rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Appraising the Thailand village fund
The Thailand Village Fund is the
            second-largest microcredit scheme in the world. Nearly
            80,000 elected local Village Fund committees administer
            loans that reach 30 percent of all households. The value of
            Village Fund loans has remained steady since 2006, even
            without new infusions of government funds, and loans go
            disproportionately to the poor. Based mainly on a
            custom-built survey of more than 3,000 Village Funds
            conducted in 2010, this paper evaluates the performance of
            Village Funds, which it argues are best modeled as
            altruistic, and do not appear to be subject to elite
            capture. As expected, profit rates are difficult to model,
            but the regression analysis shows that loan recovery rates,
            total lending, credit ratings, and the proportion of loans
            going to the poor are all higher when a Village Fund borrows
            additional funds from a formal bank and on-lends to
            households, as was done by one in five Village Funds. An
            economic analysis suggests that Village Fund benefits exceed
            the costs. Most Village Funds are social rather than
            financial intermediaries; they have little incentive to take
            risks or to innovate, which explains why Village Fund
            lending has not kept pace with the growth of the Thai economy.
Collateralized Borrowing : Insights
            from The World Bank Enterprise Surveys
Using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys,
            we investigate the prevalence and correlates of
            collateralized borrowing in 131 countries between 2005-2017.
            Overall, 77 percent of loans require collateral, and the
            median loan-to-collateral value is 60 percent. Small firms
            and loans from non-bank financial institutions are less
            often associated with collateral. When collateral is
            pledged, the type of collateral assets is strongly
            correlated with the loan-to-value ratio.
Grant financing of metropolitan
            areas : a review of principles and worldwide practices
In the new information age in the
            globalized and interconnected world, metropolitan areas hold
            the key to the future prosperity and growth of nations. This
            paper takes a closer look at grant-financing regimes faced
            by metropolitan areas and their role in facilitating or
            hindering improvements in economic and social outcomes of
            residents of metropolitan areas. A review of 42 large
            metropolitan areas worldwide shows that, with a few notable
            exceptions, metropolitan areas in general are hamstrung from
            playing their potential role in economic advancement. Metro
            areas have large economic bases and therefore little a
            priori needs for grant financing, yet they have strong
            dependence on central transfers. This is because of the
            highly constrained fiscal autonomy given to these areas,
            especially in developing countries, with the singular
            exception of metro areas in China. Such a strong reliance on
            transfers undermines local autonomy and local
            accountability. General purpose transfers are formula based
            , transparent and predictable yet they discriminate against
            metropolitan areas as they utilize a one size fit all
            (common formula) for all local governments -- large or
            small. Such formula typically incorporate equal per
            jurisdiction component that discriminates against large
            metropolitan areas. Compactness is rarely rewarded and the
            greater needs of metro areas for transportation, education,
            health, culture and welfare go unrecognized. Overall the
            emphasis in grant financing of metro areas deals with
            vertical fiscal gaps or project based specific purpose
            grants. To ensure that metropolitan areas can play their
            dual roles in improving economic and social outcomes for
            residents, it is important to strengthen their fiscal
            autonomy while at the same time enhancing their
            accountability to local residents. The paper argues that
            results based grant financing of social and transportation
            services and tournament based approaches to encourage
            inter-jurisdictional competition need to be given serious
            consideration to ensure metropolitan autonomy while
            strengthening citizen based accountability.
Autonomy with equity and
            accountability : toward a more transparent, objective,
            predictable and simpler (TOPS) system of central financing
            of provincial-local expenditures in Indonesia
During the past decade, Indonesia has
            transformed itself from centralized governance to
            decentralized local governance. Local governments were given
            extensive expenditure responsibilities while keeping the tax
            system centralized. To finance decentralized
            provincial-local expenditures, Indonesia implemented a new
            system of intergovernmental finance. This paper provides a
            review of the equity and efficiency implications of the
            current system of central-provincial-local transfers. It
            finds that the system of intergovernmental finance
            represents one of the most complex systems ever implemented
            by any government in the world. The system is primarily
            focused on a gap-filling approach to provincial-local
            finance to ensure revenue adequacy and local autonomy but
            without accountability to local residents for service
            delivery performance. This is done through a great degree of
            academic rigor using highly complex procedures.  The
            complexity leads to a lack of transparency, inequity and
            uncertainty in allocation as well as creating incentives for
            jurisdictional fragmentation and reducing own-tax effort.
