rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Poverty correlates and
            indicator-based targeting in Eastern Europe and the Former
            Soviet Union
The authors compare poverty in three
            Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland)
            with poverty in three countries of the former Soviet Union
            (Estonia, Kyrgyz Republic, and Russia).  They find striking
            differences between the post-Soviet and Eastern European
            experiences with poverty and targeting.  Among patterns
            detected: a) Poverty in Eastern Europe is significantly
            lower than in former Soviet Union countries.  b) Rural
            poverty is greater than urban poverty.  c) In Eastern Europe
            there is a strong correlation between poverty incidence and
            the number of children in a household; in the former Soviet
            Union countries this is less pronounced, except in Russia.
            d) There is a gender and age dimension to poverty in some
            countries.  In single-person households, especially of elder
            women, the poverty rate is very high (except in Poland) and
            poverty is more severe.  The same is true in pensioner
            households (except in Poland).  In Poland the pension system
            has adequate reach.  e) Poverty rates are highest among
            people who have lost their connection with the labor market
            and live on social transfers (other than pensions) or other
            nonearned income.  But through sheer mass, the largest group
            of poor people is the working poor -- especially workers
            with little education (primary education or less) or
            outdated vocational or technical education. Only those with
            special skills or university education escape poverty in
            great numbers, thanks to the demand for their skills from
            the newly emerging private sector.  f) The poverty gap is
            remarkably uniform in Eastern European countries, especially
            Hungary and Poland, suggesting that social safety nets have
            prevented the emergence of deep pockets of poverty.  This is
            much less true in the former Soviet Union, where those with
            the highest poverty rate also have the largest poverty gap.
            In the short to medium term, creating employment in the
            informal sector will generate a larger payoff than creating
            jobs in the formal (still to be privatized) sectors, so
            programs to help (prospective) entrepreneurs should take
            center stage in poverty alleviation programs.
The cost and performance of paid
            agricultural extension services : the case of agricultural
            technology transfer in Nicaragua
Budgets for extension services have been
            reduced in many countries.  One response to these reductions
            in public services in some countries has been to privatize
            extension services - with extension services provided for a
            fee, by either public agencies or private companies. Under
            the new approach, producers become clients instead of
            beneficiaries.  The authors examine ways to measure the cost
            of providing paid-extension services and its performance and
            apply these indicators to data on Nicaragua, where paid
            extension has existed for several years.  Data were
            insufficient to compare the quality of privately and
            publicly provided extension services, but available data
            suggest that the costs of extension have declined over time.
            Results suggest that paid extension is feasible and has a
            positive impact, even in a relatively poor country such as
            Nicaragua.  The national system for agricultural
            technology-transfer services was redesigned to include three
            main modules: mass media and free demonstrations; cofinanced
            extension services; and private extension services.  The
            relatively high cost recovery rates in Nicaragua and the
            economic performance of the two paid programs show that even
            poor farmers are willing to pay for a service that improves
            their economic efficiency and ability to earn a living.  To
            the surprise of everyone involved, Nicaragua's producer
            clients understood that without cost-sharing, the system
            would not endure.
The 1997 pension reform in Mexico
In 1995-96, Mexico shifted to a
            multipillar approach to old-age security.  The objective of
            the publicly managed first pillar is redistribution; a
            fully-funded second pillar provides for mandatory individual
            savings accounts and competitive but exclusive and
            specialized pension fund management; the third pillar is
            voluntary savings.  The package could provide effective
            income security and protection against old-age poverty, in a
            manner compatible with goals of savings and economic growth.
            It offers Mexico's first real opportunity to shift to a
            defined-distribution model and to expand and deepen
            institutional investors - although in the short term its
            impact on capital markets will be limited by the need to
            focus on the security of pension fund investments.  The
            reformed systems provides for a probably irreversibly shift
            toward private intermediation of most domestic investment
            funds.  Further efforts to improve the pension system should
            encourage efficiency, confidence, and economies of scale.
            There are weaknesses in Mexico's pension design -
            especially the limited scope for workers in the private
            sector, the continued role of the housing-fund component,
            and the moral hazard implications of the lifetime-switch
            option.  But Mexico achieved radical reform with its pension
            system within a difficult political and economic
            environment.  And the timing of the reform was appropriate.
            The age structure in the existing system was very young, so
            coverage could increase.   Also, reform took place after the
            inflationary 1980s and the recent financial crisis, which
            eroded the real value of old pensions, the acquired pension
            rights of the transition generation, and the minimum pension
            for minimum-wage retirees.  If returns on invested
            contributions are high enough, much of the transition
            generation will choose the defined-contribution alternative
            over the old pay-as-you-go system.  This will release the
            government from pension liabilities, except for the minimum
            pension guarantee for new affiliates.  Ensuring the
            system's long-term success will require improved
            financial performance from INFONAVIT, the authorities'
            political will and regulations, and the system's
            flexibility in the face of changing circumstances.
