rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Brazilian exports : climbing down a
            competitiveness cliff
This note examines in detail Brazils
            export performance over the past 15 years, focusing not only
            on growth and composition, but also on different performance
            dimensions, including diversification, sophistication, and
            firm dynamics. The analysis uses international comparisons
            to better situate the Brazilian performance, and explores
            different databases, including firm-level data recently
            published by the World Bank. The note uses a recent
            diagnostic toolkit developed by the World Bank in order to
            suggest some hypotheses about the factors that have been
            inhibiting exports and industrial production expansion.
            Among the latter, it is noted how service sectors, as the
            largest beneficiaries from favorable terms of trade,
            accommodated larger wage increases and "exported"
            cost pressures to other sectors of the economy. Furthermore,
            although a stronger currency can be appointed as one of the
            elements behind the lower competitiveness in Brazilian
            exports, sluggish productivity performance and a real wage
            uptrend explain a significant part of the overall loss of
            competitiveness. This diagnostic reinforces the importance
            of resuming the agenda of microeconomic reforms, increasing
            the investment-to-gross domestic product ratio, and
            advancing toward better-skilled human capital.
Inequality of opportunity, income
            inequality and economic mobility : some international comparisons
Despite a recent surge in the number of
            studies attempting to measure inequality of opportunity in
            various countries, methodological differences have so far
            prevented meaningful international comparisons. This paper
            presents a comparison of ex-ante measures of inequality of
            economic opportunity (IEO) across 41 countries, and of the
            Human Opportunity Index (HOI) for 39 countries. It also
            examines international correlations between these indices
            and output per capita, income inequality, and
            intergenerational mobility. The analysis finds evidence of a
            "Kuznets curve" for inequality of opportunity, and
            finds that the IEO index is positively correlated with
            overall income inequality, and negatively with measures of
            intergenerational mobility, both in incomes and in years of
            schooling. The HOI is highly correlated with the Human
            Development Index, and its internal measure of inequality of
            opportunity yields very different country rankings from the
            IEO measure.
Reinsurance as capital optimization
            tool under Solvency II
This paper compares solvency capital
            requirements under Solvency I and Solvency II for a sample
            mid-size insurance portfolio. According to the results of a
            study, changing the solvency capital regime from Solvency I
            to Solvency II will lead to a substantial additional
            solvency capital requirement that might represent a heavy
            burden for the company's shareholders. One way to
            reduce the capital requirement under Solvency II is to
            increase reinsurance protection, which will reduce the net
            retained risk exposure and hence also the solvency capital
            requirement. Therefore, this paper proposes an extended
            reinsurance structure that, under Solvency II, brings the
            capital requirement back to the level of that required under
            Solvency I. In a step-by-step approach, the paper
            demonstrates the extent of solvency relief attained by the
            insurer by applying different possible adjustments in the
            reinsurance structure. To evaluate the efficiency of
            reinsurance as the solvency capital relief instrument, the
            authors introduce a cost-of-capital based approach, which
            puts the achieved capital relief in relation to the costs of
            extending the reinsurance protection. This approach allows a
            direct comparison of reinsurance as a capital relief
            instrument with debt instruments available in the capital
            market. With the help of the introduced approach, the
            authors show that the best capital relief efficiency under
            all examined reinsurance alternatives is achieved when a
            financial quota share contract is chosen for proportional reinsurance.
Incentive audits : a new approach to
            financial regulation
A large body of evidence points to
            misaligned incentives as having a key role in the run-up to
            the global financial crisis. These include bank
            managers' incentives to boost short-term profits and
            create banks that are "too big to fail,"
            regulators' incentives to forebear and withhold
            information from other regulators in stressful times, and
            credit rating agencies' incentives to keep issuing high
            ratings for subprime assets. As part of the response to the
            crisis, policymakers and regulators also attempted to
            address some incentive issues, but various outside observers
            have criticized the response for being insufficient. This
            paper proposes a pragmatic approach to re-orienting
            financial regulation to have at its core the objective of
            addressing incentives on an ongoing basis. Specifically, the
            paper proposes "incentive audits" as a tool that
            could help in identifying incentive misalignments in the
            financial sector. The paper illustrates how such audits
            could be implemented in practice, and what the implications
            would be for the design of policies and frameworks to
            mitigate systemic risks.
