rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
to convert that into similar units, we used the Atlas exchange rate provided by the IBRD (see Appendix 2), which corrects for certain distortions in exchange markets and allows us to compare the trends of labor costs and per caplta CDP. We did not convert our labor cost data to dollars through any purchasing-power-parity exchange rate, because our data are relevant to study international competitiveness of production, and the product embodying these labor costs must compete on tho basis of the actual current exchange rate in each country.

**I P.** lPevio,s **bzk** In the **Area.**

International comparisons of labor costs have remained an important issue in applied econouics. Zarly, Nelson (1965, 1968), lardhan (19b5) and Nerlove (1967), highlighted some key analytical assumptions involved in comparing wages and labor productivity between two economLes. Research soon expanded to more specific questions regarding international dispersion of wages. Krueger (1968) explained income dlfferentials on the basis of differences in human capital across countries, an issue also addressed by Kothari (1970) and Papola & Eharadwaj (1970), as well **as** by Mitchell (1968) in the context of modeling labor productivity.

Problems encountered in constructing a comparable international data base for labor cost comparisons were pointed out early by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS (1966)3 [see also, Shelton & Chandler (1963)]. More recently, Bashir (1979) discussed comparisons of labor market trends In LDCs and lns4sted on **the** necessity of further efforts to improve wage data, an issue also highlighted by Krueger (1987) in analyzing employment, international competition and trade policies. Although several ILO recomme ndations aived at Improving methodologies of data collection,
In all eight countries, children living in resource‐poor households are more likely to be stunted than children living in resource‐rich households. A household is classified as resource rich if it is in the top 60% of an asset index and as resource poor the bottom 40% of the index value. Annex 1 describes the construction of the asset index. The difference in stunting rates by access to resources is especially marked in Peru where only 6% of the children in resource‐rich households are stunted, but 20% of children in resource‐poor households are stunted—a quadrupling of the prevalence (Figure 4). Similarly, the other LAC country of the study—Bolivia—showed large differences in stunting rates by wealth. Children in resource‐poor Bolivian households were more than twice as likely to be stunted as children in resource‐rich households. The other countries with a large prevalence gap by resource access were Bangladesh based on the Helen Keller data and Nepal. In Cambodia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe, the stunting rates for resource‐poor and resource‐rich children were within 4 percentage points.

**Figure 4: Stunting resource‐poor vs resource‐rich households**

<!-- Start of picture text --> Stunting in children 0 to 23 or 35 months<br>47<br>44<br>42<br>37<br>35 35<br>32 32<br>30<br>28 28<br>26<br>25 25<br>22<br>20<br>16<br>6<br>BGD, HK BOL* IDN NPL* ZWE<br>BGD, IFPRI ETH* KHM PER*<br>Resource poor Resource rich<br>Source: Author estimates. Data for Bangladesh from 2010 (HK) and 2011 (IFPRI); Bolivia 2008; Cambodia 2010; Ethiopia 2011;<br>Indonesia 2010 (RKD); Nepal 2011; Peru 2012; Zimbabwe 2010. *Stunting for under 36 month olds. The rest under 24 month olds.<br>50<br>40<br>30<br>20<br>10<br>Percentage of children with HAZ < -2 SD<br>0<br><!-- End of picture text -->

# **3.2 Adequacies in Food Security, Environment, Health, and Care Practices**

Given the indicators available in the surveys, the determination of whether children have access to an adequate or inadequate level of each specific underlying determinant of nutrition is carried out using accepted international standards regarding infant and child feeding practices, food security, improved water and sanitation, and pre‐ as well as post‐natal care practices. Specifically, the WHO (2008) standards are used for assessing infant and young child feeding practices, the USAID (2012) 21
# **Which World Bank Reports Are Widely Read?**<sup>**1**</sup>

Doerte Doemeland and James Trevino JEL Codes: O19, H87, and D73.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, International Organizations, Internet.

> 1 The authors would like to thank Zeljko Bogetic, Simon Davies, Jean-Jacques Dethier, Kene Ezemenari, Sharokh Fardoust, Aart Kraay, Eileen Monnin-Kirby, Jimmy Olazo, David Rosenblatt, Zia Qureshi, Adam Wagstaff and participants at a DEC seminar in December 2013 for excellent comments and suggestions, and Eliza McLeod, Yoshimi Muto, Irina Sergeyeva, and Jeannette Smith for assistance with the data.
## **5.4 Savings Discipline**

We now turn our attention to the compulsory savings deposits required by Saath. We might expect that savings discipline is higher in the group liability setting, since compulsory savings may act as a form of insurance when a group member defaults.

