rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
A survey of Viet Nam's legal
            framework in transition
Viet Nam is trying to preserve its
            sociopolitical system while moving gradually toward a
            different economic system, recognizing that law is a
            valuable instrument for effecting orderly change. It has
            begun to enact the laws and decrees needed in such areas as
            company law, contract law, banking law, and, especially,
            laws on foreign investment. Further progress toward a market
            system will require more legislative activity. The author
            highlights four areas of special priority. Thoroughly
            implementing the new land law, by issuing detailed
            regulations to "marketize" the leasehold system,
            clarify land-use rights in liquidating state enterprises or
            making them corporations, and establish a firm basis for
            mortgage financing. Deepening state enterprise reform
            through a new legal framework for state enterprises, to be
            established under a revised company law, to permit state
            enterprises to operate under the same framework as nonstate
            enterprises. This should be accompanied by a new state
            management of its shares in enterprises. Revising the
            framework of company law and foreign investment law to
            implement and expand pilot corporatizations. Finalizing the
            civil code and commercial law to provide rules of the game
            for everyday business transaction and for resolution of the
            disputes that will inevitably result from them. Other areas
            less far-reaching in impact but important for market
            development include regulations to implement bankruptcy law,
            competition law, and securities law. In addition, the author
            notes the need to guard against separate legal regimes for
            state enterprises, nonstate enterprises, and
            foreign-investment enterprises, as this would interfere with
            efficient competition among enterprises with different
            ownership structures. It is also important to coordinate
            foreign legal traditions and preferences, especially in such
            areas as dispute resolution.
Service as a major source of growth
            in Russia and other former Soviet states
Private services could contribute
            greatly to economic growth in Russia and the other former
            Soviet states. The authors use econometric analysis to
            identify the gap between expected and actual levels of
            service activities in these countries and simulate the
            effect on GDP and employment of closing the gap. The gap is
            particularly wide for business and consumer services.
            Transport and publicly provided services are comparable to,
            or higher than, those in other countries. Traditionally, the
            Marxist doctrine of socialist economies has labeled services
            "nonproductive." And there is continuing evidence
            that national policies in these countries favor producers of
            goods over producers of services. In Russia, for example,
            there was until recently a 25 percent ceiling on trade
            margins for some products, and the enterprise profits tax is
            higher for producers of services than for producers of
            goods. Also, coefficients for real estate lease payments are
            sometimes higher for service firms. It will be important for
            Russia and the other former Soviet states to identify a
            policy agenda to facilitate the rapid expansion of services.
            The policy agenda should entail legal, economic, and
            institutional changes to eliminate the current bias against
            services, so that service firms can operate on a level
            playing field. It should also include proactive programs to
            stimulate a rapid increase in the level of service activity.
            Appropriate measures may include: (a) changes in the tax
            law, the regulatory framework, and other economic
            incentives; (b) government programs to accelerate private
            sector development and the privatization of government
            distribution and service activities; (c) training for
            enterprise employees to facilitate their transfer from
            production to service activities; (d) action to support the
            orderly development of input and output markets; (e)
            creation of a modern banking system that will use
            appropriate criteria to provide credit to service
            enterprises; and (f) consideration of service activities as
            priorities for international technical assistance and direct
            foreign investment.
Economic transformation and the
            fiscal crisis : a critical look at the Central European
            experience of the 1990s
The authors argue that traditional
            explanations of the fiscal crisis in reforming ex-socialist
            economies overlook crucial connections between key
            components of the deficit - particularly between reductions
            in spending and declines in revenues. Almost all studies of
            the fiscal aspects of the transition stress the impact on
            the fiscal budget of the performance crisis in state-owned
            enterprises. The authors contend that this aspect of the
            fiscal crisis has been overstated. The enterprise
            sector's net contribution to the government budget -
            that is, net income from profit taxes after subtracting
            subsidies - has increased during the transition in
            Czechoslovakia and Poland and has not changed substantially
            in Hungary. After reexamining the data, the authors argue
            that although the fiscal crisis is certainly structural, the
            main blame should be attributed to the explosion in spending
            (especially social spending) rather than to the crisis in
            revenues. Many of the social costs of adjustment were
            previously hidden within the state-owned enterprises system.
