rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Investing in all the people
Recent research has convinced the author
            that once all the benefits are recognized, investment in the
            education of girls may be the highest return of investment
            available in the developing world.  The author stresses five
            major points: (1) higher death rates are symptomatic of the
            more general pattern of female deprivation in the developing
            world; (2) underinvestment in girls is an economic problem
            resulting from a vicious cycle caused by distorted
            incentives; (3) educated women choose to have fewer children
            and can provide more for those they do have; (4) the social
            benefits alone of increased female education are more than
            sufficient to cover its costs; and (5) priorities should be
            to reduce the cost of schooling for girls and make special
            efforts to accommodate parent's practical needs.  Major
            initiatives to increase female education can transform
            society over time.  If more girls had gone to school a
            generation ago, millions of infant deaths could have been
            averted each year, and tens of millions of families could
            have been healthier and happier.
The economic effects of minimum
            import prices : with an application to Uruguay
By increasing the costs of imports,
            minimum unit import reference prices not only generate the
            usual distortions one expects from tariff protection but add
            new ones that a pure tariff system would not generate.
            Reference prices substantially reduce the price gap between
            imports with prices above and below the reference price. By
            making cheap imports relatively more expensive than
            expensive imports, reference prices affect quality in three
            ways that appear not to have been analyzed before: 1) they
            can induce foreign firms to shift toward more expensive
            exports to the country with reference prices; 2) they can
            induce domestic producers in that country to shift
            production toward lower-quality, cheaper goods; and 3)
            because this decreases the relative price of the expensive
            varieties, domestic consumers may lean toward buying more
            expensive goods. Using the case of Uruguay, the authors
            estimate what protection the reference price procedures
            provide for Uruguayan industries and analyze how this
            protection affects Uruguay's economy. The authors show
            that the reference and minimum export price procedures
            impose floor prices on imports that cover more than a third
            of value added in Uruguayan manufacturing. These systems
            jeopardize trade liberalization efforts by creating the
            impression that tariff cuts are greater than they really
            are. These systems also create massive distortions between
            the relative domestic prices of imported goods above and
            below the floor prices.
The relationship between German
            banks and large German firms
German banks are often criticized, or
            praised, depending on a person's viewpoint, for owning
            German industry and for playing an active part in corporate
            control.  The author argues that this misrepresents German
            banking. First, the number of German firms a bank can own or
            control, although significant, is limited.  Second, although
            most of the largest 100 firms have a bank member on their
            supervisory board, this does not imply effective bank
            control.  Third, the role of the banker in the supervisory
            board has to be viewed in the light of the rigorous
            standards of corporate governance imposed on German public
            firms.  fourth, bank ownership of industry is not pervasive,
            but is in fact limited to a few special cases.  Fifth and
            last, proxy voting is more important than stock ownership as
            a potential means of control.  The author argues that the
            German system of corporate governance represents an
            efficient attempt to minimize socially wasteful behavior.
            The negotiated consensus achieved in the board room provides
            better incentives to management to maximize firm value and
            social welfare than the factionalized U.S. system.
Trade policy and exchange rate
            issues in the former Soviet Union
The author reviews possible trade and
            exchange rate policies of the former Soviet Union.
            Alternative exchange rate regimes, including a monetary
            union are considered. For Russia, a fixed but adjustable
            regime is most realistic. Frequent adjustment may be
            desirable, to prevent the use of trade restrictions to
            achieve balance of payments objectives. The author examines
            the need for transitional tariffs, including the argument
            for a temporary uniform tariff that is higher than the
            long-run revenue tariff. The temporary uniform tariff is
            designed to prevent temporary overshooting of the exchange
            rate. The case for a free trade area is strong because the
            republics of the former Soviet Union are so highly
            specialized, but there will be problems if price controls
            remain and differ among the republics. There could be a free
            trade area even if there is no monetary union. The author
            concludes that one approach to trade policy is to have no
            trade policy - to have completely free trade with
            convertibility for current account transactions. Some
            tariffs and export taxes may be justified, at least as
            second-best policies. If so, the author stresses that four
            principles be observed: 1) barriers to existing trade
            between the republics should not be set up; 2) all
            quantitative control measures should be avoided; 3) tariff
            and export tax structures should be very simple; and 4)
            trade policy should be transparent.
