rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Natural resources, institutions, and
            economic growth : the case of Nigeria
Using growth regressions with panel
            data, this study identifies the determinants of economic
            growth, highlighting in particular the role of natural
            resources and institutional quality. The overarching aim of
            this exercise is to learn about the drivers of growth in
            Nigeria, and to predict growth rates of gross domestic
            product per capita for the country under different
            scenarios. This study finds that a growth-enhancing effect
            of natural resources is tied to a sound institutional
            environment and low levels of corruption. Accumulation of
            human as well as physical capital, but also the quality of
            institutions and natural resource rents are estimated to be
            particular important ingredients for a prosperous economic
            development in Nigeria.
Surveys, big data, and experiments :
            how can we best learn about LGBTI development outcomes
There is little rigorous quantitative
            data about the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
            and intersex (LGBTI) people in developing countries. This
            makes the development of policy to improve the welfare of
            lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people
            difficult, and it also makes it difficult to know whether
            lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex–focused
            policies and programs are working. Filling this data gap is
            necessary to understand the development outcomes for
            lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people.
            Quantitative data practices exist that can be drawn on to
            fill the gap, including household surveys, experiments, and
            big data analysis. Summarizing existing experience, this
            paper provides guidance on how to study development outcomes
            for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex
            people, by: paying attention to the different ways to define
            sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex
            characteristics; and collecting samples that allow
            conclusions to be drawn with the broader lesbian, gay,
            bisexual, transgender, and intersex community, as well as
            the general population.
Can business input improve the
            effectiveness of worker training evidence from Brazil's Pronatec-MDIC
This study evaluates the employment
            effects of a publicly-run national technical vocational
            education training program in Brazil that explicitly takes
            input from firms in determining the location, scale, and
            skill content of courses offered. Using exogenous course
            capacity restrictions, the study finds that those completing
            the course following receipt of a course offer have an 8.6
            percent increase in employment over the year following
            course completion. These effects come from previously
            unemployed trainees who find employment at non-requesting
            firms. The demand-driven program's effects are larger
            and statistically distinguishable from those of a broader
            and institutionally-similar publicly-administered skills
            training program run at the same time that did not take
            input from firms. The study finds that the demand-driven
            program better aligned skill training with future aggregate
            occupational employment growth -- suggesting the input from
            firms captured meaningful information about growth in skill
            demand. Courses offered in occupations that grew more over
            the year following requests exhibited larger employment
            effects, explaining the effectiveness of the demand-driven model.
Can business input improve the
            effectiveness of worker training evidence from Brazil's Pronatec-MDIC
WPS8155 Policy Research Working Paper 8155 Can Business Input Improve the Effectiveness of Worker Training?

Evidence from Brazil’s _Pronatec-MDIC_ _Stephen D. O’Connell Lucas Ferreira Mation João Bevilaqua T. Basto Mark A. Dutz_ Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice Group July 2017
Through the looking glass: can
            classroom observation and coaching improve teacher
            performance in Brazil
This study conducted a randomized
            evaluation of a program in the Brazilian state of Ceara. The
            program was designed to improve teachers’ effectiveness by
            increasing their professional interaction and sharing of
            classroom practice. In 175 of 350 secondary schools,
            teachers were provided with benchmarked feedback from
            classroom observations and access to expert coaching.
            Schools’ uptake of the coaching program was high (85
            percent). Over a single school year, the program increased
            teachers’ time on instruction and student engagement and
            produced statistically significant gains in student learning
            on the Ceara state assessment and the national secondary
            school exit exam. Controlling for individual students’
            prior-year learning outcomes, schools exposed to the program
            had 0.05-0.09 standard deviation higher performance on the
            state test and 0.04-0.06 standard deviation higher scores on
            the national test. Implementation fidelity strongly boosted
            program impacts. In the 49 schools where the pedagogical
            coordinators achieved the highest certification at the end
            of the program, student scores were 0.13-0.23 standard
            deviation higher on the state test and 0.13-0.17 standard
            deviation higher on the national test. Coaching delivered by
            Skype kept the costs of the program low, $2.40 per student,
            and produced cost-effective impacts on learning in
            comparison with other rigorously evaluated teacher training
            interventions. The combination of classroom observation
            feedback and expert coaching appears to be a promising
            strategy for whole-school efforts to raise teacher effectiveness.
