rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
International differences in wage
            and nonwage labor costs
The ratio of nonwage labor costs (for
            social security, pensions, vacation days, severence
            compensation, and the like) to direct wage costs is
            proportionately higher in Europe and Latin America than in
            Asia and Africa - largely because workers there are
            protected more by regulations. The distortionary growth of
            labor costs because of increasing nonwage costs is not
            common in the LDCs however. The author of this paper found
            that international differences in labor costs are
            attributable largely to differences in labor productivity
            and capital-labor ratios. The author also found that labor
            costs declined significantly in almost all LDCs in the
            1980s, and that the impact of declining labor costs on
            manufacturing employment was statistically significant - and
            bodes well for the growth of nontraditional exports.
            International differences in labor cost levels are
            important, especially when one compares LDC and industrial
            economies. But differences between labor cost levels in
            terms of per capita output are not so large. This suggests
            the importance of different capital-labor ratios.
Notes on cash - flow taxation
Under cash-flow taxation, a country can
            tax the cash flow of domestic producers, domestic residents,
            or domestic citizens. The implications are different in each
            case. The paper examines the positive and normative effects
            of various versions of a cash-flow tax, focusing on the
            effects of such a tax in a small open economy. A country
            must decide, for example, whether investment in each type of
            asset will be taxed based on its cash flow or will instead
            be entirely tax exempt. The economic implications differ,
            depending on whether the government decides or the choice
            may be left to each tax payer. In addition tax flow rates
            may vary: as a result of a progressive rate schedule;
            according to the type of tax payer; or over time, depending
            on economic conditions. Substantial problems can result from
            each type of variation. Finally, inequities can arise during
            the transition to a cash-flow tax. Different inequities
            arise depending on what tax precedes the cash-flow tax. And
            a partial introduction of cash-flow taxation may open
            important arbitrage opportunities.
Women and development : objectives,
            frameworks, and policy interventions
The contribution of women to an economy
            is in principle no different from that of men. But in
            practice, the problems of valuation, measurement, and policy
            inference are more complex and the implications for policy
            may be more controversial and culturally sensitive. This
            paper finds that the private and social returns are high on
            investments to improve women's economic productivity -
            particularly education. Where women recieve less education
            than men, efforts to redress that imbalance deserve
            priority. Measures to open women's access to
            information, technology, productive resources, and credit
            should be tested far more extensively.
On-the-job improvements in teacher
            competence : policy options and their effects on teaching
            and learning in Thailand
Teachers must hone their teaching skills
            on the job if the quality of primary education is to improve
            in developing countries. The authors of this paper use a
            multi-level modeling procedure to examine two policy options
            for improving the competence of teachers already in the
            system: providing inservice training and encouraging regular
            classroom supervision. After examining a nationwide sample
            of small rural primary schools in Thailand, they found that
            a teacher's experience in inservice training courses
            predicts neither instructional quality nor student
            achievement. In sharp contrast, intensity of supervision
            within a school significantly predicts both instructional
            quality and student achievement, after controlling for a
            variety of school, teacher, and classroom variables. The
            effect of supervision is significant - roughly the same as
            the effect of preservice education. Intensive field work in
            carefully selected rural schools suggests that supervision
            by effective principals is a critical component in a larger
            strategy to create and sustain an "ethos of
            improvement" in school teaching and learning.
Higher education in the Republic of
            Yemen : the University of Sana'a
Enrollment in the University of
            Sana'a grew gradually from fewer than 100 students in
            1970, shortly after it opened, to about 4,500 in 1979.
