rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Skill use, skill deficits, and firm
            performance in formal sector enterprises : evidence from the
            Tanzania enterprise skills survey, 2015
Inadequacies in Tanzania's
            education and training systems compromise the quality of
            workforce skills, giving rise to skill shortages, and
            constraining the operations and growth of formal sector
            firms in the country. This study addressed these concerns
            using data from a unique Enterprise Skills Survey that asked
            Tanzanian employers about the education, training, and
            occupational mix of their workforce, the skill gaps in
            cognitive, noncognitive, and job-specific competencies
            affecting their operations, and the strategies they are
            using to overcome these skill gaps. The study investigates
            the consequences for firm productivity of employers'
            choices about their optimal skills mix, and their strategies
            to mitigate shortfalls in skills supply. Compared with
            noninnovators and firms primarily serving the domestic
            market, exporters and innovators face greater skill demand
            and suffer from skill shortages that are more likely to
            constrain their operations in such areas as quality
            assurance, use of new technology, and introducing new
            products and services. In analyzing firm performance and its
            relation to skill mix, the study found that firms with
            higher shares of tertiary-educated workers are more
            productive; it found no impact, however, from secondary
            education and technical vocational education and training
            qualifications, possibly reflecting the universally
            acknowledged poor quality of secondary education in
            Tanzania. Employers use a range of strategies to address
            skill deficiencies, from hiring new workers, to training
            current workers in-house or externally, using high-skill
            expatriate workers, or outsourcing professional services.
            Almost all were associated with higher labor productivity.
            The exception, employer provided in-house training, had no
            measurable impact on productivity.
Does the global trade slowdown matter
Since the Global Financial Crisis, world
            trade growth has been subdued and lagging slightly behind
            growth of gross domestic product. Trade is growing more
            slowly not only because growth of global gross domestic
            product is lower, but also because trade itself has become
            less responsive to gross domestic product. This paper
            reviews the reasons behind the changing trade-income
            relationship, and then investigates its consequences for
            economic growth. On the demand side, sluggish world import
            growth may adversely affect individual countries'
            economic growth, as it limits opportunities for their
            exports. On the supply side, slower trade may diminish the
            scope for productivity growth through increasing
            specialization and diffusion of technologies. The paper
            finds preliminary evidence that the changing trade-income
            relationship matters, although the quantifiable effects do
            not appear to be large.
Trust in government and support for redistribution
In many countries safety nets consist
            predominantly of universal subsidies on food and fuel. A key
            question for policy makers willing to shift to targeted
            safety nets is under what conditions middle-class citizens
            would be supportive of redistributive programs. Results from
            a behavioral experiment based on a nationally representative
            sample in Jordan reveal that increasing transparency in
            benefit delivery makes middle-class citizens (particularly
            among the youth and low-trust individuals) more willing to
            forgo their own welfare to benefit the poor. Moreover,
            increasing transparency enhances the relative support for
            cash-based safety nets, which have greater impact on poverty
            compared with in-kind transfers, but may be perceived as
            more prone to elite capture.
Exports and job training
This paper examines whether export
            participation matters for job training. The paper draws on
            longitudinal worker-firm data for Brazilian manufacturing,
            linked with detailed records on training activity from the
            main provider. The analysis uses industry-specific exchange
            rate movements to generate exogenous variation in export
            status at the firm-level. The findings indicate that export
            participation tends to increase the share of workers who
            receive technical upgrading. The results also reveal that
            technical upgrading has positive returns to trainees within
            exporting firms. These findings support the hypothesis that
            exporting requires skill upgrading, and suggest that this is
            partially achieved by training firms' existing workforce.