Monetary policy and macroprudential
            regulation : whither emerging markets
Confidence in combining
            inflation-targeting-cum-flexible-exchange-rate regimes with
            isolated microprudential regulation as a means to guarantee
            both macroeconomic and financial stability has been
            shattered by the scale and synchronization of asset price
            booms and busts that preceded the current global financial
            crisis. This paper has a two-fold purpose. On the one hand,
            it explores the implications and challenges of acknowledging
            the need for coordination between monetary policies and
            macroprudential regulation. On the other, it points out
            specific challenges currently faced by central bankers in
            emerging economies, as they cope with policy and regulatory
            coordination in a context of debt overhang and
            unconventional monetary policies in advanced economies.
Leveraging land to enable urban
            transformation : lessons from global experience
Around the world, in both developed and
            developing countries, policy makers use a variety of tools
            to manage and accommodate urban growth and redevelopment.
            Government officials have three main concerns in terms of
            land policy: (i) accommodating urban expansion, (ii)
            providing infrastructure, and (iii) managing density.
            Together, the planning for infrastructure and urban
            expansion, land use, and density policies combine to shape
            the spatial structure of cities. This paper reviews global
            experience on using land based instruments to accommodate
            urban development and financing infrastructure. The review
            suggests that urban transformation is most efficient when
            land markets are fluid, particularly when they are grounded
            in strong institutions that (i) assign and protect property
            rights, (ii) enable independent valuation and public
            dissemination of land values across uses, and (iii) enable
            the judicial system to handle disputes that may arise in the process.
Rainfall variability, occupational
            choice, and welfare in rural Bangladesh
This study investigates the choice of
            occupational focus versus diversification between household
            members in rural Bangladesh as an autonomous and proactive
            adaptation strategy against ex ante local rainfall
            variability risks. The analysis combines nationally
            representative household level survey data with historical
            climate variability information at the Upazila level. The
            authors note that flood prone Upazilas may face reduced
            risks from local rainfall variability as compared with
            non-flood prone Upazilas. They find that two members of the
            same household are less likely to be self-employed in
            agriculture if they live in an area with high local rainfall
            variability. However, the occupational diversification
            strategy comes at a cost to households in terms of
            consumption welfare. The paper considers the effects of
            three policy actions, providing access to credit, safety
            net, and market. Access to market appears to be more
            effective in reducing the likelihood of costly
            within-household occupational diversification as an ex ante
            climate risk-reducing strategy as compared with access to
            credit and safety net.
Antidumping, retaliation threats,
            and export prices
Utilizing four-dimensional
            (firm-product-destination-year) Brazilian firm-level export
            data, the paper shows that antidumping (AD) duties result in
            a significant and dramatic increase in the unit values of
            the products that firms export to duty-imposing countries.
            Furthermore, it examines the effect of potential
            (retaliatory) AD duties on the unit price of the firms'
            shipments. The findings suggest that AD activities in Brazil
            lead Brazilian exporting firms to increase their unit export
            prices for the named industries' products to decrease
            the dumping margin and avoid the threat of retaliation by
            the target countries.
Wage effects of high-skilled
            migration : international evidence
The international migration of
            high-skilled workers may trigger productivity effects at the
            macro level such that the wage rate of skilled workers
            increases in host countries and decrease in source
            countries. The authors exploit data on international
            bilateral migration flows and provide evidence consistent
            with this theoretical hypothesis. They propose various
            instrumentation strategies to identify the causal effect of
            skilled migration on log differences of GDP per capita,
            total factor productivity, and the wages of skilled workers
            between pairs of source and destination countries. These
            strategies aim to address the endogeneity problem that
            arises when international wage differences affect migration decisions.
