rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Do performance agreements help
            improve service delivery the experience of Brazilian states
A growing number of states and
            municipalities in Brazil rely on results-based management,
            and many other local and state governments are considering
            adopting the practice. This paper examines the experiences
            of the Brazilian states that have implemented results
            agreements linked to variable pay. The analysis compares
            current with pre-intervention outcomes in the education,
            health, and security sectors. The changes are examined in
            relation to regional trends to determine whether the
            improvements depart in meaningful ways from the overall
            trend. In addition, a truncated time-series cross-section
            model is used to control for several additional factors
            influencing service delivery outcomes. The results suggest
            that, at least in the short and medium term, the
            implementation of results agreements is associated with
            significant and positive changes in outcomes in the security
            and education sectors. On average, states using team-level
            targets and performance-related pay have 15 fewer homicides
            per 100,000 inhabitants than those that do not, all else
            equal. Similarly, states that have introduced performance
            agreements and a bonus for teachers and school staff have
            improved their Basic Education Development Index score for
            public secondary schools by 0.3 additional points compared
            with the scores of states with similar characteristics. The
            conclusions are in line with the findings of in-depth impact
            evaluations and case study work in the education and
            security sectors (Bruns, Evans and Luque 2011, Milagres de
            Assis 2012). The paper does not analyze unit or team level
            data, which would be necessary to draw more rigorous
            conclusions about how results-based interventions affect the
            behavior of civil servants and outcomes over time.
            Therefore, the results should be interpreted with caution,
            as some of the assumptions behind the models cannot be
            examined with the available data.
Impacts on poverty of removing fuel
            import subsidies in Nigeria
The petroleum sector contributes
            substantially to the Nigerian economy; however, the
            potential benefits are diminished because of the existence
            of significant subsidies on imports of petroleum products.
            Subsidies on imported petroleum products are considered to
            be an important instrument for keeping fuel prices, and
            hence the cost of living, low. The costs of these subsidies,
            however, have risen dramatically in recent years along with
            increased volatility in world petroleum and petroleum
            product prices and increased illegal exportation of
            subsidized petroleum products into neighboring countries.
            Removing the subsidy on fuel is one of the most contentious
            socioeconomic policy issues in Nigeria today. In this paper,
            an economy-wide framework is used to identify the impact of
            removing the fuel subsidy on the Nigerian economy and
            investigate how alternative policies might be used to meet
            socioeconomic objectives related to fuel subsidies. The
            results show that although a reduction in the subsidy
            generally results in an increase in Nigeria’s gross domestic
            product, it can have a detrimental impact on household
            income, and in particular on poor households. Accompanying
            the subsidy reduction with income transfers aimed at poor
            households or domestic production of petroleum products can
            alleviate the negative impacts on household income.
Subjective well-being across the
            lifespan in Europe and Central Asia
This paper uses data from the Integrated
            Values Survey, the Life in Transition Survey, and the Russia
            Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to analyze the relation
            between age and subjective well-being in the Europe and
            Central Asia region. Although the results generally confirm
            the findings of previous studies of a U-shaped relation
            between subjective well-being and age for most of the
            lifecycle, the paper also finds that well-being declines
            again after people reach their 60s and 70s, giving rise to
            an S-shaped relation across the entire lifespan. This
            pattern generally remains robust for most of the
            cross-sectional and panel analyses. Hence, despite
            significant heterogeneity in the pattern of well-being
            across the lifespan in the Europe and Central Asia region,
            the paper does not observe high levels of cross-country or
            cross-cohort variation.
Charter school entry and school
            choice: the case of Washington, D.C.
This paper develops and estimates an
            equilibrium model of charter school entry and school choice.
            In the model, households choose among public, private, and
            charter schools, and a regulator authorizes charter entry
            and mandates charter exit. The model is estimated for
            Washington, D.C. According to the estimates, charters
            generate net social gains by providing additional school
            options, and they benefit non-white, low-income, and
            middle-school students the most. Further, policies that
            raise the supply of prospective charter entrants in
            combination with high authorization standards enhance social welfare.
