rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Dynamic relationship between
            corruption and youth unemployment : empirical evidences from
            a system GMM approach
This paper addresses the causal
            relationship between corruption and youth unemployment from
            two different perspectives. The discussion starts by asking
            how the corruption practices within government institutions
            that encourage the payment of bribes to access the job
            opportunities contribute to reducing the efficiency of the
            resources (labor force) allocations. The resources are
            diverted from the most productive economic sectors toward
            those (usually less efficient economic sectors) where
            self-motivated officials have more discretionary power in
            selecting the candidates who are less qualified for the job.
            The challenge is to examine how bribed bureaucrats are more
            concerned by their own personal interests at the expense of
            national welfare when positively reacting to the highest
            bribe payers. Second question addressed is why the resulting
            mismatching between supply and demand in the labor market
            tends to sustain its underlying causes (i.e., bribes) by
            giving more incentive to new agents and economic actors to
            adopt these practices. Using a system GMM approach that
            simultaneously account for the dynamic effect between
            perceived bribery among officials and the youth unemployment
            rates, the paper finds that, after controlling for various
            macroeconomic and institutional factors, the development of
            corruption practices tend to increase the unemployment rate
            among youth and educated job seekers which in turn
            contribute to sustain those unlawful practices by forcing
            the latter to bribe rent seeking government officials in
            order to secure a job.
New estimates of extreme poverty for children
This paper uses household surveys from
            89 countries to estimate the rate of extreme poverty among
            children in the developing world. The estimates are based on
            the same surveys and welfare measures as official World Bank
            poverty estimates. Of children under age 18 years, 19.5
            percent are estimated to live on less than $1.90 per day, as
            opposed to 9.2 percent of adults ages 18 and above. Poverty
            rates are high for children ages 0 to 4 years, slightly
            higher among ages 5 to 9 years, and steadily decline for
            successively older age groups. The analysis also examines
            the sensitivity of age-based poverty estimates to the use of
            alternative household equivalence scales when adjusting the
            international poverty line accordingly. Child poverty rates
            remain above 17 percent, and are greater than adult poverty
            rates, for all reasonable two-parameter equivalence scales.
The more stringent, the better
            rationing car use in Bogota with moderate and drastic restrictions
Rationing car use based on license plate
            number has become a popular policy in several cities around
            the world to address traffic congestion and air pollution.
            This paper studies the effects of the moderate and drastic
            driving restrictions imposed as part of the Pico y Placa
            program on car use and air pollution in Bogota. Using data
            on ambient carbon monoxide, gasoline consumption, and
            vehicle sales and registrations, no evidence of an
            improvement in air quality or a reduction in car use is
            found in either phase of the program. On the contrary, there
            is some indication that, relative to the moderate phase,
            gasoline consumption, vehicle ownership, and carbon monoxide
            in the morning peak tended to increase slightly when drastic
            restrictions were implemented.
Casting the tax net wider :
            experimental evidence from Costa Rica
The majority of firms in developing
            countries are informal, and encouraging them to register
            with the tax authority has proven challenging and costly.
            This paper argues that incomplete tax filing among
            registered firms constitutes an important intermediate form
            of informality, which can be tackled with much higher
            cost-effectiveness. Using a nationwide randomized experiment
            in Costa Rica, The paper shows that credible enforcement
            emails tripled the income tax filing rate and doubled the
            payment rate among previously non-filing firms. The
            treatment effect was even higher when the email listed
            examples of third-party reports of a firm's
            transactions, with the return on an email reaching US$ 19.
            It also shows that the intervention had no negative
            spillovers on other tax compliance dimensions, the treatment
            effects persisted in the medium term, and treated firms
            became more likely to file information reports about their
            suppliers or clients, thereby increasing the tax
            authorities~^!!^ information set for future tax enforcement.
