rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Financial inclusion and legal
            discrimination against women : evidence from developing countries
This paper documents and analyzes gender
            differences in the use of financial services using
            individual-level data from 98 developing countries. The
            data, drawn from the Global Financial Inclusion (Global
            Findex) database, highlight the existence of significant
            gender gaps in ownership of accounts and usage of savings
            and credit products. Even after controlling for a host of
            individual characteristics including income, education,
            employment status, rural residency and age, gender remains
            significantly related to usage of financial services. This
            study also finds that legal discrimination against women and
            gender norms may explain some of the cross-country variation
            in access to finance for women. The analysis finds that in
            countries where women face legal restrictions in their
            ability to work, head a household, choose where to live, and
            receive inheritance, women are less likely to own an
            account, relative to men, as well as to save and borrow. The
            results also confirm that manifestations of gender norms,
            such as the level of violence against women and the
            incidence of early marriage for women, contribute to
            explaining the variation in the use of financial services
            between men and women, after controlling for other
            individual and country characteristics.
Should marginal abatement costs
            differ across sectors the effect of low-carbon capital accumulation
The optimal timing, sectoral
            distribution, and cost of greenhouse gas emission reductions
            is different when abatement is obtained though abatement
            expenditures chosen along an abatement cost curve, or
            through investment in low-carbon capital. In the latter
            framework, optimal investment costs differ in each sector:
            they are equal to the value of avoided carbon emissions,
            minus the value of the forgone option to invest later. It is
            therefore misleading to assess the cost-efficiency of
            investments in low-carbon capital by comparing levelized
            abatement costs, that is, efforts measured as the ratio of
            investment costs to discounted abatement. The equimarginal
            principle applies to an accounting value: the Marginal
            Implicit Rental Cost of the Capital (MIRCC) used to abate.
            Two apparently opposite views are reconciled.  On the one
            hand, higher efforts are justified in sectors that will take
            longer to decarbonize, such as urban planning; on the other
            hand, the MIRCC should be equal to the carbon price at each
            point in time and in all sectors. Equalizing the MIRCC in
            each sector to the social cost of carbon is a necessary
            condition to reach the optimal pathway, but it is not a
            sufficient condition. Decentralized optimal investment
            decisions at the sector level require not only the
            information contained in the carbon price signal, but also
            knowledge of the date when the sector reaches its full
            abatement potential.
Building or bypassing recipient
            country systems : are donors defying the Paris declaration
The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid
            Effectiveness sets targets for increased use by donors of
            recipient country systems for managing aid. It also calls
            for donors to be more responsive to the quality of recipient
            country systems: the optimal level of their use, in terms of
            maximizing the development effectiveness of aid, is believed
            to vary with their quality. This study investigates the
            degree to which donors' use of country systems is in
            fact positively related to their quality, using indicators
            explicitly endorsed for this purpose by the Paris
            Declaration and covering the 2005-2010 period. The results
            of these tests strongly confirm a positive and significant
            relationship, and show it is robust to corrections for
            potential sample selection, omitted variables, or
            endogeneity bias. The result holds even when estimates are
            informed only by variation over time within each
            donor-recipient pair in use and quality of country systems.
            Moreover, donor-specific tests show that use of country
            systems varies positively with their quality for the vast
            majority of donors. These findings contradict several other
            studies that claim there is no relation and imply that
            donors in this respect are failing to live up to their
            commitments under the Paris Declaration. The author's
            interpretation of the available evidence on use of country
            systems is more favorable: donors' behavior over the
            measurement period is largely consistent with their
            commitments in this area. In this respect, at least, donors
            appear to have modified their aid practices in ways that
            build rather than undermine administrative capacity and
            accountability in recipient country governments.
