rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Dark costs, missing data : shedding
            some light on services trade
A structural gravity model is used to
            estimate barriers to services trade across many sectors,
            countries, and time. Since the disaggregated output data
            needed to infer border barriers flexibly are often missing
            for services, this paper derives a novel methodology for
            projecting output data. The empirical implementation sheds
            light on the role of institutions, geography, size, and
            digital infrastructure as determinants of border barriers.
            The paper finds that border barriers have generally fallen
            over time, but there are differences across sectors and
            countries. Notably, border effects for the smallest
            economies have remained stable, giving rise to a divergent
            pattern across countries.
Quantifying spillover effects from
            large farm establishments : the case of Mozambique
Almost a decade after large land-based
            investment for agriculture increased sharply, opinions on
            its impact continue to diverge, partly because (positive or
            negative) spillovers on neighboring smallholders have never
            been rigorously assessed. Applying methods from the urban
            literature on Mozambican data suggests that changes in the
            number and area of large farms within 25 or 50 kilometers of
            these investments raised use of improved practices, animal
            traction, and inputs by small farmers without increasing
            cultivated area or participation in output, credit, and
            nonfarm labor markets; or, once these factors are controlled
            for, yields. The limited scope and modest size of the
            estimated benefits point toward considerable unrealized
            potential. The paper discusses ways to systematically
            explore the size of such potential and the extent to which
            it is realized.
Socioeconomic and fiscal impact of
            large-scale gold mining in Mali
This paper analyzes the socioeconomic,
            fiscal, and governance impact of gold mining in Mali. The
            analysis finds that, at the national level, mining plays an
            important role by contributing to export earnings and
            overall government fiscal revenue. In 2013, the mining
            sector represented 7 percent of gross domestic product,
            contributed 1.5 percent to growth in total gross domestic
            product, and accounted for 65 percent of total export
            earnings and 25 percent of total government budget revenues.
            At the local level, despite higher population growth, there
            is some evidence that outcomes (poverty and infrastructure
            services) are marginally better in mining communes compared
            with non-mining communes. Local governments receive fiscal
            windfalls that are spent significantly on education capital
            expenditures and current expenditures (salaries and
            non-salaries). Non-salary current expenditures are 10 times
            higher in mining areas. Analysis of the political economy of
            public service provision at the local level suggests that
            technical or absorptive capacities may be the bottleneck to
            increasing the local benefit of mining instead of corruption
            or accountability.
All in my head the play of exclusion
            and discrimination in the labor market
Labor market discrimination is very
            difficult to pinpoint, even more difficult to measure and
            almost impossible to “prove”. It has been studied in many
            disciplines of which economics and sociology are prime. The
            latter has focused more on the manner in which
            discrimination plays out and how it is related to different
            forms of social stratification. This paper reviews the
            literature and makes two main contributions: first, it
            builds a four-fold typology to think about
            discrimination—overt or covert; conscious or unconscious;
            legal or illegal and real or perceived. Second, it
            identifies screens and filters—devices through which
            discrimination plays out in the labor market. Unless more
            empirical studies identify the play of discrimination and
            exclusion, subordinate groups may well be told that
            discrimination is actually in their heads—that they are
            imagining it.
Measuring progress towards universal
            health coverage: with an application to 24 developing countries
The last few years have seen a growing
            commitment worldwide to universal health coverage (UHC). Yet
            there is a lack of clarity on how to measure progress
            towards UHC. This paper proposes a ‘mashup’ index that
            captures both aspects of UHC: that everyone—irrespective of
            their ability-to-pay—gets the health services they need; and
            that nobody suffers undue financial hardship as a result of
            receiving care. Service coverage is broken down into
            prevention and treatment, and financial protection into
            impoverishment and catastrophic spending; nationally
            representative household survey data are used to adjust
            population averages to capture inequalities between the poor
            and better off; nonlinear tradeoffs are allowed between and
            within the two dimensions of the UHC index; and all
            indicators are expressed such that scores run from 0 to 100,
            and higher scores are better. In a sample of 24 countries
            for which there are detailed information on UHC-inspired
            reforms, a cluster of high-performing countries emerges with
            UHC scores of between 79 and 84 (Brazil, Colombia, Costa
            Rica, Mexico and South Africa) and a cluster of
            low-performing countries emerges with UHC scores in the
            range 35–57 (Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Indonesia and
            Vietnam). Countries have mostly improved their UHC scores
            between the earliest and latest years for which there are
            data—by about 5 points on average; however, the improvement
            has come from increases in receipt of key health
            interventions, not from reductions in the incidence of
            out-of-pocket payments on welfare.
