rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Global imbalances before and after
            the global crisis
This paper surveys the academic and
            policy debate on the roots of global imbalances, their role
            in the inception of the global crisis, and their prospects
            in its aftermath. The conventional view holds that global
            imbalances result primarily from unsustainably high demand
            for goods in the United States and other rich countries, and
            that their impending correction must involve major United
            States trade adjustment and dollar depreciation -- although
            recent literature argues that their extent may be dampened
            by financial adjustment effects. In contrast, an alternative
            view portrays global imbalances as the equilibrium result of
            asymmetries in world asset demand and supply. Absent changes
            in the deep determinants of these, global imbalances can
            persist. International capital flow patterns before and
            during the crisis lend support to the equilibrium view. The
            paper also examines different hypotheses proposed in the
            literature on the role of global imbalances in the
            generation and propagation of the financial crisis. On the
            whole, the evidence suggests that global imbalances were not
            among the major causes of the crisis. Lastly, the paper
            assesses alternative scenarios about the future of global
            imbalances, considering in particular their potential
            consequences for developing countries, and the policy
            measures that these might adopt to enhance their growth
            prospects in a changing global equilibrium.
Markets for cotton by-products :
            global trends and implications for African cotton producers
This paper analyzes and compares the
            structure of cotton by-products industries in se-lected
            countries (Uganda, Tanzania, Benin, and Burkina Faso) in the
            context of the global vegetable oil market. It reaches
            several conclusions. First, because the markets for various
            edible oils are highly integrated with each other,
            examination of each oil market should be done in conjunction
            with all other (relevant) edible oil markets. Second, the
            recent surge in demand for commodities used as feedstocks
            for biofuels is unlikely to become a new source of growth
            for the cotton oil market. Third, within the context of
            deepening the on-going reform efforts in West and Central
            African countries, cotton by-products should be taken into
            consideration, both in terms of the cotton price setting
            mechanism and the size of the organization of the cotton
            by-products industry. Fourth, trade policies including
            export bans or import tariffs to protect the domestic
            crushing industries, and policies that favor crude over
            refined oils, should be rationalized. Fifth, large
            cottonseed processing operations using advanced technology,
            while efficient from a technological perspective, tend not
            to be economically profitable in the African context. Last,
            research efforts for new cotton varieties should consider
            the value of by-products, not just lint.
An empirical analysis of the effects
            of climate variables on national level economic growth
The influence of climate on economic
            growth is a topic of growing interest. Few studies have
            investigated the potential role that climate hazards and
            their cumulative effects have on the growth prospects for a
            country. Due to the relatively stationary spatial patterns
            of global climate, some regions and countries are more prone
            to climate hazards and climate variability than others. This
            study uses a precipitation index that preserves the spatial
            and temporal variability of precipitation and differentiates
            between precipitation maximums (such as floods) and minimums
            (such as droughts). The authors develop a year and country
            fixed effects regression model to test the influence of
            climate variables on measures of economic growth and
            activity. The results indicate that precipitation extremes
            (floods and droughts) are the dominant climate influence on
            economic growth and that the effects are significant and
            negative. The drought index is associated with a highly
            significant negative influence on growth of growth domestic
            product, while the flood index is associated with a negative
            influence on growth of gross domestic product and lagged
            effects on growth. Temperature has little significant
            effect. These results have important implications for
            economic projections of climate change impacts. In addition,
            adaptation strategies should give new consideration to the
            importance of water resources given the identification of
            precipitation extremes as the key climate influence on
            historical growth of gross domestic product.
Investment in job training : why are
            SMES lagging so much behind
This paper analyzes the link between
            firm size and investment in job training by employers. Using
            a large firm level data set across 99 developing countries,
            the analysis shows that a strong and positive correlation in
            investment in job training and firm size is a robust
            statistical finding both within and across countries with
            very different institutions and level of development.
            However, the findings do not support the view that this
            difference is mostly driven by market imperfections
            disproportionally affecting small and medium enterprises.
