rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
What does debt relief do for
            development evidence from India's bailout program for
            highly-indebted rural households
This paper studies the impact of a large
            debt relief program, intended to attenuate investment
            constraints among highly-indebted households in rural India.
            It isolates the causal effect of bankruptcy-like debt relief
            settlements using a natural experiment arising from
            India's Debt Relief Program for Small and Marginal
            Farmers -- one of the largest debt relief initiatives in
            history. The analysis shows that debt relief has a
            persistent effect on the level of household debt, but does
            not increase investment and productivity as predicted by
            theories of debt overhang. Instead, the anticipation of
            future credit constraints leads to a greater reliance on
            informal financing, lower investment and a decline in
            productivity among bailout recipients. The results suggest
            that one-time settlements may be insufficient to incentivize
            new investment, but can have significant real effects
            through their impact on borrower expectations.
Visualizing Uncertainties, or how
            Albert Hirschman and the World Bank disagreed on project
            appraisal and development approaches
Since its birth in 1944, the World Bank
            has had a strong focus on development projects. Yet, it did
            not have a project evaluation unit until the early 1970s. An
            early attempt to conceptualize project appraisal had been
            made in the 1960s by Albert Hirschman, whose undertaking
            raised high expectations at the Bank.  Hirschman's
            conclusions -- published first in internal Bank reports and
            then, as a book in 1967 -- disappointed many at the Bank,
            primarily because they found it impractical. Hirschman
            wanted to offer the Bank a new vision by transforming the
            Bank's approach to project design, project management
            and project appraisal. What the Bank expected from
            Hirschman, HOWEVER, was not a revolution but an examination
            of the Bank's projects and advice on how to make
            project design and management more measurable, controllable,
            and suitable for replication. The history of this failed
            collaboration provides useful insights on the unstable
            equilibrium between operations and evaluation within the
            Bank. In addition, it shows that the Bank actively
            participated in the development economics debates of the
            1960s. This should be of interest for development economists
            today who reflect on the future of their discipline
            emphasizing the need for a non-dogmatic approach to
            development. It should also be of interest for the Bank
            itself, which is stressing the importance of evaluation for
            effective development policies. The history of the practice
            of development economics, using archival material, can bring
            new perspectives and help better understand the evolution of
            this discipline.
Agricultural trade : what matters in
            the Doha round
This survey concludes that including
            agriculture in the Doha Agenda negotiations was important
            both economically and politically, although the political
            resistance to reform is particularly strong in this sector.
            While agriculture accounts for less than 10 percent of
            merchandise trade, high and variable agricultural
            distortions appear to cause the majority of the cost of
            distortions to global merchandise trade. Within agriculture,
            most of the costs appear to arise from trade barriers levied
            on imports since these barriers tend to be high, variable
            across time and over products, and are levied by a wide
            range of countries. The negotiations faced a need for
            balance between discipline in reducing tariffs and hence
            creating the market access gains that are central to the
            negotiations, and flexibility in managing political
            pressures. While the approach of providing flexibility on a
            certain percentage of tariff lines is seriously flawed, the
            proposed Modalities still appear to provide worthwhile
            market access. Better ways appear to be needed to deal with
            developing countries' concerns about food price
            volatility while reducing the collective-action problems
            resulting from price insulation.
Commercialization of publicly funded
            research and development (R&D) in Russia : scaling up
            the emergence of spinoff companies
This paper explores fundamental issues
            affecting technology commercialization of publicly funded
            research and development (R&D) in the Russian
            Federation. Despite substantial R&D investments, Russia
            has experienced a decline in scientific output and
            employment. Nevertheless, the innovation system remains
            strong in several technological fields. This paper develops
            an analytical framework to discuss conditions for technology
            commercialization, which hinge on the innovation system
            research base, governance of research institutions,
            alignment between specialization and sector prioritization,
            availability and performance of scientists and engineers,
            intellectual property (IP) regime for publicly funded
            discoveries, and early stage finance. The paper identifies
            areas for policy and regulatory improvement to incentivize
            research institutes and scientists to undertake research
            with market potential. These include: stronger results-based
            management that rewards commercialization efforts and
            focuses not only on high-technology sectors, but also on
            sectors where Russia has technological comparative
            advantages. In addition, researchers' career
            development could consider performance metrics that include
            entrepreneurial achievements, as well as support for young
            scientists and for international collaboration. Moreover,
            the IP regime for federally funded R&D may consider
            transferring full ownership of research discoveries to
            research organizations. Finally, to increase deal-flow of
            new ventures, enhancing the supply of early-stage financing
            for new technologies may be considered.
