rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Estimating the welfare costs of
            reforming the Iraq public distribution system : a mixed
            demand approach
The Iraqi Public Distribution System is
            the largest universal, in-kind subsidy system in the world.
            In 2012, the Public Distribution System transfers accounted
            for as much as 30 percent of incomes of the poorest 10
            percent of the Iraqi population and provided 70 percent of
            the calories of the poorest 40 percent. In effect, the
            Public Distribution System remains the only safety net
            program that covers all the poor and vulnerable in the
            country. Yet, it is a very inefficient and expensive means
            to deliver transfers to the poor and creates distortions in
            the economy as well as an unsustainable fiscal burden. The
            fiscal crisis since mid-2014 has put reform of the Public
            Distribution System back on the agenda. This paper employs a
            mixed demand approach to analyze the consumption patterns of
            Iraqi households and quantify the welfare impact of a
            potential reform of the Public Distribution System in urban
            areas. The results show that household consumption of Public
            Distribution System items is relatively inelastic to changes
            in price. Consumption is more inelastic for the poorest
            quintiles and, for much of the population, these goods are
            not inferior, but rather normal goods. Cross-sectional
            comparisons suggest that with improvements in welfare
            levels, and with well-functioning markets, some segments of
            the population are substituting away from the Public
            Distribution System and increasing their consumption of
            market substitutes. The removal of all subsidies will
            require compensating poor households by 74.4 percent of
            their expenditures compared with nearly 40 percent for the
            richest households in urban areas.
Fast, easy, and cheap job matching :
            social networks in Bangladesh
This paper uncovers the reason why
            social networks are used in a job market. The data are
            novel: a nationally representative matched employer-employee
            data set in Bangladesh with detailed information, including
            direct measures of the use of social networks. The empirical
            analysis shows that compared with those who used open
            channels to find jobs, the employees who used social
            networks found jobs more easily, have lower observable
            abilities, and achieved lower employment outcomes
            conditional on observable and unobservable abilities. These
            results are robust whether firm-occupation fixed effects are
            controlled for or not. By comparing these findings with
            theoretical predictions, the paper concludes that social
            networks play the role as fast and easy but narrow-spectrum
            matching. That is, social networks allow job seekers to find
            jobs quickly and easily and thereby reduce search costs, but
            the types of jobs available from social networks are
            narrower than those from open channels. As a consequence,
            those who choose to use social networks are more likely to
            end up having mismatched jobs, that is jobs in which they
            cannot take advantage of their specialties. In the context
            of developing countries, a considerable number of poor job
            seekers may use social networks out of necessity even if the
            returns to finding good-match jobs through open channels are
            sufficiently high.
Are caste categories misleading the
            relationship between gender and Jati in three Indian states
This paper examines the relationship
            between caste and gender inequality in three states in
            India. When households are grouped using conventional,
            government-defined categories of caste the paper finds
            patterns that are consistent with existing literature:
            lower-caste women are more likely to participate in the
            labor market, have greater decision-making autonomy within
            their households, and experience greater freedom of
            movement. When households are grouped by the narrower
            sub-caste categories of jati, where caste is lived and
            experienced, the paper finds the relationships to be far
            more varied and nuanced. These results suggest that
            focussing on broad caste categories such as "scheduled
            castes" and "scheduled tribes" can be
            misleading for understanding the relationship between caste
            and gender, and for targeting anti-poverty programs.
The heterogeneous growth effects of
            the business environment : firm-level evidence for a global
            sample of cities
Using firm-level data covering 709
            cities in 128 countries, this paper examines the role of a
            comprehensive list of business environment variables at the
            subnational level in explaining firm employment and
            productivity growth. The analysis finds basic protection,
            access to finance and infrastructure, and the existence of a
            strong agglomeration environment to be critically important.
            By contrast, human capital and a list of refined business
            environment variables related to labor regulations, tax, and
            land access are found to be relatively unimportant. The
            analysis also finds that the effects of the business
            environment vary according to firm size, age, sector
            affiliation, and the host country's level of
            development. The research suggests that it pays to be
            comprehensive about the business environment and that
            attention to heterogeneity is important.
The effects of health insurance
            within families: experimental evidence from Nicaragua
This paper measures the causal effects
            of parent enrollment into voluntary health insurance on
            healthcare utilization among insured and uninsured children
            in Nicaragua. The study utilizes a randomized trial and
            age-eligibility cut-off in which insurance subsidies were
            randomly allocated to parents that covered their dependent
            children under 12; children ages 12 and older were not
            eligible for coverage. Among eligible children, the
            insurance increased utilization at covered providers by 0.56
            visits and increased overall utilization by 1.3 visits.
            Ineligible children with insured parents experienced 1.7
            fewer healthcare visits, driven by parent, not sibling
            enrollment. The results suggest complementarities across
            healthcare provider type, and provide evidence that
            households reallocate resources across all members, in
            response to changes in healthcare prices for some.