The women's development program
            in Rajasthan : a case study in group formation for
            women's development
The author presents the Women's
            Development Program (WDP) - launched in six districts in
            Rajasthan, India in 1984, and now extending to nine - as a
            case study awareness-building and group formation among
            rural women. A departure from the traditional pattern of
            viewing women as objects of welfare, WDP has been a distinct
            success. Rural women have realized that their deprivation is
            not unchangeable, that alternatives exist, that they are
            competent enough to choose between alternatives, and that
            they are not alone. One important feature of the project
            document was that it was provisional and tentative,
            essentially a guide to structure and financial patterns.
            WDP's sole aim was to form groups that would
            consolidate themselves for their own development - these
            groups, once formed would initiate any action they needed
            and decided upon. The second element of the project document
            was the degree of freedom visualized for women's groups
            and nongovernmental organizations. WDP stressed the need to
            build awareness and confidence among women as essential to
            integrating them into the development process. What emerges
            from the WDP experience is the process it unleashed: the
            organization, interaction and participation of women.
Transformation of agriculture in
            central Eastern Europe and the former USSR : major policy
            issues and perspectives
The author surveys agricultural reform
            to date, identifies key policy issues, and outlines
            potential scenarios for the transformation of agriculture in
            Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the former German Democratic
            Republic (GDR), Hungary, Poland, Romania, and to a lesser
            extent - the former USSR.  After years of socialism, these
            countries' agricultural sectors are characterized by
            large, inefficient farms with high production costs; heavier
            food consumption than in market economies of comparable
            prosperity, and excess demand for food, at subsidized food
            prices. Central Eastern Europe is beginning to create a new
            agricultural structure based on private ownership, real
            cooperatives, and a market economy.  The former USSR is also
            striving to overcome serious economic difficulty with
            comprehensive economic and political reform.  To develop a
            market-oriented, competitive agricultural structure, these
            countries need to : a) create marketable landed property; b)
            change agriculture's structure to emphasize medium size
            private agricultural ventures and cooperatives; c) create an
            environment supportive of private ventures; d) create an
            agricultural market that encourages fair competition; e)
            develop a policy emphasizing efficient production; and f)
            support environmentally sustainable agricultural production technologies.
Evaluating the asset based minimum
            tax on corporations : an option pricing approach
In many countries, well-meant ad hoc tax
            incentives proliferate over time, creating an opaque
            corporate tax structure and many unanticipated tax
            loopholes.  Tax authorities in several countries have
            considered and sometimes introduced minimum corporate taxes.
            Liability under such a tax is sometimes linked to profits
            but more often to assets, as these are harder to manipulate.
            The authors refer to such a tax as a minimum asset tax
            (MAT).  They suggest an approach based on option pricing,
            which is designed to incorporate the impact of
            rate-of-return uncertainty on the burden a MAT will impose.
            The authors use their methodology to assess a recent
            Brazilian MAT proposal using sectoral data on corporate
            income tax revenue and asset value.  The MAT, with its
            simple tax code and marginal impact on the marginal
            effective tax rate (MERT), is an appealing short cut to
            comprehensive tax reform - and the revenue effects in Brazil
            could be substantial.  Two common assumptions turned out not
            to be true: 1) the MAT does not reduce sectoral distortions.
            The standard deviation of the MERT is higher with MAT than
            without; and 2) high-risk firms tend to be
            high-rate-of-return firms, which reduces MAT's impact.
