bank lending and advice to support
            institutional and policy reform of public expenditure
            management is of recent and limited, but rapidly expanding
            scope. The paper begins with a brief overview of the
            Bank's recent work on public expenditures. The analysis
            indicates the lack of a consistent approach to the
            institutional and procedural aspects of public expenditure
            management. The paper goes on to discuss the Bank's
            changing approach towards public expenditures, starting with
            concepts of economic planning and public investment
            programs. It describes how the Bank's concerns have
            pushed beyond the confines of investment programming into
            the wider area of the planning and management of public
            expenditure. The paper then discusses some of the
            difficulties and issues involved in this process. The paper
            attempts to offer some tentative operational guidelines
            based partly on recent experience, and partly on "state
            of the art" in some industrialized and developing
            countries. These are summarized in annexes II and III, while
            annex IV distils some of the main sequential features of the
            budgetary decision-making process.
Payroll taxes for financing training
            in developing countries
In most developing countries, the major
            programs of vocational training and manpower-skill
            development are financed from general revenues.
            Increasingly, however, earmarked payroll taxes are employed
            to finance training. This paper summarizes international
            experience with these payroll taxes, drawing the distinction
            between the more traditional revenue raising schemes on the
            lines of the Latin American model and the newer levy-grant
            schemes. Drawing upon experience of payroll taxes in
            advanced economies it discusses the incidence of these taxes
            in developing countries and presents an economic rationale
            for their growing use, as part of a reverse social security
            scheme. The paper concludes that the desirability of using
            payroll taxes to finance training, compared to other
            alternatives available to developing country governments, is
            likely to be contingent upon the stage of a country's development.
Implementing direct consumption
            taxes in developing countries
This report examines the possibility of
            using a direct tax on consumption as a replacement for an
            existing income tax within the context of a developing
            country. The structural differences between income and
            consumption taxes are described, and some simple examples
            are used to illustrate the basic differences in the taxation
            of businesses and individuals under the two approaches. The
            report includes a brief survey of the extensive literature
            on the choice between income and consumption as the basis
            for a system of direct taxation. After a detailed discussion
            of the choice between cash flow and tax prepayment treatment
            at the individual level under a direct consumption tax, the
            analysis concludes that for simplicity reasons the
            individual tax prepayment approach is the more appropriate
            one in the developing country context. The report then
            describes the structure and implementation of such a direct
            consumption tax. The discussion includes an examination of
            international and transitional issues, and also comments on
            the desirability and feasibility of supplementary wealth
            taxes and taxation on a presumptive basis.
Pricing commodity bonds using
            binomial option pricing
Commodity linked bonds have received
            considerable attention recently as a way to tailor a
            developing country's debt repayments to its ability to
            pay. This report presents a method for pricing
            commodity-linked bonds in the presence of default risk and a
            commodity price risk. The advantage of this method is that
            extensions are very simple. Following an introduction, in
            part 2 of the report a simple version of the bond is priced
            to make the process transparent. In part 3, the parameters
            of the model are derived from real world values. In part 4
            the model is extended to incorporate the various features
            that these bonds can include. Part 5 contains come
            comparisons of the values obtained by the model with those
            obtained by the Schwartz model.
Import demand in developing countries
As a less restrictive trade regime is
            associated with greater responsiveness to economic
            incentives, econometric evidence that does not allow for the
            impact of import controls cannot be used reliably to assess
            the effect of a devaluation on the trade balance. Indeed,
            devaluation combined with trade liberalization ( a common
            feature of many adjustment programs) will have a more
            pronounced effect on import demand than available evidence
            would suggest. In this report, the authors compare three
            different approaches to modeling and estimating import demand.
Is the discount on the secondary
            market a case for LDC debt relief
In 1988, the prices on the secondary
            market of LDC debt averaged 50 cents per dollar of face
            value. From the observation of such discount, this paper
            goes one step further and argues that the debt should be
            written down in order to account for the discrepancy between
            the face and market value of the debt. The paper is
            structured as follows. Section 1 spells out the model,
            section 2 calculates the socially efficient and the
            post-default growth rates of the economy. Section 3 shows
            that the lenders, if they were to monitor the investment and
            the consumption strategy of the borrower, would choose a
            lower investment strategy than the socially efficient one.
