rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Public works programs and crime :
            evidence for El Salvador
Most evaluations of public works
            programs in developing countries study their effects on
            poverty reduction and other labor market outcomes (job
            creation, earnings, and participation). However, very few
            look at other collateral effects, such as the incidence of
            violence. Between 2009 and 2014, El Salvador implemented the
            Temporary Income Support Program, which aimed to guarantee a
            temporary minimum level of income to extremely poor urban
            families for six months, as well as provide beneficiaries
            with experience in social and productive activities at the
            municipal level. Making use of a panel data set at the
            municipal level for 2007 to 2014, with monthly data on
            different types of crime rates and social program benefits
            by municipalities, this paper assesses the effects of the
            program on crime rates in municipalities in El Salvador.
            There are several possible channels through which the
            Temporary Income Support Program can affect crime. Since the
            program is associated with cash transfers to beneficiaries,
            a reduction in economically motivated crimes is expected
            (income effect). But since the program enforces work
            requirements and community participation, this could
            generate a negative impact on crime, because the
            beneficiaries will have less time to commit crime and
            because of community deterrence effects. Overall, the paper
            finds a robust and significant negative impact of the
            Temporary Income Support Program on most types of crimes in
            the municipalities with the intervention. Moreover, the
            negative effects of the program on some types of crime rates
            hold several years after participation. Positive spillover
            effects for municipalities hold within a radius of 50 kilometers.
Obstacles on the road to Palestinian
            economic growth
This paper quantifies the impact of
            market access on local GDP in the West Bank, proxied by
            nighttime lights, using the deployment of road closure
            obstacles by the Israeli army between 2005 and 2012 as a
            quasi-natural experiment generating exogenous temporal and
            spatial variation in accessibility. Minimum travel times
            between locality pairs are computed using road network and
            obstacles data supplemented with information on checkpoint
            traversal times. These are combined with population data to
            construct a time-varying market access measure for each
            locality. Market access has a significant and substantial
            effect on local light emissions. This association is robust
            to controlling for conflict, and strengthens when market
            access is instrumented by the number of obstacles located in
            a radius between 10 and 25km away from the locality.
Too small to be beautiful : the farm
            size and productivity relationship in Bangladesh
This paper examines the agricultural
            productivity–farm size relationship in the context of
            Bangladesh. Features of Bangladesh's agriculture help
            overcome several limitations in testing the inverse farm
            size–productivity relationship in other developing country
            settings. A stochastic production frontier model is applied
            using data from three rounds of a household panel survey to
            estimate simultaneously the production frontier and the
            technical inefficiency functions. The “correlated random
            effects” approach is used to control for unobserved
            heterogeneous household effects. Methodologically, the
            results suggest that the stochastic production frontier
            models that ignore the inefficiency function are likely
            mis-specified, and may result in misleading conclusions on
            the farm size–productivity relationship. Empirically, the
            findings confirm that the farm size and productivity
            relationship is negative, but with the inverse relationship
            diminishing over time. Total factor productivity growth,
            driven by technical change, is found to have been robust
            across the sample. Across farm size groups, the relatively
            larger farmers experienced faster technical change, which
            helped them to catch up and narrow the productivity gap with
            the smaller farmers.
Peacekeeping and development in
            fragile states : micro-level evidence from Liberia
Using surveys and administrative data
            from post-war Liberia, the hypothesis that peacekeeping
            deployments build peace "from the bottom up"
            through contributions to local security and local economic
            and social vitality was tested. The hypothesis reflects
            official thinking about how peacekeeping works via
            "peacebuilding." A quasi-experiment was created by
            applying coarsened exact matching to administrative data
            used in mission planning, identifying sets of communities
            that were similarly likely to receive peacekeeping bases.
            The analysis finds nothing to support claims that
            deployments increase local security and finds only modest
            effects on economic or social vitality. Nongovernmental
            organizations tend to work in areas where deployments are
            not present, contrary to the hypothesis. Thus, it is less
            likely that peacekeepers build peace from the bottom up,
            leaving mechanisms such as signaling and deterrence at the
            level of leaders as worthy of more attention. For policy,
            peacekeeping missions should reevaluate their methods for
            providing local security.