Water nationalization and service quality
The objective of this paper is to
            explore the impact of Uruguay's privatization and
            subsequent nationalization of water services on network
            access and water quality. The results suggest that although
            the early privatization of water services had little impact
            on access to the sanitation network, the subsequent
            nationalization led to an increase in network access at the
            bottom of the income distribution as well as an improvement
            in water quality.
Information and participation in
            social programs
Participation in social programs, such
            as clubs and other social organizations, results from a
            process in which an agent learns about the requirements,
            benefits, and likelihood of acceptance related to a program,
            applies to be a participant, and, finally, is accepted or
            rejected. The authors propose a model of this participation
            process and provide an application of the model using data
            from a social program in Mexico. Their empirical analysis
            illustrates that decisions at each stage of the process are
            responsive to expectations about the decisions and outcomes
            at the subsequent stages and that knowledge about the
            program can have a significant impact on participation outcomes.
Highway to success in India : the
            impact of the golden quadrilateral project for the location
            and performance of manufacturing
The infrastructure gap is one of the
            most significant impediments to India realizing its growth
            and poverty reduction potential. Although Indias transport
            network is one of the most extensive in the world,
            accessibility and connectivity are limited. Only 20 percent
            of the national highway network (which carries 40 percent of
            traffic) is four-lane and one-fourth of the rural population
            does not have access to an all-weather road. It is estimated
            that the transport sector alone will require an investment
            of nearly US$500 billion over the next 10 years. This paper
            investigates the impact of the Golden Quadrilateral highway
            project on the Indian organized manufacturing sector using
            enterprise data. The Golden Quadrilateral project upgraded
            the quality and width of 5,846 km of roads in India. The
            analysis uses a difference-in-difference estimation strategy
            to compare non-nodal districts based on their distance from
            the highway system. It finds several positive effects for
            non-nodal districts located 0-10 km from the Golden
            Quadrilateral that are not present in districts 10-50 km
            away, most notably higher entry rates and increases in plant
            productivity. These results are not present for districts
            located on another major highway system, the North-South
            East-West corridor. Improvements for portions of the
            North-South East-West corridor system were planned to occur
            at the same time as the Golden Quadrilateral but were
            subsequently delayed. Additional tests show that the Golden
            Quadrilateral projects effect operates in part through a
            stronger sorting of land-intensive industries from nodal
            districts to non-nodal districts located on the Golden
            Quadrilateral network. The Golden Quadrilateral upgrades
            further helped spread economic activity to moderate-density
            districts and intermediate size cities.
Highway to success in India : the
            impact of the golden quadrilateral project for the location
            and performance of manufacturing
WPS6320 Policy Research Working Paper 6320

# Highway to Success in India

The Impact of the Golden Quadrilateral Project for the Location and Performance of Manufacturing _Ejaz Ghani Arti Grover Goswami William R. Kerr_ The World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network Economic Policy and Debt Department January 2013
The impact of health insurance
            schemes for the informal sector in low- and middle-income
            countries : a systematic review
This paper summarizes the literature on
            the impact of state subsidized or social health insurance
            schemes that have been offered, mostly on a voluntary basis,
            to the informal sector in low- and middle-income countries.
            A substantial number of papers provide estimations of
            average treatment on the treated effect for insured persons.
            The authors summarize papers that correct for the problem of
            self-selection into insurance and papers that estimate the
            average intention to treat effect. Summarizing the
            literature was difficult because of the lack of (1)
            uniformity in the use of meaningful definitions of outcomes
            that indicate welfare improvements and (2) clarity in the
            consideration of selection issues. They find the uptake of
            insurance schemes, in many cases, to be less than expected.