            Rather, the evidence is supportive of small and medium
            enterprises having a smaller expected return from the
            investment in job training than larger firms. Therefore, the
            findings call for caution when designing pro-small and
            medium enterprises policies fostering investment in
            on-the-job training.
Are banks too big to fail or too big
            to save International evidence from equity prices and CDS spreads
Deteriorating public finances around the
            world raise doubts about countries' abilities to bail
            out their largest banks. For an international sample of
            banks, this paper investigates the impact of government
            indebtedness and deficits on bank stock prices and credit
            default swap spreads. Overall, bank stock prices reflect a
            negative capitalization of government debt and they respond
            negatively to deficits. The authors present evidence that in
            2008 systemically large banks saw a reduction in their
            market valuation in countries running large fiscal deficits.
            Furthermore, the change in bank credit default swap spreads
            in 2008 relative to 2007 reflects countries'
            deterioration of public deficits. The results of the
            analysis suggest that some systemically important banks can
            increase their value by downsizing or splitting up, as they
            have become too big to save, potentially reversing the trend
            to ever larger banks. The paper also documents that a
            smaller proportion of banks are systemically important --
            relative to gross domestic product -- in 2008 than in the
            two previous years, which could reflect private incentives
            to downsize.
Education, labor rights, and
            incentives : contract teacher cases in the indian courts
Since the liberalization of India's
            economy beginning in the early 1990's, the government
            has increasingly employed contract workers to perform
            various state functions, including in the education sector.
            Yet, little research has been done to examine how courts
            have reacted to this shift in government labor policy. This
            paper looks at all reported cases involving contract
            teachers in the Indian Supreme Court and four High Courts
            over the last thirty years. It finds that although almost
            never explicitly overturning precedent, the judiciary in
            India has increasingly become less sympathetic to contract
            teachers demands, particularly at the Supreme Court level.
            The paper then argues that the Court could use its power of
            judicial review to engage the government in a dialogue, not
            unlike some of its earlier decisions in the 1980s and early
            1990s. The Court can help guide the government to create a
            labor policy that not only achieve better results for
            students, but better working conditions for teachers. Such a
            dialogic approach could potentially be adopted to help
            reframe the governments contract labor policy more generally.
Export discoveries, diversification
            and barriers to entry
The literature on the relationship
            between economic diversification and development has grown
            rapidly in recent years, partly due to the surprising
            finding that diversification rises with gross domestic
            product per capita up to a certain point. Export
            diversification along the extensive margin is inextricable
            from the introduction of new export products. The authors
            test the hypothesis that the threat of imitation inhibits
            the introduction of new exports -- export discoveries --
            under the assumption that the intensive and extensive
            margins of exports are correlated within broad
            country-industry groups. Econometric evidence from
            panel-data techniques that are appropriate for count data
            (the number of discoveries) suggests that discoveries within
            countries and industries rise with the growth of exports
            along the intensive margin (relative to the growth of
            non-export gross domestic product) but the magnitude of this
            partial correlation increases with domestic barriers to
            entry and with customs delays in exporting. However, the
            magnification effect of barriers to entry appears to be less
            significant as a determinant of total within-country export
            discoveries. This is consistent with inter-industry and
            within-country spillovers related to export discoveries,
            implying that barriers to entry enhance the effect of export
            growth on discoveries within country-industries but total
            discoveries might be unaffected by barriers to entry.
How can public spending help you
            grow an empirical analysis for developing countries
Although many studies indicate that both
            the level and composition of public spending are significant
            for economic growth, the results in the empirical literature
            are still mixed. This paper studies the importance of
            country sample selection and expenditure classification in
            explaining these conflicting results. It investigates a set
            of fast-growing countries versus a mix of countries with
            different growth patterns. The regression specifications
            include different components of public expenditure and total
            fiscal revenues, always considering the overall government
            budget constraint. Total public spending is first
            disaggregated using a definition that classifies public
            spending as productive versus unproductive components, an a
            priori criterion that is based on the expected impact of
            public spending items on the private sector production
            function. After empirically confirming the validity of this
            definition in the panel analysis, the authors suggest and
            test an alternative definition of "core" public
            spending that may be more appropriate for developing
            countries. The empirical analysis shows that the link
            between growth and public spending, especially the
            productive and "core" components, is strong only
            for the fast-growing group. In addition, macroeconomic
            stability, openness, and private sector investment are
            significant in the fast-growing group, which points to the
            existence of an economic policy environment more conducive
            to growth in the first group of countries. The authors
            conclude that public spending can be a significant
            determinant of growth for countries that are capable of
            using funds for productive purposes.