            Simpler alternatives are available that have the potential
            to address equity objectives while also enhancing efficiency
            and citizen-based accountability. Such alternatives would
            represent a move away from complex gap filling and special
            allocation approaches to simple, output based transfers to
            finance operating expenditures. These would be complemented
            by capital grants to deal with infrastructure deficiencies,
            and fiscal capacity equalization as a residual program with
            an explicit standard to ensure that all local jurisdictions
            have adequate means to deliver reasonably comparable levels
            of public services at reasonably comparable levels of tax
            burdens across the country. The paper argues that such an
            alternative system of intergoveernmental finance would
            preserve autonomy, while enhancing equity, simplicity,
            objectivity, transparency and accountability.
Public services and expenditure need
            equalization : reflections on principles and worldwide
            comparative practices
This paper reviews the conceptual
            challenges as well as lessons from worldwide experiences in
            implementing public services and expenditure need
            compensation in fiscal equalization transfers with a view to
            developing guidance for practitioners. The paper concludes
            that while in theory a strong case for a comprehensive
            fiscal equalization can be made, in practice fiscal need
            equalization as part of a comprehensive equalization program
            introduces significant complexity. This works against the
            simplicity, transparency and general acceptability of the
            program. This does not imply that fiscal need equalization
            should be abandoned in the interest of simplicity and
            transparency. Instead simplicity, transparency and local
            autonomy are preserved by having fiscal need equalization
            through public service oriented (specific purpose block
            transfers) output based fiscal transfers that impose no
            spending requirements for any functions or objects of
            expenditures. Such transfers contrast with traditional
            earmarked transfers, which impose conditions on spending for
            specific purposes or objects of expenditure and subsequent
            verification/certification of such expenditures. Such
            output-based block transfers would further enhance citizen
            based accountability for results and thereby offer potential
            for enhancing public confidence and trust in government operations.
Firm growth and productivity in
            Belarus : new empirical evidence from the machine building industry
Using a unique dataset comprising
            information for more than 900 firms in the machine building
            sector in Belarus, this paper investigates the determinants
            of firm growth for an economy where state ownership of
            enterprises is widespread. It uses panel data models based
            on generalizations of Gibrat's law, total factor
            productivity estimates and matching methods to assess the
            differences in firm growth between private and state-owned
            firms. The results indicate that labor hoarding and soft
            budget constraints play a particularly important role in
            explaining differences in performance between these two
            groups of firms.
Gender inequality in the labor
            market in Serbia
This paper presents a broad overview of
            labor market indicators for men and women in Serbia with a
            focus on employment patterns, entrepreneurship and career
            advancement as well as earnings differentials. The analysis
            relies primarily on the results of the Labor Force Surveys
            conducted in Serbia in April 2008 and October 2009. The
            findings show that although the overall labor market
            situation in Serbia is difficult, women are in a much more
            disadvantageous position than men. Women are much less
            likely to be employed, start a business or advance in the
            political arena. Furthermore, there is a significant wage
            gap between men and women in a number of sectors and
            occupational groups with low educated women being
            particularly disadvantaged. The results of the
            Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition demonstrate that the wage gap
            is indicative of discrimination of women in the labor market
            as earnings differentials cannot be explained by differences
            in observed characteristics of male and female employees.
            Based on the obtained results, the paper outlines four broad
            areas that require the attention of policy-makers:
            employment generation; enhancement of education outcomes;
            improvement of the regulatory environment and support to
            women's business and political careers; and promotion
            of transparent performance setting mechanisms.
