rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Does access to finance matter in
            microenterprise growth evidence from Bangladesh
In less-developed economies such as
            Bangladesh, the farm sector is the major source of
            employment and income, while the rural nonfarm sector
            provides as an additional source of income. But the rural
            nonfarm sector increasingly plays an important role in
            fostering the development of the rural economy. A
            significant share of this sector is made up of
            microenterprise activities, which requires investment and
            access to adequate funds. This paper investigates the role
            access to finance plays in promoting the efficiency and
            growth of microenterprise activities. The findings suggest
            that households engaged in microenterprise activities, in
            addition to farm and other nonfarm activities, are much
            better off (in terms of income, expenditure and poverty)
            than those not engaged in such activities. Fewer than 10
            percent of the enterprises have access to institutional
            finance (formal banks or microcredit), although the rate of
            return on microenterprise investments is more than
            sufficient (36 percent per year) to repay institutional
            loans. The research suggests that credit constraints may
            reduce the enterprises' profit margin by as much as
            13.6 percent per year. As the returns to microenterprise
            investment are found to be high, microfinance institutions
            can play a larger role in supporting microenterprise growth
            in Bangladesh.
Trends in developing country trade 1980-2010
This paper reviews trends and patterns
            in developing countries' trade from 1980 to 2010.
            During the 30-year span, world trade expanded rapidly,
            especially in developing countries in the last decade. A
            similar picture emerges in trade in services. These overall
            trends, however, mask different trade patterns during some
            of the time periods and among different developing countries
            and groups. For example, except for Asia, the 1980s were
            pretty much a "lost" decade for many developing
            countries and groups. But that changed in the 1990s and
            2000s, with trade by all major developing countries growing
            faster than developed countries. From 1980 to 2000, trade by
            Least Developed Countries grew much more slowly than that of
            developing countries as a whole. But those countries saw the
            fastest growth in trade in the following decade. This strong
            overall trade performance -- with some exceptions (for
            example Sub-Sahara Africa in the manufacturing trade) --
            raises questions about sustainability, trade policy and the
            architecture of the trading system.
Political reforms and public policy
            : evidence from agricultural and food policies
This paper studies the effect of
            political regime transitions on public policy using a new
            data set on global agricultural and food policies over a
            50-year period (including data from 74 developing and
            developed countries over the 19552005 period). The authors
            find evidence that democratization leads to a reduction of
            agricultural taxation, an increase in agricultural
            subsidization, or both. The empirical findings are
            consistent with the predictions of the median voter model
            because political transitions occurred primarily in
            countries with a majority of farmers. The results are robust
            to different specifications, estimation approaches, and
            variable definitions.
Intrahousehold bargaining and
            resource allocation in developing countries
Many key development outcomes depend on
            women's ability to negotiate favorable intrahousehold
            allocations of resources. Yet it has been difficult to
            clearly identify which policies can increase women's
            bargaining power and result in better outcomes. This paper
            reviews both the analytical frameworks and the empirical
            evidence on the importance of women's bargaining power.
            It argues that there is sufficient evidence from rigorous
            studies to conclude that women's bargaining power does
            affect outcomes. But in many specific instances, the
            quantitative evidence cannot rigorously identify causality.
            In these cases, a combination of quantitative and
            qualitative evidence may suggest policy levers. Taken
            together, there are sufficient data in place to support a
            greatly expanded focus on intrahousehold outcomes and
            bargaining power. Additional data at the individual level
            will allow for further and more detailed research. A growing
            literature supports the current conventional wisdom --
            namely, that the patterns of evidence suggest that
            women's education, incomes, and assets all are
            important aspects of women's bargaining power.
