rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Labor market regulations and
            outcomes in Sweden : a comparative analysis of recent trends
This paper analyzes recent trends in
            Sweden's labor market regulations in relation to
            comparator economies and examines the relationship between
            labor market regulations and outcomes. The paper finds that
            the Swedish labor market responded more rapidly to the
            recent global financial crisis than the majority of the
            European Union economies, which helped Sweden to recover
            quickly.  Sweden's hiring regulations are more flexible
            than those of many comparator economies, however, fixed-term
            contracts of short duration might have adverse consequences
            for the economy. In addition, Sweden's regulations on
            work during the weekly holidays and mandatory paid annual
            leave are stricter than those of the majority of comparator
            economies. Moreover, among the economies of the Organisation
            for Economic Co-operation and Development, Sweden has one of
            the largest differences in employment protection between
            permanent and temporary employees, which could lead to a
            segmented labor market, where insiders enjoy high job
            security and outsiders are largely marginalized. This could
            be cause for concern, given that Sweden has a higher share
            of involuntary temporary workers among youth and involuntary
            part-time workers than both the Nordic and European Union
            averages. While protecting employees is important, excessive
            protection, particularly if it differs across different
            types of employment contracts, has been shown to have
            adverse effects on welfare and economic performance.
Tax evasion through trade
            intermediation : evidence from Chinese exporters
Many production firms use intermediary
            trading firms to export indirectly. This paper uses Chinese
            export data at the transaction level to investigate the tax
            evasion motive through indirect trade. The paper provides
            strong evidence that, under China's partial export
            value-added tax rebate policy, production firms can
            effectively evade value-added taxes by underreporting their
            selling prices to domestic intermediary trading firms,
            especially when they sell differentiated products. Even for
            a moderate level of underreporting, the revenue loss is
            close to one billion U.S. dollars. The paper also finds that
            such underreporting behavior through domestic intermediaries
            may be associated with cross-border evasion through
            underreporting export values to foreign partners. In
            addition, the results indicate that the evasion motive is
            stronger for larger transactions.
Weather insurance savings accounts
Better insurance against rainfall risk
            could improve the security of hundreds of millions of
            agricultural households around the world. However, customers
            have shown little demand for stand-alone insurance products.
            This paper theoretically and experimentally analyzes an
            innovative financial product called a Weather Insurance
            Savings Account (WISA), which combines savings and rainfall
            insurance. The paper uses a standard model of intertemporal
            insurance demand to study how customers' demand for a
            WISA varies with the amount of insurance offered. A
            laboratory experiment is then used to elicit
            participants' valuations of pure insurance, pure
            savings, and intermediate WISA types. Contrary to the
            standard model, within-subjects comparisons show that many
            participants prefer both pure insurance and pure savings to
            any interior mixture of the two, suggesting that market
            demand for a WISA is likely to be low. Additional
            experimental and observational evidence distinguishes
            between several alternative explanations. One possibility
            that survives the additional tests is diminishing
            sensitivity to losses, as in prospect theory.
“Missing girls” in the south
            Caucasus countries : trends, possible causes, and policy options
Sex ratios at birth rose sharply in the
            South Caucasus countries after 1991, but recent data
            indicate that this trend is turning. What caused this rise,
            and what can be done to accelerate its normalization?
            Traditional kinship systems in the region are similar to
            those of other settings with sex-selection: structured for
            collaboration among male kin and dependence only on sons,
            not daughters. Yet it is anomalous to find sex-selection in
            a region that under the Soviet Union has for long been
            substantially urbanized and gender-equitable in public life
            — factors associated with declines in sex-selection
            elsewhere. Sex-selection manifested itself only after the
            sudden economic and governance meltdown following the
            dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Jobs, basic
            services, and social protection mechanisms unraveled. People
            scrambled for coping mechanisms, and sons offer the
            traditional form of support under uncertainty. Basic
            services, pensions, and safety nets have been rebuilt, but
            the process involved years of policy changes. Strengthening
            these institutions, and maintaining credible continuity of
            expectations in them, is critical to accelerating
            normalization of sex ratios.
Measuring inequality from top to bottom
This paper presents a new methodology to
            measure inequality that optimally combines household survey
            information and tax records to construct a complete income
            distribution. Combining the two data sources is necessary
            because, on the one hand, household surveys do not
            accurately represent the wealthiest segment of the
            population, while tax records do; on the other hand, the
            opposite is true for the lower end of the income
            distribution: tax records only include incomes above a
            certain threshold. The key innovation of the proposed
            methodology—and the main difference from the existing
            literature—is the choice of an optimal income threshold b.
            The Gini coefficient for the population is then computed
            combining the conditional income distributions for incomes
            below b (using household survey data) and above b (using tax
            records). Central to this methodology is the fact that b is
            not chosen arbitrarily: it should be determined in such a
            way as to minimize reliance on household survey data to
            compute the top of the income distribution. In practice, the
            optimal b corresponds to the minimum income level that
            triggers mandatory tax filing. The proposed methodology is
            applied to the case of Colombia.