Unequal opportunity, unequal growth
This paper argues that inequality can be
            both good and bad for growth, depending on what inequality
            and whose growth. Unequal societies may be holding back one
            segment of the population while helping another. Similarly,
            high levels of income inequality may be due to a variety of
            different factors; some of these may be good while others
            may be bad for growth. The paper tests this hypothesis by
            “unpacking” both inequality and growth. Total inequality is
            decomposed into inequality of opportunity, due to observed
            factors that are beyond the individual's control, and
            residual inequality. Growth is measured at different steps
            of the income ladder to verify whether low, middle, and top
            income households fare differently in societies with high
            (low) levels of inequality. In an application to the United
            States covering 1960 to 2010, the paper finds that
            inequality of opportunity is particularly bad for growth of
            the poor. When inequality of opportunity is controlled for,
            the importance of total income inequality is dramatically
            reduced. These results are robust to different measures of
            inequality of opportunity and econometric methods.
Climate change and water variability
            : do water treaties contribute to river basin resilience
Climate-driven water variability is a
            natural phenomenon observed across river basins, but
            predicted to increase due to climate change. Environmental
            change of this kind may aggravate political tensions,
            especially in regions that are not equipped with an
            appropriate institutional apparatus. This paper argues that
            attempts to assess the ability of states to deal with
            variability in the future rests with considering how river
            basins with agreements have fared in the past. The paper
            investigates whether basins governed by treaties witness
            less tension (and by extension more cooperation) over shared
            water in comparison with those basins not governed by
            treaties, using the 1948-2008 country dyads event data from
            the Basins at Risk project. The results provide evidence to
            suggest that the presence of a treaty promotes cooperation.
            Furthermore, the number of agreements between riparian
            countries has a significant positive effect on cooperation,
            which is robust across different specifications controlling
            for a broad set of climatic, geographic, political, and
            economic variables.
A first step up the energy ladder
            low cost solar kits and household's welfare in Rural Rwanda
More than 1.1 billion people in
            developing countries are lacking access to electricity.
            Based on the assumption that electricity is a prerequisite
            for human development, the United Nations has proclaimed the
            goal of providing electricity to all by 2030. In recent
            years, Pico-Photovoltaic kits have become a low-cost
            alternative to investment intensive grid electrification.
            Using a randomized controlled trial, the paper examines
            uptake and impacts of a simple Pico-Photovoltaic kit that
            barely exceeds the modern energy benchmark defined by the
            United Nations. The authors find significant positive
            effects on household energy expenditures and some indication
            for effects on health, domestic productivity, and on the
            environment. Since only parts of these effects are
            internalized, underinvestment into the technology is likely.
            In addition, our data show that adoption will be impeded by
            affordability, suggesting that policy would have to consider
            more direct promotion strategies such as subsidies or
            financing schemes to reach the UN goal.
The risk of polygamy and wives'
            saving behavior
In a polygamous society, all monogamous
            women are potentially at risk of polygamy. However, the
            anthropological and economic literatures are silent on the
            potential impact of the risk of polygamy on the economic
            decisions of monogamous wives. This paper explores this
            issue in Senegal, using individual panel data. The paper
            first estimates a Cox model for the probability of
            transition to polygamy. Second, it estimates the impact of
            the predicted risk of polygamy on monogamous wives'
            savings. The findings show a positive impact of the risk of
            polygamy on female savings entrusted to formal or informal
            institutions, which is suggestive of self-protective
            strategies. The increase in savings comes at the cost of
            reduced consumption of household food expenditures and
            wives' private nonfood expenses.
The world is not yet flat :
            transport costs matter !
The paper provides evidence of the
            effects of changes in transport costs on the geographic
            concentration of industries. The analysis uses micro-level
            commodity flow data and micro-geographic plant-level data to
            construct industry-specific ad valorem trucking rates and
            continuous measures of geographic concentration. The
            findings show that, controlling for international trade
            exposure and input-output links, increasing trucking rates
            are significantly associated with declining geographic
            concentration. The effect is large: changes in trucking
            rates explain around 20 percent of the observed decline in
            geographic concentration of Canadian manufacturing
            industries between 1992 and 2008.