            These social costs include unemployment benefits and the
            cost of supporting - through pensions or social assistance -
            the people displaced from the work force by the
            transformation. It is important to continue reforming the
            tax system and tax administration - to deal with the
            widespread hiding of profits and cheating on taxes - but all
            three countries already have relatively high levels of
            taxation. Society in the three countries may not be willing
            to provide the resources required to support or extend
            current spending levels.
Interest rates in open economies :
            real interest rate parity, exchange rates, and country risk
            in industrial and developing countries
The paper tests for the relative
            importance of international capital market integration in
            determining interest rates in a broad sample of both
            industrial and developing countries. The recent turbulence
            in industrial country financial markets has underscored
            these concerns. One view holds that it is possible for
            countries to conduct an independent domestic interest rate
            policy. The other suggests that there is very little room
            for managing interest rates in open economies without
            destabilizing effects on exchange rates - given the massive
            volumes of capital market transactions that force interest
            rate parity across countries. Interest rate formation in
            developing countries has attracted much less attention. But
            it is an increasingly important issue as a growing number of
            them undertake financial liberalization. The central
            question for policy-makers is again the degree to which
            domestic interest rates are influenced by world interest
            rates. A separate concern is high domestic interest rates,
            relative to world interest rates, in some developing
            countries. A model of real interest rate parity is proposed
            as the main test for capital market integration - that is,
            that nominal interest rate differences across countries are
            largely explained by inflation differentials (rather than
            uncovered or covered nominal interest parity). The evidence
            suggests strongly that although domestic monetary policies
            play a significant role, real interest parity is a dominant
            factor, in both industrial and developing countries.
            However, expectations of exchange rate changes also
            significantly influence interest rates. A third key factor
            is the apparent presence of significant "country
            risk", unexplained by macroeconomic imbalances, for
            some developing countries (for example, Chile, Indonesia,
            Mexico, and the Philippines) pushing real domestic interest
            rates higher than what would be otherwise predicted. The
            concluding section discusses the possible reasons for such
            "country-risk" in the case of Indonesia.
Union - nonunion wage differentials
            in the developing world : a case study of Mexico
Union-nonunion wage differentials have
            been extensively studied by labor economists, but for lack
            of data on the developing world the study has been confined
            largely to the industrial world.  This paper is one of the
            first attempts to empirically examine those differentials in
            a developing country. The authors find that union-nonunion
            wage differentials in Mexico have many of the same patterns
            as those in industrial nations.  But there are marked
            differences.  Based on a household survey in 1989, the
            authors find that: (i) overall, the union-nonunion wage gap
            is 10.4 percent; (ii) unions have a positive impact on the
            earnings of employed women and indigenous people; and (iii)
            organized labor in Mexico's northern states is
            considerably weaker in collective bargaining strength than
            it is elsewhere in Mexico.
The tax base in transition : the
            case of Bulgaria
The transition from socialism
            characteristically reduces existing tax revenues at the same
            time that it increases the need for government spending. An
            increasing need for revenue combined with an eroding tax
            base creates a transition-related fiscal gap and a challenge
            for tax policy.  The solution, say the authors, is not to
            lay a heavier tax burden on new private firms.  The issue is
            how to meet revenue needs without inhibiting private sector
            development.  Large-scale tax evasion in the private sector
            - the de facto outcome in Bulgaria and in many other
            transitional economies - may be a good incentive for
            development of private enterprise, but it is illegal and
            inequitable to wage-earners and salaried workers.  The chief
            means of increasing tax revenue are to: (1) reduce tax rates
            to decrease the benefit of evasion; (2) improve tax
            administration (to increase tax coverage and better dectect
            evasion); and (3) increase penalties for evasion.  These
            three measures effectively decrease the benefits and
            increase the cost of tax evasion to economic agents. It
            takes time to improve tax administration, however.  Given
            administrative limitations, what should the tax structure
            be?  The authors contend that an administratively feasible
            system designed to encourage development of the private
            sector during the transition should: (i) be simple, not
            complex or oversophisticated; (ii) be administratively
            implementable with current resources; (iii) impose a low tax
            burden on all economic agents; (iv) rely on broad tax bases
            with minimum exemptions; (v) begin the long-term improvement
            of tax administration; and (vi) limit the severity of tax
            penalties in the transition from an authoritarian to a
            democratic regime.  In theory, reducing the cost of
            compliance and increasing the expected cost of noncompliance
            should reduce tax evasion and increase tax revenue.  In
            practice, small businesses and self-employed citizens tend
            to evade taxes, providing an effective zero tax base.  The
            government has little to lose from reducing taxes on the
            self-employed but, to be equitable, it should reduce taxes
            for everyone.  As a general rule, say the authors, economies
            in transition should impose lower tax burdens than are
            imposed in mature western market economies.  It may also
            reduce the perception of "exploitation" by giving
            the impression of a more modest government consistent with
            the dynamic private sector led economy.