Climate-informed decisions: the
            capital investment plan as a mechanism for lowering carbon emissions
Global trajectories for reducing carbon
            emissions depend on the local adoption of alternatives to
            conventional energy sources, technologies, and urban
            development. Yet, decisions on which type of capital
            investments to make, made by local governments as part of
            the normal budget cycle, typically do not incorporate
            climate considerations. Furthermore, current academic and
            professional literature specific to climate change draws
            attention to decision-making tools that would require access
            to technical expertise, data, and financial support that may
            not be practical for cities in low- and middle-income
            countries. Arguably, the methodologies most able to effect
            this transformation will be those that are convenient and
            affordable to administer, and that offer straight-forward
            low carbon alternatives to traditional forms of
            infrastructure investment. Current methodologies for capital
            investment planning that do not take climate change into
            consideration can result in prioritization of investments
            that diverge from a low carbon path and a potential missed
            opportunity to reap financial benefits from efficiency
            gains. This paper concludes that relatively minor
            alterations to common procedures can reveal the trade-offs
            and local benefits of low carbon alternatives in the capital
            investment planning process. This paper was written as an
            input to the preparation of the Climate-Informed Capital
            Investment Planning Guidebook, a how-to guide for local
            government staff, which will be published in 2015.
The impact of secondary schooling in
            Kenya : a regression discontinuity analysis
This paper estimates the impacts of
            secondary school on human capital, occupational choice, and
            fertility for young adults in Kenya. The probability of
            admission to government secondary school rises sharply at a
            score close to the national mean on a standardized 8th grade
            examination, permitting the estimation of causal effects of
            schooling in a regression discontinuity framework. The
            analysis combines administrative test score data with a
            recent survey of young adults to estimate these impacts. The
            results show that secondary schooling increases human
            capital, as measured by performance on cognitive tests
            included in the survey. For men, there is a drop in the
            probability of low-skill self-employment, as well as
            suggestive evidence of a rise in the probability of formal
            employment. The opportunity to attend secondary school also
            reduces teen pregnancy among women.
Should Latin America save more to
            grow faster
A widely shared view holds that there is
            no policy-exploitable causal connection from saving to
            growth because domestic saving is fully endogenous,
            optimally determined, or substitutable by foreign saving.
            Yet, abandoning these assumptions, which are questionable in
            the real world of frictions, leads to three channels through
            which domestic saving may promote growth: a real interest
            rate channel, whereby saving reduces the cost of capital
            (the sovereign risk premium) and enhances macro
            sustainability; a real exchange rate channel, through which
            saving leads to a more competitive real exchange rate; and
            an endogenous saving channel, whereby saving follows growth
            but in a less than perfectly elastic manner, thereby
            amplifying the effects of the first two channels.
            Broad-based econometric evidence supports all three channels
            and suggests that Latin America, a historically low
            growth-low saving region, would benefit from boosting its
            saving rate, especially in countries with recurrently weak
            balance of payments and persistent domestic demand pressures
            on the non-tradable sector.
Gender education gaps among
            indigenous and nonindigenous groups in Bolivia
This paper studies gender education gaps
            among indigenous and nonindigenous groups in Bolivia. Using
            the National Census of Population and Housing 2012 and an
            estimation method analogous to difference-in-differences,
            the paper finds that the intersection of gender and
            indigenous identity confers cumulative disadvantage for
            indigenous women in literacy, years of schooling, and
            primary and secondary school completion. Although gender
            education gaps have become narrower across generations,
            there remain significant differences among indigenous
            groups. The Aymara have the largest gender gap in all
            outcomes, despite having high overall attainment rates and
            mostly residing in urban centers, with greater physical
            access to schools. The Quechua have relatively smaller
            gender gaps, but these are accompanied by lower attainment
            levels. The paper discusses the possible sources of these
            differentials and highlights the importance of taking gender
            dynamics within each indigenous group into greater consideration.