Export liberalization, job creation
            and the skill premium : evidence from the U.S.-Vietnam
            bilateral trade agreement
This paper explores how the expansion of
            labor-intensive manufacturing exports resulting from the
            United States-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001
            translated into wages of skilled and unskilled workers and
            the skill premium in Vietnam through the channel of labor
            demand. In order to isolate the impacts of trade shock from
            the effects of other market-oriented reforms, a strategy of
            exploiting the regional variation in difference in exposure
            to trade is employed. Using the data on panel individuals
            from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Surveys of 2002
            and 2004, and addressing the issue of endogeneity, the
            results confirm the existence of a Stolper-Samuelson type
            effect. That is, those provinces more exposed to the
            increase in exports experienced relatively larger wage
            growth for unskilled workers and a decline of (or a smaller
            increase in) the relative wages of skilled and unskilled
            workers. During the period 2000-2004, the skill premium
            increased for Vietnam's economy as a whole in the
            sample of panel individuals. Thus, the Stolper-Samuelson
            type effect appears to have mitigated but did not outweigh
            the impacts of other factors that contributed to the rise in
            the skill premium.
Foreign job opportunities and
            internal migration in Vietnam
This paper investigates the role of
            employment opportunities created by foreign-owned firms as a
            determinant of internal migration and destination choice
            using the Vietnam Migration Survey 2004 and the Vietnam
            Household Living Standards Survey 2004. Multinomial logit
            and conditional logit models are estimated to study both
            origin and destination-specific characteristics of migrants.
            The paper finds that the migration response to foreign job
            opportunities is larger for female workers than male
            workers; there appears to be intermediate selection in terms
            of educational attainment; and migrating individuals on
            average tend to go to destinations with higher foreign
            employment opportunities, even controlling for income
            differentials, land differentials, and distances between
            sending and receiving areas.
Potential and actual FDI spillovers
            in global value chains : the role of foreign investor
            characteristics, absorptive capacity and transmission channels
Using newly collected survey data on
            direct supplier-multinational linkages in Chile, Ghana,
            Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, and Vietnam, this
            paper first evaluates whether foreign investors differ from
            domestic producers in terms of their potential to generate
            positive spillovers for local suppliers. It finds that
            foreign firms outperform domestic producers on several
            indicators, but have fewer linkages with the local economy
            and offer less supplier assistance, resulting in offsetting
            effects on the spillover potential. The paper also studies
            the relationship between foreign investor characteristics
            and linkages with the local economy as well as assistance
            extended to local suppliers. It finds that foreign investor
            characteristics matter for both. The paper also examines the
            role of suppliers' absorptive capacities in determining
            the intensity of their linkages with multinationals. The
            results indicate that several supplier characteristics
            matter, but these effects also depend on the length of the
            supplier relationship. Finally, the paper assesses whether
            assistance or requirements from a multinational influence
            spillovers on suppliers. The results confirm the existence
            of positive effects of assistance (including technical
            audits, joint product development, and technology licensing)
            on foreign direct investment spillovers, while the analysis
            finds no evidence of demand effects.
Potential and actual FDI spillovers
            in global value chains : the role of foreign investor
            characteristics, absorptive capacity and transmission channels
WPS6424 Policy Research Working Paper 6424 Potential and Actual FDI Spillovers in Global Value Chains The Role of Foreign Investor Characteristics, Absorptive Capacity and Transmission Channels _Deborah Winkler_ The World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network International Trade Department April 2013
How to avoid middle income traps
            evidence from Malaysia
Malaysia's structural
            transformation from low to middle income is a success story,
            making it one of the most prominent manufacturing
            exporters' in the world. However, like many other
            middle income economies, it is squeezed by the competition
            from low-wage economies on the one hand, and more innovative
            advanced economies on the other. What can Malaysia do? Does
            Malaysia need a new growth strategy? This paper emphasizes
            the need for broad structural transformation; that is,
            moving to higher productivity production in both goods and
            services. This paper examines productivity growth for
            Malaysia at the sectoral level, and constructs several
            measures of the sophistication of goods and services trade,
            and puts these comparisons in a global context. The results
            indicate that Malaysia has further opportunities for growth
            in the services sector in particular. Modernizing the
            services sector may provide a way out of the middle income
            trap, and serve as a source of growth for Malaysia into the future.