            Government policy at first tried to balance the university
            enrollment with the capacity of the marketplace to absorb
            university graduates. University enrollment began to
            increase at an outstanding rate after 1985, following the
            heavy expansion of secondary education in the country in the
            late 1970s. From 1987 to 1991, total enrollment expanded
            from about 17,000 to 44,000 students. If the present rate of
            intake continues, total enrollment is projected to reach
            79,000 students by the year 2000. This explosive growth has
            created numerous problems, including overcrowded classrooms,
            insufficient staff resources, deteriorating physical plant
            and equipment, inadequate educational materials and
            equipment, and a low level of absorption of graduates into
            the labor force. These developments threaten the quality of
            degree programs in several disciplines. The government
            should act immediately to develop a strategy to protect its
            investment in higher education. The policy should consider
            the country's medium and long-term needs, the
            constraints on its resources, and the growing social
            aspirations of its people. The goal of this assessment
            should be to design a strategy that will make higher
            education a more effective investment to serve the needs of
            the country and to protect its resources.
Higher education in Egypt
Egypt's policy on higher education,
            the author argues, must take account of the realities of
            declining government budgets and employment and increasing
            reliance on the private sector, which must become more
            competitive internationally. Education in Egypt must
            increase Egyptians' ability to cope with economic
            disequilibria: to respond quickly and effectively to
            changing technological and market opportunities. The
            Government of Egypt's strategy for achieving this goal
            is to stabilize the number of university students and raise
            the quality of instruction. This fundamentally sound
            strategy, pursued since the mid-1980s, has required
            considerable courage of policymakers, who are struggling to
            correct a longtime, inequitable misallocation of educational
            resources. The Nasser regime greatly expanded higher
            education and guaranteed jobs to university graduates. As a
            result of rapidly growing enrollment in the 1970s and 1980s,
            the quality of education seriously deteriorated. Classes are
            too big and resources too scarce for anything but
            professorial salaries, so learning amounts to little more
            than memorization and repetition. The system does not foster
            the development of synthesizing, problem-solving, or
            creative thinking abilities. And with tertiary institutions
            over-enrolled, academic success requires the use of tutors,
            whose fees are beyond the reach of students of modest means.
Automotive air pollution : issues
            and options for developing countries
Air pollution constitutes an ominous
            threat to human health and welfare. Its adverse effects are
            pervasive and may be disaggregated at three levels: (a)
            local, confined to urban and industrial centers; (b)
            regional, pertaining to transboundary transport of
            pollutants; and (c) global, related to build up of
            greenhouse gases. These effects have been observed globally
            but the characteristics and scale of the air pollution
            problem in developing countries are not known; nor has the
            problem been researched and evaluated to the same extent as
            in industrialized countries. Air pollution, however, can no
            longer be regarded as a local or a regional issue as it has
            global repercussions in terms of the greenhouse effect and
            depletion of the ozone layer. This paper discusses the
            contribution of motorized land transport to air pollution
            problems, with special reference to developing countries. It
            assesses the adverse effects of air pollution from transport
            sources, primarily motor vehicles, and reviews possible
            approaches to bring about improvements. The paper identifies
            key issues and research needs related to land transport and
            air pollution in developing countries
India - India's growing
            conflict between trade and transport : issues and options
India was a rather marginal participant
            in world trade during the early years after independence.
            Since 1980, however, the structure and orientation of Indian
            export trades have undergone fundamental changes.
            Substantial progress has been made in diversifying the
            export base - manufactured goods have increased and the
            traditional bulk sector has shrunk. Key targets for the
            export of manufactured goods are the European, Japanese and
            North American markets. However, these markets are
            characterized by increasingly efficient trade logistics,
            including containerization and multimodal transport
            arrangements. To enable further trade growth, India is
            confronted with a need to tie into the highly organized
            international trade logistics networks, something the
            country is totally unprepared to cope with in terms of
            demanding logistical arrangements. There is a real danger
            that India's trade performance will deteriorate, if no
            corrective measures are taken. A highly fragmented service
            industry, outdated regulations, heavy Government control, a
            constrained private sector, and largely inadequate
            infrastructure have curtailed efforts to improve trade
            logistics, including containerization and multimodal
            transport arrangements in India. Major reforms are called
            for so that an effective framework for initiating urgently
            required system adjustments can be established.