Households or locations cities,
            catchment areas and prosperity in India
Policy makers in developing countries,
            including India, are increasingly sensitive to the links
            between spatial transformation and economic development.
            However, the empirical knowledge available on those links is
            most often insufficient to guide policy decisions. There is
            no shortage of case studies on urban agglomerations of
            different sorts, or of benchmarking exercises for states and
            districts, but more systematic evidence is scarce. To help
            address this gap, this paper combines insights from poverty
            analysis and urban economics, and develops a methodology to
            assess spatial performance with a high degree of
            granularity. This methodology is applied to India, where
            individual household survey records are mapped to “places”
            (both rural and urban) below the district level. The
            analysis disentangles the contributions household
            characteristics and locations make to labor earnings,
            proxied by nominal household expenditure per capita. The
            paper shows that one-third of the variation in predicted
            labor earnings is explained by the locations where
            households reside and by the interaction between these
            locations and household characteristics such as education.
            In parallel, this methodology provides a workable metric to
            describe spatial productivity patterns across India. The
            paper shows that there is a gradation of spatial performance
            across places, rather than a clear rural-urban divide. It
            also finds that distance matters: places with higher
            productivity are close to each other, but some spread their
            prosperity over much broader areas than others. Using the
            spatial distribution of this metric across India, the paper
            further classifies places at below-district level into four
            tiers: top locations, their catchment areas, average
            locations, and bottom locations. The analysis finds that
            some small cities are among the top locations, while some
            large cities are not. It also finds that top locations and
            their catchment areas include many high-performing rural
            places, and are not necessarily more unequal than average
            locations. Preliminary analysis reveals that these top
            locations and their catchment areas display characteristics
            that are generally believed to drive agglomeration economies
            and contribute to faster productivity growth.
Environmental reliance, climate
            exposure, and vulnerability : a cross-section analysis of
            structural and stochastic poverty
This paper analyzes environmental
            reliance, poverty, and climate vulnerability among more than
            7,300 households in forest adjacent communities in 24
            developing countries. The data are from the detailed,
            quarterly income recording done by the Poverty Environment
            Network project. Observed income is combined with predicted
            income (based on households’ assets and other
            characteristics) to create four categories of households:
            income and asset poor (structurally poor), income rich and
            asset poor (stochastically non-poor), income poor and asset
            rich (stochastically poor), and income and asset rich
            (structurally non-poor). The income and asset poor generate
            29 percent of their income from environmental resources,
            more than the other three categories. The income poor are
            more exposed to extreme and variable climate conditions.
            They tend to live in dryer (and hotter) villages in the dry
            forest zones, in wetter villages in the wet zones, and
            experience larger rainfall fluctuations. Among the
            self-reported income-generating responses to income shocks,
            extracting more environmental resources ranks second to
            seeking wage labor. Given high reliance on forest and other
            environmental resources, a concerning finding is that, in
            the Africa subsample (dominated by dry forests), the rate of
            forest loss is more than four times higher for the income
            & asset poor compared with the income & asset rich.
            Special attention should be given to the poorest households
            in dry areas, predominantly in Africa. They are (already)
            exposed to more extreme climate conditions, they suffer the
            highest forest loss, and the forest benefits are at risk in
            global warming scenarios.
