rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Together, the observation that firm age – along with productivity – matters, with a minimized effect from firm size, is an interesting complement to research elsewhere on the age-size lifecycle of firms (for a recent discussion see Ayyagar, Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic 2013). Some recent analysis including Haltiwanger et al. (2013) (for the United States) have challenged a long-held view that small firms are the largest engines of job growth, showing evidence that job growth effects may be mostly explained by age. Our mixed findings of the relationship between firm size and exit add to the need for further researching into firm survival particularly in developing economies (e.g., see Haltiwanger et al. 2012).

For firms with bank financing, either for fixed asset investment or for working capital, we also consistently observe a lower likelihood of exiting the market. Firms with limited liability are less likely to exit, a finding consistent across our specifications, providing a possible indication that firms’ legal structure – and their capacity to shield themselves from potentially catastrophic losses – is more a mechanism of insulating incumbent firms rather than the promotion of risk-taking as seen in developed economies (such as reported by Harhoff et al (1998). These effects remain consistent, in magnitude and significance, after controlling for economy-level variables, including GDP and population at t0 and growth, which itself is associated with a lower likelihood of firm exit.

Firms with at least 10% of foreign ownership are less likely to exit the market as well, underlining findings elsewhere (e.g. Bernard and Sjöholm (2003)). This may point to a dynamic whereby parent companies are able to support subsidiaries, as opposed to withdrawing from markets rapidly in times of distress. There are clear endogeneity issues with foreign ownership, however, that we do not fully account for – including, to name a few, the possibility that foreign investors may buy up the most productive firms or that the likelihood of subsidiary survival is certainly linked to the fortunes of parent companies abroad – and this is one area of potential future research.

We do not find evidence for the effects of two other factors related to the characteristics of ownership and management: firms with female participation in ownership do not face a higher likelihood of exit compared to fully-male-operated firms, nor do the years of a manager’s experience matter for exit. The latter factor, in particular, is a possible area for future consideration, given that there may be little correlation between experience and managerial quality (Bloom et al (2012)) or perhaps it is in indication that firm incumbency matters more than the tenure of who is in charge.

One feature of the Enterprise Survey that we exploit is the inclusion of service-sector firms, which are omitted from analyses based on manufacturing censuses. We somewhat unexpectedly find 22
The change in prices and quantities and returns to labor and land consequent to trade reforms are obtained from the GTAP model. The GTAP results employed here are generated by trade reform simulations that _include_ Mexican cuts in tariffs and domestic support. This is because we do not introduce a national CGE model. Two scenarios are considered: full trade liberalization (Full-Lib) scenario which assumes full tariff removal, removal of all export subsidies and domestic support, and the core Doha scenario.

Table 2 reports the change in prices and factor returns as estimated for the Mexican economy by the GTAP model for the both of these scenarios.<sup>7</sup> From these results, it is clear at the Doha development agenda is expected to produce only small changes in the prices of goods and factor returns in Mexico.<sup>8</sup> The largest effect for the Doha scenario is estimated in the return to natural resources which is expected to increase about by 1.6 percent in real terms. The return to land is expected to increase by 1 percent and wages (both skilled and unskilled) are expected to decrease minimally. Prices, with the exception of oils and fats are expected to rise by between 0 and 1 percent. More generally, prices are expected to rise only for agricultural products and not for manufacturing.

Larger effects are estimated for the full trade liberalization scenario. In this scenario, return to land is expected to substantially decrease (by about 16 percent), as domestic support for Mexican agriculture is fully removed. Labor earnings are expected to decline by about 0.1 percent (unskilled) and increase by 0.1 percent (skilled). More interesting are the effects on prices. The price of cereals is expected to rise by almost 15

> 7 Within the model, the impact of tariff changes on government revenues and redistribution is kept neutral adjusting prices by the effect of compensating changes in direct income taxation.

> 8 One of the reason of the small changes is to be found in the fact that trade is already largely free within the NAFTA countries.

7
Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4420

# **Abstract**

This paper analyzes the process of Internet diffusion across the world using a panel of 199 countries during 1990-2004. The authors group countries in two categories—low and high-income countries—and show that the Internet diffusion process is well characterized by an S-shape curve for both groups. Low-income countries display a steeper diffusion curve that is equivalent to a right shift of the diffusion curve for high-income countries. The estimated diffusion curves provide evidence of a “catching-up” process, although a very slow one. The paper explores the determinants of Internet diffusion at the country level and across the same income groups. The most novel finding is that network effects seem to be crucial—the number of Internet users in a country in a given year is positively associated with the number of users in the previous year. The findings also show that the degree of competition in the provision of Internet service contributes positively to its diffusion, and there are significant positive language externalities.