Buying votes vs. supplying public
            services : political incentives to under-invest in pro-poor policies
This paper uses unique survey data to
            provide, for the first time in the literature, direct
            evidence that vote buying in poor economies is associated
            with lower provision of public services that
            disproportionately benefit the poor. Various features of the
            data and the institutional context allow the interpretation
            of this correlation as the equilibrium policy consequence of
            clientelist politics, ruling out alternate explanations
            (such as, for example, poverty driving both vote buying and
            health outcomes). The data come from the Philippines, a
            country context that allows for measuring vote buying during
            elections and services delivered by the administrative unit
            controlled by winners of those elections. The data reveal a
            significant, robust negative correlation between vote buying
            and the delivery of primary health services. In places where
            households report more vote buying, government records show
            that municipalities invest less in basic health services for
            mothers and children; and, quite strikingly, as a summary
            measure of weak service delivery performance, a higher
            percentage of children are severely under-weight.
Cash transfers and child schooling :
            evidence from a randomized evaluation of the role of conditionality
The authors conduct a randomized
            experiment in rural Burkina Faso to estimate the impact of
            alternative cash transfer delivery mechanisms on education.
            The two-year pilot program randomly distributed cash
            transfers that were either conditional or unconditional.
            Families under the conditional schemes were required to have
            their children ages 7-15 enrolled in school and attending
            classes regularly. There were no such requirements under the
            unconditional programs. The results indicate that
            unconditional and conditional cash transfer programs have a
            similar impact increasing the enrollment of children who are
            traditionally favored by parents for school participation,
            including boys, older children, and higher ability children.
            However, the conditional transfers are significantly more
            effective than the unconditional transfers in improving the
            enrollment of "marginal children" who are
            initially less likely to go to school, such as girls,
            younger children, and lower ability children. Thus,
            conditionality plays a critical role in benefiting children
            who are less likely to receive investments from their parents.
Determinants of export growth at the
            extensive and intensive margins : evidence from product and
            firm-level data for Pakistan
As globalization progresses and
            investment is mobile, it is ever more important for policy
            makers to understand drivers of growth and exports at the
            micro-level: Which products are being produced and exported?
            Which firms populate the domestic economy? Are they
            successful in exporting? How are firms affected by exogenous
            shocks and policy intervention? Through the use of
            descriptive statistics and econometric analysis, this paper
            assesses the trade competitiveness of Pakistan using
            micro-data. The case of Pakistan is interesting since the
            country's recent trade policy has reverted to a
            protectionist path since the mid-2000s and trade performance
            is stagnating, as indicated by a decrease in its
            trade-to-gross domestic product ratio over the past decade
            and low levels of sophistication of exports. The main
            findings of the paper are the following. Like many other
            countries, Pakistan posts a high concentration of exports in
            the hands of a limited number of large exporters. The
            dominance of few exporters has increased over time and it
            seems associated with the changes in trade policy. Low rates
            of product innovation and experimentation and a low ability
            of the Pakistani export sector to enter into new higher
            growth sectors are other features emerging from the data.
            All in all, the mediocre performance seems to be associated
            with internal problems with trade-related incentives,
            business environment, and governance, in addition to the
            well-known external constraints.
Is foreign aid fungible evidence
            from the education and health sectors
This paper adopts a new approach to the
            issue of foreign aid fungibility. In contrast to most
            existing empirical studies, panel data are employed that
            contain information on the specific purposes for which aid
            is given. This allows linking aid that is provided for
            education and health purposes to recipient public spending
            in these sectors. In addition, aid flows that are recorded
            on a recipient's budget are distinguished from those
            that are not recorded on budget, and the previous failure to
            differentiate between on- and off-budget aid is shown to
            produce biased estimates of fungibility. Sector program aid
            is the measure of on-budget aid, whereas technical
            cooperation serves as a proxy for off-budget aid. The
            appropriate treatment of off-budget aid leads to lower
            fungibility estimates than those reported in many previous
            studies. Specifically, in both sectors and across a range of
            specifications, technical cooperation, which is the largest
            component of total education and health aid, leads to, at
            most, a small displacement of recipient public expenditures.