United we stand divided we fall :
            maternal social participation and children's
            nutritional status in Peru
In previous literature, social capital
            has been hypothesized as a substitute for other forms of
            capital, such as physical and human capital. This paper
            contributes to this literature, studying the association
            between mothers' access to social capital via
            participation in community organizations and their
            children's nutritional status at 1 and 5 years. Using
            the Peruvian sample of the Young Lives project, this study
            suggests that, where human capital is scarce, social capital
            might have important implications for child development.
            Maternal social capital is positively associated with height
            at 1 year old for those children whose mothers have no
            formal education. No significant association is found at 5
            years of age.
The surprising effects of the great
            recession : losers and winners in Thailand in 2008-2009
In 2009, buffeted by the great
            recession, Thai gross domestic product fell by 2.3 percent.
            Using monthly data from the socio-economic surveys of
            2007-2010, this paper finds, after controlling for household
            variables, that real consumption per capita rose in 2009
            relative to 2008 for most groups, including the poor, urban
            and rural households, men, women, and children. The losers
            were residents of Bangkok, especially those aged 20-29, and
            those working in sales and services. During the recession
            year of 2009, school enrollment rates did not fall, and
            durable goods purchases actually rose; households probably
            reduced their savings, and also benefitted from the lower
            food prices that prevailed in 2009. A simulation exercise
            based on the slowdown in growth of gross domestic product
            would have missed these effects, as would models based
            solely on readily-available data series. This points to the
            importance of country-specific policy analysis, rooted in
            timely local evidence, including household survey data.
Promoting handwashing behavior in
            Peru : the effect of large-scale mass-media and community
            level interventions
This paper analyzes a randomized
            experiment that uses novel strategies to promote handwashing
            with soap at critical times in Peru. It evaluates a
            large-scale intervention that includes a mass media
            provincial campaign and a district-level community
            component. The analysis finds that the mass media
            intervention alone had no significant effect on exposure to
            the handwashing promotion campaign messages, and therefore
            no effect on handwashing knowledge or handwashing behavior.
            In contrast, the community-level intervention, a more
            comprehensive intervention that included several community
            and school activities in addition to the communications
            campaign, was successful in reaching the target audience
            with handwashing promotion messages and in improving the
            knowledge of the treated population on appropriate
            handwashing behavior. Those improvements translated into
            higher self-reported and observed handwashing with soap at
            critical junctures. However, no significant improvements in
            the health of children under the age of five were observed.
            The results are consistent with earlier literature, which
            indicates that substantively changing behavior to improve
            health is a complex task requiring intensive and more
            personalized interventions.
Promoting handwashing behavior in
            Peru : the effect of large-scale mass-media and community
            level interventions
WPS6257 Policy Research Working Paper 6257 Impact Evaluation Series No. 74

# Promoting Handwashing Behavior in Peru

The Effect of Large-Scale Mass-Media and Community Level Interventions _Sebastian Galiani Paul Gertler Alexandra Orsola-Vidal_ The World Bank Sustainable Development Network Water and Sanitation Program November 2012
Ahmedabad : more but different
            government for "slum free" and livable cities
This paper analyzes real estate market
            dynamics over the past decade in the city of Ahmedabad,
            India, with a view to improving the living conditions of the
            large population living in slums. The paper combines census
            data, the National Sample Survey, and slum household surveys
            to review the demand side of the market. Satellite
            photography was used to estimate the production of both
            formal and informal housing over the past ten years.