The role of inequality in
            climate-poverty debates
There is no doubt that the poorest
            people are already and will continue to be most severely
            impacted by climatic changes, including shifting trends as
            well as more frequent and severe extreme events. Yet, new
            insights on the dynamics and distribution of poverty point
            to the need to comprehend where the poor and poorest are,
            how they are poor, and why their poverty constrains their
            abilities to cope with and adapt to occurring and predicted
            changes. This paper draws on a diverse and growing
            literature on climate change and poverty to argue that
            uneven power relations more so than exposure and sensitivity
            to climatic hazards make the poor and disadvantaged
            distinctly more vulnerable than more affluent, privileged,
            and powerful groups and individuals. Further, climatic
            stressors and climate change as well as climate policies,
            often entangled with social exclusion and institutional
            neglect, compound the issue of poverty and exacerbate human
            precariousness, hence acting as a threat multiplier. The
            paper compares different approaches to assessing poverty,
            and explores structural processes and power dynamics that
            drive or perpetuate inequalities. The paper also
            investigates how the currently nonpoor may become transient
            or chronic poor, how climate change may exacerbate poverty
            traps, and how interventions to curb emissions and
            multidimensional poverty may be tackled to pursue
            climate-resilient development pathways.
Estimating an equilibrium exchange
            rate for the Argentine Peso
This paper assesses the equilibrium
            value of the Argentine peso exchange rate based on the
            country's economic fundamentals and compares it with
            the official exchange rate value. The paper estimates a
            behavioral equilibrium exchange rate model that allows for
            movements in the equilibrium real effective exchange rate
            based on changing economic fundamentals, using monthly data
            from 1980 to 2015. The analysis identifies four key
            fundamentals driving the equilibrium exchange rate in
            Argentina: terms of trade, productivity differentials,
            foreign currency reserves, and trade openness. Based on
            these fundamentals, before the exchange rate reunification
            that took place at the end of 2015, the Argentine peso was
            overvalued by 39 percent. The results are robust to
            alternative estimation approaches.
Creative natives in the digital age
            : how digital technology has revolutionized creative work
Digital technologies have permeated
            modern life, and their impact on creative work has been
            revolutionary. This revolution, as widely noted, has
            disrupted the making, distribution, and consumption of
            creative output. On the downside, key concerns include
            Internet-induced piracy and inequality. Yet digital
            technologies also accelerate opportunities. So, how can
            these opportunities be reaped to promote creative work for
            development? Suggestions here include closing the digital
            gender gap, promoting appropriate intellectual property
            rights, and providing digital literacy. More needs to be
            done to understand the benefits and limitations of digital
            technologies on creative work for human development.
Creative trade for human development
In recent years, international trade in
            creative goods and services has been expanding. But this
            upward march is not lifting all boats. Although many
            developing countries are endowed with vast cultural wealth,
            they still lag behind. In addition, women are not faring
            well. Much needs to be done to expand creative trade for
            human development. Suggestions here include implementing a
            Women Artisan Trade Initiative, creating a cultural trade
            index, developing appropriate intellectual property
            initiatives, and considering creative trade in economic
            diversification strategies.
Exporters, engineers, and
            blue-collar workers
This paper investigates differences in
            the composition of employment between exporting and
            non-exporting firms. In particular, it asks whether
            exporting firms hire more engineers relative to blue-collar
            workers than non-exporting firms. In a stylized
            partial-equilibrium model, firms produce goods of varying
            quality and exporters tend to produce higher quality goods,
            which are intensive in engineers relative to blue-collar
            workers. Firms are heterogeneous and more productive firms
            become exporters and have a higher demand for engineers. The
            paper provides causal evidence in support of these theories
            using the Chilean Encuesta Nacional Industrial Anual, an
            annual census of manufacturing firms. The results from an
            instrumental variable estimator suggest that Chilean
            exporters indeed utilize a higher share of engineers over
            blue-collar workers.
Informed trading in business groups,
            ownership concentration, and market liquidity
Business groups, which are collections
            of publicly traded companies with significant amount of
            common ownership, dominate private sector activity in
            developing countries. This paper studies how information
            flows within these groups by analyzing the trading behavior
            of pension fund managers in firms that belong to the same
            group. The paper shows that while pension fund managers are
            momentum traders on non-affiliated companies, they trade in
            anticipation of future abnormal returns in affiliated firms.
