rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
You are what (and where) you eat :
            capturing food away from home in welfare measures
Consumption of food away from home is
            rapidly growing across the developing world. Surprisingly,
            the majority of household surveys around the world haven not
            kept up with its pace and still collect limited information
            on it. The implications for poverty and inequality
            measurement are far from clear, and the direction of the
            impact cannot be established a priori, since consumption of
            food away from home affects both food consumption and the
            poverty line. This paper exploits rich data on food away
            from home collected as part of the National Household Survey
            in Peru, shedding light to the extent to which welfare
            measures differ depending on whether they properly account
            for food away from home. Peru is a relevant context, with
            the average Peruvian household spending 28 percent of their
            food budget on food away from home by 2010. The analysis
            indicates that failure to account for the consumption of
            food away from home has important implications for poverty
            and inequality measures as well as the understanding of who
            the poor are. First, accounting for food away from home
            results in extreme poverty rates that are 18 percent higher
            and moderate poverty rates that are 16 percent lower. These
            results are also consistent, in fact more pronounced, with
            poverty gap and severity measures. Second, consumption
            inequality measured by the Gini coefficient decreases by 1.3
            points when food away from home is included, a significant
            reduction. Finally, inclusion of food away from home results
            in a reclassification of households from poor to non-poor
            status and vice versa: 20 percent of the poor are different
            when the analysis includes consumption of food away from
            home. This effect is large enough that a standard poverty
            profile analysis results in significant differences between
            the poverty classification based on whether food away from
            home is included or not. The differences cover many
            dimensions, including demographics, education, and labor
            market characteristics. Taken together, the results indicate
            that a serious rethinking of how to deal with the
            consumption of food away from home in measuring well-being
            is urgently needed to properly estimate and understand
            poverty around the world.
Universal health coverage in the
            Philippines : progress on financial protection goals
Providing protection against the
            financial risk of high out-of-pocket health spending is one
            of the main goals of the Philippines’ health strategy. Yet,
            as this paper shows using eight household surveys, health
            spending increased by 150 percent (real) from 2000 to 2012,
            with the sharpest increases occurring in recent years. The
            main driver of health spending is medicines, accounting for
            almost two-thirds of total health spending, and as much as
            three-quarters among the poor. The incidence of catastrophic
            payments has trebled since 2000, from 2.5 to 7.7 percent.
            The percentage of people impoverished by health spending has
            also increased and, in 2012, out-of-pocket spending on
            health added 1.5 percentage points to the poverty rate. In
            light of these findings, recent policies to enhance
            financial risk protection—such as the expansion of
            government-subsidized health insurance for the poor, a
            deepening of the benefit package, and provider payment
            reform aimed at cost-containment—are to be applauded.
            Between 2008 and 2013, self-reported health insurance
            coverage increased across all quintiles and its distribution
            became more pro-poor. To speed progress toward financial
            protection goals, possible quick wins could include issuing
            health insurance cards for the poor to increase awareness of
            coverage and introducing a fixed copayment for non-poor
            members. Over the medium term, complementary investments in
            supply-side readiness are essential. Finally, an in-depth
            analysis of the pharmaceutical sector would help to shed
            light on why medicines continue to place such a large
            financial burden on households.
Investigating the gender gap in
            agricultural productivity : evidence from Uganda
Women comprise 50 percent of the
            agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa, but manage
            plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less
            productive. As a source of income inequality and aggregate
            productivity loss, the country-specific magnitude and
            drivers of this gender gap are of great interest. Using
            national data from the Uganda National Panel Survey for
            2009/10 and 2010/11, the gap before controlling for
            endowments was estimated to be 17.5 percent. Panel data
            methods were combined with an Oaxaca decomposition to
            investigate the gender differences in resource endowment and
            return to endowment driving this gap. Although men have
            greater access to inputs, input use is so low and inverse
            returns to plot size so strong in Uganda that smaller
            female-managed plots have a net endowment advantage of 12
            percent, revealing a larger unexplained gap of 29.5 percent.
            Two-fifths of this unexplained gap is attributed to
            differential returns to the child dependency ratio and
            one-fifth to differential returns to transport access,
            implying that greater child care responsibilities and
            difficulty accessing input and output markets from areas
            without transport are the largest drivers of the gap.
            Smaller and less robust drivers include differential uptake
            of cash crops, and differential uptake and return to
            improved seeds and pesticides.
Does access to foreign markets shape
            internal migration evidence from Brazil
This paper investigates how internal
            migration is affected by Brazil’s increased integration into
            the world economy. It analyzes the impact of regional
            differences in access to foreign demand on sector-specific
            bilateral migration rates between the Brazilian states for
            the years 1995 to 2003. Using international trade data, a
            foreign market access measure is computed at the sectoral
            level, which is exogenous to domestic migration. A higher
            foreign market access is associated with a higher local
            labor demand and attracts workers via two potential
            channels: higher wages and new job opportunities. Results
            show that both channels play a significant role in internal
            migration. Further, we find a heterogeneous impact across
            industries, according to their comparative advantage on the
            world market. However, the observed impact is driven by the
            strong reaction of low-educated workers to changes in market
            access. This finding is consistent with the fact that Brazil
            is exporting mainly goods that are intensive in unskilled labor.