Tracking wage inequality trends with
            prices and different trade models : evidence from Mexico
Mexican wage inequality rose following
            Mexico's accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs
            and Trade/World Trade Organization in 1986. Since the
            mid-1990s, however, wage inequality has been falling. Since
            most trade models suggest that output prices can affect
            factor prices, this paper explores the relationship between
            output prices and wage inequality. The rise of inequality
            can be explained by the evolution of the relative price of
            skill-intensive goods relative to unskilled-intensive goods,
            but these prices flattened by 1999 and thus cannot explain
            the subsequent decline in wage inequality. An alternative
            trade model with firm heterogeneity driven by variations in
            the relative price of tradable relative to non-tradable
            goods can explain the decline in wage inequality. The paper
            compares this model’s predictions with Mexican inequality
            statistics using data on output prices, census data, and
            quarterly household survey data. In spite of the
            model's simplicity, the model’s predictions match
            Mexican variables reasonably well during the years when wage
            inequality fell.
Climate change impacts and
            mitigation in the developing world : an integrated
            assessment of the agriculture and forestry sectors
This paper conducts an integrated
            assessment of climate change impacts and climate mitigation
            on agricultural commodity markets and food availability in
            low- and middle-income countries. The analysis uses the
            partial equilibrium model GLOBIOM to generate scenarios to
            2080. The findings show that climate change effects on the
            agricultural sector will increase progressively over the
            century. By 2030, the impact of climate change on food
            consumption is moderate but already twice as large in a
            world with high inequalities than in a more equal world. In
            the long run, impacts could be much stronger, with global
            average calorie losses of 6 percent by 2050 and 14 percent
            by 2080. A mitigation policy to stabilize climate below 2°C
            uniformly applied to all regions as a carbon tax would also
            result in a 6 percent reduction in food availability by 2050
            and 12 percent reduction by 2080 compared to the reference
            scenario. To avoid more severe impacts of climate change
            mitigation on development than climate change itself,
            revenue from carbon pricing policies will need to be
            redistributed appropriately. Overall, the projected effects
            of climate change and mitigation on agricultural markets
            raise important issues for food security in the long run,
            but remain more limited in the medium term horizon of 2030.
            Thus, there are opportunities for low- and middle-income
            countries to pursue immediate development needs and thus
            prepare for later periods when adaptation needs and
            mitigation efforts will become the greatest.
Responses to weather and climate : a
            cross-section analysis of rural incomes
How much do poor rural households rely
            on environmental extraction from natural ecosystems? And how
            does climate variability impact their livelihoods? This
            paper sheds light on these two questions with household
            income data from the Poverty and Environment Network
            pantropical data set, combined with climate data for the
            past three decades. The study finds that extraction of wild
            resources (from natural forests, bushlands, fallows, etc.)
            provides on average as much income (about 27 percent) as
            crops across the smallholder sample. The cross-section data
            on past reactions to household self-perceived economic
            shocks and observed production reactions to climate
            anomalies can, respectively, provide hints about livelihood
            vulnerability to current climate variability, which is
            likely to worsen with climate change. Forest extraction did
            not figure among the most favored response strategies to
            households’ self-perceived economic shocks, but households
            undertake subtle substitutions in sector production in
            response to weather anomalies that accentuate suboptimal
            climatic conditions for cropping.  By relying more on forest
            extraction and wages, households compensate quite
            successfully for declining crop incomes. This paints a
            cautiously optimistic picture about fairly flexible rural
            livelihood reactions to current climate variability, and
            featuring forests as potentially important in household
            coping strategies.
Households and heat stress:
            estimating the distributional consequences of climate change
Recent economic research documents a
            range of adverse welfare consequences from extreme heat
            stress, including health, labor productivity, and direct
            consumption disutility impacts. Without rapid adaptation,
            climate change will increase the burden of heat stress
            experienced by much of the world’s population in the coming
            decades. What will the distributional consequences of this
            added heat stress be, and how might this affect optimal
            climate policy? Using detailed survey data of household
            wealth in 690,745 households across 52 countries, this paper
            finds evidence suggesting that the welfare impacts of added
            heat stress caused by climate change may be regressive.