This paper—a product of the Sustainable Development Department in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region—is part of a larger effort in the department to understand the determinants for performance in the infrastructure sectors. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors may be contacted at landres@worldbank.org and tserebrisky@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
***** 17-

_58._ The existence of the de jire job guarantee also seriously biases unemployment statistics in Egypt. Unemployed persons are those who register as such with the Ministry v f Labor; in effect, they are "queueing" for government employment. They must re-register every twelve months, and must assert that they have no other job. Since the country has no system of unemployment insurance, such individual **s** ubsist either on the largesse of relatives or from earnings in the informal sector. Gunnar Myrdahl's telling remark, "Unemrployment is a bourgeois luxury" certainly applies to Egypt.

59. Nevertheless, the problem of graduate unemployment certainly poses a challenge for the govermment. Despite reforms, the surplus of graduates continues to burden the labor market. Trends in the composition of unemployment are shown in Table 8. The absolute number of unemployed university graduates has exploded, rising from 5,405 in 1960 to 56,693 in 1976 to 236,530 in 1986.

60. The surpluses are not confined to humanities graduates, whose numbers grew most rapidly. Engineering graduates from the public universities, for example, often require four years to find a satisfactory job. This is in contrast to the (small) number of engineering graduates from AUC, who seem to have few difficulties finding employment. The difference may be explained by the English language facility and greater non-classroom materials available to students at the AUC. However, even they have some difficulties finding the type of job which they would like. This appears to be because many engineering firms need not so much university engineers, whose training is primarily in design (whether of bridges, computers, chemical processes, etc.) but rather technicians who can implement and maintain already existing designs. Quite a few engineering graduates find themselves employed as technicians.

61. It has been said that Egypt's most critical labor shortages are for the "sergeants of industry"--the technicians and supervisory personnel who are so essential to the smooth functioning of modem industry. Private sector formal sector firms also frequently complain of the paucity of satisfactozy "middle management" personnel. Technical institutes have attempted to fill this gap, but so far, they have had mixed success. (See paragraph 3.4) Employers tend to prefer the graduates of the mixed secondary/post-secondary "five year" technical institutes. Not only do the students in the latter usually receive more practical training than those in the two year institutes,'<sup>8</sup> but they also seem to have a better attitude toward technical work than their counterparts from the two-year institutes.

62. Another problem is that technical training needs to be general rather than excessively specific. This is not only because technology and consumer tastes can change swiftly, but also because the current structure of Egyptian industry has little to do with the country's comparative advantage I Five-year students receive about 1750 hours of practical training, compared with about 1200 for two-year students
roles within the household across space. This restriction is also important given that some sensitive variables are only collected for individuals who are married—specifically, domestic violence and fertility indicators. In addition, we exclude all individuals residing in Borno, the state most directly affected by conflict in Nigeria, as our interest is studying the spatial effects of conflict. Figures A1 and A2 in the appendix provide a geographic overview of our sample households and the extent to which they are exposed to violent events.

Some indicators differ for women and men. The DHS questionnaires are different because of the aim to capture household information from different perspectives. However, we construct variables that are as comparable as possible. For this reason, we present all results for men and women separately instead of pooling the sample.

The financial indicators include variables associated with (self-)employment, asset ownership, and decision-making autonomy. These outcomes are (i) a binary variable indicating whether the individual is employed,<sup>11</sup> (ii) a binary indicator for whether an individual reports that they own a house or land, (iii) a dummy variable for whether the individual participates in or has autonomy regarding household and personal decisions.<sup>12</sup> For women, the descriptive statistics show small improvements in financial outcomes from 2013 to 2018, with the exception of asset ownership, which worsens slightly (Columns I and III of Table 1). We observe a small increase in the proportion of women who work, from 68 to 69 percent, and a modest increase in the proportion of women who report they independently make decisions concerning their own health care, large household purchases, and family visits, from 2.5 to 3.1 percent. However, the table also shows a decrease in the proportion of women who report sole ownership of their homes or land from 12 to 9 percent. For men, we observe an increase in employment from 96 to 98 percent, a modest increase in the proportion of men who report independently making decisions about their own health care and large household purchases from 42 to 46 percent, and a decrease in

> 11The individual reported she or he is currently working. Throughout the paper, we use the term _employment_ but acknowledge that individuals can engage in work for their own consumption, volunteer work, and unpaid-trainee work.

