rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The effect of formal credit on
            output and employment in rural India
This paper estimates the output,
            investment, employment and wage effect of institutional
            credit using district-level panel data from India. Using a
            two-stage model to distinguish demand for formal credit from
            supply, the authors conclude that increased formal credit
            has a positive effect on crop production, on the use of
            fertilizer, and on private investment in machines and
            livestock. However, the effect of expanded credit on crop
            output is small. Crop output improves more because of
            increased use of fertilizer than because of capital
            investments, which merely substitute for labor. Credit
            decreases farm employment, yet increases the real
            agricultural wage because of its overwhelmingly positive
            effect on rural nonfarm employment. In short, improved
            financial intermediation in rural India greatly improves
            rural nonfarm employment and output, has a modest effect on
            crop output, and tends to substitute capital investment for
            farm labor.
Improving rural wages in India
The purpose of this paper is to identify
            public policy and program interventions that can increase
            real rural wage rates and hence reduce rural poverty. Rural
            wages can only increase if the demand for rural labor grows
            faster than its supply.  The report states that whether
            public policies increase real agricultural wages depends on
            whether they promote rural non farm employment to absorb the
            growing labor force. For example, although educational
            infrastructure, public irrigation, and regulation of markets
            raise agricultural output, they depress real agricultural
            wages because they do not increase nonfarm employment. In
            contrast, rural electrification, roads and banks can
            increase real agricultural wages, because they increase
            nonfarm employment. Rural financial institutions and
            electrification reallocate labor from agriculture to rural
            nonfarm activities, however, while roads promote both farm
            and nonfarm employment.
Revised estimates and projections of
            international migration : 1980-2000
This report reviews the World
            Bank's latest international migration statistics for
            every country in the world for each five year period from
            1980 - 2000. The estimates and projections of net
            international migration during this period will be used as
            input statistics for the forthcoming edition of the World
            Population Projections. In the early 1980s, net
            international migration to all receiving countries totaled
            more than 1.2 million persons a year. The author assumes
            this figure to gradually decrease to fewer than 900,000
            persons a year in the period 1995 - 2000. The current male
            dominance of international migration flows is also expected
            to decrease. He also assumes that the importance of the
            United States as a prime destination of immigrants will
            increase substantially in the 1990s. Mexico is by far the
            largest net exporter of international migrants.
Tax administration in developing
            countries : strategies and tools of implementation
Developing nations should adopt less
            sophisticated taxes (such as taxes on goods and services) to
            broaden the tax base and use more efficient administrative
            techniques.  This could be achieved through a system of
            income withholdings (for all components of income) and
            through computerization.  This could simplify withholding
            and collection by giving each taxpayer a number in a master
            file.  Computers could also facilitate information
            gathering, cross checking, and audits.  At present,
            potential tax bases are often not exploited because the
            application of existing laws is not possible.  Because of
            this, administrators face major problems: a large portion of
            the economy is at a subsistence level and does not keep
            records.  Where records are kept, accounting is not
            reliable.  Taxpayer cooperation is also low for a variety of
            reasons: shortage of trained officials, a tradition of
            corruption, and because taxes are not often seen to produce
            better government services.
Women in development : issues for
            economic and sector analysis
This paper highlights issues and action
            plans concerning women in economic and sector analysis and
            in project design. The paper focuses on the majority of
            women who are poor. It emphasizes measures to include women
            in development that contribute to economic performance,
            poverty reduction, slower population growth, and other broad
            development objectives. The paper concludes that women
            already contribute far more economically than is usually
            recognized. By expanding women's economic choices,
            output and efficiency can be increased by enabling women to
            find their true comparative advantage. Women also tend to be
            disproportionately represented among the poor, so economic
            adjustment programs should deliberately take into
            consideration women's special needs and constraints.
            The same set of prices on agricultural products may also
            have a different incentive effect on men and women. With
            labor markets often segmented by gender, women are typically
            concentrated in fewer more traditional, less remunerative
            lines of work. Finally, improving education of women is
            probably the easiest program to target, but key health and
            family planning needs include stronger prenatal screening
            and care, help with delivery and a reduction of anemia.