Structural challenges for SOEs in
            Belarus : a case study of the machine building sector
Are Belarus's state owned
            enterprises  positioned to grow in 2011-2015 as successfully
            as in 1995-2006? State owned enterprises account for 55
            percent of Belarus's output and two-thirds of overall
            employment; economic growth in 1995-2006 was the result of
            capacity expansion and productivity improvements in state
            owned enterprises. These sources of economic growth
            originated in policy decisions that preserved the
            functioning of the command and control economy and allowed
            the country to exploit preferential commercial access to the
            Russian market in several goods and services. Are the same
            reasons likely to facilitate the performance of state owned
            enterprises and overall economic growth in 2011-2015? This
            paper concludes that this is not likely to happen. Times
            have changed: the slowdown in production and exports in
            2009-2010 was unquestionably associated with a transitory
            decline in demand for durable goods in Russia. But there
            have also been more permanent market forces at work: a
            steady increase in competition in Russia and other
            Commonwealth of Independent States markets resulting from
            low-price Chinese and Russian-produced capital goods; and a
            shift in demand from low-quality/low price to high-quality,
            high-price transport equipment demand in Russia and other
            Commonwealth of Independent States markets. And these forces
            are there to stay. This conclusion leads to the following
            questions: Would state owned enterprises be able to adapt to
            observed market changes? What reforms would be relevant to
            facilitate the necessary adaptation?
Channels of transmission of the
            2007/09 global crisis to international bank lending in
            developing countries
During a financial crisis, credit
            provision by international banks may be stymied by three
            distinct, but related, channels: changes in lending
            standards as a result of increased economic uncertainty,
            changes in funding availability from interbank liquidity
            markets, and changes in solvency due to effects on bank
            balance sheets. This paper illuminates the manner by which
            each of these channels independently operated to affect
            developed-country bank lending in developing countries
            during the global financial crisis of 2007/09. It quantifies
            how changes in banks' uncertainty about the value of
            their asset holdings, access to interbank liquidity, and
            internal balance sheet considerations altered their supply
            of credit in the run-up, during, and in the immediate
            aftermath of the financial crisis, both in terms of their
            relative magnitudes, as well as the sensitivity of these
            magnitudes to the crisis.
Achieving the MDGs in Yemen : an assessment
Once the current political crisis in
            Yemen has been resolved, it will be ever more urgent to
            speed up progress, including Millennium Development Goal
            (MDG) achievements. Drawing on simulations with the Maquette
            for MDG Simulations (MAMS), a model for strategy analysis,
            and a linked microsimulation model, this paper addresses
            Yemen's MDG challenges. A first simulation set
            considers scaled-up government actions with the aim of fully
            achieving the 2015 international MDG targets with required
            additional financing from foreign or domestic sources. The
            main finding is sobering but not surprising: given the
            required expansion of MDG -- related services, on-time
            achievement of key MDG targets does not appear to have been
            a realistic objective even if the government,
            hypothetically, would have expanded services with grant aid
            financing starting from 2005; macroeconomic stability,
            government efficiency, and the production of tradables would
            all have suffered due to the size of spending and aid
            increases as well as the resulting real exchange rate
            appreciation. The results suggest that countries, instead of
            relying on international targets, should set MDG targets
            grounded in their own reality. In light of these results,
            the authors designed a second simulation set that is focused
            on the remaining period up to 2015, and on what may be
            feasible once the current conflict has been settled. The
            simulations introduce moderate increases in foreign aid or
            government allocative efficiency. The government uses the
            resulting fiscal space for spending and service expansion in
            infrastructure and human development without losses in
            productive efficiency. The results suggest that, under these
            conditions, substantial improvements could still be achieved.
Do middle classes bring
            institutional reforms
The paper examines the link between
            poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes using a
            new cross-country panel dataset on the distribution of
            income and expenditure. It uses an econometric methodology
            to gauge whether a larger middle class has a causal effect
            on policy and institutional outcomes in three areas: social
            policy in health and education, market-oriented economic
            structure and quality of governance. The analysis find that
            when the middle class becomes larger (measured as the
            proportion of people earning more than US$10 a day), social
            policy on health and education becomes more progressive, and
            the quality of governance (democratic participation and
            official corruption) also improves. This trend does not
            occur at the expense of economic freedom, as a larger middle
            class also leads to more market-oriented economic policy on
            trade and finance. These beneficial effects of a larger
            middle class appear to be more robust than the impact of
            lower poverty, lower inequality or higher gross domestic
            product per capita. That may be linked to the evolution of
            the middle class: they are more enlightened, more likely to
            take political actions and have a stronger voice. They also
            share preferences and values for policy and institutional
            reforms, as well as higher stakes in property rights and
            wealth accumulation.
