rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Do workers in the informal sector
            benefit from cuts in the minimum wage
This paper analyzes the effect of a
            change in the minimum wage on the earnings of workers in the
            informal sector, who supposedly are not covered by minimum
            wage legislation.  The standard view of the matter is that a
            reduction of the minimum wage, which increases employment in
            the formal sector, reduces the effective supply of labor to
            the informal sector increasing the wage at which the latter
            clears.  Strong policy conclusions can be - and have been -
            derived from the standard view.  Given that workers in the
            informal sector earn less than those in the formal sector, a
            reduction in the minimum wage should reduce income
            inequality between workers in the two sectors.  Also, to the
            extent that most of the urban poor work in the informal
            sector, reducing the minimum wage could be an effective
            anti-poverty policy.  This paper explores the possibility of
            a non-standard result following a different avenue.  It
            discusses the role of labor reallocation and demand factors
            in determining the relationship between minimum wages and
            informal sector earnings.
How access to contraception affects
            fertility and contraceptive use in Tunisia
To a great extent, fertility decline in
            Tunisia can be explained by the rise in the age at which
            women marry, probably because they are better educated and
            because social legislation has given them more rights. A
            second major factor in fertility decline was the increased
            use of contraception. The main focus of this paper is what
            determines the practice of contraception. The general
            increase in the use of contraception was the result of a
            strong family planning program as well as increases in
            education over time. The family planning program in Tunisia
            is considered one of the best in the world. There has been a
            substantial program to improve the access of the rural,
            poor, and least educated population groups to family
            planning. Although in the last 10 years contraceptive use
            increased the most among the least educated women, these
            groups are still served less well than the more privileged.
            The results of this paper show the central role of mortality
            decline and access to contraception. Health facilities,
            especially clinics, and good water are important in reducing
            mortality, which in turn increases the motivation to
            restrict fertility and the likelihood that people will act
            on that motivation. The structural model used is designed to
            distinguish such community variables as access to family
            planning from the channels through which they operate.
Coping with the legacies of
            subsidized mortgage credit in Hungary
The authors examine alternatives for
            dealing with the initial conditions of housing finance
            facing countries making the transition to a market economy
            and moving toward a  more efficient and equitable system.
            They focus on the problem of restructuring the stock of
            housing loans that exist at the time a new regime is
            implemented.  Almost without exception, the stock of housing
            loans is yielding heavily subsidized rates, and its market
            value is significantly below its book value.  Hungary makes
            an interesting case study. The mortgage portfolio inherited
            from past regimes makes especially clear the perverse
            implications of housing finance systems based on
            across-the-board subsidized interest rates.  The authors
            propose a general approach to finding options to reduce the
            fiscal burden implicit in the subsidized housing loan
            portfolio.  They identify mechanisms to reduce the interest
            subsidy embodied in that portfolio as well as mechanisms to
            spread the associated losses among those benefiting from the
            subsidies as well as among other parties.  Clearly any
            residual subsidy must be absorbed by the government and
            ultimately by the population in the form of increased
            taxation or decreased availability of public services.  The
            problem is complex and no obvious, easily implementable
            solutions emerge.  But delaying action could hardly improve
            the situation.
Manpower planning in a market
            economy with labor market signals
The movement from centrally planned to
            market economies will not eliminate the need for manpower
            planning.  Rather, it will substantially change the roles
            manpower planners play and the techniques they use.
            Manpower planners must become analysts of the labor market.
            In a market economy, the will be asked for information:  (a)
            to guide private decisions about training; (b) to improve
            the management of training systems; (c) to identify
            impediments to competitive labor markets; and (d) to help
            rationalize public investments in education and training.
            The authors introduce techniques for manpower planning that
            acknowledge the dynamic nature of market economies.  They
            reject the idea of forecasting manpower requirements,
            proposing instead to use signals from the labor market
            picked up by monitoring movements in wages and employment
            and evaluating training programs.