Reducing traffic congestion in
            Beirut : an empirical analysis of selected policy options
Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon,
            faces huge traffic congestion, the cost of which is
            estimated to be more than 2 percent of the city's gross
            regional product. Effective policies are needed, based on
            weighing their overall economic cost and benefit to society.
            This study developed an empirical model based on
            microeconomic theory, accounting for production and
            consumption behavior related to transportation in the
            Greater Beirut Area, to simulate various policy
            combinations. A key finding of the study is that individual
            supply-side policies, such as the expansion of roads or
            introduction of a bus rapid transit system, are quite
            effective at reducing traffic congestion while increasing
            economic output and welfare. They also account for most of
            the benefits from implementing policy packages with supply-
            and demand-side measures. The introduction of bus rapid
            transit with expansion of the road system to feed the bus
            rapid transit system reduces congestion by about 16 percent
            and congestion costs by more than 50 percent. This would
            increase Beirut's gross regional product by roughly 2
            percent, and the average social welfare of the residents of
            Beirut by 4 percent. In contrast, demand-side instruments,
            implemented alone, lower gross regional product and welfare
            with limited effects on congestion.
Understanding the interactions
            between emissions trading systems and renewable energy
            standards using a multi-regional CGE model of China
Many countries have introduced policy
            measures, such as carbon pricing, greenhouse gas offsetting
            mechanisms, renewable energy standards, and energy
            efficiency improvements, to achieve their climate change
            mitigation targets. However, in many instances, these
            measures overlap in ways that may dilute each policy's
            greenhouse gas reduction potential. This study examines how
            a renewable energy standard in the power sector would
            interact with a national emission trading scheme that is
            introduced to achieve a greenhouse gas mitigation target.
            Using a static, multiregional computable general equilibrium
            model of China to simulate policy measures, the study finds
            that the addition of a separate renewable energy standard
            policy would increase the economic cost for achieving a
            target level of greenhouse gas mitigation. The study
            concludes that although renewable energy standard policies
            promote the use of renewable energies, they are an economic
            burden from the perspective of reducing greenhouse gas
            emissions if a carbon pricing mechanism is in place.
Online exports and the wage gap
The development of the Internet is often
            seen as a source of demand for skilled workers and therefore
            a potential driver of the wage gap between skilled and
            unskilled workers. This paper focuses on the impact that
            international trade in online platforms has on the wage gap.
            Because online trade allows smaller firms with relatively
            more unskilled workers to access world markets it can be
            expected a priori that an expansion of online exports
            reduces the wage gap. After correcting for potential
            endogeneity bias in a sample of 22 developing countries for
            which online trade and wage gap data can be matched, the
            study finds that a 1 percent increase in the share of online
            exports over GDP leads to a 0.01 percent decline in the wage gap.
Buses, houses or cash
            socio-economic, spatial and environmental consequences of
            reforming public transport subsidies in Buenos Aires
Transit subsidies in the urban area of
            Buenos Aires are high, amounting to a total of US$5 billion
            for 2012. They have been challenged on several counts:
            suspected of driving urban sprawl and associated
            infrastructure costs, diverting resources from system
            maintenance, and failing to reach the poor among others. In
            this context, this paper examines the impacts of cost
            recovery fares under a range of different policy scenarios
            that could cushion the impact of fare increases. The
            alternative scenarios that are scrutinized are the
            uncompensated removal of the transit subsidy, its
            replacement by a lump sum transfer, and its replacement by
            two different construction subsidy schemes. Using a dynamic
            urban model (NEDUM-2D) calibrated for the urban area of
            Buenos Aires, all scenarios are assessed along four
            dimensions: (i) the efficiency/welfare impact on residents,
            (ii) the impacts on the internal structure of the urban area
            and sprawl, (iii) the impact on commuting-related carbon
            dioxide emissions, and (iv) the redistributive impacts, with
            a focus on the poorest households. A series of results
            emerge. First, there are consumption-related welfare gains
            for residents associated with replacing the transit subsidy
            by a lump sum transfer. Second, there are only moderate
            reductions in urbanization over time and thus infrastructure
            costs associated with the subsidy removal. Third, the
            replacement of the transit subsidy leads to only moderate
            increases in carbon dioxide emissions despite lower public
            transport mode shares, because households will chose to
            settle closer to jobs, thereby reducing commuting distances.