> 12Using alternative definitions of asset ownership and decision-making to include co-ownership and co-decision-making leads to similar results.

18
According to the official data, in 2007 total dibao expenditures were equivalent to 18% of the ex ante poverty gap; by 2009 total dibao expenditures had risen to 64% of the ex ante poverty gap (Table 7). The reduction in the poverty gap per yuan dibao expenditure was therefore fairly small. In 2007 each yuan of dibao expenditures was associated with a reduction in the poverty gap of 0.13 yuan. In 2009 each yuan of dibao expenditures was associated with a reduction in the poverty gap of 0.10 yuan.

Dibao participation in the CHIP sample is lower than that reported in official statistics, and it may be appropriate to evaluate the program’s poverty impact using the level of dibao expenditures implied by the CHIP data. We calculate total dibao expenditures implied by the CHIP data as equal to the weighted sum of county level transfers times the number of dibao recipients within each county (see note to Table 7).<sup>8</sup> By this calculation, total dibao expenditures are substantially lower than the official numbers. In 2009, for example, they are only 36% of the official total.

Even using these lower estimates of total dibao expenditures, the poverty impact of the dibao program remains modest. In 2009, for example, dibao expenditures implied by the CHIP data were equivalent to 26% of the ex ante poverty gap, but the poverty gap calculated using ex post incomes was only 6.5% lower than that calculated using ex ante incomes. Each yuan of dibao expenditures was associated with a reduction in the poverty gap of only 0.24 yuan. These discrepancies between dibao expenditures and poverty reduction suggest leakages in targeting.

# **VI. Conventional analysis of dibao targeting**

The dibao program’s stated goal is to assist households with incomes below the dibao thresholds, so inclusionary targeting error—the proportion of program beneficiaries with higher incomes— is a relevant criterion for evaluation of the program. The dibao program does not claim to cover all individuals with incomes below the dibao threshold, so exclusionary error may not be a measure of the success of the program in meeting its own objectives. Nevertheless, analysis of the program’s exclusionary targeting error is informative.

> 8 For dibao recipients who live in counties for which MOCA county‐level transfer data are missing, we use the village average transfers from CHIP.

16
based indicators of sectoral factor exposures (subsection 2.1). Secondly, we construct a hand-collected database of the sectoral exposures reported by the largest banks in the notes to their financial statements. The procedure to hand-collect the accounting-based sectoral shares will be exposed in subsection 2.2. To gauge the relationship between sectoral specialization and bank performance, we use various dimensions of bank risk and return. The construction of these dependent variables is described in subsection 2.3. The correlations between both types of sectoral specialization measures as well as their relationship with bank performance measures are described in subsection 2.4.

# **2.1 A stock return-based approach to measuring banks’ sectoral exposures and lending specialization**

If a bank holds a well-diversified loan portfolio, then its stock return should mainly co-move with returns on a broad market-wide index. On the other hand, if a bank’s loan portfolio is (over)exposed to certain sectors, then the bank’s stock return should not only react to economy-wide shocks, but also to sector-specific news. Using an extended market model, we test whether banks are well diversified and are only exposed to the market index, or whether they additionally exhibit significant exposures to certain sector-specific portfolios (and hence violate the assumption underlying the asymptotic single risk factor framework). This method is similar in spirit to returns-based style analysis, which is a statistical technique mainly used to deconstruct mutual fund returns in exposures to investment strategies or asset classes (see e.g. Sharpe (1992), Brown and Goetzmann (1997) and ter Horst et al. (2004)). These exposures are then interpreted as a measure of a fund or portfolio manager’s style (e.g. with respect to large versus small stocks or value versus growth stocks). A similar approach is used by Acharya and Steffen (2013) to infer European banks’ sovereign risk exposure from asset prices. They relate banks’ stock returns to yields on German government debt and then limited to the syndicated loans, which may not be representative for the overall portfolio of commercial and industrial loans.

