rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Estimating a Poverty Trend for
            Nigeria between 2009 and 2019
Issues of data availability and
            incomparability in the measurement of household consumption
            arise frequently when measuring poverty trends over time.
            Yet, understanding these trends is key to guide national and
            international policy makers in their poverty reduction
            efforts. This paper aims to estimate a long-run poverty
            trend for Nigeria, a country whose poverty trends are
            crucial for regional and global estimates. In 2020, the
            Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics released the first
            official poverty estimates for Nigeria in almost a decade,
            calculated using the 2018/19 Nigerian Living Standards
            Survey. Yet the official poverty estimates from the 2018/19
            Nigerian Living Standards Survey cannot technically be
            compared with those from the 2009/10 Harmonized Nigerian
            Living Standards Survey—the previous official household
            consumption survey—given key differences in the way
            household consumption was measured and concerns around data
            quality in the 2009/10 survey. To address this challenge,
            this paper uses two distinct methodologies to construct a
            poverty trend for Nigeria in the decade before the COVID-19
            crisis. First, it uses sector-level gross domestic product
            growth rates combined with micro-data from the 2018/19
            Nigerian Living Standards Survey to “backcast” poverty rates
            back to 2009. Second, it uses survey-to-survey imputation
            methods and data collected throughout the decade through the
            General Household Survey panel. Despite their very different
            foundations, these two approaches produce very similar
            results, suggesting that there was a small reduction in
            poverty at the beginning of the decade, followed by a period
            of stagnation or even a slight uptick in poverty following
            the 2016 economic recession. The paper estimates a poverty
            rate of between 42.2 and 46.3 percent in 2009, translating
            into a reduction in the poverty headcount rate of between 3
            and 7 percentage points between 2009 and 2018/19.
How Resilient Was Trade to COVID-19
This paper examines which product
            supply-side characteristics affect the resilience of traded
            products to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on monthly
            product-level exports by all countries to the United States,
            Japan, and 27 European Union countries from January 2018 to
            December 2020, the paper estimates a
            difference-in-differences specification for the impact of
            COVID-19 incidence (deaths per capita) mediated by product
            characteristics, accounting for when exports reach their
            destination by relying on product transportation lags.
            Higher reliance on foreign inputs, China as an input
            supplier, and unskilled labor and a lower degree of
            complexity negatively affected exports as a result of COVID-19.
Roads, Electricity, and Jobs:
            Evidence of Infrastructure Complementarity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Evidence for road expansion and
            electrification as drivers of job creation is limited and
            mixed, with most studies having considered either one or the
            other, and only in isolation. This paper estimates the
            average and heterogeneous impacts of road and electricity
            investments and the interaction of the two on job creation
            over the past two decades in 27 countries of sub-Saharan
            Africa. Exploiting the exogenous location of ancestral
            ethnic homelands, a new instrumental variable is created for
            road accessibility, inspired by post-independence
            leaders' agenda of building roads to extend authority
            over the entire expanse of their country, and to promote
            nation building. Topography and lightning strikes—a key
            source of damage to electric lines and disruption of
            service—are used to instrument electricity supply. The paper
            finds positive and significant effects on employment from
            enhancing proximity to roads and to electric grids.
            Moreover, the interaction of the two enhances the effects,
            making them complementary investments. The impacts of both
            individual and bundled investments are positive, but with
            differences between men and women, workers of various ages,
            and countries at different stages of development. In urban
            areas, better access to roads and electricity promotes all
            types of employment. In rural areas, greater access induces
            a transition from low- to high-skilled occupations. These
            differential effects suggest that the structural
            transformation brought about by road and electricity
            expansion is primarily a rural phenomenon.