The effect of local governance on
            firm productivity and resource allocation : evidence from Vietnam
Governance quality plays a key role in
            private sector development: competent bureaucrats not only
            create good policies and regulations, but also effectively
            implement them to shape the business environment. This paper
            exploit Vietnam’s decentralization of administrative tasks
            since the early 2000s to test this hypothesis. The paper
            examines how changes in the provincial administration of
            national business regulations affect firms through two
            channels: within-firm productivity levels and resource
            allocation across firms. The results show that better
            overall business environment has a positive impact on firm
            productivity, and this effect is driven by a reduction in
            corruption levels, the risks of land expropriation, and
            entry regulations. The analysis also finds that
            high-productivity firms are generally better able to take
            advantage of improvements in the business environment.
            However, better implementation of entry regulations matters
            most for less productive firms. The study does not find
            evidence for the impact of business environment quality on
            province-level market efficiency.
Deliberative inequality : a
            text-as-data study of Tamil Nadu's village assemblies
The resurgence of deliberative
            institutions in the developing world has prompted a renewed
            interest in the dynamics of citizen engagement. Using
            text-as-data methods on an original corpus of village
            assembly transcripts from rural Tamil Nadu, India, this
            paper opens the "black box" of deliberation to
            examine the gendered and status-based patterns of influence.
            Drawing on normative theories of deliberation, this analysis
            identifies a set of clear empirical standards for “good”
            deliberation, based on an individual's ability both to
            speak and be heard, and uses natural language processing
            methods to generate these measures. The study first shows
            that these assemblies are not mere "talking shop"
            for state officials to bluster and read banal announcements,
            but rather, provide opportunities for citizens to challenge
            their elected officials, demand transparency, and provide
            information about authentic local development needs. Second,
            the study finds that across multiple measures of
            deliberative influence, women are at a disadvantage relative
            to men; women are less likely to speak, set the agenda, and
            receive a relevant response from state officials. Finally,
            the paper shows that although quotas for women on village
            councils have little impact on the likelihood that they
            speak, they do improve the likelihood that female citizens
            are heard.
Unheard voices : the challenge of
            inducing women's civic speech
Deliberative institutions have gained
            popularity in the developing world as a means by which to
            make governance more inclusive and responsive to local
            needs. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that
            persistent gender inequality may limit women's ability
            to participate actively and influence outcomes in these
            forums. In response, policy makers have tried to induce
            women's participation by leveraging the group-based
            format of self-help groups, which can build women's
            social capital and develop their sense of political efficacy
            and identity. This paper evaluates the impact of one such
            intervention, known as the Pudhu Vaazhvu Project, on
            women's civic participation in rural Tamil Nadu. Using
            text-as-data methods on a matched sample of transcripts from
            village assembly meetings, the analysis finds that the Pudhu
            Vaazhvu Project significantly increases women's
            participation in the gram sabha along several dimensions --
            meeting attendance, propensity to speak, and the length of
            floor time they enjoy. Although women in the Pudhu Vaazhvu
            Project villages enjoy greater voice, the study finds no
            evidence that they are more likely than women in control
            villages to drive the broader conversational agenda or
            elicit a relevant response from government officials.
"Create" or
            "buy" : internal vs. external sources of
            innovation and firm productivity
The role of innovation in improving
            productivity might vary according to a country's
            relative position in technology advancement. Frontier
            countries might benefit more from policies that promote
            firms' internal innovation (create), while follower
            countries would gain more from policies favoring the
            adoption of existing technologies through innovation
            outsourcing (buy). However, in many countries, the
            government policies to promote innovation narrowly focus on
            "creating," regardless of considerations of the
            level of a country's technological advancement. This
            paper investigates the effect of different sources of
            innovation on output via productivity with representative
            manufacturing firms in Tunisia from 1997 to 2007. It finds
            that "buying" has a positive effect on
            productivity whereas "creating" does not, which
            might imply that Tunisian firms do not invest sufficiently
            in "creating," or that "creating" is
            more difficult for Tunisian firms because they might be too
            far from the technology frontier. Meanwhile, there is no
            synergy from using both sources of innovation simultaneously
            –- a finding that counters literature suggesting that
            "creating" could enhance firms' absorptive
            capacity. The paper considers the possibility that
            "creating" and "buying" substitute for
            each other in Tunisia, where resources are limited, assuming
            the effect of innovation is not linear or requires a certain
            amount of investment (threshold) to positively affect
            productivity. The estimation result using the Tobit model
            supports this assumption. The findings suggest that
            innovation policy in Tunisia should emphasize adoption and
            adaptation, rather that creation and innovation. To
            encourage firms' "buying," the government can
            promote exports and workers' skills, whereas incentives
            that encourage firms to hire more technicians or to acquire
            foreign investment might not be efficient ways to encourage
            "buying." Moreover, the fact that there is a
            minimum requirement (threshold) for innovation investment
            suggests that policies that aim to reduce this threshold or
            support firms around this threshold could catalyze the
            innovation investment.