Population, health, and nutrition :
            fiscal 1991 sector review
The theme of this year's annual
            sector review blends two special topics: poverty alleviation
            and the development of management and institutional
            capacity. Based on a review of project experience, both
            within and outside of the population, health and nutrition
            (PHN) sector, this report distills lessons that should
            assist task managers in the design and implementation of
            interventions to develop poverty-sensitive management and
            institutional capacity in the PHN sector. The Bank's
            ability to strengthen institutions, especially those needed
            to alleviate poverty, are constrained by the number and the
            skills mix of PHN staff, by the absence of standards and
            guidelines for analyzing and addressing institutional and
            management issues, and by too little time to spend on
            institutional and management issues. Therefore, the sector
            review recommends : a) improving the sector staff not only
            in numbers but in access to guidelines and training; b)
            revising Bank priorities and practices to ensure that enough
            time is spent on supervision and on upstream diagnostic
            work; c) grounding PHN policies in a macroeconomic and
            multisectoral framework oriented toward growth with poverty
            reduction, together with a sound strategy for building
            institutions and the capacity to implement and manage
            policy; and d) seeking more creative use of Bank instruments
            through a review and assessment of the best use of lending
            instruments for PHN sector interventions.
Privatization of natural monopoly
            public enterprises : the regulation issue
Many developing countries are
            considering the privatization of public enterprise natural
            monopolies. Such as monopolies in charge of electricity,
            natural gas, water and sewer, and telephone service.  The
            author tries to answer two questions: (i) how great would
            the efficiency losses be, if any, if a public natural
            monopoly were privatized and allowed to function as an
            unregulated entity? and (ii) how much could performance be
            expected to improve if the privatized natural monopoly
            operated as a regular firm?  The author argues that the
            deadweight losses from monopoly pricing by unregulated
            privatized natural monopolies are likely to be modest and
            may well be outweighed by improvements in technical
            efficiency.  He also argues that regulation is not costless
            and may well foster static and dynamic efficiency losses
            greater than the deadweight monopoly losses it is intended
            to prevent. Also, the reduction of allocative inefficiency
            is only one of several objectives of regulation.  If the
            case for regulation on efficiency is weak, then much greater
            attention must be paid to how these other objectives can
            best be achieved.  Historically, achieving distributional
            equity has been an important objective of regulation. We
            have very little systematic knowledge about the actual
            distributional consequences of privatization and
            deregulation, so more research is needed.
Power sharing and pollution control
            : coordinating policies among levels of government
Traditional approaches to pollution
            control emphasize the government's role in providing
            incentives to alter the behavior of relevant economic
            agents.  But to exploit cost advantages at different levels
            of government, pollution control policies typically involve
            assigning a variety of responsibilities to different public
            agencies.  These responsibilities can include choosing
            policy targets, controlling instruments, and developing and
            implementing strategies for monitoring and enforcement.  A
            hierarchically decentralized management structure introduces
            problems of coordination because different agencies may have
            different objectives.  These problems can be alleviated by
            modifying intergovernmental relations, particularly by using
            implicit and explicit financial transfers and by dividing
            initial property rights equally among local authorities to
            ensure that they will want to participate in the negotiating
            process. The author concludes that : a) no single level of
            government should be responsible for all environmental
            policy; b) coordination of government policies may be
            improved using intergovernmental incentive schemes; c) one
            can grant the local government financial autonomy, so that
            funds collected from enforcement are retained locally; d)
            one can affect the enforcement budget of a local regulator
            through control of lump sum transfers; and e) under
            decentralized control, command and control policies may be
            implemented more efficiently.
The impact of EC-92 on developing
            countries' trade : a dissenting view
Most benefits of the European Community
            (EC-92) program will probably not come from marginal changes
            in trade flows. Those changes are important to European
            policymakers, but are of remote interest to developing
            countries. The main threats to developing countries are the
            diversion of investment funds to EC countries and continued
            external barriers, especially nontariff barriers. The EC
            expects higher growth and lower prices as a result of EC-92.
            The net effect on developing countries of the removal of
            internal trade barriers depends on the country's income
            and price elasticities with the EC. Current estimates
            suggest the effect will be small. If new external barriers
            emerge, or if EC-wide barriers replace national barriers, EC
            firms may collaborate more with large US or Japanese firms.
            None of these developments will improve developing
            countries' trade in manufactures and services.