Cash debt buybacks and the insurance
            value of reserves
Bulow and Rogoff showed in 1988 that
            auction based purchases of debt could not be an effective
            way to capture the secondary market discount, since the
            purchase pushes up the secondary market afterward. The
            author of this report points out another problem with cash
            debt buy backs - one that arises because terms of trade
            contingent instruments do not exist in international capital
            markets, and because of the differences in risk aversion
            that one may plausibly assume to exist between commercial
            creditors and the developing countries that are their debtor
            clients. Under such circumstances, secondary market prices
            fail to reflect the insurance value reserves have to debtors
            but not to creditors - since, after all, the secondary
            market reflects mostly intrabank transactions. As a result,
            the country buying back debt with reserves clearly ends up
            worse off, even if it succeeds in capturing the full
            secondary market discount prevailing before the buyback -
            because the buyback reduces the insurance possibilities open
            to the country.
Kuwait - Averting financial crisis
On August 8, 1982 a leaflet was
            distributed in the Suq Al Manakh building and in the
            basement of Commercial Center No. 5, the offices of the
            parallel stock market and the Kuwait Stock Exchange. The
            leaflet carried the names of most of the dealers in the
            stock market and it declared a one month moratorium on all
            payments of maturing future cheques. The moratorium,
            informal as it was, was respected by the dealers. During the
            next two years stock market and real estate prices fell more
            than 50 percent, devastating investors who had bought the
            underlying assets at future prices. This paper traces the
            development of Kuwait's financial crisis and describes
            the interventions devised by the government as events
            unfolded. The critical question is whether the solutions
            will reignite Kuwait's nonoil economy and stimulate the
            participation of the private sector.
Fiscal policy and stabilization in Brazil
The theoretical basis for the
            "heterodox shocks" recently implemented in
            Argentina and Brazil is that chronic inflation is
            essentially inertial - the product of staggered prices and
            wage adjustments. The underlying assumption is that the
            economic process is a cooperative game. Without legal and
            other forms of coercion, however, individuals tend to cheat
            - to fix their prices above average to start with. A basic
            flaw of the "heterodox" stabilization programs was
            to assume that stabilizing the price level was a
            precondition for fiscal equilibrium and eventual fiscal
            reform - instead of the reverse. The fiscal austerity
            promised after stabilization was never accomplished -
            blocked by bureaucrats and special interest groups
            interested in maintaining the status quo. The challenge in
            these countries is to devise economic programs that could
            make long-term stabilization programs viable and politically acceptable.
Causes of adult deaths in developing
            countries : a review of data and methods
Relatively little attention has been
            paid to the problem of premature adult mortality in
            developing countries, despite high levels of mortality in
            many countries - and despite the potentially severe social
            and economic consequences of adult deaths. Circulatory
            diseases and external causes appear to be major causes of
            adult deaths in most countries. The relative contribution of
            other important causes - including tuberculosis, cancer,
            liver disease, respiratory disease, and maternity related
            complications varies between countries. Techniques for
            determining cause specific adult mortality require thorough
            field testing and validation. The authors discuss several
            possible approaches, and categorize selected major causes of
            death according to whether they are likely to be diagnosed
            or excluded, on the basis of symptoms reported by relatives.
            They consider methods for classifying and presenting data on
            cause of death and conclude with recommendations for further
            methodological research.
The effect of job training on
            Peruvian women's employment and wages
This paper looks at the effect of
            post-school training on employment and wage opportunities of
            urban women. Attendance in post-school training programs is
            extensive. The more schooling a women has, the more likely
            she is to receive job training. Post-school training
            generally increases a woman's chances of entering the
            labor force, however, job training does not increase the
            hourly wage rates of women in wage (private) and nonwage
            employment sectors. There are several possible explanations
            for this finding. First, since women tend to expect to work
            outside the home fewer years than men, they have an
            incentive to train for occupations that require lower
            investments in human capital than those by men. Second,
            there are no standards for assessing the quality of the
            training in proprietary institutes where most women are
            trained. Finally, discrimination against women may prevent
            them from entering not only the most successful training
            programs, but also the jobs that allow more wage and career
            advancement as well.