Does governing law affect bond spreads
Controlling for bond and issuer
            characteristics, bond spreads are expected to be equal
            across different legal jurisdictions, and differences are
            expected to disappear through arbitrage. However, an
            analysis of 435 U.S. dollar–denominated bonds issued by 53
            emerging market sovereigns during 1990-2015 reveals that
            after the financial crisis of 2008, the launch spread of
            sovereign bonds issued under U.K. law has been higher than
            those issued under U.S. law, by 130 basis points for BB
            bonds and 175 basis points for B- bonds. This effect was not
            significant for investment grade bonds. On average, bonds
            issued under U.K. law had weaker ratings and shorter tenors
            post-crisis. The post-crisis impact of governing law on
            sovereign bond spreads is not explained by collective action
            clauses, or first-time bond issuances. Instead, the
            difference seems to be related to the perception that U.S.
            law offers stronger investor protection, and that the
            investor base for bonds issued under U.S. law is larger than
            that for bonds issued under U.K. law. The difference in
            spreads persists in the secondary market even after 180
            days, perhaps because of the lack of liquidity, as investors
            tend to buy and hold these more attractive bonds on a longer
            term basis.
Conflict and Poverty in
            Afghanistan's Transition
Despite record economic growth for more
            than a decade, poverty has remained stubbornly high in
            Afghanistan, especially in the regions that suffered less
            from conflict. This paper aims to explain this paradox by
            combining a model of conflict intensity at the province
            level over period 2007-14 with a model of consumption at the
            household level in 2011. Provincial data show that higher
            levels of conflict were positively correlated with both a
            larger presence of troops (international and Afghan) and
            larger aid flows. Household data show that the negative
            impact of conflict on consumption was more than offset by
            the positive impact of aid and troops. According to the
            estimates, Afghan troops contributed more to poverty
            reduction than international troops, possibly because they
            spent more locally. The paper uses the estimated models to
            conduct an out-of-sample validation exercise, focusing on
            the transition initiated in 2014. The results should be
            interpreted with caution, as the quantitative models cannot
            account for strategic shifts in the insurgency and watershed
            political developments. But they suggest that the reduction
            in the number of international troops and declining foreign
            aid flows led to an increase in conflict intensity and a
            decline in consumption per capita, matching current trends.
Preferential liberalization,
            antidumping, and safeguards : stumbling block evidence from MERCOSUR
There is not yet consensus in the trade
            agreements literature as to whether preferential
            liberalization leads to more or less multilateral
            liberalization. However, research thus far has focused
            mostly on tariff measures of import protection. This paper
            develops more comprehensive measures of trade policy that
            include the temporary trade barrier policies of antidumping
            and safeguards. Studies in other contexts have also shown
            how these policies can erode some of the trade
            liberalization gains that arise when examining tariffs
            alone. This paper examines the experiences of Argentina and
            Brazil during the formation of the MERCOSUR over 1990-2001.
            The study finds that an exclusive focus on applied tariffs
            may lead to a mischaracterization of the relationship
            between preferential liberalization and liberalization
            toward non-member countries. First, any "building
            block" evidence that arises by focusing on tariffs
            during the period in which MERCOSUR was only a free trade
            area can disappear, once the analysis includes changes in
            import protection arise through temporary trade barriers.
            Furthermore, there is also evidence of a "stumbling
            block" effect of preferential tariff liberalization for
            the period in which MERCOSUR became a customs union, and
            this result tends to strengthen with the inclusion of
            temporary trade barriers. Finally, the paper provides a
            first empirical examination of whether market power motives
            can help explain the patterns of changes in import
            protection that are observed in these settings.
Assessing the degree of
            international consumption risk sharing
This paper examines the extent of
            consumption risk sharing for a group of 50 high-income and
            developing countries. The analysis is based on the empirical
            implementation of a model of partial consumption insurance
            whose parameters have the natural interpretation of
            coefficients of partial risk sharing even when the 0
            hypothesis of perfect risk sharing is rejected. The
            estimation results show that high-income countries exhibit
            higher degrees of risk sharing than developing countries,
            and that the gap between the two country groups appears to
            have widened over the period of financial globalization.