            Ownership concentration and business group ties exacerbate
            information asymmetries, discouraging investment and
            depressing stock market participation. Using the merger and
            acquisition activity among pension fund managers as a
            natural experiment, the paper provides evidence that
            increases in stock ownership concentration, via the threat
            of informed trading, adversely affect liquidity. The results
            indicate that cross-ownership structures and extensive
            investor-industry relations might curb the expected benefits
            from the presence of institutional investors, limiting
            market development.
Are gender differences in
            performance innate or socially mediated
To explain persistent gender gaps in
            market outcomes, a lab experimental literature explores
            whether women and men have innate differences in ability (or
            attitudes or preferences), and a separate field-based
            literature studies discrimination against women in market
            settings. This paper posits that even if women have
            comparable innate ability, their relative performance may
            suffer in the market if the task requires them to interact
            with others in society, and they are subject to
            discrimination in those interactions. The paper tests these
            ideas using a large-scale field experiment in 142 Malawian
            villages where men or women were randomly assigned the task
            of learning about a new agricultural technology, and then
            communicating it to others to convince them to adopt it.
            Although female communicators learn and retain the new
            information just as well, and those taught by women
            experience higher farm yields, the women are not as
            successful at teaching or convincing others to adopt the new
            technology. Micro-data on individual interactions from 4,000
            farmers in these villages suggest that other farmers
            perceive female communicators to be less able, and are less
            receptive to the women's messages.  Relatively small
            incentives for rewards undo the disparity in performance by
            encouraging added interactions, improving farmers'
            accuracy about female communicators' relative skill.
Who supports violent extremism in
            developing countries analysis of attitudes based on value surveys
What are the common characteristics
            among radicalized individuals, willing to justify attacks
            targeting civilians? Drawing on information on attitudes
            toward extreme violence and other characteristics of 30,787
            individuals from 27 developing countries around the world,
            and employing a variety of econometric techniques, this
            paper identifies the partial correlates of extremism. The
            results suggest that the typical extremist who supports
            attacks against civilians is more likely to be young,
            unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, relatively
            uneducated, and not as religious as others, but more willing
            to sacrifice own life for his or her beliefs. Gender and
            marital status are not found to explain significantly the
            individual-level variation in attitudes toward extremism.
            Although these results may vary in magnitude and
            significance across countries and geographic regions, they
            are robust to various sensitivity analyses.
Saving for old age
Countries around the world face a
            retirement crisis brought on by aging populations, declining
            birthrates, and fiscal shortfalls. As a result, policy
            makers increasingly seek to understand retirement savings
            patterns, a crucial component of the safety net for the
            elderly. Drawing on the 2014 Global Findex database, which
            provides individual-level data on the use of financial
            products in more than 140 countries, this paper examines how
            adults save for old age. It finds that about 25 percent of
            adults worldwide save for old age, with rates exceeding 35
            percent in high-income Organisation for Economic
            Co-operation and Development economies and the East Asia and
            Pacific region. On average, men are slightly more likely
            than women to save for this purpose, but the gender gap is
            deeper in developing countries. Worldwide, saving for old
            age is more common among older adults, more educated adults,
            and adults who own accounts. Adults in countries with
            English legal origin, and with high savings rates, are also
            more likely to save for old age. The paper also finds that
            measures to increase trust in the financial system, such as
            the safety net/moral hazard index based on deposit
            insurance, lead to higher rates of saving for old age.
            Finally, the paper finds little evidence of substitution
            between pension system provisions and contribution rates
            with saving for old age.
Markets, contracts, and uncertainty
            in a groundwater economy
Groundwater is a vital yet threatened
            resource in much of South Asia. This paper develops a model
            of groundwater transactions under payoff uncertainty arising
            from unpredictable fluctuations in groundwater availability
            during the agricultural dry season. The model highlights the
            trade-off between the ex post inefficiency of long-term
            contracts and the ex ante inefficiency of spot contracts.