Do Caribbean exporters pay higher
            freight costs
The objective of this study is to
            analyze transportation costs incurred by Caribbean countries
            on their major export products to determine whether there is
            evidence of freight rate discrimination against these
            countries, or whether their transport costs are
            significantly different from those of other exporters. A key
            finding is that a distinction must be made between freight
            rates for air cargo services as opposed to ocean transport.
            For exports by ocean carriers the empirical evidence is
            quite different than that for air shipments. This study also
            finds that Caribbean exporters are more likely to experience
            adverse transport costs on food and agricultural raw
            materials than they are on manufactured goods where a
            relatively high percentage of shipments are by air. The
            report also suggests the following lines of analysis: how
            the Caribbean countries might best exploit the major cost
            advantage they have for products exported by air, why is
            ocean transport less cost efficient than air freight for
            Caribbean countries, and why do large adverse transport cost
            differentials appear to be concentrated in certain product
            groups like food and agricultural raw materials?
The curricular content of primary
            education in developing countries
This paper examines the curriculum
            policies for primary schools in a wide range of developing
            countries in the 1980s and, to a lesser extent, the 1960s.
            The research covers what subjects are taught, what
            percentage of instructional time is allocated to each
            subject, and how much instructional time is available
            overall in primary education. The results indicate that
            there is little international debate about primary school
            curricula. The curricula of mass education systems are
            increasingly alike all over the world, with surprisingly
            little regional and national variation. Almost all national
            educational systems emphasize certain core subjects:
            language (35), math (18), science (8), and social science (9).
Financial policies, growth, and efficiency
Most developing countries intervene
            extensively in financial markets, setting ceilings on
            interest rates and spreads and allocating much (often
            between half and all) of formal credit to
            "priority" uses. This study reviews interest rate
            controls and other repressive financial policies on
            investment and efficiency, and investigates such
            relationships using a cross section analysis of 34 countries
            between 1965 and 1985. The report finds a significant
            positive correlation between growth and interest rates as
            well as between efficiency and interest rates. However, it
            finds little relationship between interest rates and
            investment levels and no relationship between interest rates
            and the current account. The evidence found supports the
            need for liberalizing financial markets or at least supports
            measures against severe financial repression. That is not to
            say that abrupt liberalization is desirable or that certain
            interventions in financial markets may not be beneficial --
            at least until measures to improve information, supervision,
            regulation, and macrostability have become effective.
Adjustment and the labor market
How has the labor market responded to
            changes in macroeconomic conditions and related government
            policies? And to what extent has government intervention
            affected the microeconomic functioning of the labor market.
            Geographical immobility of workers does not seem to hinder
            adjustment. Labor is increasingly deployed in nontradables
            and import competing sectors, however, and problems of
            mobility between tradables and nontradables are reported. In
            addition, shortages of skilled manpower are reported. There
            is little evidence of wage resistence where wage indexation
            is not institutionalized. Traditional methods of wage
            support have become less important in the past two decades.
            Where effective minimum wage policies exist, they have the
            expected distortionary effects. Wage differences between the
            public and private sectors, particularly in sub-Saharan
            Africa, have continued to widen, and the efficiency of the
            public sector has declined as a result. Job security
            regulations may be an obstacle to structural adjustment
            programs insofar as they hinder the release of labor from
            contracting sectors.
Openness, outward orientation, trade
            liberalization, and economic performance in developing countries
This paper provides a critical review of
            the existing empirical literature that deals with the
            relationship between trade orientation and economic
            performance. Using a model that avoids the shortcomings of
            most current measures of trade orientation, the author finds
            strong support for the hypothesis that, other things being
            equal, countries with a less distorted external sector grow
            faster than countries with a more distorted external sector.