6
**Table 3: Results from Probit regression of firm death on enterprise characteristics before crisis**

|**Observations**|2362|2325|2283|1779|724|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Country Dummies**|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|**Sector Dummies**|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|**Month of Interview Dummies**|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|
|**Bank Credit**||||||
|Firm has loan, line of credit or overdraft||-0.178**||-0.273***|-0.427**|
|(dummy)||(-2.21)||(-2.70)|(-2.42)|
|Firm has overdraft|||-0.213***|||
|(dummy)|||(-2.59)|||
|Firm has line of credit or loan|||0.033|||
|(dummy)|||(0.41)|||
|**Firm Characteristics**||||||
|Firm is medium-sized|-0.163**|-0.131|-0.167*|-0.112|0.041|
|(dummy)|(-1.97)|(-1.55)|(-1.96)|(-1.10)|(0.24)|
|Firm is large|-0.295***|-0.263**|-0.288***|-0.170|0.092|
|<br>(dummy)|(-2.93)|(-2.54)|(-2.75)|(-1.32)|(0.43)|
|Age of firm|-0.252***|-0.246***|-0.240***|-0.141*|-0.366***|
|(natural log)|(-4.78)|(-4.59)|(-4.44)|(-1.68)|(-2.68)|
|Percent foreign-owned|0.001|0.000|0.001|-0.002|-0.005|
|(percent)|(0.49)|(0.31)|(0.52)|(-1.11)|(-1.42)|
|Firm was privatized|0.136|0.140|0.163|0.055|-0.627*|
|(dummy)|(1.02)|(1.05)|(1.21)|(0.34)|(-1.65)|
|Exports|-0.002|-0.002|-0.002|-0.001|-0.001|
|(% of sales)|(-1.47)|(-1.55)|(-1.59)|(-0.65)|(-0.42)|
|**Firm Performance**||||||
|Firm has no need for external financing||||-0.121|-0.223|
|(dummy)||||(-1.32)|(-1.46)|
|Firm has ISO certification||||-0.197**|-0.327**|
|(dummy)||||(-2.00)|(-2.03)|
|Firm Growth 2005-2007||||0.003|0.001|
|(employment growth, %)||||(0.78)|(0.29)|
|<br>Firm invested in 2007||||-0.031|0.036|
|(dummy)||||(-0.33)|(0.24)|
|<br>Return on Sales in 2007|||||-0.002|
|(percent)|||||(-0.72)|
|**Joint test for significance of overdraft and loan variables**|||6.91|||
|**P-value**|||0.03|||
|**Pseudo R-Squared**|0.06|0.06|0.06|0.07|0.12|

***,**, * Significant at 1,5, and 10 percent level.  T-statistics in parentheses. Source: Authors‘ calculations based upon World Bank Enterprise Surveys

Note: Since dependent variables are dummy variables, probit regressions are used. Percent private-owned is omitted due to co-linearity. Country dummies are used rather than country controls because of the small number of countries in the regressions. All regressions include dummy variables indicating sector, country, and month of first interview (i.e., in 2008 or early 2009). Dependent variable is dummy variable indicating firm in existence in late 2008/early 2009 was no longer operating at time of second survey 41
require it to be very severe indeed in order to overturn the conclusion that the multiplier is significantly less than one.

Second, as long as the measurement error in government spending is uncorrelated with changes in disbursements on World Bank loans, the IV estimates of the multiplier are still consistent even in the presence of measurement error in total spending. Moreover, if measurement error were important, then other things equal, we should expect to find IV estimates that are larger than the OLS estimates. Yet in nearly all the specifications we have seen so far, the opposite is true. Taken together these arguments suggest that while measurement error in government spending surely is nontrivial for these countries, it is unlikely that my estimates of the multiplier suffer from major attenuation bias as a result.

# **5.2  Special Features of World Bank‐Financed Spending**

The identification strategy in this paper hinges on the correlation between growth and changes in public spending that are associated with changes in disbursements on World Bank loans. This opens the possibility that there are unique features of World Bank‐financed spending that might reduce its short‐run stimulative effect on output relative to other forms of spending. And since the composition of total spending shifts towards World Bank‐financed spending when the latter increases, this may account for why the estimated overall government spending multiplier is so small. One such possibility is that the distribution of World Bank‐financed government spending between domestic production and imports is different from that of non‐World Bank‐financed spending. To take an extreme scenario, if a World Bank‐financed project consists exclusively of purchases of machinery or consultancy services imported from abroad, then one might expect the stimulative effects of this spending in the recipient country operating through expansions in domestic aggregate demand to be limited.

To investigate this issue further, I match up the project‐level data on disbursements with contract‐level data on individual procurement contracts awarded on World Bank projects. The World Bank’s procurement records include information on the country of origin of the supplier to which each procurement contract was awarded, as well as, of course, the total value of the contract. I aggregate these individual contracts up to the project level, and construct the share of total procurement contract value associated with a project which is tendered to suppliers situated in the country where the project is located. This is only an imperfect indicator of where disbursements on World Bank loans are spent, for at least three reasons. First, this information is available only as an aggregate for the entire project, and not for the individual year‐over‐year disbursements. Absent better information, I make the 20