An efficient frontier for
            international portfolios with commodity assets
In recent years, the role of investment
            funds has increased in most commodity markets.  Investment
            funds, which traditionally deal with financial markets, have
            been shifting between financial markets and commodity
            futures markets, as well as among commodity futures markets.
            The popularity of investing in emerging capital markets is
            as high as it has been since World War I.  By 1913, nearly
            half of a typical equity portfolio was invested in emerging
            markets.  Today, one in every four dollars invested in
            foreign equity markets goes to emerging markets.  Both
            commodity futures and emerging capital markets are growing
            in popularity because they allow risk reduction through
            portfolio diversification.  The authors analyze the benefits
            of including commodity futures and assets from emerging
            markets in an investment portfolio. They also try to
            calculate the optimal composition of assets.  The calculated
            optimal weights show that a considerable proportion of an
            investment portfolio could be invested in commodity futures
            and emerging market assets.  The weights calculated are
            higher than those funds usually used, signifying the
            potential for futher expansion of these assets in a
            portfolio.  Finally, including commodity futures and assets
            from emerging markets in investment portfolios produces a
            significant risk/return benefit.
A rock and a hard place : the two
            faces of U.S. trade policy toward Korea
U.S. trade policy since the 1980s has
            been quite different from trade policy in the first two or
            three decades after World War II. Until the 1970s, U.S.
            trade policy was dominated by systematic concerns. Trade
            policy actions were subject to the disciplines of
            constructing an open, stable, and nondiscriminatory system.
            In contrast, for the past 10 or 15 years the main objective
            of trade policy actions has been to respond to the demands
            of various domestic constituents for greater access to
            foreign markets or for reduced foreign access to the U.S.
            market. When systemic concerns were strong, they helped
            discipline the actions the U.S. government would take to
            advance the interest of a particular constituent. But now,
            these constituent-supporting actions are U.S. trade policy.
            To state the same point another way, the current objective
            of U.S. trade "policy" is to respond to each
            constituent's plea for the application of this or that
            regulatory instrument (antidumping, "301," and so
            on) - to respond in a way that will win that
            constituent's vote. "Policy" is now no more
            than a generic label for the accumulation of these
            responses. The author describes the accumulation of these
            responses. He tabulates U.S. trade actions in the 1980s,
            paying particular attention to actions against Korea. While
            Korean economic interests were advanced by restrictions on
            Korea's and other countries' exports of steel to
            the United States and the European Union (EU), the outcome,
            judged globally, was probably negative. Rent transfers to
            Korean and other exporters are, on a global basis, transfers
            from U.S. and EU users, and hence net to zero. That leaves
            only the efficiency effects, which is estimated to add up to
            a global loss of about $36 million a year, based on process
            and the size of the industry in 1984. The underlying theme,
            says the author, is that these actions have no unifying
            discipline except to respond in a politically acceptable way
            to constituent pressures. These are responses to the
            politics and economics of specific situations, not the
            automatic or hands-off extension of nondiscriminatory
            standards that the still-popular rhetoric of a
            "rules-based" system would suggest.