Assessing fiscal space in
            Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper presents new empirical
            evidence on how fiscal space in Sub-Saharan Africa has
            evolved over the past 15 years. Fiscal space is a
            multi-dimensional concept that is proxied by indicators
            capturing aspects of fiscal sustainability, balance sheet
            vulnerabilities, external debt positions, and market
            perception. The analysis relies on a new comprehensive
            database developed on a wide array of indicators (28) for a
            large set of countries in the world—of which 48 are in
            Sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis finds that, breaking with
            history, Sub-Saharan African countries were able to conduct
            countercyclical policies amid the 2008–09 global financial
            crisis, thanks to built-up liquidity and policy buffers. The
            evidence shows that fiscal adjustment efforts in the region
            were reversed amid the 2014–16 plunge in commodity prices,
            and oil and minerals and metals exporters saw a sharp
            deterioration in their primary balance sustainability gap.
            The paper finds a great deal of heterogeneity in the
            post–global financial crisis evolution of the fiscal space
            in the region. In countries with reduced fiscal space, the
            increase in the number of tax years to repay the debt fully
            was 1.1 years for the representative country, and in over
            one-third of the countries, this increase was more than one
            standard deviation above the median.
The impact of interest rate caps on
            the financial sector : evidence from commercial banks in Kenya
Interest rate caps can have far-reaching
            consequences on the composition and maturity of commercial
            bank loans and deposits. This paper carefully documents
            these impacts on the formal financial sector in Kenya after
            the recent interest rate caps of 2016. Using bank-level
            panel data from before and after the caps, the paper
            identifies a significant decline in aggregate lending, an
            increase in nonperforming loans, and a change in composition
            of lending away from small and medium enterprises and toward
            safer corporate clients. Banks also shifted away from
            offering interest on current account deposits to preserve
            their interest margins. These quantitative findings are
            supported by qualitative evidence through detailed
            interviews of commercial bank executives, and have important
            implications for economic growth and financial inclusion.
Does workfare work well the case of
            the employment generation program for the poorest in Bangladesh
Evidence on the effectiveness of
            workfare as an anti-poverty program in developing countries
            is weak compared with the relatively well-established role
            of public works during economic crisis as a social safety
            net. This paper contributes to evidence building by
            examining the impact of a large-scale workfare program in
            Bangladesh, the Employment Generation Program for the
            Poorest. Taking advantage of the program's
            distinguishable feature of direct wage transfer to a
            person's bank account, the paper uses accessibility to
            local banks as an instrumental variable to identify the
            program's impacts on rural social assistance
            beneficiaries. Based on locality-by-time fixed effects
            models over two rounds of locality panel data, the analysis
            finds that the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest
            has contributed to increasing overall household consumption
            and reducing outstanding loans. In particular, expenditures
            on quality food and health care have significantly
            increased, which likely helps individuals continue to engage
            in income-generating activities in the labor market.
            However, the implementation costs and poor quality of public
            assets built through work projects could potentially
            undermine the program's efficiency. Moreover, further
            evidence is required on the impacts of work experience
            through workfare on subsequent labor market outcomes and the
            value of public assets, to assess the program's
            effectiveness compared with administratively simpler
            alternative instruments such as unconditional cash transfers.
Lobbying for capital tax benefits
            and misallocation of resources during a credit crunch
Corporations often have strong
            incentives to exert influence on the tax code and obtain
            additional tax benefits through lobbying. For the U.S.
            financial crisis of 2007-09, this paper shows that lobbying
            activity intensified, driven by large firms in sectors that
            depend more on external finance. Using a heterogeneous agent
            model with financial frictions and endogenous lobbying, the
            paper studies the aggregate consequences of this rise in
            lobbying activity. When calibrated to U.S. micro data, the
            model generates an increase in lobbying that matches the
            magnitude and the cross-sector and within-sector variation
            observed in the data. The analysis finds that lobbying for
            capital tax benefits, together with financial frictions,
            accounts for 80 percent of the decline in output and almost
            all the drop in total factor productivity observed during
            the crisis for the non-financial corporate sector. Relative
            to an economy without lobbying, this mechanism increases the
            dispersion in the marginal product of capital and amplifies
            the credit shock, leading to a one-third larger decline in
            output. The paper also studies the long run effects of
            lobbying. Restricting lobbying implies welfare gains of 0.3
            percent after considering the transitional dynamics to the
            new steady state.