Risk sharing and internal migration
Over the past two decades, more than
            half the population in rural Tanzania migrated within the
            country, profoundly changing the nature of traditional
            institutions such as informal risk sharing. Mass internal
            migration has created geographically disperse networks, on
            which the authors collected detailed panel data. By
            quantifying how shocks and consumption co-vary across linked
            households, they show how migrants unilaterally insure their
            extended family members at home. This finding contradicts
            risk-sharing models based on reciprocity, but is consistent
            with assistance driven by social norms. Migrants sacrifice 3
            to 7 percent of their very substantial consumption growth to
            provide this insurance, which seems too trivial to have any
            stifling effect on their growth through migration.
Energy intensive infrastructure
            investments with retrofits in continuous time : effects of
            uncertainty on energy use and carbon emissions
Energy-intensive infrastructure may tie
            up fossil energy use and carbon emissions for a long time
            after investments, making the structure of such investments
            crucial for society. Much or most of the resulting carbon
            emissions can often be eliminated later, through a costly
            retrofit. This paper studies the simultaneous decision to
            invest in such infrastructure, and retrofit it later, in a
            model where future climate damages are uncertain and follow
            a geometric Brownian motion process with positive drift. It
            shows that greater uncertainty about climate cost (for given
            unconditional expected costs) then delays the retrofit
            decision by increasing the option value of waiting to
            invest. Higher energy intensity is also chosen for the
            initial infrastructure when uncertainty is greater. These
            decisions are efficient given that energy and carbon prices
            facing the decision maker are (globally) correct, but
            inefficient when they are lower, which is more typical.
            Greater uncertainty about future climate costs will then
            further increase lifetime carbon emissions from the
            infrastructure, related both to initial investments, and to
            too infrequent retrofits when this emissions level is
            already too high. An initially excessive climate gas
            emissions level is then likely to be worsened when
            volatility increases.
Models of public service reform : a
            problem-solving approach
This paper identifies six models of
            public service reform that have been practiced in developing
            countries over the past half-century. It critically reviews
            their implementation, discussing them as attempted solutions
            to problems that have arisen in the policy process in
            different countries. The models are: public administration;
            decentralization; pay and employment reform; New Public
            Management; integrity and corruption reforms; and
            "bottom-up" reforms. The paper seeks an
            explanation for their disappointing performance in the
            political economy of reform, with an emphasis on how
            learning from failure can be the paradoxical foundation of
            future success.
Trade policy barriers: an obstacle
            to export diversification in Eurasia
Despite trade liberalization efforts
            made by Eurasian countries, the export structure of the
            region shows significant levels of concentration across
            export destinations. To shed light on this observation, this
            research analyzes trade policy barriers in Eurasia, East
            Asia and the Pacific, and the European Union. Using the most
            recent data from sources including the World Trade
            Organization, the United Nations, and the World Bank 
            including the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Indices, the
            Services Trade Restrictions Database, and the Temporary
            Trade Barriers Database  the role of tariffs, non-tariff
            measures, temporary trade barriers, trade agreements, and
            trade barriers in services are explored to explain the lack
            of diversification by destination. Several conclusions can
            be drawn from the analysis. First, China, Korea, and Japan,
            as well as the European Union, impose high levels of
            protection on products of animal origin, which may explain
            the lack of Eurasian export diversification toward the East
            Asia and the Pacific and the European Union regions. It also
            highlights the potential benefits of diversifying the
            structure of production in Eurasia toward more sophisticated
            and technologically intensive goods. Second, the East Asia
            and the Pacific region (especially China) appears to be more
            protectionist than the European Union, suggesting a greater
            challenge for Eurasian countries in diversifying exports to
            the destination. And third, few or no regional trade
            agreements exist between Eurasian countries and countries in
            the European Union or East Asia and the Pacific.