Rural credit in developing countries
Subsidized formal credit to the
            agricultural sector has been advocated as more efficient,
            equitable, and easier to implement than, say, land reform.
            But the record on subsidized credit to farmers is dismal. It
            shows a significant failure either to achieve an increase of
            agricultural output cost-effectively or to improve rural
            income distribution and alleviate poverty. Many of the
            financial institutions have proven to be inept and to lack
            accountability. Common features of the success stories are
            tougher stands on default; strict auditing and accounting
            procedures and financial control; and some form of joint
            responsibility or liability by small groups of farmers,
            whereby default by one member cancels future loans to the
            whole group.
Optimal commodity taxes under rationing
How useful and relevant are the results
            of standard optimal commodity tax models when one or more
            commodities are rationed? This paper investigates the
            implications of optimal commodity taxation under rationing.
            In a single person economy, optimal policy dictates that the
            rationed commodity bears the entire tax. The implication for
            developing countries is that if the government has a fixed
            budget to subsidize certain commodities, optimal policy will
            be to subsidize only the rationed commodities. In a multi
            person economy, optimal policy will tax all nonrationed
            commodities at an infinite rate if the rule is that taxes on
            all commodities are proportional to prices. The more a
            society is concerned about inequality, the greater the tax
            should be on nonrationed commodities. The alternative model
            presented here overcomes some of the restrictive features of
            the previous rationing model.
Credit rationing, tenancy,
            productivity, and the dynamics of inequality
Why, when given the same resources,
            might productivity be lower on farms operated through
            sharecropping than on owner-run farms? The reason is that
            sharecropping, much less wage contracts, cannot overcome the
            divergence of interests between those who till the land and
            those who own it. Only land redistribution can do that. This
            paper presents notes toward a general equilibrium theory of
            land tenancy that suggest how changes in technology and
            publicly provided infrastructure can affect the equilibrium
            distribution of land in countries where credit is rationed.
            When credit to famers is rationed, changes in technology can
            increase the inequality in landholdings - with a long term
            increase in share tenancy. This is turn might reduce
            productivity, at least partially offsetting the initial
            improvements. The paper suggests that the development of
            effective rural financial institutions would reduce the
            likelihood of these negative effects on equality and
            productivity. It further cautions though that past attempts
            in creating such institutions have failed because of a lack
            of accountability and of enforcement procedures.
Adjustment and income distribution :
            a counterfactual analysis
This paper presents model simulations to
            quantify the effects of different stabilization packages in
            the distribution of income and wealth. The simulations
            suggest that a sharply contractionary stabilization package
            has a major adverse impact on the distribution of income.
            The shifts in distribution are likely to make the package
            less sustainable. The simulations support the view that
            stabilization packages which do not have specific components
            targeted to the poor will redistribute income in a way that,
            although transitory, is likely to permanently harm those
            below the poverty line - in terms of things like nutrition,
            health, and education. The sharp redistributive effects of
            stabilization packages that omit specific targeted policies
            to alleviate poverty are also likely to endanger the
            sustainability of the adjustment package.
Differentiating cyclical and
            long-term income elasticities of import demand
Determining how imports react to
            cyclical and secular (long term) factors has been a
            recurrent theme in the empirical trade literature. The
            evidence suggests that cyclical income elasticities of
            import demand are generally higher than long term
            elasticities - particularly for basic materials and
            semi-manufactured goods. Traditional models generally
            underestimate the cyclical response in imports, and
            overestimate the long term response. For example, estimates
            of income elasticity using a traditional import model
            average 1.4 and 1.2 respectively. The authors' model
            suggests a cyclical elasticity averaging 2.6. This result
            suggests that the two elasticities may differ by an even
            larger factor for developing countries. Relative prices
            generally are more important in determining import demand in
            Latin America and Asian-Pacific countries, in this model,
            but seem to have little effect in the African and
            (surprisingly) Mediterranean countries. In countries for
            which both cyclical and long-term income elasticities are
            significantly different from zero, relative price
            coefficients are also significantly different than in
            countries for which income parameters are not significantly
            different from zero.