            Section 4 shows how an optimum rescheduling can achieve the
            equilibrium described in section 3. Section 5 shows the
            dynamic inconsistency of the optimal strategy spelled out in
            section 4, and shows the link with the "debt
            overhang" literature. Section 6 investigates the
            empirical relevance of the "debt overhang".
The effects of financial
            liberalization on Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines :
            a quantitative analysis
In the early 1980s, interest rate
            ceilings and other regulations affecting financial assets
            were lifted in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The
            paper finds that liberalization of interest rates
            significantly increased the real return on financial assets
            in Thailand and Indonesia, because all interest and credit
            constraints were removed. Similar reforms failed in the
            Philippines, where taxes on the financial sector interacted
            with high rates of inflation. The paper is organized as
            follows. Each of the first three sections in devoted to one
            of the countries with a specific emphasis on the main policy
            issues. The last section turns to a more general analysis of
            the intratemporal efficiency costs of the taxation of
            financial assets which draws on the empirical evidence of
            the previous sections.
Commercial bank provisioning against
            claims on developing countries
The report examines both statistically
            and analytically various aspects of commercial bank
            provisioning.  In the first phase, the report defines the
            differences existing between countries and explains the
            implications of provisioning for banks' balance sheets.
            Secondly, it looks at the various factors affecting the
            decision to provision and attempts to differentiate between
            those long term and secular factors as opposed to those of a
            short term and proximate nature.  The report further
            examines the implications of provisioning for both creditors
            and debtors as well as on a global scale. Finally, the
            report broadly reviews certain options which might be
            considered in attempting to alleviate the problem of global debt.
Public policy and private investment
            in Turkey
Developing countries trying to emerge
            from recessionary spirals must recognize the importance of
            public/private interactions in designing growth oriented
            adjustment programs. They must appreciate the complex impact
            of fiscal policy on the economy. Turkey is an interesting
            country for studying how public policy can stimulate private
            investment. The reason, is that unlike other high debt
            countries, Turkey has managed to increase the rate of
            investment in recent years despite external constraints and
            high real interest rates. Turkey's strategy
            nevertheless has limits. The surges in public investment in
            1986 and 1987 have since hurt macro stability. Private
            investment has tilted toward such non-tradables as housing -
            partly as a result of special credit schemes directed at
            mass housing and partly because housing investment is an
            attractive investment against inflation. Unless corrected,
            this shift could hurt future export prospects.
Europe, Middle East, and North
            Africa region population projections : 1988-89 edition
Population projections are provided in
            this paper for the individual countries comprising EMENA
            region. The projections cover the period 1985-2150. The
            length of the projection period was chosen to allow
            countries to approach stability, which for several is
            projected to take as long as two centuries. The paper begins
            with an introduction which explains what projection results
            are provided in the detailed tables, describes the
            projection methodology, and summarizes and interprets the
            main results.
Public sector pay and employment
            reform : a review of World Bank experience
This paper offers an interim review of
            the Bank's experience with public sector pay and
            employment reform. Its aim is to establish what has been
            done and what has been learnt to date. The objectives of the
            paper are to inventory and analyze Bank operational work in
            selected countries and to provide a brief guide to Bank
            research and policy work on this subject. The review covers
            the period between 1981 and February 1987. The paper tries
            to draw attention to issues that have emerged in the early
            phases of these activities and to make some tentative
            suggestions about directions for future Bank work; rather
            than draw conclusions about the impact of these efforts. The
            paper covers only the Bank's experience with pay and
            employment policy issues in central governments (generally
            with particular reference to the civil service).