Although Saath initiated both a shift to group liability lending and compulsory deposits at the same time in November 2007, we can uniquely identify the effect of group liability on compulsory savings by exploiting the time-series variation in loan renewals. Specifically, while the compulsory savings were mandated across the board for all borrowers post-November 2007, the shift from individual to group liability was more staggered, depending on when each individual loan term expired. As explained earlier, these renewals were distrubted relatively uniformly throughout the year. Hence, we can study the adherence to compulsory savings for the same person who was borrowing under an individual liability contract post November 2007, and who eventually converted to a group liability contract.<sup>9</sup> Table 6 presents OLS estimates where our dependent variable is a dummy for missing a compulsory savings deposit. The dependent variable takes on the value 1 if the client deposited less then INR 100, and 0 otherwise. Our results indicate that the same borrower exhibits greater savings discipline when in a group liability loan than when in an individual liability loan: compulsory savings depoists are about 19% less likely to be missed in the group liability setting, significant at the 5% level.

# **6 Conclusion**

Microfinance has reached over 150 million borrowers worldwide, and is growing at a 40 percent cumulative average growth rate. Recent initial public offerings (IPOs) which valued the Mexican microfinance institution Compartamos at $2 billion, and SKS in India at $1.5 billion, have attracted the attention of global financial markets. Yet, there have also been spectacular failures, such as the collapse of Banco del Exito (BANEX), which with a $125 million dollar loan portfolio was recently the largest micro and small and medium enterprise lender in Nicaragua. Suffering from a 45 percent

> 9 Since we only have savings data from January 2008 onwards, we cannot study the effect of compulsory savings under the individual liability setting as we have no pre-period data (i.e. savings data pre-November 2007).

18
**'**

# TIble 7c IURN=Y

|Indicator|1971|1972|1973|1974|1975|1976|1977|1978|1979|1960|1981|<br>1982|1983|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|ir caxi±ta GNP<br>pakh rate|-0.2|-1.6|0.3|3.1|5.6|3.5|0.7|4.6|5.5|5.1|1.2|-10.3|-5.3|
|U%A.loymet rate|7.6|7.7|8.9|8.1||12.7|11.8|10.1|8.3|7.4|6.6|11.9|15.5|
|Inflation rate_a/_|24.0|76.4|97.0|77.2|81.4|50.7|58.2|44.5|66.8|63.5|34.1|19.0|51.5|
|Nbimn dnvl atla|||55.4|39.0|89.1|47.7|39.9|28.9|29.3|15.7|18.7|36.2|148.3|
|_II2IQIP_|26.8|25.5|21.3|20.0|21.1|26.7|31.1|38.3|39.3|39.8|43.6|_NWA_|<br>47.5|
|EIbblic-sector-<br>_awpuWQNP_|-5.8|-2.5|-1.2|-3.8|-4.3|-2.1|-1.3|-0.9|0.0|-0.3|-1.5|-9.1|-3.9|
|Ozrzut-r8accomt-<br>T|-28.7|13.5|4.4|-27.3|-35.9|-11.8|-21.2|-14.5|-30.4|-46.9|-27.5|-15.3|-4.0|
|ewag:s||||||||||||||
|hal wo index<br>hal effectiye<br>ex<br>YW<br>rateW|105.2<br>92.0|87.2<br>113.7|85.7<br>97.3|85.0<br>93.8|77.5<br>108.0|75.6<br>115.0|69.9<br>114.1|66.9<br>111.2|64.8<br>94.0|65.1<br>90.5|69.9<br>86.7|69.7<br>100.3|55.3<br>123.8|
|ITons of trade, pods<br>and ervlcs|102.2|109.9|139.8|106.4|80.4|78.6|84.7|89.1|9.6|94.5|89.1|87.5|78.5|
|Sbure:<br>_WALv_on the bi<br>AWist 1985, an|sls of o<br>d atJstf|fficial<br>ml<br>ei|data; gr<br>ntboin&|uth rat<br>1982.|e of M|1 Internat|imud M|boetary|Fund,**liS**|**aab**|**loax**|**l**<br>&|Sttatlm,|
|Note:<br>a/<br>Varlatimn<br>b/<br>Ehae<br>r<br>M2 - Ml p<br>Infintlcn|In the<br>ate varl<br>bs savin<br>and dev|coniamr<br>atiom de<br>s and t<br>wbiatim|price_In_<br>flated<br>imn dep<br>are am|_dex._<br>by the d<br>osits.<br>u2h mal<br>avrn|ff<br>w<br>.<br>pss:|beter|the int<br>1970-10|ernal an<br>0. Year|d<br>fter<br>1983 -|nal bdla]<br>PrelJbim|e-price<br>nry flgw|inde<br>res.|x.|
|Tabl]n basd an J. Ras|(1966),|Jxe||oo lI|<br>the|gwfm|Cbne o|f Itib.|JAckm.|1973-1|983.|||
What can governments do to promote access? First and foremost, governments can further access by making and encouraging infrastructure improvements. Better legal, information, payments systems, distribution and other structures can allow technology to bring down transaction costs. Research shows that small firms and firms in countries with poor institutions use less external finance, especially less bank finance, and that other types of finance are imperfect substitutes (Beck, Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic, 2005). For example, at the household level, giving each individual a national identification number and creating credit registries where lenders share information about their clients’ repayment records would help since all borrowers could then borrow using their future access to credit as collateral (Rajan, 2006).