A helping hand or the long arm of
            the law experimental evidence on what governments can do to
            formalize firms
Many governments have spent much of the
            past decade trying to extend a helping hand to informal
            businesses by making it easier and cheaper for them to
            formalize. Much less effort has been devoted to raising the
            costs of remaining informal, through increasing enforcement
            of existing regulations. This paper reports on a field
            experiment conducted in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in order to
            test which government actions work in getting informal firms
            to register. Firms were randomized to a control group or one
            of four treatment groups: the first received information
            about how to formalize; the second received this information
            and free registration costs along with the use of an
            accountant for a year; the third group was assigned to
            receive an enforcement visit from a municipal inspector;
            while the fourth group was assigned to have a neighboring
            firm receive an enforcement visit to see if enforcement has
            spillovers. The analysis finds zero or negative impacts of
            information and free cost treatments, and a significant but
            small increase in formalization from inspections. Estimates
            of the impact of actually receiving an inspection give a 21
            to 27 percentage point increase in the likelihood of
            formalizing. The results show most informal firms will not
            formalize unless forced to do so, suggesting formality
            offers little private benefit to them. But the tax revenue
            benefits to the government of bringing firms of this size
            into the formal system more than offset the costs of inspections.
How can safety nets contribute to
            economic growth
The paper provides an up-to date and
            selective review of the literature on how social safety nets
            contribute to growth. The evidence is carefully chosen to
            show how safety nets have the potential to overcome
            constraints on growth linked to market failures, and is
            organized into 4 distinct pathways: i) encouraging asset
            accumulation by changing incentives and by addressing
            imperfections in financial markets caused by constraints in
            obtaining credit, and from information asymmetries;
            overcoming such failures helps households to invest into
            their human capital or productive assets; ii) failures in
            insurance markets especially in low income setting; safety
            nets are assisting in managing risk both ex post and ex
            ante; iii) safety nets are overcoming failure to create
            assets and other local economy complementary factors to
            household-level investments; iv) safety nets are shown to
            relax political constraints on policy. Safety nets have a
            dual objective of directly alleviating poverty through
            transfers to the poor and of triggering higher growth for
            the poor. However, the trade-off between the dual objectives
            of equity and growth is not eliminated by the potential for
            productive safety nets; this remains critical for designing
            social policies.
A model of gendered production in
            colonial Africa and implications for development in the
            post-colonial period
This paper proposes a model to analyze
            the implications of colonial policies for gender inequality
            in Sub-Saharan Africa. The model emphasizes segmentation of
            production under complete specialization. It shows that the
            colonial production model, underpinned by occupational job
            segregation in the agricultural sector and gender bias in
            the non-agricultural sector, exacerbated gender inequality
            by limiting employment opportunities for women outside the
            realm of home production and subsistence agriculture. Over
            the past few decades, the resilience of parameters
            underlying these models of colonial production has
            heightened the risks of macroeconomic volatility in the
            region, especially where the structural transformation from
            low to high-value-added activities has remained elusive.
A "greenprint" for
            international cooperation on climate change
International negotiations on climate
            change have been dogged by mutual recriminations between
            rich and poor countries, constricted by the zero-sum
            arithmetic of a shrinking global carbon budget, and
            overtaken by shifts in economic power between industrialized
            and developing countries. To overcome these
            "narrative," "adding-up," and "new
            world" problems, respectively, this paper proposes a
            new Greenprint for cooperation. First, the large dynamic
            emerging economies -- China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia --
            must assume the mantle of leadership, offering contributions
            of their own and prodding the reluctant industrial countries
            into action. This role reversal would be consistent with the
            greater stakes for the dynamic emerging economies. Second,
            the emphasis must be on technology generation. This would
            allow greater consumption and production possibilities for
            all countries while respecting the global emissions budget
            that is dictated by the climate change goal of keeping
            average temperature rise below 2 degrees centigrade. Third,
            instead of the old cash-for-cuts approach -- which relies on
            the industrial countries offering cash (which they do not
            have) to the dynamic emerging economies for cuts (that they
            are unwilling to make) -- all major emitters must make
            contributions. With a view to galvanizing a technology
            revolution, industrial countries would take early action to
            raise carbon prices. The dynamic emerging economies would in
            turn eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, commit to matching
            carbon price increases in the future, allow limited border
            taxes against their own exports, and strengthen protection
            of intellectual property for green technologies. This would
            directly and indirectly facilitate such a technological revolution.