rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Do school facilities matter : the
            case of the Peruvian Social Fund (FONCODES)
Since its creation in 1991, the Peruvian
            Social Fund (FONCODES) has spent about US$570 million
            funding micro-projects throughout Peru. Many of these
            projects have involved building and renovating school
            facilities. The authors analyze the targeting and impact of
            FONCODES investments in the education sector, using data
            from FONCODES, Peru's population census, Peru's
            1994 and 1995 Living Standards Measurement Surveys, and a
            1996 household survey conducted by the Peruvian Statistical
            Institute. They present their results based on various
            descriptive and econometric techniques, including
            non-parametric regressions, differences-in-differences, and
            instrumental variables estimators. They show that FONCODES
            projects in the education sector have reached poor districts
            and, to the extent they live in those districts, poor
            households. FONCODES has had a positive effect on school
            attendance rates for young children, but not on the
            likelihood that children will be at an appropriate school
            level for their age. Among other recommendations, they
            suggest that FONCODES consider random assignment of some
            education projects for a sub-sample of the population, to
            test the robustness of the study's assumptions and
            results. Lack of disaggregated data on such measures as the
            time children spend in school, pupil-teacher ratios, and
            scholastic achievement precluded analysis of the impact of
            FONCODES education projects on school quality. Collecting
            such data, and understanding how improvements in school
            infrastructure interact with other school-level changes to
            produce more learning, should be a research priority.
Integrated financial supervision :
            lessons of Northern European experience
Drawing on Northern European experience
            - where three Scandinavian countries have practiced
            integrated supervision for the past 10 years - the authors
            address three policy-related issues associated with the
            integrated model: a) Under what conditions should (or should
            not) a country consider moving toward an integrated model of
            financial supervision? Clearly, for a small transition or
            developing economy, or an economy with a small financial
            sector, the economies of scale from establishing an
            integrated agency outweigh the costs of moving to such a
            model. A strong case can also be made for an integrated
            approach in a financial sector dominated by banks, with
            little role for capital markets or a highly integrated
            financial sector. b) How should an integrated agency be
            structured, organized, and managed? There is no single
            obviously correct organizational structure, and existing
            agencies are experimenting with a variety of forms. An
            institutionally based structure has the virtue of simplicity
            and can be implemented fairly quickly, but tends to preserve
            the cultures and identities of the predecessor agencies more
            than is optimal. Whatever the structure, integrated
            supervision requires active management to secure the
            potential benefits that the approach offers. C) How should
            the integration process be implemented? While the decision
            to move to an integrated agency must be carefully thought
            through in the context of the country concerned, the more
            difficult part is implementation, which must be sensitively
            managed. Once the decision has been made, implementation
            should take place as quickly as possible. A well-conceived
            "change management" process should aim to overcome
            the cultural barriers associated with the previous
            fragmented structure. The authors' review of Northern
            European experience with integration of financial
            supervision raises a range of questions relevant to
            developing and transition economies, which they discuss.
User's guide to an early
            warning system for macroeconomic vulnerability in Latin
            American countries
The authors develop an early warning
            system for macroeconomic vulnerability for several Latin
            American countries, drawing on the work of Kaminsky,
            Lizondo, and Reinhart (1997) and Kaminsky (1988). They build
            a composite leading indicator that signals macroeconomic
            vulnerability, showing that, historically, crises tend to
            happen in certain "vulnerable " situations.
            Interested mainly in providing an operational tool, the
            authors use a different approach to the problem than
            Kaminsky did. First, they use fewer variables to generate
            the signals. Then, after the variables are aggregated, a
            signal is issued, depending on the behavior of the composite
            index. (Kaminsky's procedure was to generate signals
            with each variable and then aggregate them.) Their results
            are satisfactory both statistically and operationally.
            Statistically, Type I and II errors are smaller than those
            reported in previous papers. Operationally, this system of
            leading indicators is less costly to maintain, given fewer
            variables-which are widely available and reported with
            timeliness. The authors tested the models'
            out-of-sample predictive ability on crises that occurred
            after the first stage of their project was finished:
            Colombia (September 1998), Brazil (January 1999), and
            Ecuador (February 1999). In all cases the models correctly
            anticipated the speculative attacks. Moreover, Mexico's
            models, estimated with information available two years
            before the 1994 crisis, show that these signaling devices
            would have been useful for signaling the macroeconomic
            vulnerability before December 1994.