            Specifically, the analysis finds that poorer households tend
            to be located in hotter locations across and within
            countries, and poorer individuals are more likely to work in
            occupations with greater exposure to the elements not only
            across but also within countries. These findings—combined
            with the fact that current social cost of carbon estimates
            do not include climate damages arising from the productivity
            impacts of heat stress—suggest that optimal climate policy,
            especially when allowing for declining marginal utility of
            consumption, involves more stringent abatement than
            currently suggested, and that redistributive adaptation
            policies may be required to reduce the mechanical inequities
            in welfare impacts arising from climate change.
The exposure, vulnerability, and
            ability to respond of poor households to recurrent floods in Mumbai
This paper examines poor households in
            the city of Mumbai and their exposure, vulnerability, and
            ability to respond to recurrent floods. The paper discusses
            policy implications for future adaptive capacity,
            resilience, and poverty alleviation. The study focuses
            particularly on the poor households, which tend to have
            greater exposure and vulnerability to floods and limited
            ability to respond given the constraints on physical and
            financial resources. The study seeks to understand the
            implications of the fact that poor households are more
            likely than non-poor households to be located in flood-prone
            areas. The study used the land use maps for the selected
            flood-prone areas to determine the extent and spread of poor
            and non-poor households and other types of assets and
            activities in areas with chronic and localized flooding.
            Primary data were obtained through detailed household
            surveys to understand the vulnerability and impacts of the
            extreme floods of July 2005, recurrent floods and the
            ability of households to respond and cope. The study
            examined the option of relocation to flood-free areas and
            identified factors that influence families’ decisions
            regarding relocation. The study finds that a significantly
            large proportion of poor households are located near areas
            with chronic and localized flooding. These households are
            either below the poverty line or have low incomes and reside
            in informal settlements or old and dilapidated structures.
            Future climate risks are likely to put greater burden on the
            poor and push them further into poverty unless well directed
            efforts are made to protect them.
The impacts of climate change on
            poverty in 2030 and the potential from rapid, inclusive, and
            climate-informed development
The impacts of climate change on poverty
            depend on the magnitude of climate change, but also on
            demographic and socioeconomic trends. An analysis of
            hundreds of baseline scenarios for future economic
            development in the absence of climate change in 92 countries
            shows that the drivers of poverty eradication differ across
            countries. Two representative scenarios are selected from
            these hundreds. One scenario is optimistic regarding poverty
            and is labeled “prosperity;” the other scenario is
            pessimistic and labeled “poverty.” Results from sector
            analyses of climate change impacts—in agriculture, health,
            and natural disasters—are introduced in the two scenarios.
            By 2030, climate change is found to have a significant
            impact on poverty, especially through higher food prices and
            reduction of agricultural production in Africa and South
            Asia, and through health in all regions. But the magnitude
            of these impacts depends on development choices. In the
            prosperity scenario with rapid, inclusive, and
            climate-informed development, climate change increases
            poverty by between 3 million and 16 million in 2030. The
            increase in poverty reaches between 35 million and 122
            million if development is delayed and less inclusive (the
            poverty scenario).
When do in-service teacher training
            and books improve student achievement experimental evidence
            from Mongolia
This study presents evidence from a
            randomized control trial (RCT) in Mongolia on the impact of
            in-service teacher training and books, both as separate
            educational inputs and as a package. The study tests for the
            complementarity of inputs and non-linearity of returns from
            investment in education as measured by students' test
            scores in five subjects. It takes advantage of a
            national-scale RCT conducted under the Rural Education and
            Development project. The results suggest that the provision
            of books, in addition to teacher training, raises student
            achievement substantially. However, teacher training and
            books weakly improve test scores when provided individually.
            Students whose teachers have received training and whose
            classrooms have acquired books improved their cumulative
            score (totaled across five tests) by 34.9 percent of a
            standard deviation, relative to a control group. Students
            treated only with books improved their total score by 20.6
            percent of a standard deviation relative to a control group
            of students. On the other hand, extra teacher training did
            not have a statistically significant effect on the total
            test score. In addition, providing both inputs jointly
            improved test scores in most subjects, which was not the
            case when either input was provided individually. This study
            sheds light on the relevance of supplementing teacher
            training schemes with appropriate teaching materials in
            resource-poor settings. The policy implication is that
            isolated education investments, in settings where
            complementary inputs are missing, could deliver minimal or
            no return.