Inclusive Refugee-Hosting in Uganda
            Improves Local Development and Prevents Public Backlash
Large arrivals of refugees raise
            concerns about potential tensions with host communities,
            particularly if refugees are viewed as an out-group
            competing for limited material resources and crowding out
            public services. To address this concern, calls have
            increased to allocate humanitarian aid in ways that (also)
            benefit host communities. This study empirically tests
            whether the presence of refugees in Uganda (one of the
            largest refugee-hosting countries) has improved public
            service delivery, and consequently, dampened potential
            social conflict. The data com- bines geospatial information
            on refugee settlements with unique longitudinal data on
            primary and secondary schools, road density, health clinics,
            and health utilization. This study reports two key findings.
            First, particularly after the 2014 arrival of over 1 million
            South Sudanese refugees, host communities with greater
            levels of refugee presence experienced substantial
            improvements in local development. Second, using public
            opinion data, we find no evidence that refugee presence is
            associated with more negative (or positive) attitudes
            towards migrants or migration policy.
Immigration, Labor Markets and
            Discrimination : Evidence from the Venezuelan Exodus in Peru
Venezuela is currently experiencing the
            biggest crisis in its recent history. This has led to a
            large increase in emigration. According to recent estimates,
            there are a total of 5.6 million Venezuelan immigrants
            worldwide with over one million now living in Peru, which
            has led to an over 2 percent increase in the country’s
            population. Unlike in many other episodes of refugee
            migration, Venezuelan immigrants are not only very similar
            in cultural terms, but are, on average, also more skilled
            than Peruvians. This study first examines Venezuelans’
            perceptions about being discriminated against in Peru. Using
            an instrumental variable strategy, the results document a
            causal relationship between the level of employment in the
            informal sector – where most immigrants are employed – and
            reports of discrimination. The second part is focused on
            studying the impact of Venezuelan migration on local’s labor
            market outcomes, reported crime rates and attitudes using a
            variety of data sources. The results provide evidence that
            inflows of Venezuelans to particular locations in Peru lead
            to better labor market outcomes for locals, decreased
            reported crime, as well as improved reported quality of
            local services, greater trust in neighbors and higher
            community quality.
Gendered Laws
This paper offers for the first time a
            global picture of gender discrimination by the law as it
            affects women's economic opportunity and charts the
            evolution of legal inequalities over five decades. Using the
            World Bank's newly extended Women, Business and the Law
            database, the paper documents large and persistent gender
            inequalities, especially with regard to equal pay and
            treatment of parenthood. The paper finds positive
            associations between improvements in the law and several
            labor market outcomes, and establishes a small, but over
            time increasing, causal impact of more equal laws on higher
            female labor force participation.
The Medium Term Impacts of Cash and
            In-kind Food Transfers on Learning
This paper studies the medium-term
            impact of early-life welfare transfers on children's
            learning. It studies children who were exposed to the
            randomized controlled trial of the Mexico's Food
            Support Program (the Programa de Apoyo Alimentario, PAL), in
            which households were assigned to receive cash, in-kind food
            transfers, or nothing (a control). The children are matched
            with administrative data on primary school standardized
            tests, which were taken four to 10 years after the
            experiment began. The findings show that in-kind transfers
            did not impact test scores, while cash transfers led to a
            significant and meaningful decrease in test scores. An
            analysis of the mechanisms driving these results reveals
            that both transfers led to an increase in child labor, which
            is likely detrimental to learning. In-kind food transfers,
            however, induced a greater consumption of several key
            micronutrients that are vital for brain development, which
            likely attenuated the negative impacts of child labor on learning.
Group Incentives for the Public Good
            : A Field Experiment on Improving the Urban Environment
How to maintain communal spaces is an
            important concern in many developing countries, particularly
            in urban environments. But what strategies can communities
            use to overcome the public goods problems involved in
            maintaining their local environment? This paper investigates
            whether changing the incentives for a subset of the
            community to contribute to the public good can lead to a
            shift to a more efficient equilibrium for the community as a
            whole. The analysis uses a randomized controlled trial to
            test the effectiveness of a program called "Operation
            Clean Neighborhood," which targets established
            community-based organizations and encourages them, through
            social recognition and low-value, in-kind incentives, to
            work toward keeping their neighborhoods clean, with the
            ultimate goal of reducing flooding in these areas. The
            findings show that, after one year, the intervention was
            effective in engaging communities and improving the
            cleanliness of the neighborhood. There is also evidence that
            this leads to reduced levels of flooding. The analysis
            uncovers important differences in the effectiveness of the
            program between areas that have had increased investment in
            drainage infrastructure and those that have not. It also
            addresses the issue of spillovers, an important
            consideration in densely populated urban centers.