The slippery slope : explaining the
            increase in extreme poverty in urban Brazil, 1976-96
Despite tremendous macroeconomic
            instability in Brazil, the country's distributions of
            urban income in 1976 and 1996 appear, at first glance,
            deceptively similar. Mean household income per capita was
            stagnant, with minute accumulated growth (4.3 percent) over
            the two decades. The Gini coefficient hovered just above
            0.59 in both years, and the incidence of poverty (relative
            to a poverty line of R$60 a month in 1996 prices) remained
            effectively unchanged over the period, at 22 percent. Behind
            this apparent stability, however, a powerful combination of
            labor market, demographic, and educational dynamics was at
            work, one effect of which was to generate a substantial
            increase in extreme urban poverty. Using a decomposition
            methodology based on micro-simulation, which endogenizes
            labor incomes, individual occupational choices, and
            decisions about education, the authors show that the
            distribution of income was being affected by: 1) Three
            factors that tended to increase poverty-a decline in average
            returns to education and experience, a negative
            "growth" effect, and unfortunate changes in the
            structure of occupations and participation in the labor
            force. 2) Two factors that tended to reduce poverty-improved
            educational endowments across the board, and a progressive
            reduction in dependency ratios. The net effect was small and
            negative for measured inequality overall, and negligible for
            the incidence of poverty (relative to "high"
            poverty lines). But the net effect was to substantially
            increase extreme poverty-suggesting the creation of a group
            of urban households excluded from any labor market and
            trapped in indigence. Above the 15th percentile, urban
            Brazilians have "stayed put" only by climbing hard
            up a slippery slope. Counteracting failing returns in both
            self-employment and the labor market required substantially
            reduced fertility rates and an average of two extra years of
            schooling (which still left them undereducated for that
            income level).
Jamaica's food stamp program -
            impacts on poverty and welfare
The authors examine how the food stamp
            program affected measures of poverty during devaluation of
            the Jamaican dollar in the early 1990s. They find that
            without the food stamp program, the poverty gap in Jamaica
            would have been much worse, especially in 1990 and 1991. For
            the country as a whole, not having a food stamp program
            wouldn't have affected the incidence of poverty
            significantly, but particular groups among the poor would
            have fared worse. Households with elderly residents
            benefited most from the program. Households with young
            children benefited more than households without, in terms of
            the poverty headcount and gap. The program also appears to
            have had more effect on extremely poor households than on
            those of the transient poor (people who move in and out of
            poverty). Explicitly incorporating behavioral responses into
            the model reduces the contribution of food stamps to
            household consumption and poverty, but the poorest benefited
            most from the program even after accounting for behavioral
            responses. The program contributed more to reducing poverty
            than to smoothing consumption.
Managing risks of capital mobility
Inherent in pursuing openness to
            international capital flows is an awareness that it brings
            both benefits and risks. Much of the current debate is about
            how best to balance them. Major benefits for developing
            countries include access to a broader menu of investment
            sources, options, and instruments, as well as enhanced
            efficiency of domestic financial institutions and the
            discipline of capital markets in conducting domestic
            macroeconomic policy. By easing financing constraints, the
            greater availability of international finance can extend the
            period for implementing needed adjustments. From the
            perspective of emerging market economies, the author
            highlights two sources of risk: the host governments'
            policy of liberalizing capital controls before having
            established the macroeconomic, regulatory, and institutional
            foundations required for capital openness. A shift in
            foreign leaders' and investors' sentiments and
            confidence, not necessarily related to a particular
            country's long-term creditworthiness. Risk management
            demands judicious strategies for both corporate and
            financial institutions and national policy. At the
            institutional level, with the advances in technology and
            communications, financial risk management practice has
            improved significantly in recent years through the use of
            statistical models, such as value at risk, computer
            simulation, and stress testing. At the national level, with
            the worldwide trend toward democracy, the author argues that
            managing the risks of financial openness will require
            developing national mechanisms through which to provide
            insurance to citizens-through the marketplace or through
            redistributive policy-and thus to avert political pressure
            for capital controls. To succeed, open democratic societies
            have to balance the threat of capital exit, made easier by
            the opening of capital markets, with the political voice of
            citizens-demanding protection through redistribution, social
            safety nets, and other insurance-like measures. These
            insurance measures have been critical increasing the tension
            between politics and financial openness in OECD countries.
            Indeed, cross-country empirical analysis confirms that
            countries that spend a large share of their GDP on social
            needs (education, health, and transfer payments) are more
            open to free international capital flows, and also score
            high on measures of political and civil liberty.
Specialization without regret -
            transfer rights, agricultural productivity, and investment
            in an industrializing economy
A number of studies have examined the
            effects of secure tenure on agricultural investment and
            productivity. The authors also study the importance of
            rights to household residual income and land use being
            transferable. Contemporary China - where industrialization
            has spread rapidly, if unevenly - is a good place to study
            the economic effects of transfer rights as well as
            conventional security of tenure. Village collectives
            formally own land in China, so there can be no individual
            land sales, but farmers are sometimes entitled to sell their
            rights to use the land allocated to them under the household
            responsibility system. Whether a household has secure tenure
            depends on whether its landholding will be reduced if the
            household population declines, whether the landholding will
            be increased if the household population increases, and how
            frequent average land adjustments are under the household
            responsibility system. Analyzing panel data for a sample of
            farm households, the authors study the "investment
            regret mitigation effect", which results when greater
            transfer rights make households more willing to invest
            because they are less likely to regret such investments when
            they can recoup the investment value even if they exit
            farming. The authors find that transfer rights may be
            especially important in an industrializing economy. A
            property rights system with incomplete security of tenure
            but with strong transfer rights that permit
            "specialization without regret" - so farmers can
            recoup the value of an investment even if they exit farming
            - may have much to recommend it.