Trade reform, policy uncertainty,
            and the current account
Rapid trade liberalization is often
            followed by a surge of imports and a deterioration in the
            current account. The macroeconomic counterpart of this is a
            decline in private savings. This paper discusses the impact
            of policy uncertainty on private savings. The author uses
            the Ordinal Certainty Equivalence approach to establish that
            trade policy uncertainty by itself will further reduce
            savings if: (a) there is a positive risk aversion; and (b)
            the intertemporal substitution elasticity exceeds 1. The
            result shows that, with positive risk aversion, policy
            uncertainty will in fact reinforce the negative savings
            impact of an anticipated policy reversal, especially when
            that negative impact is strong. This suggests that with high
            risk aversion and high intertemporal substitution, a rapid
            trade reform that is not fully credible may depress private
            savings significantly, with attendant negative impact on the
            current account.
Borrowing, resource transfers, and
            external shocks to developing countries : historical and counterfactual
Since the late 1970's the buildup
            and servicing of external debt has dominated the economic
            situation in many developing countries. This paper gathers
            some statistical evidence on the magnitude of lending and
            repayment and on the question of whether repayment reduces
            the resources available for development. The evidence
            largely confirms commonly held beliefs. Although most debtor
            countries have made net transfers of resources to creditors,
            middle-income countries that have not had to reschedule
            their debts have averaged smaller net transfers than those
            that did reschedule. Adverse changes in terms of trade since
            1978 accounted for most of the debt buildup in many non-oil
            developing countries. The mostly favorable terms of trade
            for oil exporters, on the other hand, gave them large gains
            that could have more than covered the losses of the oil
            importing developing countries. Heavy borrowing by oil
            exporters during favorable times seems to have been a major
            factor in precipitating the debt crisis. Since the debt
            crisis, the highly indebted countries have greatly increased
            their official borrowing. Increased official lending might
            help the resource balance and domestic investment of
            lower-income countries more than those of middle-income
            countries with high commercial debts.
Price and quality effects of VERs -
            revisited : a case study of Korean footwear exports
The application of index numbers to
            disaggregated Korean footwear exports during 1974-85
            suggests that binding voluntary export restraints (VERs) led
            to significant price increases but not to the upgrading of
            quality predicted in earlier theoretical analyses. The
            results in this paper were derived from exporters rather
            than importers data. Drawing its comparisons from
            multilateral indices, the paper finds that the price of
            Korean footwear exports to the United States rose
            significantly in the years when the VERs were binding. VERs
            were associated less with quality upgrading and if anything
            were possibly associated with quality downgrading. The
            empirical results confirm that as a result of VER type
            restrictions on shoes, rents accrue to the exporting
            country, but shoes do not show the improved quality that
            automobiles do under similar restrictions.
Recent economic performance of
            developing countries
The GDP growth rate in the developing
            countries averaged 4.1 percent between 1980 and 1988. Many
            dynamic countries - chiefly in Asia - did exceedingly well
            during this period, but many others - typically in
            Sub-Saharan Africa - regressed. In general, the highly
            indebted countries have stagnated. If the prospects for the
            most deprived and highly indebted countries are to be
            improved, they will need to channel significant real flows
            into investments. This could be done through a combination
            of new external debt initiatives and growth inducing
            domestic policies. Appropriate domestic policies are
            essential so that external inflows are not negated by higher
            consumption levels. Perhaps it is time to reassess the
            Marshall Plan that reinvigorated the depleted post-war
            Europe. The Marshall Plan provided needed resources in a
            relatively short period, and since the aid did not carry an
            interest burden the authorities were not preoccupied with
            financial engineering.