When winners feel like losers :
            evidence from an energy subsidy reform
In 2011 the Government of El Salvador
            implemented a reform to the gas subsidy that increased the
            welfare of households in all but the top two deciles of the
            income distribution. However, the reform turned out to be
            rather unpopular, especially among winners. This paper
            relies on ad hoc household surveys conducted before the
            implementation and in the following two and a half years to
            test which factors help explain the puzzle. The analysis
            uses probit and logit models to show that misinformation (a
            negativity bias by which people with limited information
            inferred negative consequences), mistrust of the
            government’s ability to implement the policy, and political
            priors explain most of the (un)satisfaction before
            implementation. Perceptions improved gradually—and
            significantly so—over time when the subsidy reception
            induced households to update their initial priors, although
            political biases remained significant throughout the entire
            period. The results suggest several implications with
            respect to policy reforms in cases where agents have limited information.
World Bank policy lending and the
            quality of public sector governance
This study investigates the impact of
            World Bank development policy lending for public sector
            governance on the quality of public sector management and
            institutions. The World Bank’s Country Policy and
            Institutional Assessments (CPIA) are used to measure the
            latter, the study considers only policy conditions targeted
            at improvements in those areas. The analysis uses a
            comprehensive country-year panel data set of aid
            receiving-countries and finds a significant and inverse
            U-shaped effect of public sector conditions on the quality
            of public sector governance. For most observed values in the
            data, the impact is positive, but it turns negative beyond a
            value of 80 conditions. At that point, the predicted CPIA
            score is about 0.25 point (0.3 standard deviation) higher
            than with zero conditions. For most observations, the number
            of cumulative conditions is below 80, so the estimated
            effect of more conditions is generally positive. The
            analysis corrects for potential endogeneity and shows that
            the results are robust to sample restrictions, the use of an
            alternative governance measure, and the inclusion of an
            extended set of control variables. Falsification tests are
            also consistent with a causal interpretation from conditions
            to quality of public sector governance. The paper shows that
            conditions related to public financial management and tax
            reforms are more effective than those related to
            anti-corruption or civil service and administrative reform,
            where progress requires changing the behavior of a larger
            set of “deconcentrated” actors. The paper concludes by
            describing some innovative ideas in the Bank’s ambitious new
            public sector management strategy that could improve the
            effectiveness of its support for public sector governance reform.
Do public health interventions crowd
            out private health investments Malaria control policies in Eritrea
It is often argued that engaging in
            indoor residual spraying in areas with high coverage of
            mosquito bed nets may discourage net ownership and use. This
            is just a case of a public program having perverse
            incentives. This paper analyzes new data from a randomized
            control trial conducted in Eritrea, which surprisingly shows
            the opposite: indoor residual spraying encouraged net
            acquisition and use. The evidence points to the role of
            imperfect information. The introduction of indoor residual
            spraying may have made the problem of malaria more salient,
            leading to a change in beliefs about its importance and to
            an increase in private health investments.
Poverty dynamics in India between
            2004 and 2012 : insights from longitudinal analysis using
            synthetic panel data
Recent National Sample Surveys point to
            significant poverty reduction in India since 2004/05, with a
            marked acceleration between 2009/10 and 2011/12. This paper
            enquires into important aspects of income mobility between
            2004/05 and 2011/12, based on new statistical methods to
            convert the three pertinent National Sample Survey rounds
            into synthetic panels. The analysis draws on the synthetic
            panels to derive a vulnerability line for India that can be
            used to separate out a population subgroup comprising
            non-poor households facing a heightened risk of falling into
            poverty. The paper documents a strong pattern of upward
            mobility out of poverty and vulnerability into the middle
            class, with a noticeable acceleration between 2009/10 and
            2011/12. The paper further undertakes a careful
            investigation into the comparability of the survey rounds,
            prompted by the observation that fairly significant
            modifications had been made to survey questionnaires.  The
            findings suggest that changes in questionnaire design have
            not compromised the comparability of the data.
Delivering education : a pragmatic
            framework for improving education in low-income countries
Even as primary-school enrollments have
            increased in most low-income countries, levels of learning
            remain low and highly unequal. Responding to greater
            parental demand for quality, low-cost private schools have
            emerged as one of the fastest growing schooling options,
            challenging the monopoly of state-provided education and
            broadening the set of educational providers. Historically,
            the rise of private schooling is always deeply intertwined
            with debates around who chooses what schooling is about and
            who represents the interests of children. This time is no
            different. But rather than first resolve the question of how
            child welfare is to be adjudicated, this paper argues
            instead for a `pragmatic framework’. In this pragmatic
            framework, policy takes into account the full schooling
            environment—which includes public, private and other types
            of providers—and is actively concerned with first
            alleviating constraints that prohibit parents and schools
            from fulfilling their own stated objectives. Using policy
            actionable experiments as examples, this paper shows that
            the pragmatic approach can lead to better schooling for
            children. Alleviating constraints by providing better
            information, better access to finance or greater access to
            skilled teachers brings more children into school and
            increases test-scores in language and mathematics. These
            areas of improvement are very similar to those where there
            is already a broad societal consensus that improvement is required.