Measuring the impact of minimum wage
            policies on the economy
This paper undertakes a statistical
            analysis of the effect of minimum wages (MWs) on different
            population groups. The underlying question for this analysis
            relates to the probability bias exerted by certain
            protective government regulations in terms of the
            unemployment prospects of specific groups. Several
            cross-sectional data and a standard human capital model
            corrected for selectivity bias are used to analyze the case
            of Chile, where high structural unemployment has been a
            remarkable feature of the 1970s and 1980s. The main
            conclusions show that the coverage of the MW is more
            significant for the young and the less educated, and there
            exists a negative relationship between human capital stock
            and actual coverage of MWs. It is also shown that previous
            statistical analysis of this issue, both in the case of
            Chile and in industrial countries may have underestimated
            the negative impact of MWs because they do not correct for
            selectivity bias.
Securing access to international markets
The unconditional extension of the
            fruits of trade negotiations under the General Agreement on
            Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is giving way to bilateral and
            other discriminatory trade agreements. Led by the United
            States, GATT has taken a strong position against
            discrimination: the benefits of negotiations under GATT
            generally have been extended to all contracting parties
            without specific conditions or reservations. This
            unconditional extension of benefits - the unconditional most
            favored nation principle (MFN) - is now under considerable
            pressure. This paper finds that the threat to
            multilateralism and small traders will be reduced if : (i)
            new trade liberalizing "clubs" that are formed in
            the Uruguay Round, or elsewhere, are open to new members on
            the same terms that apply to the founders; (ii) compliance
            with the rules of such clubs is determined multilaterally
            and not unilaterally by any existing members; (iii) markets
            that are levered open are opened in a nondiscriminatory
            manner; (iv) preferential trading agreements conform to the
            relevant GATT rule - Article XXIV and; (v) the main
            safeguard provision of GATT (Article XIX) remains nondiscriminatory.
Latin America and the Caribbean
            region population projections 1988-89
The report which is part of a series,
            presents population projection tables for each country in
            the Latin America and Caribbean region. The report provides
            an explanation on projection results as well as a
            description of the projection methodology, summarizing the
            main results. The projections in the report cover the period
            1985 - 2150. This time period allows countries to approach
            stability. The key elements in these projections are the
            base year (mid - 1985). Total population estimates and age -
            sex structures are for the base period (1985 - 90 ).
            Mortality, fertility and migration rates are included in the statistics.
Recent developments in commodity
            modeling : a World Bank focus
This paper provides insights into
            international commodity modeling by providing a survey of
            recent developments in this modeling area and by explaining
            how these developments interacted with and were applied
            within the Bank.  Following a brief introduction into basic
            commodity modeling purposes, a fuller description is given
            of the nature of the various methodologies, and of recent
            advances in their formulation.  The Bank's employment
            of these methodologies in constructing and operating a
            variety of commodity models is then discussed.  While a
            perspective is provided regarding historical modeling
            developments within the Bank, most of the review is
            concerned with the Bank's recent success in utilizing
            these models for forecasting and market analysis purposes.
Diversification in rural Asia
The report focuses on the investment in
            agriculture through the diversification of crops in Asia so
            as to maintain rural incomes, which maybe adversely affected
            by declining contribution of rice based farming.  In the
            short - term, the diversification should be directed toward
            crops where there is a promising market such as vegetables,
            fruits and livestock products. Diversification should also
            entail expanding small scale industry, marketing and
            construction in rural areas.  Likewise, in the long - term,
            the process should include sustained research on crops and
            livestock technology for the development of higher yields in
            secondary food crops and an improved integration of
            livestock and crop production.  The research of this report
            further studies more flexible irrigation and drainage
            systems, and improved technology to lower the cost of production.
Microeconomic theory of the
            household and nutrition programs
Lack of food is no longer the major
            cause of malnutrition. Many households and individuals
            remain malnourished when income and supplies of food are
            adequate. Nutrition policy and programs must be based on a
            sound knowledge of household behaviour patterns. The
            microeconomic theory of the household focuses on the
            household's decisionmaking about scarce food resources
            based upon such considerations as: (i) the size of the
            family; (ii) the purchasing power of the family; (iii) the
            availability of healthful foods; (iv) the family's food
            preferences; (v) environmental variables (such as ethnic
            traditions and the homemaker's level of education); and
            finally (vi) family health (disease can limit the absorption
            of nutrients). Such determinants should be monitored to
            anticipate malnutrition problems unrelated to the food.