Impact of property rights reform to
            support China’s rural-urban integration : household-level
            evidence from the Chengdu national experiment
As part of a national experiment in
            2008, Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property
            rights reforms, including complete registration of all land
            together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate
            migration restrictions. A triple difference approach using
            the Statistics Bureau’s regular household panel suggests
            that the reforms increased consumption and income,
            especially for less wealthy and less educated households,
            with estimated benefits well above the cost of
            implementation. Local labor supply increased, with the young
            shifting toward agriculture and the old toward off-farm
            employment. Agricultural yields, intensity of input use, and
            diversity of output also increased. Improving property
            rights in peri-urban China appears to have increased
            investment and diversification.
Impact of property rights reform to
            support China’s rural-urban integration : village-level
            evidence from the Chengdu national experiment
As part of a national experiment, in
            2008 Chengdu prefecture implemented ambitious property
            rights reforms, including complete registration of all land
            together with measures to ease transferability and eliminate
            labor market restrictions. This study uses a discontinuity
            design with spatial fixed effects to compare 529 villages
            just inside and outside the prefecture’s border. The results
            suggest that the reforms increased tenure security, aligned
            land use closer to economic incentives, mainly through
            market transfers, and led to an increase in enterprise
            start-ups. These impacts, most of which are more pronounced
            for villages with lower travel time to Chengdu city, point
            toward high potential gains from factor market reform.
A decade of declining earnings
            inequality in the Russian Federation
Wage inequality decreased significantly
            in the Russian Federation over the 2000s. The economic
            expansion experienced throughout the decade led to an
            improvement in social indicators, with a large reduction in
            poverty rates and an increase in higher education. In this
            context, wage inequality showed a sharp decline, with the
            Gini index on labor income decreasing by 18 percent between
            2002 and 2012. Using data from the Russian Longitudinal
            Monitoring Survey, this paper documents the reduction in
            wage inequality and explores potential factors behind the
            trend. The analysis uses a decomposition technique proposed
            by Fortin, Lemieux, and Firpo (2011) to disentangle the main
            drivers behind changes in the wage distribution. The results
            suggest that wage structure effects are more important than
            composition effects for explaining changes in wage
            inequality. Institutional factors, such as minimum wage
            policies and changes in the returns to employment in
            different sectors and types of firms as well as the
            reduction of the skill premium, emerge as the most relevant
            factors for explaining changes in the wage structure.
Can improved biomass cookstoves
            contribute to REDD+ in low-income countries evidence from a
            controlled cooking test trial with randomized behavioral treatments
This paper provides field
            experiment–based evidence on the potential additional forest
            carbon sequestration that cleaner and more fuel-efficient
            cookstoves might generate.  The paper focuses on the Mirt
            (meaning “best”) cookstove, which is used to bake injera,
            the staple food in Ethiopia. The analysis finds that the
            technology generates per-meal fuel savings of 22 to 31
            percent compared with a traditional three-stone stove with
            little or no increase in cooking time. Because approximately
            88 percent of harvests from Ethiopian forests are
            unsustainable, these findings suggest that the Mirt stove,
            and potentially improved cookstoves more generally, can
            contribute to reduced forest degradation. These savings may
            be creditable under the United Nations Collaborative Program
            on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
            Degradation in Developing Countries. Because of the highly
            specific nature of the Mirt stove and the lack of
            refrigeration in rural Ethiopia, rebound effects are
            unlikely, but this analysis was unable completely to rule
            out such leakage. The conclusions are therefore indicative,
            pending evidence on the frequency of Mirt stove use in the
            field. The effects of six randomized behavioral treatments
            on fuelwood and cooking time outcomes were also evaluated,
            but limited effects were found.