Second thoughts on second moments :
            panel evidence on asset-based models of currency crises
The literature on speculative attacks
            has been given new impetus by the collapse of the European
            currency arrangements beginning in 1992, by the Mexican peso
            crisis and after-effects in 1994, and most recently by
            speculative attacks across Asia. One stand of this
            literature stresses the importance of imbalances in stocks
            of monetary and financial aggregates rather than traditional
            "flow" factors, arguing that massive, volatile
            capital flows have become a dominant feature of the global
            landscape, and that exchange-rate levels and current
            accounts have not proved convincing as proximate causes of
            crises. The authors test two popular asset-based models of
            speculative attacks -- Krugman and Rotemberg (1992) and
            Calvo and Mendoza (1995) -- especially their emphasis on the
            second moments of monetary aggregates. Analyzing monthly
            panels of appropriate countries in three regions, they find
            evidence for the importance of money/reserve ratios
            predicted by both models, and their variance as predicted by
            Calvo and Mendoza. But the variance of velocity does not
            appear to be important, casting some doubt on the
            Krugman-Rotemberg target zone framework and the
            interpretation of the Calvo-Mendoza results.
Are labor markets in developing
            countries dualistic
There is a long tradition of viewing as
            disadvantaged the roughly 40 percent of workers in
            developing countries who are unprotected by labor
            legislation and work in small "informal" firms.
            The author offers an alternative to traditional views of the
            relationship between formal and informal labor markets: For
            many workers, inefficiencies in present labor codes and
            relatively low levels of human capital (labor productivity)
            may make employment in the informal sector more desirable.
            He offers the first study of worker transitions among
            sectors, using detailed panel data from Mexico, and finds
            little evidence to support the traditional dualistic view.
            He shows that traditional earning differentials cannot prove
            or disprove segmentation in developing countries, and
            patterns of worker mobility do not suggest a rigid labor
            market -- or one segmented into formal and informal
            divisions.  It is possible that the market is dualistic in
            the sense used in the industrial world, but the division
            between good jobs and bad jobs seems to cut across issues of formality.
The structure of labor markets in
            developing countries : time series evidence on competing views
Competing conceptions of the large,
            unprotected, "informal" workforce in developing
            countries differ greatly in their implications for the labor
            reform considered to be essential complements to trade
            liberalization and "fair" competition in
            international trade.  Traditionally, the informal sector is
            viewed as the disadvantaged segment of a dual labor market
            segmented by legislated or union-induced rigidities and high
            labor costs in the protected (or "informal")
            sector.  In this view, the size of the informal sector is a
            testament to the inefficiencies in labor allocation and the
            magnitude of required reform.  In cyclical downturns, the
            informal sector is thought to absorb displaced workers from
            the formal sector (with informal earnings falling relative
            to those in the formal sector) and then to contract again
            during recovery as the queue for "good jobs"
            shortens again.  A recent, related view postulates a
            long-term trend in which large enterprises, confronted by
            heightened global competition, increasingly subcontract to
            unprotected workers as a way to reduce costs and gain
            flexibility.  This is particularly relevant in the debate
            about establishing common labor standards in regional trade
            agreements.  The author reexamines the traditional view of
            the dual labor market by studying the dynamics between the
            formal and informal sectors across a business cycle and a
            period of trade liberalization in Mexico (1987-93). He shows
            conventional comparisions of earnings, even across time, to
            be unreliable tests for segmentation.  As an alternative, he
            shows that transitions on informal employment, the size of
            the informal sector, and levels of mobility to be
            procyclical, increasing with upturns, and decreasing with
            recessions.  He tests for, and finds, however, some evidence
            of queuing to enter formal employment.  Overall, he
            contends, the informal sector behaves as an unregulated
            entrepreneurial sector rather than the disadvantaged wing of
            a dual labor market.  There is evidence of increased
            subcontracting over time, with trade liberalization, but it
            is not clear that workers are worse off as a result.
The size, origins, and character of
            Mongolia's informal sector during the transition
The explosion of informal
            entrepreneurial activity during Mongolia's transition
            to a market economy represents one of the most visible signs
            of change in this expansive but sparsely populated Asian
            country.  To deepen our understanding of Mongolia's
            informal sector during the transition, the author merges
            anecdotal experience from qualitative interviews with hard
            data from a survey of 770 informals in Ulaanbaatar, from a
            national household survey, and from official employment
            statistics.  Using varied sources, the author generates
            rudimentary estimates of the magnitude of, and trends in,
            informal activity in Mongolia, estimates that are
            surprisingly consistent with each other.  He evaluates four
            types of reasons for the burst of informal activity in
            Mongolia since 1990: 1) The crisis of the early and
            mid-1990s, during which large pools of labor were released
            from formal employment.  2) Rural to urban migration.  3)
            The "market's" reallocation of resources
            toward areas neglected under the old system: services such
            as distribution and transportation.  4) The institutional
            environments faced by the formal and informal sectors:
            hindering growth of the formal sector, facilitating entry
            for the informal sector.  Formal labor markets haven't
            absorbed the labor made available by the crisis and by
            migration and haven't fully responded to the demand for
            new services.  The relative ease of entering the informal
            market explains that market's great expansion. The
            relative difficulty of entering formal markets is not random
            but is driven by policy.  Improving policies in the formal
            sector could afford the same ease of entry there as is
            currently being experienced in the informal sector.