            Moreover, the pattern of consumption risk sharing is related
            to the degree of financial openness: countries with more
            open capital accounts, and larger stocks of foreign assets
            and liabilities exhibit larger degrees of risk sharing. Yet,
            larger countries in terms of gross domestic product show
            lower degrees of consumption risk sharing.
The credibility of economic policy
            making in Argentina, 1989-2015
This paper explores the hypothesis that
            the credibility of economic policy making in Argentina (or
            lack thereof) has impacted the volatility of economic
            performance. To establish the link, a historical review of
            economic policy making and economic outcomes over the
            quarter century is presented, informed by a survey of the
            literature on credibility and the political economy of
            reforms. A more fundamental question is why policy shifts
            are so frequent, and this necessarily relates to the
            political institutions underlying policy making. A recent
            literature on citizen engagement and accountability,
            combined with international experience, is then used to
            consider policy options that could help reestablish
            credibility during the new administration.
Social capital, finance, and
            consumption: evidence from a representative sample of
            Chinese households
Using a new, nationally representative
            sample of Chinese households, this paper studies how social
            capital affects access to credit and its implications for
            consumption levels. The paper focuses on two specific forms
            of social capital: private social networks and membership in
            the Communist Party. Although party affiliation is linked to
            higher consumption in rural areas, those benefits are direct
            and thus do not work through credit markets. The main
            finding is a strong link between private social networks,
            use of informal credit, and household consumption.
            Instrumental variable regressions indicate that the link is
            causal. However, the study finds no evidence that social
            capital has facilitated formal credit market development in
            China, as it has in countries with higher levels of private
            sector development.
New rural access index : main
            determinants and correlation to poverty
Transport connectivity is essential to
            sustain inclusive growth in developing countries, where many
            rural populations and businesses are still considered to be
            unconnected to the domestic, regional, or global market. The
            Rural Access Index is among the most important global
            indicators for measuring people’s transport accessibility in
            rural areas where the majority of the poor live. A new
            method to calculate the Rural Access Index was recently
            developed using spatial data and techniques. The
            characteristics of subnational Rural Access Index estimates
            were investigated in eight countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia,
            Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. It
            was found that for the countries in Africa, road density and
            road condition are important determinants of the Rural
            Access Index. For the South Asian countries, improvement of
            road condition is particularly relevant. The evidence
            suggests that significant resources are likely to be
            required to achieve universal access through rehabilitating
            the existing road network and expanding the road network.
Growth recovery in southern Europe :
            a dozen lessons, old and new
Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain
            entered a period of severe economic and financial stress in
            the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Their collective
            experience confirmed the primacy of total debt, private or
            public, in affecting the onset of, depth of, and recovery
            from economic crises. The year 2010 and the years following
            have demonstrated the ways in which policy responses to
            crisis-related downturns must be adapted when major
            international partners experience simultaneous growth
            slowdowns and markets exhibit increased risk aversion. This
            paper compares the recovery experience of these countries in
            light of recent policy debates and research on the impact of
            macroeconomic and structural reforms. It highlights that (a)
            the quality of the policies adopted to stabilize economies
            in the short run affects growth recovery in the long run;
            and (b) macroeconomic policies (fiscal and monetary) are
            most effective in supporting growth when they take into
            account structural differences between countries and when
            policies complement each other. The country experiences
            indicate that a holistic view of factors affecting
            investment, exports, and employment is needed to understand
            the impact of macroeconomic and structural reforms on
            output. In the absence of such a holistic view, policy may
            neglect to influence the binding constraints to growth.
Transit migration : all roads lead
            to America
The paths of many migrants include
            multiple destinations and transit routes, yet this pattern
            is almost never reflected in empirical analyses. For
            example, 9 percent of recent immigrants to the United States
            arrived from a transit country as opposed to the country
            where they were born. Among those arriving from many
            high-income countries, the transit migration ratio exceeds
            30 percent. To explain these patterns, this paper constructs
            a dynamic model of global migration that allows transit
            migration opportunities to impact the attractiveness of
            locations. After estimating the structural parameters of the
            model, the paper simulates various counterfactual scenarios
            to highlight the spillovers of transit migration paths.