Estimates of trade-related
            adjustment costs in Syria
The scope and complexity of
            international trading arrangements in the Middle East, as
            well as their spotty historical record of success,
            underscores the urgent need for an adequate understanding of
            the relative costs and benefits of participation in
            preferential trading arrangements and, more generally, of
            changes in domestic import regimes. This paper seeks to
            address this problem by providing estimates of the
            adjustment costs associated with two broad classes of
            hypothetical trade policy scenarios for Syria: participation
            in preferential trading arrangements, and changes in the
            domestic import regime. The authors find that the revenue
            consequences of the first scenario may be substantial. Their
            analysis of the second scenario suggests that the number of
            tariff bands can be reduced, while ensuring revenue
            neutrality, via the introduction of a value added tax of
            sufficient but reasonable size.
Child ability and household human
            capital investment decisions in Burkina Faso
Using data they collected in rural
            Burkina Faso, the authors examine how children's
            cognitive abilities influence resource constrained
            households' decisions to invest in their education.
            This paper uses a direct measure of child ability for all
            primary school-aged children, regardless of current school
            enrollment. The analysis explicitly incorporates direct
            measures of the ability of each childs siblings (both
            absolute and relative measures) to show how sibling rivalry
            exerts an impact on the parents decision of whether and how
            much to invest in their childs education. The findings
            indicate that children with one standard deviation higher
            own ability are 16 percent more likely to be currently
            enrolled, while having a higher ability sibling lowers
            current enrollment by 16 percent and having two higher
            ability siblings lowers enrollment by 30 percent. The
            results are robust to addressing the potential reverse
            causality of schooling influencing child ability measures
            and using alternative cognitive tests to measure ability.
Crisis preparedness and debt
            management in low income countries : strengthening
            institutions and policy frameworks
The magnitude of the public liabilities
            incurred as a result of the unprecedented government action
            in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and the
            consequences of exiting from the projected high debt
            scenario, have become a major source of concern about a
            future sovereign debt crisis. As Low-Income Countries (LICs)
            face unique challenges in debt management (DeM) due to their
            more limited financing sources and higher capacity
            constraints, their ability to successfully manage their
            public debt burdens effectively through a crisis of this
            magnitude is far from assured. Therefore, the challenges of
            the last two years will require a re-evaluation of existing
            DeM strategies in LICs, focusing on the identification of
            institutional weaknesses and the assessment and mitigation
            of potential risk. It is in this context that this paper
            examines the application of two global public goods in LICs:
            the Debt Management Performance Assessment (DeMPA) and the
            Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS) tools. The
            results of the application of these tools from 2007-2009
            provide valuable information to policymakers and other
            stakeholders on the development of sound public DeM
            practices and analytical capacity, with the goal of
            strengthening the public balance sheet and reducing
            vulnerability to financial crises.
The World Bank's publication record
The World Bank has produced a huge
            volume of books and papers on development -- 20,000
            publications spanning decades, but growing appreciably since
            1990. This paper finds evidence that many of these
            publications have influenced development thinking, as
            indicated by the citations found using Google Scholar and in
            bibliographic data bases. However, the authors also find
            that a non-negligible share of the Bank's publications
            have received no citations, suggesting that they have had
            little scholarly influence, though they may well have had
            influence on non-academic audiences. Individually-authored
            journal articles have been the main channel for scholarly
            influence. The volume of the Bank's research output on
            development is greater than that of any of the comparator
            institutions identified, including other international
            agencies and the top universities in economics. The
            bibliometric indicators of the quality and influence of the
            Bank's portfolio of scholarly publications are on a par
            with, or better than, most of the top universities.