A political - economy analysis of
            free trade areas and customs unions
The authors analyze the welfare effects
            of regional integration in a model of endogenous protection.
            They show that introducing preferential trading leads to an
            increase in protection against countries outside the
            preferential trading area. Moreover, the important Meade
            result of preferential trading breaks down in the presence
            of endogenous protection. According to the Meade result, if
            excess demands exhibit net substitutability, the
            introduction of preferential trading is welfare-improving.
            In the presence of endogenous protection, because
            preferential trading is accompanied by increased protection
            against nonpartners, its effect on welfare is ambiguous. The
            authors also compare free trade areas and customs unions.
            They provide the first formal treatment of the argument that
            a customs union is a more effective instrument for diluting
            the power of interest groups than is a free trade area.
            Under a customs union, the tariff available to one country
            becomes available to all countries in the union. This
            introduces a free-rider problem in lobbying and all lobbying
            takes place in one country. The lobby chooses a lower
            (common) external tariff under a customs unions than under a
            free trade area. This means that welfare in the country
            where lobbying takes place is higher under a customs union
            than under a free trade area, although the same may not hold
            true for the other country. The level of the common external
            tariff declines as the number of members in the union
            increases. Therefore, the larger the number of partners in a
            customs union, the more likely it will improve the welfare
            of member countries. But, because of the free-rider problem,
            lobbies are likely to resist the enlargement of the customs union.
The new trade theory and its
            relevance for developing countries
Recent developments in trade theory -
            the result of applying models that embody imperfect
            competition and increasing returns to scale - suggest an
            activist role for government in trade policy and threaten to
            undermine the case for trade liberalization. But the new
            modelling of international trade lacks theoretical
            robustness. It is particularly sensitive to assumptions
            about competitive behavior and the number of firms.
            Economists' criticism also focuses on the size of the
            excess profits that oligopolistic firms are alleged to earn,
            the partial equilibrium nature of the analysis, and the
            identification of the market failure and the choice of
            instrument. The normative prescriptions that arise from the
            new trade theory are also criticized in terms of political
            economy issues: the potential for foreign retaliation,
            inefficient government intervention, special interests'
            capture of policy, the problem of moral hazard, and possibly
            inimical redistributive effects. The limits of the new trade
            theory are particularly acute for developing countries
            because of their small economies, their limited ability to
            shift profits, the nature of their trade, and the greater
            chance for special interests to capture trade policy.
            Paradoxically, empirical work has shown that the gains from
            trade are much bigger under imperfectly competitive markets
            which actually strengthens the case for trade liberalization.
The role of regulation and
            commitment in the development of telecommunications in Chile
Over six decades, Chile experimented
            with three regulatory regimes and ownership patterns for its
            telecommunications sectors, each with radically different
            investment patterns.  Until 1970, Chile relied on private
            ownership and rate-of-return regulation, but excess demand
            persisted.  In the 1970s, Chile relied on public ownership
            of two regulated monopolies, but the sector grew even more
            slowly than before.  After 1982, Chile deregulated some
            market segments, introduced benchmark regulation, and
            returned to private ownership. The new regulatory regime and
            privatization doubled the number of lines in service in only
            four years.  The author explains investment behavior as a
            function of the solutions to two contracting problems:
            between government and the firm, and between government and
            interest groups. The author concludes that regulatory rules
            on pricing, entry, and conflict resolution mechanisms are
            critical for investing in such asset-specific utilities as
            telecommunications.  More important, the outcome of
            regulatory reform depends on a match between reform and both
            the prevailing political and judicial systems and interest
            group politics.  According to the author, Chile
            satisfactorily resolved the two contracting problems in the
            1980's.  Chile's new regulations are reasonably
            efficient and very specific about how tariffs are to be
            calculated, how entry is to be governed, and how conflicts
            are to be resolved.  The rules are embodied in a law that is
            relatively difficult to change (because the judicial system
            is independent). The impetus for reform came from the
            emergency of a new private entrepreneurial class, whose
            growth depends on modern telecommunications services.