Integrating gravity: the role of
            scale invariance in gravity models of spatial interactions
            and trade
This paper revisits the ubiquitous
            bi-proportional gravity model and investigates the reasons
            why different theoretical frameworks may lead to the same
            empirical formula. The generic gravity equation possesses
            scale invariance symmetries that constrain possible
            theoretical explanations based on optimal allocation
            principles, such as neoclassical or probabilistic
            frameworks. These constraints imply that a representative
            consumer's utilities must be separable, and that an
            entropy model is the only consistent maximum likelihood
            allocation of a matrix of flows between origin and
            destination. The paper explores the feasibility of wider
            classes of non-scale invariant gravity equations, where
            gravity is no longer bi-proportional by including nonlinear
            interactions between trade costs and fundamental country
            factors such as economic size. It shows that such extensions
            are feasible but that they do not result in a significant
            improvement in the explanatory power of the empirical analysis.
Service sector reform and
            manufacturing productivity : evidence from Indonesia
This paper examines the extent to which
            policy restrictions on foreign direct investment in the
            Indonesian service sector affected the performance of
            manufacturers over the period 1997-2009. It uses firm-level
            data on manufacturers' total factor productivity and
            the OECD's foreign direct investment Regulatory
            Restrictiveness Index, combined with data from Indonesias
            input-output tables regarding the intensity with which
            manufacturing sectors use services inputs. Controlling for
            firm-level fixed effects and other relevant policy
            indicators, it finds, first, that relaxing policies toward
            foreign direct investment in the service sector was
            associated with improvements in perceived performance of the
            service sector. Second, it finds that this relaxation in
            service sector foreign direct investment policies accounted
            for 8 percent of the observed increase in
            manufacturers' total factor productivity over the
            period. The total factor productivity gains accrue
            disproportionately to those firms that are relatively more
            productive, and that gains are related to the relaxation of
            restrictions in both the transport and electricity, gas, and
            water sectors. Total factor productivity gains are
            associated, in particular, with the relaxation of foreign
            equity limits, screening, and prior approval requirements,
            but less so with discriminatory regulations that prevent
            multinationals from hiring key personnel abroad.
Notes on financial system
            development and political intervention
The paper studies the impact of
            political intervention on a financial system that consists
            of banks and financial markets and develops over time. In
            this financial system, banks and markets exhibit three forms
            of interaction: they compete, they complement each other,
            and they co-evolve. Coevolution is generated by two new
            ingredients of financial system architecture relative to the
            existing theories: securitization and risk-sensitive bank
            capital. The authors show that securitization propagates
            banking advances to the financial market, permitting market
            evolution to be driven by bank evolution, and market
            advances are transmitted to banks through bank capital. Then
            they examine how politicians determine the nature of
            political intervention designed to expand credit
            availability. The authors find that political intervention
            in banking exhibits a U-shaped pattern, where it is most
            notable in the early stage of financial system development
            (through bank capital subsidy in exchange for state
            ownership of banks) and in the advanced stage (through
            direct lending regulation). Despite expanding credit access,
            political intervention results in an increase in financial
            system risk and does not contribute to financial system
            evolution. Numerous policy implications are drawn out.
How much international variation in
            child height can sanitation explain
Physical height is an important economic
            variable reflecting health and human capital. Puzzlingly,
            however, differences in average height across developing
            countries are not well explained by differences in wealth.
            In particular, children in India are shorter, on average,
            than children in Africa who are poorer, on average, a
            paradox called "the Asian enigma" which has
            received much attention from economists. This paper provides
            the first documentation of a quantitatively important
            gradient between child height and sanitation that can
            statistically explain a large fraction of international
            height differences. This association between sanitation and
            human capital is robustly stable, even after accounting for
            other heterogeneity, such as in GDP. The author applies
            three complementary empirical strategies to identify the
            association between sanitation and child height:
            country-level regressions across 140 country-years in 65
            developing countries; within-country analysis of differences
            over time within Indian districts; and econometric
            decomposition of the India-Africa height differences  in
            child-level data. Open defecation, which is exceptionally
            widespread in India, can account for much or all of the
            excess stunting in India.