            Analysis of the execution of the development plan for the
            Ahmedabad region and town planning schemes shows how the
            system of housing supply has evolved. These analyses are
            used to assess the feasibility of various approaches to
            achieving "slum free" cities, the goal of the
            Government of India's planned assistance program Rajiv
            Awas Yojana. The paper concludes that notwithstanding a
            substantial increase in public housing production in recent
            years, providing subsidized formal homes from government or
            through reservations for lower income groups in private
            developments would take more than a generation just to
            handle the current slum population -- representing one-third
            of households. Providing basic environmental infrastructure
            services in existing underserved neighborhoods -- a proven
            approach under the Slum Networking Program -- and bolstering
            infrastructure networks for the city to accommodate
            increased demand are affordable and feasible. Addressing
            issues such as rural-urban land conversion and ambiguous
            land tenure, and allowing flexibility for realistic building
            standards and increasing maximum floor space standards in
            certain neighborhoods can help to ensure a growing supply of
            housing that is affordable for moderate and low-income households.
What drives short-run labor market
            volatility in offshoring industries evidence from northern
            Mexico during 2007-2009
Recent research shows that employment in
            Mexico's offshoring maquiladora industries is twice as
            volatile as employment in their U.S. industry counterparts.
            The analyses in this paper use data from Mexico's
            social security records and U.S. customs between the first
            quarter of 2007 and the last quarter of 2009 to identify
            four channels through which economic shocks emanating from
            the United States were amplified when transmitted into
            Mexico's offshoring labor market of Northern Mexico.
            First, employment and imports within industries are
            complements, which is consistent with imports being used as
            inputs for the assembly of exportable goods within
            industries. That is, when imports fell during the crisis,
            employment in Mexico was reduced rather than protected by
            the fall of imports. Second, contrary to other studies,
            employment is more responsive than wages to trade shocks.
            Third, fluctuations in Mexico-U.S. trade were associated
            with changes in the composition of employment, with the
            skill level of workers rising during downturns and falling
            during upswings. This implies that the correlation between
            average wages and trade shocks is partly driven by
            labor-force compositional effects, which may obscure
            individual-worker wage flexibility. Fourth, trade shocks
            affecting related industries (industries linked by
            employment flows affect employment at least as much as
            own-industry trade shocks, thus amplifying employment
            volatility through the propagation of shocks across
            industries within Northern Mexico. Furthermore, the data
            suggest that the observed fluctuations in U.S.-Mexico trade
            at the onset of the Great Recession in the U.S. were not
            associated with pre-existing employment trends in Northern Mexico.
Evaluating workfare when the work is
            unpleasant : evidence for India's national rural
            employment guarantee scheme
Prevailing practices in evaluating
            workfare programs have ignored the disutility of the type of
            work done, with theoretically ambiguous implications for the
            impacts on poverty. In the case of India's National
            Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, past assessments have
            relied solely on household consumption per person as the
            measure of economic welfare. The paper generalizes this
            measure to allow for the disutility of casual manual work.
            The new measure is calibrated to the distribution of the
            preference parameters implied by maximization of an
            idiosyncratic welfare function assuming that there is no
            rationing of the available work. The adjustment implies a
            substantially more "poor-poor" incidence of
            participation in the scheme than suggested by past methods.
            However, the overall impacts on poverty are lower, although
            still positive. The main conclusions are robust to a wide
            range of alternative parameter values and to allowing for
            involuntary unemployment using a sample of (self-declared)
            un-rationed workers.
The World Bank and governance : the
            Bank's efforts to help developing countries build state capacity
This paper examines historically the
            World Bank's twin features: lending to developing
            economies to achieve tangible results and advocating
            specific development policies. Section 1 provides some
            conceptual underpinnings for the view that an effective
            state is essential for development. It asks whether
            development can be engineered, and state capacity increased,
            with large aid flows. Section 2 sketches the historical
            evolution of what characterizes the World Bank: lending to
            developing economies and advocacy of development policy. It
            concludes that, while the Bank discourse explicitly
            recognizes that developing countries need to improve their
            governance and build the capacity of the public sector to
            improve living standards, the Bank's performance in
            assisting governments in building state capacity and
            achieving better governance outcomes has been disappointing.