            In general, we find no strong evidence of an impact on
            utilization, protection from financial risk, and health
            status. However, a few insurance schemes afford significant
            protection from high levels of out-of-pocket expenditures.
            In these cases, however, the impact on the poor is weaker.
            More information is needed to understand the reasons for low
            enrollment and to explain the limited impact of health
            insurance among the insured.
How long will it take to lift one
            billion people out of poverty
Alternative scenarios are considered for
            reducing by one billion the number of people living below
            $1.25 a day. The low-case, "pessimistic," path to
            that goal would see the developing world outside China
            returning to its slower pace of growth and poverty reduction
            of the 1980s and 1990s, though with China maintaining its
            progress. This path would take another 50 years or more to
            lift one billion people out of poverty. The more optimistic
            path would maintain the (impressive) progress against
            poverty since 2000, which would instead reach the target by
            around 2025-30. This scenario is consistent with both linear
            projections of the time series data and non-linear
            simulations of inequality-neutral growth for the developing
            world as a whole.
Feeding five billion Asians : a
            socioeconomic perspective
This paper reviews the prospects for
            long-term food security in Asia, where a significant number
            of malnourished individuals still live after decades of
            mixed progress. Evidence shows that poverty reduction on its
            own will not do the job of eradicating hunger, nor will only
            increased food production. The region's contribution to
            high and volatile international food prices is well known,
            but Asia's potential contributions toward future
            decreased price uncertainty are much less cited. The
            changing composition of future food demand in the region
            will depend on the extent to which poverty reduction
            effectively leads to middle class expansion, which remains unclear.
Does trade reduce poverty a view
            from Africa
Although trade liberalization is being
            actively promoted as a key component in development
            strategies, theoretically, the impact of trade openness on
            poverty reduction is ambiguous. A more liberalized trade
            regime is argued to change relative factor prices in favor
            of the more abundant factor. If poverty and relative low
            income stem from abundance of labor, greater trade openness
            should lead to higher labor prices and a decrease in
            poverty. However, should the re-allocation of factors be
            hampered, the expected benefits from freer trade may not
            materialize. The theoretical ambiguity on the effects of
            openness is reflected in the available empirical evidence.
            This paper examines how the effect of trade openness on
            poverty may depend on complementary reforms that help a
            country take advantage of international competition. Using a
            non-linear regression specification that interacts a proxy
            of trade openness with proxies of various country structural
            specificities and a panel of 30 African countries over the
            period 1981-2010, the analysis finds that trade openness
            tends to reduce poverty in countries where financial sectors
            are deep, education levels high and governance strong.
Chinese trade reforms, market access
            and foreign competition: the patterns of French exporters
A unilateral trade reform generates two
            opposite effects: market access expansion and strengthening
            of competitive pressures in the liberalized market. Using
            detailed trade and firm-level data from France, the authors
            investigate how French firms' product scope and export
            sales changed after Chinese liberalization vis-a-vis Asian
            liberalization. The findings suggest that lower Chinese
            import tariffs account on average for 7 percent of the new
            products exported by French firms, and for 18 percent of
            additional French export sales. These results are robust
            when accounting for foreign competition faced by French
            firms in the liberalized market.
How is the liberalization of food
            markets progressing market integration and transaction costs
            in subsistence economies
The paper proposes a modification of
            Baulch's parity bounds model to measure the market
            integration of food markets in developing countries. Instead
            of extrapolating a single observation of transaction costs,
            it estimates transaction costs. Predicted transaction costs
            compare well with survey data of traders. Probabilities of
            market regimes, computed on the basis of predicted
            transaction costs, fluctuate significantly and do not
            support fixed regime probabilities over time. The
            probability of market integration with trade decreases
            consistently during food shortages, increasing either the
            probability of no trade or loss-making trade or the
            probability of profitable but unexploited trade
            opportunities. The data support a negative trend in market
            integration with trade.