Does a picture paint a thousand
            words evidence from a microcredit marketing experiment
Female entrepreneurship is low in many
            developing economies partly because of constraints on
            women's time and mobility, which are often reinforced
            by social norms. This paper analyzes a marketing experiment
            designed to encourage women to adopt a new microcredit
            product. A brochure with the same content but two different
            covers was randomly distributed among male and female
            borrowing groups. One cover featured five businesses run by
            men, while the other showed identical businesses run by
            women. Men and women responded to psychological cues. Among
            men who were not business owners, had lower measured ability
            and whose wives were less educated, the responses to the
            female brochure were more negative, as did female business
            owners with low autonomy within the household. Women with
            relatively high levels of autonomy had a similar negative
            response to the male brochure, while there was no effect on
            female business owners with autonomy. Overall, these results
            suggest that women's response to psychological cues,
            such as positive role models, may be affected by their level
            of autonomy at home, and more intensive interventions may be
            required for more disadvantaged women.
Does a picture paint a thousand
            words evidence from a microcredit marketing experiment
WPS6020 Policy Research Working Paper 6020 Impact Evaluation Series No. 54 Does a Picture Paint a Thousand Words? Evidence from a Microcredit Marketing Experiment _Xavier Giné Ghazala Mansuri Mario Picón_ The World Bank Development Research Group Finance and Private Sector Development Team & Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network Poverty Reduction and Equity Unit April 2012
Why quality matters : rebuilding
            trustworthy local government in post-conflict Sierra Leone
A broad consensus has emerged among
            practitioners and researchers that failure to build
            accountable and legitimate institutions is a critical risk
            factor associated with vicious circles of repeated violence.
            Despite this consensus, very few studies have tested the
            extent to which local government performance and
            decentralized service provision shape citizens' beliefs
            toward political authorities. This paper contributes to fill
            this gap by examining the antecedents of trustworthy local
            government authorities in a post-conflict and fragile
            setting, Sierra Leone. Taking advantage of a unique
            longitudinal survey, the National Public Services, it
            examines the impact of sub-national variation in local
            government performance on citizens' beliefs about the
            trustworthiness of local government authorities. To test the
            hypothesis, it uses multilevel models to exploit variation
            over time and within and across sub-national units in Sierra
            Leone. The results suggest that improvements in the quality
            of decentralized service delivery, as well as perceptions of
            local councillors' honesty, are positively associated
            with perceptions of local government officials as
            trustworthy political authorities. These findings speak to
            the possibility that local service provision can play a role
            in shaping the relationships between citizens and the state
            and in overcoming the root causes of fragility and conflict.
Impact of services liberalization on
            industry productivity, exports and development : six
            empirical studies in the transition countries
Services as a share of gross domestic
            product and in foreign direct investment flows have
            increased in importance both globally and in the transition
            countries of Europe and Central Asia. So has the need for
            both academics and policymakers to understand the impacts of
            services liberalization in the transition countries. For
            this reason, the World Bank Institute, under a grant from
            the Government of Austria, commissioned seven studies under
            the auspices of the Economic Education Research Consortium
            (headquartered in Kiev, Ukraine) to investigate the impact
            of services liberalization on productivity, focusing on
            services reform in the transition countries of Europe and
            Central Asia. All of the studies have been produced by
            authors from the transition countries of Europe or Central
            Asia. This paper summarizes six of these studies that will
            appear in a volume in Russian edited by the author of this
            paper. The studies contribute to the growing empirical
            literature establishing that liberalization of barriers
            against service providers can make an important contribution
            to increase total factor productivity, exports and growth in
            the economy. They also show that the issue of services
            liberalization is important for the transition countries in
            particular. Links to the English language versions of the
            papers are provided.