The Global Findex Database 2014 :
            measuring financial inclusion around the world
The Global Financial Inclusion (Global
            Findex) database, launched by the World Bank in 2011,
            provides comparable indicators showing how people around the
            world save, borrow, make payments, and manage risk. The 2014
            edition of the database reveals that 62 percent of adults
            worldwide have an account at a bank or another type of
            financial institution or with a mobile money provider.
            Between 2011 and 2014, 700 million adults became account
            holders while the number of those without an account—the
            unbanked—dropped by 20 percent to 2 billion. What drove this
            increase in account ownership? A growth in account
            penetration of 13 percentage points in developing economies
            and innovations in technology—particularly mobile money,
            which is helping to rapidly expand access to financial
            services in Sub-Saharan Africa. Along with these gains, the
            data also show that big opportunities remain to increase
            financial inclusion, especially among women and poor people.
            Governments and the private sector can play a pivotal role
            by shifting the payment of wages and government transfers
            from cash into accounts. There are also large opportunities
            to spur greater use of accounts, allowing those who already
            have one to benefit more fully from financial inclusion. In
            developing economies 1.3 billion adults with an account pay
            utility bills in cash, and more than half a billion pay
            school fees in cash. Digitizing payments like these would
            enable account holders to make the payments in a way that is
            easier, more affordable, and more secure.
Are women less productive farmers
            how markets and risk affect fertilizer use, productivity,
            and measured gender effects in Uganda
African governments and international
            development groups see boosting productivity on smallholder
            farms as key to reducing rural poverty and safeguarding the
            food security of farming and non-farming households.
            Prompting smallholder farmers to use more fertilizer has
            been a key tactic. Closing the productivity gap between male
            and female farmers has been another avenue toward achieving
            the same goal. The results in this paper suggest the two are
            related. Fertilizer use and maize yields among smallholder
            farmers in Uganda are increased by improved access to
            markets and extension services, and reduced by ex ante
            risk-mitigating production decisions. Standard ordinary
            least squares regression results indicate that gender
            matters as well; however, the measured productivity gap
            between male and female farmers disappears when gender is
            included in a list of determinants meant to capture the
            indirect effects of market and extension access.
Trade agreements and enforcement :
            evidence from WTO dispute settlement
This paper examines the implications of
            the terms-of-trade theory for the determinants of outcomes
            arising under the enforcement provisions of international
            agreements. Like original trade agreement negotiations, the
            paper models formal trade dispute negotiations as
            potentially addressing the terms-of-trade externality
            problem that governments implement import protection above
            the globally efficient level so as to shift some of the
            policy's costs to trading partners. The approach is to
            extend earlier theoretical models of trade agreement
            accession negotiations to the setting of enforcement
            negotiations in order to guide the empirical assessment. The
            paper uses instrumental variables to estimate the model on
            trade volume outcomes from World Trade Organization (WTO)
            disputes over 1995–2009. The evidence is consistent with
            theoretical predictions that larger import volume outcomes
            are associated with products that have smaller increases in
            foreign exporter-received prices (terms-of-trade losses for
            the importer) as a result of the dispute, larger pre-dispute
            import volumes, larger import demand elasticities, and
            smaller foreign export supply elasticities. Dispute
            settlement outcome differences are also explained by
            variation in institutionally-motivated measures of
            retaliation capacity and the severity of the free-rider
            problem associated with foreign exporter concentration.
Household responses to shocks in
            rural Ethiopia : livestock as a buffer stock
This paper uses a stochastic dynamic
            programming model to characterize the optimal
            savings-consumption decisions and the role of livestock
            inventories as a buffer stock in rural Ethiopia. The results
            show that relatively land-rich households use accumulation
            and liquidation of cattle and other animal inventories for
            partial consumption smoothing, while low-income households
            appear not to do so. The results highlight the need for
            improvement in livestock markets, which are often affected
            by high transaction costs and price risk, and for
            investigation of other approaches to risk management.
Investing in technical &
            vocational education and training : does it yield large
            economic returns in Brazil
Technical education and training has
            been dramatically expanding in Brazil recently. However,
            there remains no evidence on the cost effectiveness of this
            alternative track to a more general education. This paper
            quantifies the wage returns of completing technical and
            vocational education and training compared with the returns
            of completing the general education track, for individuals
            with similar observable characteristics. Exploring data from
            the Brazilian National Household Sample Survey, the paper
            profiles the students taking up this track and quantifies
            the impact of different types of technical and vocational
            education and training courses on individuals’ hourly wages.
            After controlling for selection on observables with
            propensity score matching, the analysis shows positive and
            statistically significant wage premiums for students
            completing technical school at the upper secondary level (on
            average 9.7 percent ) and for those completing short-term
            training courses (2.2 percent on average). The paper also
            documents significant heterogeneity of impacts depending on
            the courses  and the profile of students. For realistic
            unitary costs of providing technical and vocational
            education and training, the evidence suggests technical
            education is a cost-effective modality. The courses offered
            by the publically financed and privately managed “Sistema
            S,” together with courses in the manufacturing area have the
            highest positive impacts.