            Section 3 proposes an interpretation of why this has been
            the case. The interpretation is structural, and related to
            the way the Bank is organized. This concerns in particular
            (1) how its research is prioritized and used for
            decision-making, (2) how its leadership achieves a consensus
            between shareholders who hold different views on the role of
            government in the economy, and (3) how incentives for its
            staff emphasize disbursement and short-term success, and not
            capacity building and longer-term institutional sustainability.
Replicating replication : due
            diligence in Roodman and Morduch's replication of Pitt
            and Khandker (1998)
"The Impact of Microcredit on the
            Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence," by David
            Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2011) is the most recent of a
            sequence of papers and postings that seeks to refute the
            findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998) article "The
            Impact of Group-Based Credit on Poor Households in
            Bangladesh: Does the Gender of Participants Matter?"
            that microcredit for women had significant, favorable
            effects on poverty reduction. In this paper the authors show
            that these latest Roodman and Morduch claims are based on
            seriously flawed econometric methods and theory and a lack
            of due diligence in formulating models and interpreting
            output from packaged software. On the basis of Roodman and
            Morduch's preferred two-stage least squares regression,
            an alternative calculation of the standard errors would lead
            one to conclude that the problem with Pitt and Khandker is
            that they underestimate the positive and statistically
            significant effect of women's credit on household
            consumption. As in their previous efforts, the methods of
            Roodman and Morduch are shown to bias the findings in the
            direction of rejecting the results of Pitt and Khandker. We
            also further examine two aspects of our instrumental
            variable approach that have been attacked by Roodman and
            Morduch. The first is the validity of the exclusion
            restrictions underlying the use of interactions between
            program choice and the set of exogenous variables (including
            the village fixed effects) as instruments. The second is the
            application of the "one-half acre" program
            eligibility rule. The authors show that identification does
            not require both of these, and present new results dropping
            each assumption in turn. The results originally reported in
            the Pitt and Khandker paper hold up extremely well in this
            new analysis.
Labor market institutions : a review
            of the literature
This paper reviews the findings of more
            than 150 studies on the impacts of four types of labor
            market institutions: minimum wages, employment protection
            regulation, unions and collective bargaining, and mandated
            benefits. The review places particular emphasis on results
            from developing countries. Impacts studied are on living
            standards (employment and earnings effects), productivity,
            and social cohesion, to the extent that this has been
            analyzed. Strong and opposing views are held on the costs
            and benefits of labor market institutions. On balance, the
            results of this review suggest that, in most cases, the
            impacts of these institutions are smaller than the heat of
            the debates would suggest. Efficiency effects of labor
            market regulations and collective bargaining are sometimes
            found but not always, and the effects can be in either
            direction and are usually modest. Distributional impacts are
            clearer, with two effects predominating: an equalizing
            effect among covered workers but groups such as youth,
            women, and the less skilled disproportionately outside the
            coverage and its benefits. While the overall conclusion is
            one of modest effects in most cases, this does not mean that
            impacts cannot be more dramatic where regulations are set or
            institutions operate in ways that exacerbate the labor
            market imperfections that they were designed to address.
Networks, firms, and trade
Fixed costs associated with learning
            about demand and setting up distribution networks are
            expected to be lower when there are more potential contacts
            in the destination market, suggesting a greater probability
            of market entry and larger export revenues. The authors
            match historically-determined emigration stocks with
            detailed firm-level data from Portugal to examine the effect
            of migrant networks on these export outcomes. They find that
            larger stocks of emigrants in a given destination increase
            export participation and intensity. In addition, they show
            that the former of these effects tends to be more pronounced
            among firms that are more likely to have close ties with the
            emigrants. These results are consistent with a
            multiple-destination version of the Melitz (2003) model
            featuring market-specific entry costs and idiosyncratic
            firm-destination demand shocks.