Inflation Dynamics and Global Value Chains
The global economy has witnessed a
            decline in inflation and an increase in inflation
            synchronization since the early 1980s. This paper
            investigates the relationship between inflation
            synchronization and trade integration, and documents the
            strong link between inflation co-movement and Global Value
            Chain (GVC) participation. Using 35 years and both gross and
            value-added trade flows, evidence shows that an increase in
            production linkages, as proxied by trade in intermediate
            inputs, is strongly associated with higher inflation
            correlation. Moreover, backward GVC participation is
            associated with an increase in bilateral inflation
            co-movement while forward participation is linked with a
            higher correlation between domestic and worldwide inflation.
            The paper also finds evidence of the effect of trade
            integration in decreasing inflation levels.
Trade, Global Value Chains and GDP
            Comovemement : An Empirical Investigation
This paper provides up-to-date
            characterization of the association between trade and GDP
            comovement -- also called the trade comovement slope -- for
            150 countries from 1962 to 2011. The paper shows that trade
            is significantly linked to more GDP correlation, either
            directly through bilateral trade, or indirectly when two
            countries trade with similar partners. This trade network
            effect is strong for countries in all income groups and
            provides an additional channel through which GDP
            fluctuations propagate through trade linkages. It also shows
            that countries of all income groups become more synchronized
            with high income countries when the content of their trade
            is more tilted towards inputs as opposed to final goods.
            Related to this point, the paper also uncovers a strong link
            between the stickiness of trade relationships and the extent
            to which countries experience synchronized GDP comovement.
            The results are robust to a wide range of different
            measures, to the inclusion of many fixed effects, changes in
            the sectoral composition of GDP, financial controls
            capturing crosscountry investments as well as bilateral
            financial claims.
Factor Market Failures and the
            Adoption of Irrigation in Rwanda
This paper examines constraints to
            adoption of new technologies in the context of hillside
            irrigation schemes in Rwanda. It leverages a plot-level
            spatial regression discontinuity design to produce 3 key
            results. First, irrigation enables dry season horticultural
            production, which boosts on-farm cash profits by 53–71
            percent. Second, adoption is constrained: access to
            irrigation causes farmers to substitute labor and inputs
            away from their other plots. Eliminating this substitution
            would increase adoption by at least 30 percent. Third, this
            substitution is largest for smaller households and wealthier
            households. This result can be explained by labor market
            failures in a standard agricultural household model.
Factor Market Failures and the
            Adoption of Irrigation in Rwanda
Policy Research Working Paper 9092 Factor Market Failures and the Adoption of Irrigation in Rwanda _Maria Ruth Jones Florence Kondylis John Ashton Loeser Jeremy Magruder_ Development Economics Development Impact Evaluation Group December 2019 A verified reproducibility package for this paper is available at http://reproducibility.worldbank.org, click **here** for direct access.
Lights Off, Lights On : The Effects
            of Electricity Shortages on Small Firms
Entrepreneurs in developing countries
            report that unreliable electricity imposes a serious
            constraint, yet little evidence exists on how blackouts
            impact the micro firms that account for the majority of
            employment. This paper estimates the effects of outages on
            small firms using original firm-level panel data and finds
            evidence of differential effects by firm size. Firms without
            employees experience large reductions in revenues and
            profits. Outages have no measurable effect on the output of
            firms with employees, where worker hours increase, weekly
            wages paid decrease, and the analysis fails to reject that
            blackouts have no effect on (average firm-level) worker
            hourly wages.