How the Chinese system of charges
            and subsidies affects pollution control efforts by
            China's top industrial polluters
There have been extensive theoretical
            studies of firms' responses to environmental
            regulations ad enforcement but few empirical analyses of
            firms' expenditures on pollution abatement in response
            to different regulations and enforcement strategies. The
            authors empirically analyze the pollution abatement efforts
            of Chinese industrial firms under a system combining
            pollution charges and abatement subsidies. Using data on
            China's top industrial polluters and on regional
            development in China, they find that the combination of
            charges and subsidies used in china has provided effective
            incentives for the most heavily polluting industrial firms
            to abate pollution. Chinese industries operate under a
            unique pollution control system, a market-based instrument
            combining emissions charges and abatement subsidies. This
            combination of charges and subsidies has given firms
            incentive to invest in wastewater treatment facilities. The
            pollution levy, although low, has significantly improved
            investments in abatement. The authors found that the more
            pollution a firm generates, the more likely it is to invest
            in pollution abatement. This study was only of top
            polluters, which are closely monitored by environmental
            agencies, so the results may not be valid for other sources
            of industrial pollution.
The role of trust in financial
            sector development
In any economic environment where
            decisions are decentralized, agents consider the risk that
            others might unfairly exploit informational asymmetries to
            their own disadvantage. Incomplete results, especially, lies
            at the heart of financial transactions in which agents trade
            real claims for promises of future real claims. Agents thus
            need to invest considerable resources to assess the
            trustworthiness of others with whom they know they can
            interact only under conditions of limited and asymmetrically
            distributed information. Thinking of finance as the complex
            of institutions and instruments needed to reduce the cost of
            trading promises among anonymous individuals who do not
            fully trust each other, the author analyzes how incomplete
            trust shapes the transaction costs in trading assets, and
            how it affects resource allocation and pricing decisions
            from rational, forward-looking agents. His analysis leads to
            core propositions about the role of finance and financial
            efficiency in economic development. He recommends areas of
            financial sector reform in emerging economies aimed at
            improving the financial system's efficiency in dealing
            with incomplete trust. Among other things, the public sector
            can improve trust in finance by improving financial
            infrastructure, including legal systems, financial
            regulation, and security in payment and trading systems. But
            fundamental improvements in financial efficiency may best be
            gained by eliciting good conduct through market forces.
Alternative frameworks for providing
            financial services
Drawing on country experience, the
            authors analyze alternative frameworks for providing
            financial services. Scope of permissible activities: The
            integrated banking model (commercial banking fully
            integrated with other financial services, including
            investment banking) benefits both financial institutions and
            consumers. Potential costs, such as extending the safety net
            to non-deposit financial services, can be mitigated with
            safeguards and firewalls, which require regulatory
            enforcement and monitoring. Internationally, countries are
            moving toward the integrated model. The wider scope of
            services appears to improve financial stability and mitigate
            the risk of a banking crisis. Degree of competitiveness and
            contestability (openness to competition): Competitiveness
            need not only require many financial institutions; a
            concentrated system can be competitive if contestable.
            Allowing the liberal entry of foreign banks lowers the
            franchise value of (domestic) institutions, but the evidence
            suggests that on balance foreign entry provides important
            benefits. Systems should not be over-competitive, however.
            They should allow enough franchise value that future profits
            give institutions an incentive to behave prudently. Design
            of safety net: the design of the safety net is important in
            the tradeoff between ensuring the safety and soundness of
            financial institutions and allocating resources efficiently.
            A well-functioning safety net minimizes regulatory
            forbearance and gives banks incentives to act prudently.
            Owners of financial institutions behave more prudently if
            they have much at risk, in the form of capital, future
            expected profits, or their own jobs. The wrong safety net,
            especially the wrong deposit insurance, entails great moral
            hazard. Large deposit holders are more likely to provide
            market discipline if they are not covered by deposit
            insurance (explicit or implicit), if disclosure is
            extensive, and if the accounting framework is adequate.
            Supervision: Best international practice suggests that
            supervision of the financial conglomerate should probably be
            consolidated in one agency. Supervisors should have
            incentives both to monitor and to take appropriate action.
            Supervisory salaries should be sufficient, relative to those
            in the private sector, to attract and retain competent and
            motivated staff.
Governance matters
In a cross-section of more than 150
            countries, the authors provide new empirical evidence of a
            strong causal relationship from better governance to better
            development outcomes. They base their analysis on a new
            database containing more than 300 governance indicators
            compiled from a variety of sources. They provide a detailed
            description of each of these indicators and sources. Using
            an unobserved components methodology (described in the
            companion paper by the same authors, "Aggregating
            Governance Indicators," Policy Research Working Paper
            2195), they then construct six aggregate indicators
            corresponding to six basic governance concepts: voice and
            accountability, political instability and violence,
            government effectiveness, regulatory burden, rule of law,
            and graft. As measured by these indicators, governance
            matters for development outcomes.