Preferences, purchasing power
            parity, and inequality : analytical framework, propositions,
            and empirical evidence
This paper makes analytical,
            methodological and empirical contributions to the literature
            on purchasing power parity. Purchasing power parities are
            required in a host of cross-country welfare comparisons,
            such as poverty rates and gross domestic product. The
            subject has recently generated much interest in the wake of
            the release of the final results of the 2011 International
            Comparison Program. This paper introduces a preference-based
            analytical framework that departs from the conventional
            Balassa-Samuelson framework in deriving empirically
            verifiable propositions on the link between purchasing power
            parity and exchange rates, and between purchasing power
            parity and inequality. The paper also provides an
            alternative methodology for calculating purchasing power
            parities that are benchmarked against the 2011 International
            Comparison Program purchasing power parities. As this study
            shows, the alternative methodology is capable of easy
            implementation on readily available data sets. The
            benchmarking exercise suggests that the 2011 International
            Comparison Program generally understates purchasing power
            parity and overstates gross domestic product, and that the
            purchasing power parities vary across expenditure
            percentiles. The study reports regional variation in the
            direction of the difference between the two purchasing power
            parities. The empirical evidence is supportive of the
            positive association between inequality and purchasing power
            parity derived in the paper.
Public good provision in Indian
            rural areas : the returns to collective action by
            microfinance groups
Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most
            common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide
            evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake
            collective actions for the provision of public goods within
            village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper
            shows that an elected official, whose aim is to maximize
            re-election chances, exerts higher effort in providing
            public goods when private citizens undertake collective
            action and coordinate their voluntary contributions towards
            the same goods. This effect occurs although government and
            private contributions are assumed to be substitutes in the
            technology of providing public goods. Using first-hand data
            on SHGs in India, the paper tests the prediction of the
            model and shows that, in response to collective action by
            SHGs, local authorities tackle a larger variety of public
            issues, and are more likely to tackle issues of interest to
            SHGs. The findings highlight how the social behavior of SHGs
            can influence the governance of rural Indian communities.
Review of logistics service
            regulations for freight forwarding businesses: what should
            be addressed for a better logistics regulatory framework
Regulatory frameworks on logistics
            regulations are often opaque, especially in developing
            countries, because of the complex nature of logistics
            services. World Bank client countries have faced difficulty
            finding the issues that hinder them from improving logistics
            competence. Therefore, it is beneficial to understand how
            the logistics service industry is regulated and what should
            be addressed in building the regulatory framework to improve
            logistics competence. This note proposes questions to be
            addressed for beneficial regulations by reviewing existing
            logistics service regulations in 14 countries, particularly
            regulations for the freight forwarding industry. These
            questions will help in assessing a regulatory framework and
            identifying regulatory weaknesses. This note suggests that
            the regulatory framework should take into consideration
            national recognition of freight forwarding business, an
            institutional arrangement with clear division of
            responsibility among stakeholders, and streamlined but
            flexible regulations adapted to the country context.
The impact of Syrian refugees on the
            Turkish labor market : The impact of Syrians refugees on the
            Turkish labor market
Currently 2.5 million Syrians fleeing
            war have found refuge in Turkey, making it the largest
            refugee-hosting country worldwide. This paper combines newly
            available data on the distribution of Syrian refugees across
            Turkey and the Turkish Labour Force Survey to assess their
            labor market impact. Syrian refugees are overwhelmingly
            employed informally, since they were not issued work
            permits, making their arrival a well-defined supply shock to
            informal labor. Consistent with economic theory our
            instrumental variable estimates, which also control for
            distance from the Turkish-Syrian border, suggest large-scale
            displacement of natives in the informal sector. At the same
            time, consistent with occupational upgrading, there are
            increases in formal employment for the Turkish - though only
            for men without completed high school education. Women and
            the high-skilled are not in a good position to take
            advantage of lower cost informal labor. The low educated and
            women experience net displacement from the labor market and,
            together with those in the informal sector, declining
            earning opportunities.