Public sector debt, fiscal deficits,
            and economic adjustment : a comparative study of six EMENA countries
The authors analyzed the experience of
            six countries (Algeria, Morocco, Pakistan, Portugal, Turkey,
            and Yugoslavia) and compared it with the experiences of
            Latin American countries. They conclude that some countries
            successfully absorbed the external shock of the 1980s by:
            (a) minimizing the effects of the external shock by
            combining external and domestic debt strategies; (b)
            adjusting their fiscal deficits; (c) experiencing a positive
            external shock; and (d) fostering growth by stimulating
            export growth and developing domestic financial markets. No
            single country fully implemented this strategy; those most
            successful in doing so were Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey.
            Their experience contrasts with that of some Latin American
            countries that experienced a similar external shock but
            failed to undertake fiscal adjustment and financed most of
            their deficit through money finance - thus experiencing high
            inflation levels and overburdening their private sector. In
            some respects, Yugoslavia had the same experience.
Measuring trade policy intervention
            : a cross-country index of relative price dispersion
In the debate about the relationship
            between trade policy and growth, various measures for trade
            intervention have been used. The author presents a new
            measure based on a country's relative price structure
            and the structure of relative world prices. This measure, he
            argues, conforms more closely than existing measures to the
            concept of trade intervention. The relationship between
            openness and trade liberalization is more complicated than
            is often believed. Whether a country intervenes does not
            tell the whole story about its trade policy, and misses an
            essential aspect of intervention: which goods are favored by
            subsidies and which are protected by tariffs. The debate has
            been confused by the failure to distinguish between trade
            intervention and outward orientation. Trade intervention
            implies policies that distort the flow or pattern of trade;
            outward orientation implies incentives to export that are
            greater than incentives for import substitution. The two may
            be related but a heavily interventionist policy could be
            outwardly oriented. The index of relative price dispersion
            that the author develops has the advantage that it is
            objective, measures intervention in both exports and
            imports, is comparable across countries, and is independent
            of fluctuations in exchange rates caused by macroeconomic mismanagement.
Stabilization and growth recovery in
            Mexico : lessons and dilemmas
Before 1988, "orthodox"
            policies (fiscal discipline and tight money) failed to bring
            inflation down and induce a sustained economic recovery. The
            Mexican stabilization plan announced in December 1987 (the
            Pact) shows that the right combination of orthodox and
            "heterodox" policies (for example, income
            policies) can meet, and has met, both objectives. The author
            shows that although many orthodox adjustments began before
            the Pact, considerable further adjusting was needed before
            it could succeed. To make the stabilization credible
            required significantly tighter fiscal policy and a
            lengthening of the maturities of domestic debt between 1988
            and 1990. A key factor behind high real interest rates
            during the recent Mexican stabilization plan was the
            initially low credibility of the fixed - and later the
            preannounced - exchange rate. While it is difficult to
            assess what establishes credibility, we can hypothesize
            about the factors that may hamper it. Crucial among them is
            the consistency of the macroeconomic policy framework, where
            fiscal policy plays a key role. Domestic debt management
            also matters as the probability of a successful run on the
            peso increases with the amount of government liabilities
            that could, in a given period, be exchanged for foreign
            reserves. In the short term, Mexico may not have other
            options than further tightening its fiscal and monetary
            policies. Over the medium term, however, a real peso
            depreciation appears necessary.
Real overvaluation, terms of trade
            shocks, and the cost to agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa
Starting from the premise that
            agriculture should be pivotal in the structural
            transformation and economic development of sub - Saharan
            Africa, the author addresses two related issues. First, the
            extent to which policy induced distortions influence the
            structure of incentives for agriculture (with direct
            distortions induced by policies aimed directly at
            agriculture distinguished from indirect policies aimed at
            the economy's macroeconomic management). The second
            issue is how these distortions affect agriculture's
            growth, given other growth fundamentals. Preliminary
            analysis of evidence in sub - Saharan Africa links the
            observed declines in agriculture and the general worsening
            of economic conditions to economic distortions. A more
            rigorous analysis, using data from the Sudan, an African
            country with a sizable agricultural economy, strongly
            supports the predictions of an endogenous growth model,
            which states the deleterious effects of economic distortions
            on growth.
