rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Remittances and the brain drain
            revisited : the microdata show that more educated migrants
            remit more
Two of the most salient trends
            surrounding the issue of migration and development over the
            past two decades are the large rise in remittances, and an
            increased flow of skilled migration. However, recent
            literature based on cross-country regressions has claimed
            that more educated migrants remit less, leading to concerns
            that further increases in skilled migration will hamper
            remittance growth. This paper revisits the relationship
            between education and remitting behavior using microdata
            from surveys of immigrants in 11 major destination
            countries. The data show a mixed pattern between education
            and the likelihood of remitting, and a strong positive
            relationship between education and the amount remitted
            conditional on remitting. Combining these intensive and
            extensive margins gives an overall positive effect of
            education on the amount remitted. The microdata then allow
            investigation as to why the more educated remit more. The
            analysis finds that the higher income earned by migrants,
            rather than characteristics of their family situations,
            explains much of the higher remittances.
Everything you always wanted to know
            about wto accession (but were afraid to ask)
In this paper, the authors explore the
            complex, long, and unique process of accession to the World
            Trade Organization, with its intertwined economic, legal,
            and political dimensions. Referring to country case studies
            and sector-specific issues, the paper organizes some of the
            current reflections on the topic around three main themes.
            First, it explores the rationale of accession to the World
            Trade Organization: Why would new members join the WTO? And
            why would incumbent members let new members in? Second, it
            analyzes the World Trade Organization accession process in
            detail: What are the main characteristics and challenges of
            the accession process? Has it evolved over time, and how?
            Third, the paper looks at the implementation of World Trade
            Organization accession deals: Is accession the end or the
            beginning of the story? What are the implications for the
            participating countries and the multilateral trading system?
The wrath of God : macroeconomic
            costs of natural disasters
The process of global climate change has
            been associated with an increase in the frequency of
            climatic disasters. Yet, there is still little systematic
            evidence on the macroeconomic costs of these episodes. This
            paper uses panel time-series techniques to estimate the
            short and long-run impact of climatic and other disasters on
            a country's GDP. The results indicate that a climate
            related disaster reduces real GDP per capita by at least 0.6
            percent. Therefore, the increased incidence of these
            disasters during recent decades entails important
            macroeconomic costs. Among climatic disasters, droughts have
            the largest average impact, with cumulative losses of 1
            percent of GDP per capita. Across groups of countries, small
            states are more vulnerable than other countries to
            windstorms, but exhibit a similar response to other types of
            disasters; and low-income countries responds more strongly
            to climatic disasters, mainly because of their higher
            response to droughts. However, a country's level of
            external debt has no relation to the output impact of any
            type of disaster. The evidence also indicates that,
            historically, aid flows have done little to attenuate the
            output consequences of climatic disasters.
Barriers to competition in Croatia :
            the role of government regulation
This paper examines product market
            policies in Croatia by benchmarking them to OECD countries
            and highlighting how policies that are more conducive to
            competition would stimulate a more efficient allocation of
            resources and, in consequence, facilitate convergence to
            higher income levels. OECD indicators of overall regulation
            in product markets indicate that Croatias policies in 2007
            were generally more restrictive of competition than were the
            policies in OECD countries. This is especially true for
            policies concerned with the degree of state control of the
            economy and with barriers to entrepreneurship. Regulatory
            obstacles to trade and foreign direct investment, by
            contrast, are in line with those of pre-accession European
            Union countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovak Republic,
            and Poland in 2003, as well as Bulgaria and Romania in
            2006), albeit well above the OECD average. Regulation of
            post, electricity, gas, telecoms, air, rail, and road
            transport, as estimated by the OECD energy transport and
            communication sectors indicator, is also less liberal than
            in the OECD, highlighting the positive knock-on effects for
            the rest of the economy that could derive from further
            liberalization of network industries.
Climate volatility and poverty
            vulnerability in Tanzania
Climate models generally indicate that
            climate volatility may rise in the future, severely
            affecting agricultural productivity through greater
            frequency of yield-diminishing climate extremes, such as
            droughts. For Tanzania, where agricultural production is
            sensitive to climate, changes in climate volatility could
            have significant implications for poverty. This study
            assesses the vulnerability of Tanzanias population to
            poverty to changes in climate variability between the late
            20th century and early this century.  Future climate
            scenarios with the largest increases in climate volatility
            are projected to make Tanzanians increasingly vulnerable to
            poverty through its impacts on the production of staple
            grains, with as many as 90,000 additional people,
            representing 0.26 percent of the population, entering
            poverty in the median case.  Extreme poverty-increasing
            outcomes are also found to be greater in the future under
            certain climate scenarios. In the 20th century, the greatest
            predicted increase in poverty was equal to 880,000 people,
            while in the 21st century, the highest possible poverty
            increase was equal to 1.17 million people (approximately 3.4
            percent of the population). The results suggest that the
            potential impacts of changes in climate volatility and
            climate extremes can be significant for poverty in
            Sub-Saharan African countries like Tanzania.