            Finally, the replacement of the transit subsidy by a lump
            sum transfer will lead to short-term harsh redistributive
            impacts for captive transit users in some areas of the urban
            area. Medium-term adjustments of land and housing prices
            will partially mitigate the negative impacts of higher
            transport costs for tenants, but will further hurt homeowners.
Tracing back the weather origins of
            human welfare: evidence from Mozambique
Mozambique is among the African
            countries most exposed to weather-related hazards. Using
            detailed gridded precipitation data for individuals'
            birth-year and birth-district, this study investigates the
            effects of extreme rainfall anomalies around the time of
            birth on long-run well-being. The results show that the
            socioeconomic outcomes of adults are influenced by weather
            shocks that occur early in life. Individuals exposed to
            floods while in utero or during the first year of life are
            less likely to participate in the labor market.
            Consequently, the households that they are heading exhibit
            lower consumption and are more prone to be poor. In
            disentangling the mechanisms at play, this paper presents
            suggestive evidence of variation in agricultural output,
            food security, and subsequent detrimental effects on human
            capital accumulation as important drivers behind the
            impacts. The study concludes that policy efforts aimed at
            accelerating poverty reduction in Mozambique will have to
            consider the inability of rural households to shield the
            well-being of children from the consequences of extreme
            weather shocks.
The nature of trade and growth linkages
This paper shows new empirical
            regularities indicating that the structure of trade
            connections affects the trade-growth nexus. System
            generalized method of moments estimations indicate that key
            structural features associated with the composition of
            traded products and partners matter for growth. The results
            show that increases in the degree of intra-industry trade,
            greater insertion into the middle of global value chains,
            and increases in the shares of differentiated goods, skilled
            labor-intensive goods, and high-tech-intensive goods in
            traded baskets are all associated with higher income growth.
            An increase in the share of trade with countries at the core
            of the global trade network is also associated with greater
            growth effects. However, many of these effects are
            non-linear and depend on the degree of trade openness and
            labor force education. The results suggest that
            technological diffusion and learning spillovers play some
            role in the growth effects associated with the nature of
            trade connections.
The impact of strengthening
            agricultural extension services : evidence from Ethiopia
This paper evaluates the effect of the
            Rural Capacity Building Project, which aimed at promoting
            growth by strengthening the agricultural service systems in
            Ethiopia and by making them more responsive to
            smallholders' needs. The project intended to increase
            the outreach of agricultural extension services to help
            farmers become aware of and adopt economically viable and
            environmentally sustainable technologies and practices. The
            paper examines the impact of the Rural Capacity Building
            Project using panel data on 1,485 geographically dispersed
            households in project and control kebeles. The results show
            that the strengthening of extension services had a positive
            impact on economic participation in the household, land area
            cultivated, and adoption of marketable crops, suggesting
            that access to extension helped farmers switch to more
            commercial, market-oriented agriculture. In addition, and
            contrary to previous evidence from other countries,
            female-headed households seem to have benefited equally from
            the project. However, the project was not able to reduce the
            preexisting gender gap in agricultural outcomes.
Revisiting the effect of food aid on
            conflict : a methodological caution
A popular identification strategy in
            non-experimental panel data uses instrumental variables
            constructed by interacting exogenous but potentially
            spurious time series or spatial variables with endogenous
            exposure variables to generate identifying variation through
            assumptions like those of differences-in-differences
            estimators. Revisiting a celebrated study linking food aid
            and conflict shows that this strategy is susceptible to bias
            arising from spurious trends. Re-randomization and Monte
            Carlo simulations show that the strategy identifies a
            spurious relationship even when the true effect could be
            non-causal or causal in the opposite direction, invalidating
            the claim that aid causes conflict and providing a caution
            for similar strategies.