Regulation of securities markets :
            some recent trends and their implications for emerging markets
Recent rapid changes in the world
            economy, particularly the transformation of command
            economies into free market economies in many places around
            the world, can be expected to lead to an increase in the
            number of newly created securities markets through the
            1990s.  This follows a decade of unprecedented change in the
            world's securities markets.  In the 1990s, it is
            expected that increased attention will be given to newly
            established and emerging securities markets as a result of
            the historic movement toward free market economies in
            central Europe and the Soviet Union and the need for more
            efficient capital markets to support the expanding role of
            the private sector in many developing countries around the
            world.  Given the importance of the regulatory environment
            to capital market development, this paper focuses on the
            regulatory issues.  It examines the interplay between
            regulation and market efficiency and reviews recent
            development in regulation, paying particular attention to
            the experience in the Korean market in the 1980s.
Free trade agreements with the
            United States : what's in it for Latin America
Unlike earlier analysts, who have
            focused on U.S. objectives, the authors focus here on what
            11 Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
            Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay,
            and Venezuela) stand to gain from a preferential removal of
            U.S. trade barriers - that is, from the development of a
            free trade area (FTA) arrangement. They find that the United
            States is limited in its ability to extend significant FTA
            preferences to most Latin American countries because of the
            existing Generalized System of Preferences and the cuts in
            import duties negotiated in such previous multilateral trade
            negotiations as the Tokyo Round. They do not formally
            project the potential FTA-induced expansion of U.S. exports,
            but do make some detailed comparisons of the levels of
            tariff and nontariff protection in the U.S. and Latin
            American markets. Those comparisons suggest that the U.S.
            trade gains - particularly for highly protected transport
            and machinery products - are likely to be considerably
            greater than those for Latin America in the U.S. market.
            Their analysis also accents the potential dangers associated
            with independent negotiation of FTAs. Agreements that extend
            preferences to U.S. products below tariffs paid by other
            countries in the region would have a serious negative impact
            on trade among Latin American countries. Finally, the
            authors note that a successful conclusion of the Uruguay
            Round could greatly affect their projections.
Back of the envelope estimates of
            environmental damage costs in Mexico
For developing countries, budget
            constraints help set the agenda on mitigating environmental
            damage, one of the indelible marks of our era. Political
            considerations often dictate the measures taken.  There are
            no firm analytical formulas to help even environmentally
            conscious policymakers rank needs and remedies.  A
            developing country such as Mexico - the focus of this paper
            - cannot afford an in-depth study of every environmental
            issue. Policymakers need to be provided with rough,
            "back-of-the envelope" estimates of the economic
            costs of various environmental problems.  This allows them
            to rank the issues and act.  In this paper the author
            applied existing methods to estimate the costs stemming from
            different environmental problems in Mexico. Although the
            examples are from Mexico, the method can be useful in other
            developing countries as well.  The author how creative use
            of U.S. and other data can help provide simple estimates of
            the likely costs of soil erosion, air pollution, mining of
            underground waters, and estimates of the health effects of
            water and solid waste pollution, lack of sanitation, and the
            ingestion of food contaminated by polluted irrigation.  The
            assumptions underlying all calculations are conservative.
            Some environmental damage issues, such as loss of
            biodiversity, were too complex to permit quantification.