Government regulation can also help. Removal of interest ceilings, or usury laws, would allow institutions to charge the rates that they need to be profitable and improve access. These regulations end up hurting the very poor they are trying to protect as the supply of these services completely dry up. Anti-predatory lending or truth in lending requirements is also very important since households may also be forced into overborrowing by unscrupulous lenders. Reducing costs of registering and repossessing collateral is crucial. In Brazil for example, inability to repossess property has contributed to the cost of the housing finance program, keeping the mortgage rates too high to be affordable for the poor. Anti-discrimination policies may also help against cases of active or passive discrimination against the poor or different ethnic groups.

Financial regulations can also prevent the emergence of institutions better suited to the needs of lower income households or smaller firms. Rigid chartering rules, high capital adequacy requirements, very strict accounting requirements may reduce the ability 31
<!-- Start of picture text --> 4,500<br>4,000<br>3,500<br>3,000<br>2,500<br>5 2,000<br>2 1,500 ,<br>la Quasi-rents<br>1,000<br>500<br>;i<br>|<br>05 10 20 25 30 35<br>-500<br>-1,000<br>mmm E(Surplus) =ge=E(Pretax Project Value) 9 gee E(PretaxCash Flow)<br><!-- End of picture text -->
# **C Data**

The following table presents a detailed description of the variables used in the paper.

|**Variable**|**Level**|**Description**|
|---|---|---|
|Female|Individual|Indicator variable equal to 1 if person is a female, and zero other-<br>wise.|
|Usually lives here|Individual|Indicator variable equal to 1 if person reportedly normally lives in<br>the dwellingwhere the interview was conducted and zero otherwise.|
|Stayed here last night|Individual|Indicator variable equal to 1 if person reportedly spent the night<br>before the interview in the dwelling where the interview was con-<br>ducted and zero otherwise.|
|Age|Individual|Age inyears of theperson, zero if less than 1year old.|
|Ever attended school|Respondent|Indicator variable equal to 1 if respondent reportedly ever attended<br>school, and zero otherwise.|
|Only primary school|Respondent|Indicator variable equal to 1 if respondent reportedly has some<br>schooling but did not progress to secondary school; zero if re-<br>spondent has some schooling and progressed to secondary school;<br>missing if respondent has no schooling, or if respondent has some<br>schoolingbut educational achievement is not recorded in the data.|
|Literate|Respondent|Indicator variable equal to 1 if respondent reportedly can read and<br>write in one language without anydiffculty, and zero otherwise.|
|Muslim|Respondent|Indicator variable equal to 1 if respondent is Muslim, and zero oth-<br>erwise.|
|Tigre|Respondent|Indicator variable equal to 1 if respondent belongs to the Tigre tribe,<br>and zero otherwise.|
|Married|Respondent|Indicator variable equal to 1 if respondent is married, and zero oth-<br>erwise.|
|Household size|Household|Number of members of the household at the time of the survey, in-<br>cluding all people who normally eat and sleep together in the same<br>dwelling.|
|Household members un-<br>der 5|Household|Number of household members whose age was not greater than 5<br>years.|
|Household members un-<br>der 18|Household|Number of household members whose age was not greater than 18<br>years.|
|Public tap|Household|Indicator variable equal to 1 if the main source of drinking water of<br>the household was apublic tap, and zero otherwise.|

30
# **The Quality and Price of Africa’s Imports of Digital Goods**<sup>∗</sup>

Paulo Bastos<sup>†</sup> Lucio Castro<sup>‡</sup> Marcio Cruz<sup>§</sup>

**Keywords** : International trade, quality, prices, digital goods, Africa, trade agreements **JEL Classification** : F1

> ∗We thank Sebastien Dessus, Javier Suarez, Martin Molinuevo, Roberto Echandi, Jan-Christophe Maur, and Maryla Maliszewska for helpful comments and suggestions. We thank Gabriel Nicolas Michelena and Juan Tapia Montenegro for excellent research assistance. We are also grateful with Robert C. Feenstra for sharing the code for the estimation of quality and quality adjusted prices. Financial support from the IFC Economic Research Department in partnership with the Government of Japan is gratefully acknowledged. This paper was also partly supported by the Umbrella Facility for Trade trust fund.