Does arsenic-contaminated drinking
            water limit early childhood development in Bangladesh
Arsenic contamination in shallow
            groundwater aquifers remains a major barrier to providing
            access to safe drinking water in Bangladesh. Chronic
            exposure to arsenic has been shown to cause serious health
            impacts, including various cancers, skin lesions,
            neurological damage, heart disease, and hypertension.
            Numerous epidemiological studies have shown cognitive
            impacts on memory, linguistic-abstraction, attention,
            learning, and physical ability. The neurotoxic effects of
            arsenic could be particularly harmful for children during
            their critical growth periods and have impacts on early
            childhood development. This study uses cross-sectional data
            from the nationally representative 2012-13 Bangladesh
            Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey to investigate the effects
            of arsenic contamination in drinking water on early
            childhood development outcomes in a sample of around 7,500
            children ages 3-5 years. Early childhood development is
            measured in four skills domains: literacy-numeracy,
            physical, social-emotional, and learning using the Early
            Childhood Development Index. Arsenic contamination is
            measured in source drinking water at the cluster-level.
            After controlling for a range of demographic, social, and
            economic characteristics of households, the results show
            that arsenic contamination is significantly and negatively
            associated with the overall Early Childhood Development
            Index, on outcomes within the physical, social-emotional,
            and learning skills domains. Further, there is a clear
            dose-response relationship, where those children with
            exposure to higher concentrations of arsenic have worse
            developmental outcomes.
Rail transport and firm productivity
            : evidence from Tanzania
Railway transport generally has the
            advantage for large-volume, long-haul freight operations.
            Africa possesses significant railway assets. However, many
            rail lines are currently not operational because of the lack
            of maintenance. The paper recasts light on the impact of
            rail transportation on firm productivity, using micro data
            collected in Tanzania. To avoid the endogeneity problem, the
            instrumental variable technique is used to estimate the
            impact of rail transport. The paper shows that the overall
            impact of rail use on firm costs is significant despite that
            the rail unit rates are set lower when the shipping distance
            is longer. Rail transport is a cost-effective option for
            firms. However, the study finds that firms' inventory
            is costly. This is a disadvantage of using rail transport.
            Rail operations are unreliable, adding more inventory costs
            to firms. The implied elasticity of demand for transport
            services is estimated at -1.01 to -0.52, relatively high in
            absolute terms. This indicates the rail users'
            sensitivity to prices as well as severity of modal
            competition against truck transportation. The study also
            finds that firm location matters to the decision to use rail
            services. Proximity to rail infrastructure is important for
            firms to take advantage of rail benefits.
Modal choice between rail and road
            transportation : evidence from Tanzania
Rail transport generally has the
            advantage for large-volume long-haul freight operations. The
            literature generally shows that shipping distance, costs,
            and reliability are among the most important determinants of
            people's modal choice among road, rail, air, and
            coastal shipping transport. However, there is little
            evidence in Africa, although the region historically
            possesses significant rail assets. Currently, Africa's
            rail transport faces intense competition against truck
            transportation. With firm-level data, this paper examines
            shippers' modal choice in Tanzania. The traditional
            multinomial logit and McFadden’s choice models were
            estimated. The paper shows that rail prices and shipping
            distance and volume are important determinants of
            firms' mode choice. The analysis also finds that the
            firms' modal choice depends on the type of
            transactions. Rail transport is more often used for
            international trading purposes. Exporters and importers are
            key customers for restoring rail freight operations. Rail
            operating speed does not seem to have an unambiguous effect
            on firms' modal selection.
Will elders provide for their
            grandchildren : unconditional cash transfers and educational
            expenditures in Bolivia
This paper takes advantage of repeated
            cross-section household surveys and a sharp discontinuity
            created by the introduction of an unconditional cash
            transfer to elders. The paper evaluates the impact of these
            cash transfers on the educational expenditures for children
            within a household. The analysis finds positive and
            significant effects of the program at the aggregate level.
            It also finds that the program has stronger effects in
            indigenous populations and among female and rural
            populations. The results are robust with respect to a series
            of falsification tests, survey structures, model
            specifications, and estimation methods.