The effect of demographic changes on
            saving for life cycle motives in developing countries
If developing countries follow the same
            paths that industrialized countries have followed, saving
            for retirement will initially become more important as the
            population growth rate declines. To calculate the potential
            importance of life-cycle savings (saving for retirement),
            the paper presents a simulation model that translates
            demographic projections into savings-rate projections. It
            simulated aggregate rates for life-cycle savings for Brazil,
            China, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey. The
            savings rates increase 5 or 6 percentage points when the
            last baby boomers enter the work force and begin to save
            after their children leave home. The effect on life-cycle
            savings is dramatic; the effect on total savings rates which
            are often three or four times as high, is not. Simulated
            life-cycle savings rates peak at an absolute 10 percent or
            less in all cases. The patterns of these projections seem
            robust with regard to assumptions about productivity growth,
            interest rates, and age-specific participation in the labor force.
Targeting assistance to the poor
            using household survey data
It is important that limited government
            resources be channeled to the poor, but it is not always
            easy to identify the poor. Which households should be given
            tranfers when reliable information on incomes is difficult
            to obtain? The authors of this paper present a simple method
            for targeting when income is not observable but other
            characteristics that are correlated with income can be
            observed. Using survey data taken from Cote d'Ivoire,
            they predict incomes based on observable characteristics and
            distribute transfers on the basis of those predictions. It
            appears that significant reductions in poverty can be
            achieved using this method.
Education and earnings in
            Peru's informal nonfarm family enterprises
This study presents an analysis of
            non-farm family businesses in Peru. It uses the enterprise
            rather than the individual as the unit of analysis, and
            incorporates enterprise characteristics (capital, nonlabor
            inputs, focus of operation) explicitly. The central question
            addressed is: does formal schooling make a difference? Women
            and children are included in the analysis since thay play an
            important, if not the preeminent, role in Peru's family
            business sector. We can thus see whether the payoff to
            education differs between male and female entrepreneurs
            after controlling for other factors. The paper proceeds as
            follows. After the introduction, sections 2 and 3 describe,
            respectively, the data and the regression model. Section 4
            presents the empirical results. Section 5 assesses these
            results, including those for nonschooling variables, and
            section 6 discusses the implications with regard to
            education, comparing our findings with those obtained for
            some of the same people, considered as individuals, in other analysis.
The World Bank revised minimum
            standard model (RMSM) : concepts and issues
The Revised Minimum Standard Model
            (RMSM) was originally created in 1973 as a means of ensuring
            a consistent approach to World Bank projections and thus
            facilitate intercountry comparisons. These objectives are
            met through the provision of a standard list of variables
            and a minimum set of economic relationships. The RMSM is a
            thinking and planning tool. Its primary purpose, like the
            original two-gap models, is to show the user what levels of
            investment, imports, and external borrowing will be required
            for a targeted real GDP growth rate. The planners choice of
            a real growth rate will determine what level of investment
            will be necessary.
Women and food security in Kenya
Women play a key role in producing and
            providing food for the family, managing and allocating
            household resources, and caring for children. Alleviating
            their time constraints is the single most important way to
            improve household food security - since it will allow women
            to take advantage of new resources and opportunities that
            may have direct links to their ability to assure household
            food security. A combination of complementary interventions
            that address the multiplicity of women's household and
            market roles is likely to be the most effective. If the
            employment possibilities and incomes of women are to improve
            on a continuous basis, short-term solutions based on the
            development and dissemination of new technologies must be
            complemented by longer-term policies to increase
            women's access to training, credit, and other resources.
Uniform trade taxes, devaluation,
            and the real exchange rate : a theoretical analysis
Theoretically, uniform trade taxes
            (uniform tariff-cum-subsidies, UTCSs) are equivalent in
            effect to devaluations of the commercial rate in a dual
            exchange rate system - if one disregards smuggling and
            customs fraud. When either form of illegal trade is factored
            in, this equivalence is broken, and the real exchange rate
            may actually appreciate in response to an increase in the
            uniform trade tax rate. When illegal trade takes the form of
            customs fraud, the rate for exportables will depreciate, but
            the rate for importables will appreciate.