Half a century of development
            economics : a review based on the "Handbook of
            Development Economics"
Development economics has made
            remarkable progress in 50 years, says the author,
            summarizing changes in the field since Nehru's first
            proposals for an independent India.  Synthesizing insights
            about changes in the field from the many contributors to the
            "Handbook of Development Economics," the author
            observes (among other things): 1) Different schools of
            thought may dominate, but the range of research has
            broadened. Economics has "hardened" as its
            practitioners have learned to use data more carefully and to
            reason more rigorously. 2) The policy message has been
            turned upside down. Gone is the idea that development is
            industrialization and that the main policy problem is to
            manage the interface between country and city.  Today
            urbanization and industrialization are viewed as mere
            components of an integrated transformation, in which the
            expansion of foreign trade is central. Traditional
            institutions are viewed with far more understanding, because
            overhasty modernization has often proved counterproductive.
            3) More than ever, development is seen as a "whole
            replacement" process, the key to which is mastery of
            Northern technology--now understood to be both simpler and
            more complex than previously thought. Simpler, because much
            technology is uncomplicated, and complex because even simple
            technology requires ingenuity and a costly investment in
            adaptations.  4) There has been a radical change in
            economists' view of market agents and policymakers.
            Gone are the days when economists thought their advice
            should be aimed mainly at planners. Policymakers are utility
            maximizers, too. Employees of state enterprises coalesce
            into powerful interest groups that block efforts to raise
            productivity. The new thinking is sometimes modified by
            evoking the vague concept of "governance," under
            which the economist's view is to help design a system
            of interacting state and private institutions that, led by
            the state, cooperate in achieving social goals. Whether
            something useful will come from this line of thinking
            remains to be seen.  The author detects major gaps in
            economists' undrstanding of development, suggesting a
            particular need for further study of collective action (a
            far more pervasive component of human action than is
            realized) and the selection of roles by individuals and the
            costly investment this entails (a concept that may shed
            light on Schumpeter's well-known but little-studied entrepreneur).
Development expenditures and the
            local financing constraint
Focusing on the local financing
            constraint sheds new light on issues of aid, fiscal reform,
            and the management of public spending. The fungibility of
            aid need not translate into resource flows to fill the local
            financing gap. Indeed, project aid can widen the local
            financing gap. To augment direct local financing of
            development, aid must be nonproject aid that can generate
            local currency. In the longer term, project aid's
            effect on local financing lies in its impact on growth and
            on expanding the base for tax revenues, seigniorage, and
            borrowing. When inadequate local financing limits project
            implementation and effective use of aid, local currency
            funds are more valuable than project aid, at the margin--and
            it becomes important to reallocate local funds, to leverage
            project aid, and to raise the quality of investment
            projects. A persistent gap in local financing complicates
            programs of fiscal reform. For such programs to be
            effective, the local financing gap has to be confronted
            directly by matching planned local fund expenditures against
            expected local fund receipts. This requires a transparent
            database to develop indicators and to monitor the allocation
            and use of local resources.
The 1994 currency crisis in Turkey
As a result of Turkey's currency
            crisis in 1994, output fell 6 percent, inflation rose to
            three-digit levels, the Central Bank lost half of its
            reserves, and the exchange rate (against the US dollar)
            depreciated by more than half in the first three months of
            the year. The author presents stylized facts associated with
            the government's debt-financing mechanisms and other
            relevant macroeconomic variables to show the system's
            inherent fragility at the time of the crisis and to clarify
            the extent to which different factors contributed to the
            crisis. The author argues that huge requirements for public
            sector borrowing in 1993 and early 1994, combined with major
            policy errors in financing the deficit, led to the currency
            crash. As a result of interventions to control interest
            rates and treasury borrowing at the same time, the market
            for domestic borrowing almost disappeared, the government
            turned to monetization for financing, and the value of the
            overappreciated Turkish lira plummeted.
Capital markets responses to
            environmental performance in developing countries
Firms in developing countries are often
            said to have no incentives to invest in pollution control
            because they typically face weak monitoring and enforcement
            of environmental regulations.  But the inability of formal
            institutions to control pollution through fines and
            penalties may not be as serious an impediment to pollution
            control as is generally argued, contend the authors.
            Capital markets may react negatively to news of adverse
            environmental incidents (such as spills or violations of
            permits) as well as positively to the announcement that a
            firm is using cleaner technologies.  The authors assess
            whether capital markets in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and the
            Philippines react to the announcement of firm-specific
            environmental news.  They show that: I) Capital markets
            react positively ( the firms' market value increases)
            to the announcement of rewards and explicit recognition of
            superior environmental performance.  ii) They react
            negatively (the firms' value decreases) to
            citizens' complaints.  Environmental regulators in
            developing countries could 1) harness market forces by
            introducing structured programs to release firm-specific
            information about environmental performance, and 2) empower
            communities and stakeholders through environmental education programs.