Decline in Wage Inequality in Brazil
            : A Survey
In the last decades, Brazil experienced
            a historical decline in its wage inequality level,
            particularly in the first decade of the 21st century. This
            paper reviews the literature that attempted to explain the
            observed pattern. It considers mechanisms related to the
            supply and demand for labor, as well as institutional
            factors. The paper argues that the favorable economic
            environment in the period, combined with increases in the
            minimum wage, higher formalization, and a larger supply of
            skilled workers led to a compression in wages. However, some
            aspects of the decline in wage inequality are still
            unanswered, such as the causes behind a reduction in the
            experience premium and interfirm payment heterogeneity, as
            well as the exact role of technological changes. The paper
            concludes by discussing future trends in wage inequality in Brazil.
Have Robots Grounded the Flying
            Geese : Evidence from Greenfield FDI in Manufacturing
For decades, manufacturers around the
            world have outsourced production to countries with lower
            labor costs. However, there is a concern that robotization
            in high-income countries will challenge this shifting
            international division of labor known as the "flying
            geese" paradigm. Greenfield foreign direct investment
            decisions constitute a forward-looking indicator of where
            production is expected, rather than trade flows that reflect
            past investment decisions.  Exploiting differences across
            countries and industries, the intensity of robot use in
            high-income countries has a positive impact on foreign
            direct investment growth from high-income countries to low-
            and middle-income countries over 2004-15. Past a threshold,
            however, increased robotization in high-income countries has
            a negative impact on foreign direct investment growth. Only
            3 percent of the sample exceeds the threshold level beyond
            which further automation results in negative foreign direct
            investment growth and is consistent with re-shoring. For
            another 25 percent of the sample, the impact of robotization
            on the growth of foreign direct investment is positive, but
            at a rate that is declining. So, although these are early
            warning signs, automation in high-income countries has
            resulted in growing foreign direct investment for more than
            two-thirds of the sample under consideration.  Some geese
            may be slowing, but for now, most continue to fly.
Firms Far Up : Productivity,
            Agglomeration, and High-Growth Firms in Ethiopia
High-growth firms have been widely
            studied in advanced countries, but little is known about
            such stellar performers in Africa. Using establishment-level
            data from Ethiopia, this paper finds that the incidence of
            high-growth firms stands at an average of 7 percent, a
            figure comparable to that of advanced countries. High-growth
            episodes are short-lived, and the likelihood of survival or
            a subsequent episode is not any higher for high-growth
            firms. It is difficult for firms to sustain high growth, and
            the likelihood of a repeated episode is low. There is only a
            6.5 percent chance that a manufacturing plant in Ethiopia
            will repeat a high-growth event in the subsequent three-year
            period. This likelihood is not greater than that of plants
            that did not experience high growth in the previous period.
            The paper explores the drivers of high growth and finds a
            tight link between exemplary performance and initial plant
            productivity, which is robust to many controls, including
            plant location. Plants located in Ethiopia's capital
            city or agglomerations have a higher probability of high
            growth. And high growth in plant employment is found to be
            self-reinforcing, that is, past high-growth experience is
            positively and significantly associated with subsequent
            growth in firm productivity.
The Targeting Benefit of Conditional
            Cash Transfers
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are a
            popular type of social welfare program that make payments to
            households conditional on human capital investments in
            children. Compared to unconditional cash transfers (UCTs),
            CCTs may exclude some low-income households as access is
            tied to normal investments in children. This paper argues
            that conditionalities on children's school enrollment
            offer an unexplored targeting benefit over UCTs: CCTs target
            money to households that forgo a discrete amount of child
            income. This paper shows that the size of this targeting
            benefit is directly related to the distribution of parental
            incomes, the size of forgone child incomes, and two
            elasticities already popular in the literature: the income
            effect of a UCT and the price effect of a CCT. These
            elasticities are estimated for a large CCT program in rural
            Mexico, Progresa, using variation in transfers to younger
            siblings to identify income effects. In this setting, the
            analysis finds that the targeting benefit is almost as large
            as the cost of excluding some low-income households; this
            implies that 41 percent of the Progresa budget should go to
            a CCT over a UCT based on targeting grounds alone.