Are we confusing poverty with preferences
Modifying the national poverty line to
            the context of observed consumption patterns of the poor is
            becoming popular. A context-specific poverty line would be
            more consistent with preferences. This paper provides
            theoretical and empirical evidence that the contrary holds
            and that the national poverty line is more appropriate for
            comparing living standards among the poor, at least under
            prevailing conditions in Mozambique and Ghana. The problem
            lies in the risk of downscaling the burden associated with
            cheap-calorie diets and the low nonfood component of the
            rural poor. The paper illustrates how observed behavior may
            neither reveal preferences nor detect heterogeneous
            preferences among the poor. Rather, the consumption pattern
            is the upshot of the poverty condition itself. Poverty is
            confused with preferences if observed cheap-calorie diets
            are seen as a matter of taste, whereas in fact they reflect
            a lack of means to consume a preferred diet of higher
            quality, as food Engel curve estimates indicate. Likewise, a
            smaller nonfood component is not a matter of a particular
            distaste, but an adaptation to the fact that various nonfood
            items (such as transport) and basic services (such as
            electricity and health) are simply absent in rural areas.
Social and economic impacts of rural
            road improvements in the state of Tocantins, Brazil
The aim of this paper is to provide
            feedback on the question of socioeconomic benefits from
            rural road development and the impact of transport
            infrastructure on the poor, particularly the poorest and the
            bottom 20 percent of the population. This paper relies on
            impact evaluation methodologies, which are traditionally
            used in social sectors but less so in the transport sector.
            The study, including first surveys, was launched in 2003
            under the Tocantins Sustainable Regional Development
            Project. The paper highlights the context that led to the
            project’s design, which included an impact evaluation of the
            works envisaged under the project. The paper also highlights
            some of the main challenges faced by this impact evaluation
            and how these challenges were addressed for the present
            study. It then provides details about the data collected
            during the surveys and the key relevant characteristics of
            the population targeted by the surveys. It discusses the
            possible estimation methods envisioned to undertake the
            study and provides the main results of the assessment based
            on these methods. The analysis shows that improved rural
            roads changed people’s transport modal choice. People used
            more public buses and individual motorized vehicles after
            the rural road improvements. The paper also finds that the
            project increased school attendance, particularly for girls.
            Although the evidence is relatively weak in statistical
            terms, it indicates that the project contributed to
            increasing agricultural jobs and household income in certain regions.
African mining, gender, and local employment
It is a contentious issue whether large
            scale mining creates local employment, and the sector has
            been accused of hurting women’s labor supply and economic
            opportunities. This paper uses the rapid expansion of mining
            in Sub-Saharan Africa to analyze local structural shifts. It
            matches 109 openings and 84 closings of industrial mines to
            survey data for 800,000 individuals and exploits the
            spatial-temporal variation. With mine opening, women living
            within 20 km of a mine switch from self-employment in
            agriculture to working in services or they leave the work
            force. Men switch from agriculture to skilled manual labor.
            Effects are stronger in years of high world prices. Mining
            creates local boom-bust economies in Africa, with permanent
            effects on women’s labor market participation.
Socioeconomic impact of the crisis
            in north Mali on displaced people
This paper analyzes the impact of the
            2012 crisis in Mali on internally displaced people, refugees
            and returnees. It uses information from a face-to-face
            household survey as well as follow-up interviews with its
            respondents via mobile phones. This combination was found to
            present a good and robust way to monitor the impact of
            conflict on hard-to-reach populations who at times live in
            areas inaccessible to enumerators. Results indicate that
            better educated and wealthier households as well as those
            exposed to less violence fled the crisis. Significant
            amounts of durable goods (20–60 percent) and animals (75–90
            percent were lost and the welfare of the displaced declined
            considerably as a result of the crisis. Yet over time its
            impact has diminished. By February 2015, most eligible
            children were going to school and employment levels and
            number of meals consumed were at pre-crisis levels. The
            paper finds that different ethnic groups chose different
            places of refuge. Depending on location, the narrative of
            the crisis and the solutions that are envisaged differ diametrically.
Global poverty goals and prices :
            how purchasing power parity matters
With the recent release of the 2011
            purchasing power parity (PPP) data from the International
            Comparison Program (ICP), analysts and institutions are
            confronted with the question of whether and how to use them
            for global poverty estimation. The previous round of PPP
            data from 2005 led to a large increase in the estimated
            number of poor in the world. The 2011 price data suggest
            that developing countries’ incomes in PPP-adjusted dollars
            are significantly higher than indicated by the 2005 PPP
            data. This has created the anticipation that the new PPP
            data will decrease significantly the count of poor people in
            the world. This paper presents evidence that if the global
            poverty line is updated with the 2011 PPP data based on the
            same set of national poverty lines that define the $1.25
            line in 2005 PPPs, and if the 2011 PPP conversion factors
            are used without adjustments to selected countries, the 2011
            poverty rate is within half a percentage point of the
            current global estimate based on 2005 PPPs.  The analysis
            also indicates that the goal of ‘ending’ extreme poverty by
            2030 continues to be an ambitious one.