Understanding effective teaching
            practices in Chinese classrooms : evidence from a pilot
            study of primary and junior secondary schools in Guangdong, China
This study documents the results of a
            pilot study jointly undertaken by the World Bank and the
            Guangdong Department of Education to assess teaching
            practices in public primary and junior secondary schools
            using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System tool. The tool
            was used to conduct classroom observations on an
            illustrative sample of 36 teachers in three counties across
            Guangdong. The pilot tested whether such a tool could be
            used to measure the strengths and weaknesses of teaching
            practices in the Chinese context. It also informed how
            classroom observations can be more consistently applied in
            the province's Quality Assurance and Monitoring and
            Evaluation system. On average, teachers in this sample
            scored high on classroom organization, but lower on
            emotional support and instructional support. While there was
            substantial variation in performance across teachers, there
            was only modest variation by county, urban versus rural
            school location, teacher type, grade, and years of
            experience. Teachers who believed that students should be
            the focus of instruction (those who espouse student-centered
            learning) scored significantly higher across all domains
            than teachers who believed that teachers should be the focus
            of instruction (those who espouse teacher-centered
            learning). Together the results from this pilot provide
            insights into how teacher training can address the most
            critical gaps in teaching practices.
Surviving firms of the Syrian Arab
            Republic : a rapid assessment
This paper details the results from the
            first comprehensive survey of private firms across major
            urban areas in the Syrian Arab Republic -- including Aleppo,
            Homs, Hama, Latakia, and Damascus -- since the conflict
            began in 2011. This builds on the World Bank's
            Enterprise Survey from 2009 and attempts to survey each of
            the 508 firms from 2009 again. The survey highlights the
            major challenges facing firms in Syria today, such as access
            to electricity, fuel, and water. Yet, loss of workers,
            managers, and supply chain relationships are also notably
            severe.  Rebuilding the social and human capital of Syria
            may be even more difficult than the bricks and mortar. The
            paper also identifies the ways firms have been affected in
            their prices, sales, supply chains, taxation, and costs as
            well as how they have adapted in financing and employment.
            These constraints and impacts are also analyzed at the
            subnational level and across sectors. Firms in Aleppo stand
            out for their uniquely difficult challenges and responses
            that are sometimes at odds with the rest of the country.
            Finally, the paper analyzes firm exit from 2009 to 2017 and
            finds that higher productivity firms from 2009 were more
            likely to survive, except in Aleppo where the reverse holds.
            The paper hypothesizes that productive firms facing the
            particularly severe destruction in Aleppo may have made a
            different calculation compared with productive firms
            elsewhere: to use their capabilities to leave rather than to
            use their capabilities to weather the storm.
Interest rate caps : the theory and
            the practice
Ceilings on lending rates remain a
            widely used policy tool that is intended to lower the
            overall cost of credit or protect consumers from exorbitant
            rates. Interest rate caps come in many forms and scopes and,
            according to their rationale, ceilings can affect a small
            segment or the overall market. Over the past years, many
            countries have introduced new or tightened existing
            restrictions, while only a few have removed or eased them.
            This paper takes stock of recent developments in interest
            rates caps globally and classifies them according to a novel
            taxonomy. The paper also presents six case studies of
            different types of interest rate caps. The case studies
            indicate that while some forms of interest rate caps can
            indeed reduce lending rates and help to limit predatory
            practices by formal lenders, interest rate caps often have
            substantial unintended side-effects. These side-effects
            include increases in non-interest fees and commissions,
            reduced price transparency, lower credit supply and loan
            approval rates for small and risky borrowers, lower number
            of institutions and reduced branch density, as well as
            adverse impacts on bank profitability. Given these potential
            negative consequences of interest rate caps, the paper
            discusses alternatives to reduce the cost of credit.