Approximating income distribution
            dynamics using aggregate data
This paper proposes a methodology to
            approximate individual income distribution dynamics using
            only time series data on aggregate moments of the income
            distribution. Under the assumption that individual incomes
            follow a lognormal autoregressive process, this paper shows
            that the evolution over time of the mean and standard
            deviation of log income across individuals provides
            sufficient information to place upper and lower bounds on
            the degree of mobility in the income distribution. The paper
            demonstrates that these bounds are reasonably informative,
            using the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics where the
            panel structure of the data allows us to compare measures of
            mobility directly estimated from the micro data with
            approximations based only on aggregate data. Bounds on
            mobility are estimated for a large cross-section of
            countries, using data on aggregate moments of the income
            distribution available in the World Wealth and Income
            Database and the World Bank's PovcalNet database. The
            estimated bounds on mobility imply that conventional
            anonymous growth rates of the bottom 40 percent (top 10
            percent) that do not account for mobility substantially
            understate (overstate) the expected growth performance of
            those initially in the bottom 40 percent (top 10 percent).
Services trade and global value chains
Services play a role in global value
            chains in many ways, similar to goods. But services deserve
            special attention because of how they are transacted, how
            they affect downstream sectors, how they are regulated, and
            how international cooperation can contribute to integrating
            national markets. Databases on trade in value added, which
            cover only cross-border transactions in services, reveal a
            high and growing share of services in trade in value added
            across countries and industries. Although international
            transactions in services that take place through foreign
            investment are difficult to measure, their economic impact
            can be estimated. The resulting improved access to
            financial, communications, and transport services
            facilitates the emergence of global value chains, enhances
            downstream manufacturing firms’ productivity, and shifts the
            pattern of comparative advantage toward sectors intensive in
            these services. Despite significant unilateral
            liberalization, service markets in many countries remain
            protected by restrictions on the entry of foreign services
            and service providers, as well as discretionary and
            discriminatory regulatory requirements. International
            cooperation in services has attempted to follow the example
            of reciprocal market opening for goods, but this approach
            has delivered little incremental liberalization. More could
            be achieved through greater emphasis on international
            regulatory cooperation.
Farm size and productivity : a
            "direct-inverse-direct" relationship
This paper proposes a new interpretation
            of the farm size-productivity relationship. Using two rounds
            of the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey, and drawing on
            earlier work on five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the
            paper shows that the relationship between farm size and
            productivity is neither monotonic nor univocal. Most
            previous studies that tested the inverse farm
            size-productivity relationship used ordinary least squares
            estimation, therefore reporting parameter estimates at the
            conditional mean of productivity. By expanding these
            important findings to consider the entire distribution of
            agricultural productivity, the analysis finds sign switches
            across the distribution, pointing to a
            “direct-inverse-direct” relationship. Less productive
            farmers exhibit an inverted U-shape relationship between
            land productivity and farm size, while more productive
            farmers show a U-shape relationship that reverses the
            relationship. In both cases, the relationship points toward
            a threshold value of farm size; however, the threshold is a
            minimum for the less productive farmers and a maximum for
            the more productive ones. To the left of the threshold, for
            very small farmers, the relationship between productivity
            and farm size is positive; for the range of middle farm
            size, the relationship is negative; and to the right of the
            threshold, the relationship is direct (positive) again. From
            a policy perspective, these findings imply that
            efficiency-enhancing and redistributive land reform should
            consider farm size in the proper context of the present and
            potential levels of agricultural productivity. The results
            and their policy implications underline the relevance of the
            most recent efforts of the international development
            community to collect more reliable georeferenced data on
            farm size and agricultural productivity.
Exchange rate and inflation dynamics
            in Zambia
This paper investigates the dynamics
            between the exchange rate and consumer price inflation in
            Zambia. The analysis uses a structural vector
            autoregression, with quarterly data for 1995-2014 and a
            combination of short-run sign- and zero-restrictions to
            identify relevant global and domestic shocks. The findings
            suggest that the pass-through of exchange rates to consumer
            prices depends greatly on the shock that originally caused
            the exchange rate to fluctuate. Although the price of copper
            is the most important driver of the exchange rate, the
            fluctuations it caused are associated with a low
            pass-through of only about 7 percent. Exchange rate
            fluctuations caused by monetary shocks come with a
            pass-through of up to 25 percent. Food inflation is equally
            affected by genuine exchange rate shocks, but appears more
            reactive to changes in copper prices or the money supply.
            Historical variance decomposition shows that, across
            periods, the main drivers of exchange rate fluctuations
            varied substantially.
Trains, trade and transaction costs
            : how does domestic trade by rail affect market prices of
            Malawi agricultural commodities
This paper measures the impact of
            low-cost transport by rail in Malawi on the dispersion of
            agricultural commodities prices across markets by exploiting
            the quasi-experimental design of the nearly total collapse
            of domestic transport by rail in January 2003 due to the
            destruction of a railway bridge at Rivirivi, Balaka.
            Estimations are based on monthly market prices of four
            agricultural commodities (maize, groundnuts, rice, and
            beans) in 27 local markets for the period 1998–2006. Market
            pairs connected by rail when the railway line was
            operational are intervention observations. Railway transport
            services explain a 14 percent to 17 percent reduction in
            price dispersion across markets. Geographical reach of trade
            varies by crop, most likely related to storability and
            geographical spread of production. Perishability appears to
            increase impact reflecting limited scope for arbitrage.
            Overall, impacts are remarkably similar in size across commodities.