> †Development Research Group, World Bank; CEPR; and REM/UECE. E-mail: pbastos@worldbank.org.

> ‡World Bank. Email: lcastro@worldbank.org

> §International Finance Corporation. E-mail: marciocruz@ifc.org
measurement of income changes are not easily used as inputs to the quantitative welfaretheoretic analysis, thereby constituting a problematic gap between these two literatures. Furthermore, as the literature has often pointed out, the measurement of dynamic income changes is itself confronted by (at least) the following two problems. First, income data are subject to measurement error and, second, a significant proportion of the observed income changes may be simply temporary in nature - resulting, typically, in an overestimation of the relevant mobility in income (Lillard and Willis (1978) Solon (2001), Luttmer (2002), Fields et al (2003), Glewwe (2004), Antman and McKenzie (2007)). This is also important from the perspective of welfare analysis, as measurement error has no effect on workers’ welfare and transitory shocks to income are perhaps easily smoothed out, resulting in very small welfare effects. In addition, welfare analysis is confronted by an additional challenge. Since individual utility is postulated as taking consumption rather than income as its argument, its direct valuation requires reliable data on individual consumption levels, which are often unavailable for developing countries. To use the more easily available data on incomes, a theoretical framework is required that translates the estimated income dynamics into consumption changes taking into account the institutional constraints individual agents face.

In this paper, we develop a tractable analytical framework to study income mobility that provides a close link between the welfare theory and the empirical methodology used in the measurement of the income dynamics, thereby helping to bridge the gap between these literatures. At the same time, this framework overcomes many of the methodological problems that we have just discussed. We note, at the outset, that our focus is on income mobility within individual lifetimes (intra-generational mobility). We postulate (Section II) that individuals face a stochastic income process that is highly parameterized, but, following much of the literature, is sufficiently elaborate to distinguish between changes in income resulting from trend growth and other predictable factors and changes in income that are unpredictable. The unpredictable part of income change, in turn, has two components, one first degree autoregressive (AR(1)) component reflecting persistent shocks to income and another component that is i.i.d and captures transitory shocks and measurement error in the income data. We show how income mobility, measured in relation to the correlation of incomes over time,<sup>5</sup> relates to the various parameters of the underlying income process.

> 5 Specifically, we use a quite basic and familiar measure, the Hart Index, which is the complement of the correlation between the logarithm of incomes over times (see Hart (1981) and Shorrocks (1993)). As

2
# **_CONTENTS_**

|Acknowledgement|
|---|
|**Summary and Conclusions .......................................**<br>i|
|1<br>Background**........................................**<br>1|
|Historical Context .......<br>1|
|Separation is Not the Only Option ........<br>..................<br>**4**|
|2<br>**hIe Generic Options ......................................**<br>**6**|
|Option 1: The Monolithic Railway .........................<br>7|
|<br>Option 2: Lines-of-Business Organization .....................<br>9|
|<br>Option 3: Competitive Access .........................<br>17|
|<br>Option4: The"Wholesaler" .<br>.........................<br>28|
|<br>Option**5:**The**"Toll**Rail" Entexprise .......................<br>30|
|3<br>**Imues and Technical Considerations ..........**<br>**.................**<br>36|
|Issues ....................................<br>36|
|Technical Considerations ...............................<br>46|
|Bibliography**.......**<br>53|
|Acronyms<br>**.........**<br>59|

Bibliography **.......** Acronyms **.........**

## **TABLE**

|**SC.1**<br>**.......**|**v**|
|---|---|
|SC.2.......|**v**|
|SC.3 ........|-i|
|2.1<br>..|10|
|2.2<br>.......|18|
|2.3<br>.................|.............<br>20|
|2.4 ........|21|
|2.5........|23|
|3.1 ........|37|
|3.2<br>.......|40|
|3.3 .......|40|
|3.4 .......|42|
|3.5 .......|42|
|3.6 ........|44|
|3.7 .......|44|
|3.8**.......**|_45_|
# **Figure 6.  Saving and Current Account Gaps 1990-2012**