Mandated benefits, employment, and
            inequality in a dual economy
This paper studies the effect of
            enforcing labor regulation in an economy with a dual labor
            market. The analysis uses data from Brazil, a country with a
            large informal sector and strict labor law, where
            enforcement affects mainly the degree of compliance with
            mandated benefits (severance pay and health and safety
            conditions) in the formal sector, and the registration of
            informal workers. The authors find that stricter enforcement
            leads to higher unemployment but lower income inequality.
            They also show that, at the top of the formal wage
            distribution, workers bear the cost of mandated benefits by
            receiving lower wages. Wage rigidity (due, say, to the
            minimum wage) prevents this downward adjustment at the
            bottom of the income distribution. As a result, formal
            sector jobs at the bottom of the wage distribution become
            more attractive, inducing the low-skilled self-employed to
            search for formal jobs.
Education and wage differentials in
            the Philippines
In the Philippines, an important part of
            income inequality is associated with the wage difference
            between the less educated and the better educated. The
            majority of the least educated are employed in low-paid
            services jobs and the agricultural sector. Tertiary
            education is to a large extent a prerequisite for high-paid
            occupations. Using the Labor Force Survey 2003-2007, this
            paper examines disparities in human capital endowment,
            returns to education, and the role of education in wage
            differentials in the Philippines. The empirical results show
            that returns to education monotonically increase - workers
            with elementary education, secondary education, and tertiary
            education earn 10 percent, 40 percent, and 100 percent more
            than those with no education. The results also show that
            education is the single most important factor that
            contributes to wage differentials. At the national level,
            education accounts for about 30 percent of the difference in
            wages. It accounts for a higher percentage of the difference
            for female workers (37 percent) than male workers (24
            percent). There are also differences across regions and
            sectors. As an economy develops, the demand for skills
            increases. In the Philippines, efforts to improve education
            to increase the supply of highly educated people are
            important not only for long-term growth, but also for
            helping to translate growth into more equal opportunities
            for the children of the current generation.
Disparities in labor market
            performance in the Philippines
The Philippine economy has been growing
            rapidly, at an annual growth rate of 5 percent over the past
            five years. Such decent growth in gross domestic product,
            however, did not translate into an increase in household
            income. Wage income declined in real terms. The poverty
            headcount increased slightly. The fruits of economic growth
            were not shared equally across the country. Challenges
            remain to create more jobs to keep pace with the rapidly
            growing active population. Using the Philippines Labor Force
            Survey data (2003-2007), this paper reviews the disparities
            in labor market performance and examines the contribution of
            regional and individual characteristics. The results show
            that real wages declined and disparities widened between the
            National Capital Region and other islands. The youth, less
            educated, and women face more challenges in finding
            employment with a decent salary, other things being equal.
            Disparities in labor market performance are largely
            associated with the difference in regional structure and
            human capital endowment. Individual characteristics account
            for roughly one-third of the difference in wages between the
            National Capital Region and other regions; regional
            structures and other unobservable factors account for
            two-thirds of the difference.
Has India's economic growth
            become more pro-poor in the wake of economic reforms
The extent to which India's poor
            have benefited from the countrys economic growth has long
            been debated. This paper revisits the issues using a new
            series of consumption-based poverty measures spanning 50
            years, and including a 15-year period after economic reforms
            began in earnest in the early 1990s. Growth has tended to
            reduce poverty, including in the post-reform period. There
            is no robust evidence that the responsiveness of poverty to
            growth has increased, or decreased, since the reforms began,
            although there are signs of rising inequality. The impact of
            growth is higher for poverty measures that reflect
            distribution below the poverty line, and it is higher using
            growth rates calculated from household surveys than national
            accounts. The urban-rural pattern of growth matters to the
            pace of poverty reduction. However, in marked contrast to
            the pre-reform period, the post-reform process of urban
            economic growth has brought significant gains to the rural
            poor as well as the urban poor.
Export promotion agencies revisited
The number of national export promotion
            agencies has tripled over the past two decades. Although
            more countries made them part of their export strategy,
            studies criticized their efficacy in developing countries.
            The agencies were retooled, partly in response to these
            critiques. This paper studies the impact of today's
            export promotion agencies and their strategies, based on new
            survey data covering 103 developing and developed countries.
            The results suggest that on average they have a
            statistically significant effect on exports. The
            identification strategies highlight the importance of EPA
            services for overcoming foreign trade barriers and solving
            asymmetric information problems associated with exports of
            heterogeneous goods. There are also strong diminishing
            returns, suggesting that as far as export promotion agencies
            are concerned, small is beautiful.
Regionalizing telecommunications
            reform in West Africa
In recent years, there has been an
            increasing recognition that significant welfare gains could
            be realized through deep forms of regional integration which
            entail harmonization of legal, regulatory and institutional
            frameworks. Reforms that reduce cross-border transaction
            costs and improve the performance of backbone
            infrastructure services are arguably even more important for
            the creation of an open, unified regional economic space
            than trade policy reforms narrowly defined. This paper
            assesses the potential gains from regionalized
            telecommunications policy in West Africa. To this end, the
            paper: (i) discusses how regional cooperation can overcome
            national limits in technical expertise, enhance the capacity
            of nations credibly to commit to stable regulatory policy,
            and ultimately facilitate infrastructure investment in the
            region; (ii) identifies trade-distorting regulations that
            inhibit opportunities for regional trade and economic
            development, and so are good candidates for regional trade
            negotiations to reduce indirect trade barriers; and (iii)
            describes substantive elements of a harmonized regional
            regulatory policy that can deliver immediate performance benefits.