Determinants and dynamics of
            business aspirations : evidence from small-scale
            entrepreneurs in an emerging market
Small-scale entrepreneurs are ubiquitous
            in emerging market economies, yet very few graduate to
            become larger businesses. This paper asks whether such
            entrepreneurs aspire to grow and, if so, on which dimensions
            of the business? What factors influence these aspirations,
            how realistic are they, and do entrepreneurs dynamically
            update them based on realized outcomes? A unique panel data
            set of small-scale retailers in Indonesia is used to show
            that the average business has strong short- and long-term
            aspirations for growth in shop size, number of employees,
            number of customers, and sales. Yet, more than 50 percent of
            the businesses report no aspirations for growth in the next
            12 months, and 16 percent fail to imagine an ideal business
            over the long term. Entrepreneurs with low profits, business
            skills, and agency beliefs, as well as those who are older,
            female, and less educated have significantly lower
            aspirations. Analysis from a year later shows that most
            entrepreneurs fail to set realistic aspirations at baseline,
            but significantly adjust their aspirations to realistic
            levels with realized outcomes. The analysis also shows that
            baseline aspirations are a strong predictor of measures of
            business expansion and innovation, as well as performance
            outcomes a year later.
To impute or not to impute a review
            of alternative poverty estimation methods in the context of
            unavailable consumption data
There is an increasingly stronger demand
            for more frequent and accurate poverty estimates, despite
            the oftentimes unavailable household consumption data. This
            paper offers a review of alternative imputation methods that
            have been employed to provide poverty estimates in such
            contexts. These range from estimates on a nonmonetary basis,
            estimates for specific project targeting or tracking trends
            at the national level, to estimates at a more disaggregated
            level, as well as estimates of poverty dynamics. The paper
            provides a concise and accessible synthesis, which serves as
            an introduction to the literature. The focus is on intuition
            and practical insights that highlight the nuanced
            differences between the existing methods rather than
            technical aspects.
The effects of cash transfers on
            adult labor market outcomes
The basic economic model of labor supply
            has a very clear prediction of what should be expected when
            an adult receives an unexpected cash windfall: they should
            work less and earn less. This intuition underlies concerns
            that many types of cash transfers, ranging from government
            benefits to migrant remittances, will undermine work ethics
            and make recipients lazy. This paper discusses a range of
            additional channels to this simple labor-leisure trade-off
            that can make this intuition misleading in low- and
            middle-income countries, including missing markets, price
            effects from conditions attached to transfers, and dynamic
            and general equilibrium effects. The paper uses this as a
            lens through which to examine the evidence on the adult
            labor market impacts of a wide range of cash transfer
            programs: government transfers, charitable giving and
            humanitarian transfers, remittances, cash assistance for job
            search, cash transfers for business start-up, and bundled
            interventions. Overall, cash transfers that are made without
            an explicit employment focus (such as conditional and
            unconditional cash transfers and remittances) tend to result
            in little to no change in adult labor. The main exceptions
            are transfers to the elderly and some refugees, who reduce
            work. In contrast, transfers made for job search assistance
            or business start-up tend to increase adult labor supply and
            earnings, with the likely main channels being the
            alleviation of liquidity and risk constraints.
Firm location, transport
            connectivity, and agglomeration economies : Evidence from Liberia
Transport connectivity is among the most
            important factors in increasing firm productivity and
            accelerating economic development. The literature generally
            supports the idea of agglomeration economies, although there
            is little evidence of their effectiveness in Africa. There
            are often empirical challenges, such as spatial
            externalities and endogeneity of infrastructure development.
            Using firm registry data in Liberia, this study used the
            instrumental variable spatial autoregressive model to
            examine the effects of transport connectivity on firms'
            decisions on where to locate. The study found significant
            spatial autocorrelation and possible endogeneity related to
            transport infrastructure, and that firms are more likely to
            be located where market accessibility is better. The data
            indicated strong agglomeration economies, indicating that
            the primary city, Monrovia, is likely to continue to grow
            and attract more people and firms, and that secondary cities
            can also grow with greater transport connectivity between
            populated areas, such as district centers.