            The structural parameters are estimated using detailed
            micro-data on the area irrigated under each contract type
            combined with subjective probability distributions of
            borewell discharge elicited from a large sample of
            well-owners in southern India. The findings show that, while
            the contracting distortion leads to an average welfare loss
            of less than 2 percent and accounts for less than 50 percent
            of all transactions costs in groundwater markets, it has a
            sizeable impact on irrigated area, especially for small
            farmers.  Uncertainty coupled with land fragmentation also
            attenuates the benefits of the water-saving technologies now
            being heavily promoted in India.
Non-renewable resources, fiscal
            rules, and human capital
This paper develops a multi-sector,
            small open economy Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium
            model, which includes the accumulation of human capital,
            built via public expenditures in education and health. Four
            possible fiscal rules are examined for total public
            investment in infrastructure, education, and health in the
            context of a sustainable resource fund: the spend-as-you-go,
            bird-in-hand spending; moderate front-loading, and permanent
            income hypothesis approaches. There are two dimensions to
            this exercise: the scaling effect, which describes the level
            of total investment, and the composition effect, which
            defines the structure of investment between infrastructure,
            education, and health. The model is applied to Kenya. For
            impacts on the non-resource economy, efficiency of spending,
            and sustainability of fiscal outcomes, the analysis finds
            that, although investment frontloading would bring high
            growth in the short term, the permanent income hypothesis
            approach is overall more desirable when fiscal
            sustainability concerns are taken into consideration.
            Finally, a balanced composition is the preferred structure
            of investment, given the permanent income hypothesis
            allocation of total investment over time.
Measuring firm-level innovation
            using short questionnaires : evidence from an experiment
Little is known about innovation in
            developing countries, partly because of the lack of
            comparable and reliable data. Collecting data on firm-level
            innovation is challenging because of the subjective
            definition of what determines an innovation, a problem that
            is exacerbated in developing countries where innovation is
            likely to be more incremental and less radical. This paper
            contributes to the literature by presenting the results of
            an experiment aiming to identify the survey instrument that
            better captures firm-level innovation in developing
            countries. The paper shows that a small set of questions
            included in a multi-topic, firm-level survey does not
            provide an accurate picture of firm-level innovation and
            tends to overestimate innovation rates. Issues related to
            framing explain some of the unreliability of innovation
            responses, while cognitive problems do not appear to play a
            significant role.
Development of low-carbon energy
            supply system in Romania
Despite the declining trends in total
            energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, energy
            intensity, and emission intensity over the past two decades,
            Romania still emits more greenhouse gas per unit of output
            than many other members of the European Union. The country
            is looking for further greening of its energy supply system
            to achieve the clean energy and climate change mitigation
            goals included in the European Union's 2030 target and
            2050 Roadmap. Using an energy supply optimization model,
            TIMES, this study develops energy supply mixes for Romania
            under a baseline scenario that satisfies the European
            Union's current energy and climate targets for 2020, a
            green scenario that satisfies the European Union's 2030
            energy and climate targets, and a super green scenario that
            satisfies the European Union's prospective 2050 energy
            road map. The study finds that although Romania could
            achieve the green scenario at a moderate cost, it would be
            challenging and costly to achieve the super green scenario.
Women's empowerment, sibling
            rivalry, and competitiveness: evidence from a lab experiment
            and a randomized control trial in Uganda
This study looks at how a community
            event—adolescent women's economic and social
            empowerment -- and a family factor -- sibling sex
            composition—interact in shaping gender differences in
            preferences for competition. To do so, a lab-in-the-field
            experiment is conducted using competitive games layered over
            the randomized rollout of a community program that empowered
            adolescent girls in Uganda. In contrast with the literature,
            the study finds no gender differences in competitiveness
            among adolescents, on average. It also finds no evidence of
            differences in competitiveness between girls in treatment
            and control communities, on average. However, in line with
            the literature, in control communities the study finds that
            boys surrounded by sisters are less competitive. Strikingly,
            this pattern is reversed in treatment communities, where
            boys surrounded by (empowered) sisters are more competitive.