Can global de-carbonization inhibit
            developing country industrialization
Most economic analyses of climate change
            have focused on the aggregate impact on countries of
            mitigation actions. The authors depart first in
            disaggregating the impact by sector, focusing particularly
            on manufacturing output and exports because of the potential
            growth consequences. Second, they decompose the impact of an
            agreement on emissions reductions into three components: the
            change in the price of carbon due to each countrys emission
            cuts per se; the further change in this price due to
            emissions tradability; and the changes due to any
            international transfers (private and public). Manufacturing
            output and exports in low carbon intensity countries such as
            Brazil are not adversely affected. In contrast, in high
            carbon intensity countries, such as China and India, even a
            modest agreement depresses manufacturing output by 6-7
            percent and manufacturing exports by 9-11 percent. The
            increase in the carbon price induced by emissions
            tradability hurts manufacturing output most while the Dutch
            disease effects of transfers hurt exports most. If the
            growth costs of these structural changes are judged to be
            substantial, the current policy consensus, which favors
            emissions tradability (on efficiency grounds) supplemented
            with financial transfers (on equity grounds), needs re-consideration.
Time as a determinant of comparative advantage
It is assumed that added time to export
            adds cost to and lowers the volume of trade. Time delays may
            also affect the composition of trade and can
            disproportionately reduce trade in time-sensitive goods.
            This paper investigates the validity of these propositions
            using the World Bank Doing Business database and Enterprise
            Surveys for 64 developing countries. The authors find that
            in countries where there is longer time needed to export
            firms in time-sensitive industries are less likely to become
            exporters. Moreover, firms that do export have lower export
            intensities. Their findings imply that time to export is a
            significant determinant of comparative advantage. For
            example, consider two industries that have the same export
            probability and intensity - but differ in time-sensitivity
            by one standard deviation. Action taken to cut time to
            export by 50 percent for one industry opens a 6 percentage
            point difference between the export probabilities of the two
            industries. In addition, steps to cut time delays increase
            export intensities by 1.9 percentage points. This impact
            applies to industries with different productivity levels --
            and those in developing countries with different income levels.
Basel core principles and bank
            soundness : does compliance matter
This paper studies whether compliance
            with the Basel Core Principles for effective banking
            supervision is associated with bank soundness. Using data
            for more than 3,000 banks in 86 countries, the authors find
            that neither the overall index of compliance with the Basel
            Core Principles nor the individual components of the index
            are robustly associated with bank risk measured by Z-scores.
            The results of the analysis cast doubt on the usefulness of
            the Basel Core Principles in ensuring bank soundness.
Comparing condom use with different
            types of partners : evidence from national HIV surveys in Africa
Based on nationally representative
            samples from 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper
            reinforces and expands previous findings that condom use in
            general is low in this region, men report using condoms more
            frequently than women, and unmarried individuals report they
            use condoms more frequently than married individuals with
            their spouse. Based on descriptive, bivariate, and
            multivariate analyses, the authors also demonstrate to a
            degree not previously shown in the current literature that
            married men from most countries report using condoms with
            extramarital partners about as frequently as unmarried men.
            However, married women from most countries included use
            condoms with extramarital partners less frequently than
            unmarried women. This result is especially troubling because
            marriage usually ensures regular sexual intercourse,
            providing more opportunities to pass HIV from extramarital
            partner to spouse than an unmarried person who may also have
            multiple partners but not as regular sexual intercourse.
Mental health in the aftermath of conflict
The authors survey the recent literature
            on the mental health effects of conflict. They highlight the
            methodological challenges faced in this literature, which
            include the lack of validated mental health scales in a
            survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual
            exposure to conflict, and the issues related to making
            causal inferences from observed correlations. They
            illustrate how some of these issues can be overcome in a
            study of mental health in post-conflict Bosnia and
            Herzegovina. Mental health is measured using a clinically
            validated scale; conflict exposure is proxied by
            administrative data on war casualties instead of being
            self-reported. The analysis suggests that there are no
            significant differences in overall mental health across
            areas which are affected by ethnic conflict to a greater or
            lesser degree.
The potential impact of the global
            financial crisis on world trade
This paper models the global financial
            crisis as a combination of shocks to global housing markets
            and sharp increases in risk premia of firms, households and
            international investors in a global economic model. The
            model has six sectors of production and trade in 15 major
            economies and regions. The paper shows that the shocks
            observed in financial markets can be used to generate the
            severe economic contraction in global trade and production
            experienced in 2009. In particular the distinction between
            the production and trade of durable and non durable goods
            plays a key role in explaining the much larger contraction
            in trade than GDP experienced by most economies. The paper
            explores the implications of the large increase in fiscal
            deficits and the implications of a global trade war in
            response to the financial crisis.