            Investment in EC countries may increase to meet the extra
            demand, growth, or trade diversion resulting from EC-92.
            This could lead to increased investments in developing
            countries but given heavy indebtedness in developing
            countries, is more likely to divert investment funds, thus
            limiting their future production and growth. Technical
            standards in EC-92 may also be tougher than national
            standards in member countries, which could hurt developing
            country exporters. Is "Fortress Europe" likely?
            The EC Commission says no, but the Community's record
            is not good.
Malaria : the impact of treated bed
            nets on childhood mortality in the Gambia
The effectiveness of insecticide-treated
            materials had been unclear, as earlier studies had based
            their results on the effects on vectors rather than on human
            morbidity and mortality rates from malaria. In 1988 the UK
            Medical Research Council began a systematic trial of a
            combined intervention for controlling malaria around the
            small town of Farafenni, in central Gambia. Two
            interventions, bed-nets treated with Permethrin and
            chemoprophylaxis with Maloprim, were conducted in primary
            health care (PHC) villages, with non-PHC villages serving as
            controls. The study showed that general and malaria specific
            mortality in young children was sharply reduced by
            introducing Permethrin-treated bed-nets. The treated bed-net
            intervention had the additional effect of reducing other
            causes of death. This frailty protection effect was
            substantial but is largely unexplained and requires more
            basic research. Also, not all children have to be sleeping
            in bed-nets for the benefit of the treatment to be felt.
            Small rates of noncompliance need not invalidate the
            effectiveness of the intervention. The nets were dipped by
            village women, supervised by the village health worker and
            the traditional birth attendant, with the support of the
            women's association. It appears that the washing and
            dipping process can be successfully undertaken by local
            people with a minimum of supervision, at a cost for the
            solution of a few US cents per net dipped.
Dual and multiple exchange rate
            systems in developing countries : some empirical evidence
The authors examine the determinants of
            the parallel exchange rate for a cross-country sample of
            developing countries. The sample includes countries in which
            the parallel exchange rate is official (dual exchange rate
            systems) as well as those in which it is unofficial (black
            market). They base their empirical analysis on a portfolio
            macroeconomic model in which the parallel exchange rate is
            determined by expectations and equilibrium asset
            considerations in the short run, but depends on the
            evolution of key policy variables (such as stock of money,
            budget deficits, and trade policy) in the long run. The
            results indicate that macroeconomic variables explain more
            than 70 percent of the variation in the spread between the
            official and parallel exchange rates. The authors cannot
            reject the hypothesis that there are no differences in the
            determinants of the spread when the parallel rate is
            official and unofficial. Also, they cannot reject the
            hypothesis that restrictions on the capital account affect
            the spread. These results are consistent with prior findings
            that portfolio considerations dominate the determination of
            the parallel rate in the short run. There is evidence that
            the adoption of dual exchange rate systems only partly
            insulates domestic prices. This insulation may be limited by
            : 1) a leakage of transactions from the official to the
            parallel market; and 2) depreciation of the parallel
            exchange rate.
Issues in reforming financial
            systems in Eastern Europe : the case of Bulgaria
The author uses the situation in
            Bulgaria to illustrate the financial system most Eastern
            European countries have inherited.  Reforming these
            financial systems is especially difficult because of the
            problems inherited from a centrally planned economy (CPE).
            The financial system in a CPE is completely different from a
            financial system in a market economy.  It is only a slight
            exaggeration to say that reforming the financial systems in
            these countries means creating a financial system from
            scratch.  The author illustrates the types of problems
            Eastern European countries face in reforming their financial
            systems.  He argues that these countries can stimulate the
            supply response by giving the emerging private sector more
            access to credit and by increasing the savings deposited in
            the financial system.  He argues that the authorities
            should: (i) link reform of the financial sector to the
            privatization of banks and enterprises, (ii) quickly
            privatize a group of banks, (iii) encourage privatized banks
            to lend exclusively to the emerging private sector, and (iv)
            turn the of the banks into investment banks and make them
            participate in the restructuring and privatization of
            state-owned enterprises.