Entrepreneurship and the extensive
            margin in export growth : a microeconomic accounting of
            Costa Rica's export growth during 1997-2007
The literature on the correlation
            between exports and economic development runs deep into the
            history of economic thought and permeates policy debates.
            This paper studies the microeconomic structure of export
            growth in Costa Rica, with special emphasis on the extensive
            margin of trade, encompassing new exporting firms, new
            products, and new export markets, as well as the unit values
            of new versus incumbent products. The data suggest that few
            new firms survive the test of exporting -- more than 40
            percent of firms exit export activities after one year --
            and this firm turnover is associated with a steady
            deterioration of export unit values (prices). Furthermore,
            most new export products are associated with product
            switching by incumbent exporting firms. The typical new
            product introduced by incumbent firms tended to be priced at
            about 90 percent of the unit values of incumbent products.
            In contrast, the usual suspected obstacles to export growth,
            such as the inability of small firms to enter exporting
            activities or to grow their exports, appear to be important
            sources of export growth. In fact, the smallest exporting
            firms experienced the fastest growth in their export values.
            Some of these results are compared with those from other
            countries that have been examined in related literature.
Entrepreneurship and the extensive
            margin in export growth : a microeconomic accounting of
            Costa Rica's export growth during 1997-2007
WPS5376 Policy Research Working Paper 5376 Entrepreneurship and the Extensive Margin in Export Growth A Microeconomic Accounting of Costa Rica’s Export Growth during 1997–2007 _Daniel Lederman Andrés Rodríguez-Clare Daniel Yi Xu_ The World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean Region Office of the Chief Economist & Development Research Group Trade and Integration Team July 2010
CATalytic insurance : the case of
            natural disasters
Why should countries buy expensive
            catastrophe insurance? Abstracting from risk aversion or
            hedging motives, this paper shows that catastrophe insurance
            may have a catalytic role on external finance. Such effect
            is particularly strong in those middle-income countries that
            face financial constraints when hit by a shock or in its
            anticipation. Insurance makes defaults less appealing,
            relaxes countries' borrowing constraint, increases
            their creditworthiness, and enhances their access to capital
            markets. Catastrophe lending facilities providing
            "cheap" reconstruction funds in the aftermath of a
            natural disaster weaken but do not eliminate the demand for insurance.
Climate change and trade policy :
            from mutual destruction to mutual support
Contrary to what is still often
            believed, the climate and trade communities have a lot in
            common: a common problem (a global "public good"),
            common foes (vested interests using protection for slowing
            down climate change policies), and common friends (firms
            delivering goods, services, and equipment that are both
            cleaner and cheaper). They have thus many reasons to
            buttress each other. The climate community would enormously
            benefit from adopting the principle of "national
            treatment," which would legitimize and discipline the
            use of carbon border tax adjustment and the principle of
            "most-favored nation," which would ban carbon
            tariffs. The main effect of this would be to fuel a dual
            world economy of clean countries trading between themselves
            and dirty countries trading between themselves at a great
            cost for climate change. And the trade community would
            enormously benefit from a climate community capable of
            designing instruments that would support the adjustment
            efforts to be made by carbon-intensive firms much better
            than instruments such as antidumping or safeguards, which
            have proved to be ineffective and perverse. That said,
            implementing these principles will be difficult. The paper
            focuses on two key problems. First, the way carbon border
            taxes are defined has a huge impact on the joint outcome
            from climate change, trade, and development perspectives.
            Second, the multilateral climate change regime could easily
            become too complex to be manageable. Focusing on
            carbon-intensive sectors and building "clusters"
            of production processes considered as having "like
            carbon-intensity" are the two main ways for keeping the
            regime manageable. Developing them in a multilateral
            framework would make them more transparent and unbiased.