Firm inventory behavior in east Africa
Firms normally keep certain inventories,
            including raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished
            goods, to operate seamlessly and not to miss possible
            business opportunities. But inventory is costly, and the
            optimal firm inventory differs depending on various economic
            conditions, including trade and transport costs. The paper
            examines firm inventory behavior in East Africa, in which
            transport connectivity, especially to the ports, is
            considered as one of the major business constraints. Using
            firm-level data from Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and
            Uganda, it is shown that transport connectivity
            significantly affects firm inventory behavior. In
            particular, road density and transport costs to the port are
            important to determine the optimal inventory level. With
            more roads in a city and/or cheaper access to the port,
            firms would hold smaller inventories.
Firm productivity and infrastructure
            costs in east Africa
Infrastructure is an important driving
            force for economic growth. It reduces trade and transaction
            costs and stimulates the productivity of the economy. Africa
            has been lagging behind in the global manufacturing market.
            Among others, infrastructure is an important constraint in
            many African countries. Using firm-level data for East
            Africa, the paper reexamines the relationship between firm
            performance and infrastructure. It is shown that labor costs
            are by far the most important to stimulate firm production.
            Among the infrastructure sectors, electricity costs have the
            highest output elasticity, followed by transport costs. In
            addition, the paper shows that the quality of infrastructure
            is important to increase firm production. In particular,
            quality transport infrastructure seems to be essential. The
            paper also finds that agglomeration economies can reduce
            firm costs. The agglomeration elasticity is estimated at 0.03–0.04.
Agriculture production and transport
            infrastructure in east Africa : an application of spatial autoregression
Africa is estimated to have great
            potential for agricultural production, but there are a
            number of constraints inhibiting the development of that
            potential. Spatial data are increasingly important in the
            realization of potential as well as the associated
            constraints. With crop production data generated at 5-minute
            spatial resolution, the paper applies the spatial tobit
            regression model to estimate the possible impacts of
            improvements in transport accessibility in East Africa. It
            is found that rural accessibility and access to markets are
            important to increase agricultural production. In particular
            for export crops, such as coffee, tea, tobacco, and cotton,
            access to ports is crucial. The elasticities are estimated
            at 0.3–4.6. In addition, the estimation results show that
            spatial autocorrelation matters to the estimation results.
            While a random shock in a particular locality would likely
            affect its neighboring places, the spatial autoregressive
            term can be positive or negative, depending on how
            fragmented the current production areas are.
How much of the labor in African
            agriculture is provided by women
The contribution of women to labor in
            African agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60
            to 80 percent. Using individual-disaggregated, plot-level
            labor input data from nationally representative household
            surveys across six Sub-Saharan African countries, this study
            estimates the average female labor share in crop production
            at 40 percent. It is slightly above 50 percent in Malawi,
            Tanzania, and Uganda, and substantially lower in Nigeria (37
            percent), Ethiopia (29 percent), and Niger (24 percent).
            There are no systematic differences across crops and
            activities, but female labor shares tend to be higher in
            households where women own a larger share of the land and
            when they are more educated. Controlling for the gender and
            knowledge profile of the respondents does not meaningfully
            change the predicted female labor shares. The findings
            question prevailing assertions regarding substantial gains
            in aggregate crop output as a result of increasing female
            agricultural productivity.
A behavioral approach to water
            conservation: evidence from Costa Rica
This paper presents the design a set of
            three simple and replicable behavioral interventions, which
            use stickers that can be added to water bills at low cost,
            and test their impact on water consumption in Belen, Costa
            Rica, using a randomized control trial.  Two of the three
            interventions were found to decrease water consumption
            significantly in the months following the intervention. A
            descriptive social norm intervention using neighborhood
            comparisons reduces consumption by between 3.7 and 5.6
            percent relative to a control group, while a plan-making
            intervention reduces consumption by between 3.4 and 5.5
            percent. While the two interventions have similar results,
            they are effective on different subpopulations, with the
            plan-making intervention being most effective for
            low-consumption households, while the neighborhood
            comparison intervention is most effective for
            high-consumption households. The results demonstrate that
            behavioral interventions, which have hitherto utilized
            sophisticated software to deliver customized messages, can
            be  effectively implemented by local governments in
            developing countries, where technology and resource
            constraints render the sorts of customized messaging that
            has typically been used to deliver them in developed
            countries unfeasible. The results further confirm that
            raising awareness about how much water an individual
            consumes, and comparing this consumption level with peers,
            can go a long way in helping change individuals’ behavior
            regarding the use of a finite resource such as water.