How private enterprise organized
            agricultural markets in Kenya
Does liberalization of agricultural
            markets and an expanded role for the private sector result
            in a competitive market structure in Africa?  The author
            empirically investigates the organization and development of
            a dynamic African export-oriented sector - Kenya's
            horticultural exports - in which the private sector has long
            had a dominant role.  The author highlights the
            sector's impressive pattern of growth over the past two
            decades and examines the characteristics of participating
            private firms, the competitive pattern among those firms,
            and the institutional means by which they procure raw
            materials for processing and export.  He finds that despite
            the Kenyan government's direct investments in
            processing and trading activities and its application of
            regulations and targeted support measures to strengthen the
            role of Kenyan Africans in the horticultural trade, most of
            this trade remains controlled by foreign-owned companies or
            members of Kenya's small minority Asian and European
            communities.  This paper also examines the extent and forms
            of competition in this sub-sector and reviews the wide range
            of institutional arrangements adopted by private firms to
            coordinate their own processing and marketing activities
            with the farm-level production of horticultural commodities
            and raw materials.
Paternalism and the alleviation of poverty
Typically the tools available for
            redistribution are price subsidies and direct cash
            transfers. Conventional economic theory indicates that the
            efficiency loss is minimized if cash transfers are used
            instead of price subsidies. But in almost all economies,
            including advanced economies, price subsidies are
            implemented and cash transfers are seldom used. The author
            argues that taxpayers enjoy the poorer citizen's
            specific consumption package more than improving the poorer
            citizen's general economic welfare. Her objective is to
            identify the conditions under which price subsidies
            represent a more efficient way of alleviating poverty than
            cash payments, given taxpayers' paternalistic
            preferences. She concludes that when the taxpayers'
            prevalent behavior is paternalism, and taxpayers have more
            weight in society, the option for redistribution would be to
            target price subsidies to the poor. This brings about a
            greater improvement in overall social welfare and happier
            taxpayers than any other policy. With this solution, the
            poor are somewhat better off, even though they would rather
            receive cash transfers, which would represent the same
            financial cost to the economy.
Taxation in decentralizing socialist
            economies : the case of China
The authors analyze the tax system in
            China, where reforms designed to move the economic system
            toward a market economy have been occurring for more than a
            decade.  The authors characterize the comprehensive changes
            in the tax system that could be undertaken in the presence
            of system-wide reform, especially of prices and enterprises,
            as well as of more moderate reforms that must suffice in the
            absence of reforms elsewhere in the economic system.  In
            connection with tax reform per se, they emphasize that it is
            possible to simplify significantly the rate structure for
            indirect taxes in the presence of price controls, but a
            unified rate for value-added tax is undesirable without full
            decontrol of prices.  They also found that the state's
            role as owner of enterprises must be treated separately from
            its role as tax collector.  All enterprises should pay
            statutory profits taxes.  Negotiation (of the kind that
            characterizes the contract responsibility system) should be
            confined to the payments to government from after-tax
            profits.  Those payments could be set to balance incentives
            to enterprises with the need for the state to earn a return
            on assets historically provided free to those enterprises.
            The mode of analysis developed in this paper can be applied
            to a wider range of economies - whether emerging from a
            socialist past or not - that are progressing at varying
            speeds in the interlinked areas of tax reform, price reform,
            and enterprise reform.
Incorporating cost and cost -
            effectiveness into the development of safe motherhood programs
Little information is available on the
            actual costs of implementing Safe Motherhood programs, or on
            how these costs vary in different settings. Nor is there a
            consensus on the precise goal, content, and structure of
            Safe Motherhood programs. It is difficult to measure the
            impact of interventions on mortality, and debate continues
            on the appropriateness of various intermediate or process
            indicators as proxies for maternal outcome measures.
            Participants at a recent World Bank workshop on Safe
            Motherhood agreed that it is essential to develop a better
            understanding of the cost-effectiveness of Safe Motherhood
            interventions to design programs and allocate the limited
            resources available in a way that maximizes their impact on
            maternal health status. At its simplest, a costing
            methodology would provide guidelines for estimating the
            costs of prospective programs, once designed. When combined
            with information on effectiveness, it could be used to give
            planners an indication of the potential results achievable
            through a variety of program options, subject to the
            resources at their disposal.