<!-- Start of picture text --> 2<br>1<br>EAP<br>HI MNA<br>0 ECA<br>SSA<br>LAC<br>-1<br>-2<br>-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1<br>Current Account<br>National Saving<br><!-- End of picture text --> ♦LAC 1990-2012 Average ●Other countries per Period ♦ Other groups of countries 1990-2012 Average Sources: Authors' calculations based on UN, WDI and Institutional Investor data. Notes: This figure shows the national saving and current account gaps for the whole sample. Each period is a three-year average. See Section 3 for the details of how the benchmarks are calculated.

34
- Foster, V. and Steinbuks, J.: 2009, Paying the Price for Unreliable Power Supplies : In-house Generation of Electricity by Firms in Africa, _Policy Research Working Paper 4913_ , The World Bank.

- Gately, D.: 1974, Sharing the Gains from Regional Cooperation: A Game Theoretic Application to Planning Investment in Electric Power, _International Economic Review_ **15** (1), 195– 208.

- Gnansounou, E. and Dong, J.: 2004, Opportunity for Inter-regional Integration of Electricity Markets: the Case of Shandong and Shanghai in East China, _Energy Policy_ **32** (15), 1737– 1751.

- Gratwick, K. N. and Eberhard, A.: 2008, Demise of the Standard Model for Power Sector Reform and the Emergence of Hybrid Power Markets, _Energy Policy_ **36** (10), 3948–3960.

- Hauser, C. and Hopenhayn, H.: 2008, Trading Favors: Optimal Exchange and Forgiveness, _Working paper_ , Collegio Carlo Alberto.

- Hertel, J.: 2004, Efficient and Sustainable Risk Sharing with Adverse Selection, _Working paper_ , Princeton University.

- Jorgenson, D. W.: 1984, The Role of Energy in Productivity Growth, _The Energy Journal_ pp. 11–26.

- Joseph, K. L.: 2010, The Politics of Power: Electricity Reform in India, _Energy Policy_ **38** (1), 503–511.

- Joskow, P.: 2008, Lessons Learned from Electricity Market Liberalization, _The Energy Journal_ **29** (2), 9–42.

- Kalla, S. J.: 2010, _Essays in Favor-trading_ , PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania.

- Kessides, I. N.: 2012, The Impacts of Electricity Sector Reforms in Developing Countries, _The Electricity Journal_ **25** (6), 79–88.

- Kletzer, K. M. and Wright, B. D.: 2000, Sovereign Debt as Intertemporal Barter, _American Economic Review_ **90** (3), 621–639.

36
countries can be used to examine the potential for factors that are omitted in (15) to influence the results. For instance, it could be argued that the dummy variables in (15) are inadequate to take account of the impacts of ATC quotas on constrained countries. I therefore eliminate those countries from the sample and re-run the TSLS version of (15). Results (column | of Table 4) are not greatly changed, although the elasticities for the total number of standards and the extent of harmonization are both larger in absolute value.

Next, I focus on countries at relatively low income levels so as to indirectly gauge the extent to which low levels of development might negatively impact firms’ ability to make the investments necessary to comply with foreign standards. It is conceivable, for instance, that lack of access to technology, skills, or finance could effectively raise the costs of compliance with multiple foreign standards for firms in developing countries, thereby making foreign standards more burdensome and harmonization more beneficial. Columns 2-4 of Table 4 present the results from using narrower country samples: in addition to excluding ATC quota countries, I progressively exclude high income countries, upper middle-income countries, and lower middle-income countries.”° (All country groups are based on World Bank classifications.) The basic thrust of the results remains unchanged. The coefficient on the total number of standards is negative in all cases, and does not change too much in magnitude. It loses statistical significance, however, in the last two columns. The situation is more interesting for the extent of harmonization: it generally increases in magnitude as income falls. The estimated coefficient using low income countries only is 3.0, which is over 50% higher than the estimate obtained using the full sample. The same progression can also be seen for tariffs, although comparison is made more difficult by the lack of precision with which this parameter is estimated. While these results should be interpreted with caution due to the small sample size in column 4, the data are nonetheless suggestive of development-based differences in compliance costs.

As a final check, I consider the possibility that the omission of data on regional and preferential trade agreements could lead to biased estimates in (15). It could be argued, for instance, that 6Focusing on low income countries also alleviates the possible difficulties with re-exports and processing trade that were mentioned earlier in relation to variety measures for some high income countries.

22