Making performance budgeting reform
            work : a case study of Korea
Performance budgeting is considered one
            of the essential elements of public financial management
            reform and has been adopted in many countries. However, it
            continues to present a significant challenge within the
            budget process. This case study draws from change management
            theories to tell the inside story of performance budgeting
            reform in the Republic of Korea, including the background of
            the reform, the formation of the reform team, and how the
            team overcame resistance among stakeholders to implement and
            institutionalize the performance budgeting system. Policy
            implications include the importance of (1) strong support
            from top decision makers and (2) customization of the
            performance budgeting system to accommodate a country's
            cultural and socio-economic characteristics. The Korean case
            also demonstrates that stable, sustainable performance
            budgeting reform requires capacity building of relevant
            stakeholders and, sometimes, significant restructuring of
            organizations to accommodate the new systems.
Vietnam's evolving poverty map
            : patterns and implications for policy
This paper uses small area estimation
            techniques to update Vietnam's province and
            district-level poverty map to 2009. It finds that poverty
            rates continue to be highest in the northern and central
            mountainous regions, where ethnic minorities make up a large
            fraction of the population. Poverty has fallen in most
            provinces and districts over this decade, but the pace of
            poverty reduction has been least pronounced in those
            localities with high initial poverty or inequality levels.
            As a result, poverty rates have become more spatially
            concentrated over time, which is consistent with widely
            observed growth processes linked to agglomeration. The
            authors hypothesize that this makes geographic targeting of
            the poor more relevant as a means to re-balance growing
            welfare disparities between geographic areas. Simulations
            indicate that in both 1999 and 2009, geographic targeting
            for poverty alleviation improves upon a uniform lump-sum
            transfer and this becomes more evident the more spatially
            disaggregated the target populations. The analysis further
            indicates that the gains from geographic targeting have
            become more pronounced over time in Vietnam. Although
            poverty reduction in Vietnam has been impressive, further
            progress may thus warrant increased attention to geographic targeting.
Productivity, innovation and growth
            in Sri Lanka : an empirical investigation
This study investigates the impact of
            key business environment indicators on productivity,
            innovation, and growth in Sri Lanka through a cluster-level
            productivity analysis, a firm-level total factor
            productivity analysis, and a firm-level innovation analysis.
            For the cluster-level productivity analysis (as measured by
            output and value added per worker), it combines two
            established data sources in a novel way by importing average
            'industry-size-location' cluster-level business
            environment variables from the World Bank Enterprise Survey
            to the comprehensive Sri Lanka Census of Industry
            productivity data available for similar clusters of
            enterprises. For the firm-level total factor productivity
            analysis, it compares data from the 2011 World Bank
            Enterprise Survey with those from 2004. For the firm-level
            innovation analysis, it compares findings from the 2011
            World Bank Enterprise Survey with a representative sample of
            enterprises collected as part of the Sri Lanka Longitudinal
            Survey of Enterprises. The empirical findings highlight the
            importance -- for cluster-level productivity, firm-level
            total factor productivity, and innovation -- of connectivity
            to global knowledge (reflected by one or more of export
            participation, directly imported inputs, foreign ownership,
            and use of the internet), availability of skills, access to
            finance, and competition. The paper also presents evidence,
            under the assumption that the samples are statistically
            representative, that both allocative and average technical
            efficiency have improved, with allocative efficiency
            increasing roughly four-fold between 2003 and 2010, and
            accounting for the overwhelming share of the aggregate
            increase in total factor productivity over this time period.
            Most of the improvement in allocative efficiency has
            occurred among larger firms, and in large rather than small cities.