rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
How Do Countries Use an Asset and
            Liability Management Approach A Survey on Sovereign Balance
            Sheet Management
This paper summarizes and discusses the
            results of a survey on country practices in the management
            of sovereign assets and liabilities. Twenty-eight countries,
            mostly high-income economies, responded to the
            questionnaire. The survey responses provide detailed
            information about various approaches to the sovereign asset
            and liability management framework in terms of balance sheet
            production as well as objectives, priority areas, and
            challenges associated with integrated management. In
            addition to the survey results, where possible and relevant,
            this paper provides insight through prominent country
            examples. The survey results confirm that the number of
            countries that have developed such a framework is limited.
            Although most of the respondents indicated that they
            regularly produce an accounting balance sheet, the objective
            of this exercise is often limited to monitoring sovereign
            assets and liabilities rather than determining mismatches
            between them. In the cases where a sovereign asset and
            liability management framework is implemented, there are
            significant differences across countries. Most countries
            include state-owned enterprises in the sovereign balance
            sheet, but only a minority also considers central banks, in
            some cases only international reserves and sovereign funds.
            The challenges cited include institutional arrangements,
            uncertain or lacking mandate, coordination between
            institutions, data availability, and valuation of assets.
            Most of these challenges are related to the implementation
            of the approach. The development of sound practices for
            sovereign asset and liability management could benefit
            governments and facilitate the implementation of a holistic
            approach to manage their balance sheets and related risks,
            increasing their resilience to shocks.
The Cost and Benefits of Tax
            Treaties with Investment Hubs : Findings from Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper investigates the costs and
            benefits of concluding double tax treaties with investment
            hubs. Based on a sample of 41 African economies from
            1985&#x2013;2015, the results suggest that signing
            treaties with investment hubs is not associated with
            additional investments; yet, these treaties tend to come
            with nonnegligible revenue losses. Building on a theoretical
            model, the paper investigates the role of treaty shopping in
            driving nominal investment flows and provides indirect
            evidence for its importance in the sample.
The Intensive Margin in Trade
Is the variation in bilateral trade
            flows across countries primarily due to differences in the
            number of exporting firms (the extensive margin) or in the
            average size of an exporter (the intensive margin)? And how
            does this affect the estimation and quantitative
            implications of the Melitz (2003) trade model? The benchmark
            Melitz model with Pareto-distributed firm productivity and
            fixed costs of exporting, predicts that, conditional on the
            fixed costs of exporting, all variation in exports across
            trading partners should occur on the extensive margin. This
            paper subjects this theoretical prediction to a reality
            check drawing upon the World Bank's Exporter Dynamics
            Database (EDD) which has firm-level exports from 50
            developing countries to all destinations. Around 50 percent
            of the variation in exports across trading partners is shown
            to be along the intensive margin, contradicting the
            benchmark Melitz-Pareto model. The paper finds that moving
            from a Pareto to a lognormal distribution of firm
            productivity allows the Melitz model to successfully match
            the role of the intensive margin evident in the EDD. The
            paper then studies the implications of our findings for
            quantitative trade theory. Using likelihood methods and the
            EDD, a generalized Melitz model with a joint lognormal
            distribution for firm productivity, fixed costs and demand
            shifters is estimated, and exact hat algebra is used to
            quantify the counterfactual effects of a decline in trade
            costs on trade flows and welfare in the estimated model.
            Finally, these effects are compared to those that would be
            predicted by the Melitz-Pareto model, with the Pareto shape
            parameter chosen to match the average trade elasticity
            implied by the estimated Melitz-lognormal model. The paper
            shows that the effects on welfare turn out to be quite close
            to those in the standard Melitz-Pareto model even though the
            effects on trade flows remain different.
Tobacco Taxation Incidence :
            Evidence from the Russian Federation
Despite the well-known positive effects
            of tobacco taxes on health outcomes, policy makers avoid
            relying on such taxes because of their possible regressive
            impact. Using an extended cost-benefit analysis to estimate
            the distributional effect of cigarettes in the Russian
            Federation, this paper finds that the long-run impact may in
            fact be progressive. The methodology applied incorporates
            the negative price effect caused by an increase in tobacco
            taxes, combined with a presumed future reduction in medical
            expenditures and a rise in working years caused by a
            reduction in the rate of smoking among the population. The
            analysis includes estimates of the distributional impacts of
            price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios, based on
            information taken from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring
            Survey -- Higher School of Economics for 2010–16. One
            contribution is the quantification of impacts by allowing
            price elasticities to vary across consumption deciles.
            Overall, cigarette taxes exert a positive long-term effect
            on household incomes, although the magnitude depends on the
            structure of the conditional price elasticity. If the
            population is more responsive to tobacco price changes, then
            it would experience greater gains from the health and
            extended work-life benefits.
Vanishing Returns Potential Returns
            and Constraints to Input Adoption among Smallholder Farmers
            in Uganda
This paper estimates the profitability
            of fertilizer and hybrid seeds in Uganda, using agronomic
            evidence on the yield returns to inputs from experimental
            fields, as well as output price data from local markets
            between 2000 and 2012. The results suggest that the returns
            to fertilizer are positive across the entire price range for
            beans, maize, and matooke and positive for the top 75
            percent of prices for coffee. Commonly available improved
            seed varieties for maize and beans increase gains by 32
            percent on average.  However, accounting for the quality of
            the inputs available to farmers in the market, the sizable
            positive returns become negative for most of the price
            distribution, possibly explaining the low adoption of inputs
            in Uganda. The paper also examines the impact of other
            factors that could affect input adoption, by using a
            relatively long panel data set spanning 12 years. The
            analysis finds evidence that enhanced access to economic
            markets and past weather conditions have small effects on
            input use, and positive correlations between the use of
            extension services and knowledge and input use.
Inequality and Welfare Dynamics in
            the Russian Federation during 1994-2015
The Russian Federation offers the unique
            example of a leading centrally planned economy swiftly
            transforming itself into a market-oriented economy. This
            paper offers a comprehensive study of inequality and
            mobility patterns for Russia, using multiple rounds of the
            Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Surveys over the past two
            decades spanning this transition. The findings show rising
            income levels and decreasing inequality, with the latter
            being mostly caused by pro-poor growth rather than
            redistribution. The poorest tercile experienced a growth
            rate that was more than 10 times that of the richest
            tercile, leading to less long-term inequality than
            short-term inequality. The analysis also finds that
            switching from a part-time job to a full-time job, from a
            lower-skill job to a higher-skill job, or staying in the
            formal sector is statistically significantly associated with
            reduced downward mobility and increased income growth.
            However, a similar transition from the private sector to the
            public sector is negatively associated with income growth.
sae : A Stata Package for Unit Level
            Small Area Estimation
This paper presents a new family of
            Stata functions devoted to small area estimation. Small area
            methods attempt to solve low representativeness of surveys
            within areas, or the lack of data for specific
            areas/sub-populations. This is accomplished by incorporating
            information from outside sources. Such target data sets are
            becoming increasingly available and can take the form of a
            traditional population census, but also large scale
            administrative records from tax administrations, or
            geospatial information produced using remote sensing. The
            strength of these target data sets is their granularity on
            the subpopulations of interest, however, in many cases they
            lack the ability to collect analytically relevant variables
            such as welfare or caloric intake. The family of functions
            introduced follow a modular design to have the flexibility
            with which these can be expanded in the future. This can be
            accomplished by the authors and/or other collaborators from
            the Stata community. Thus far, a major limitation of such
            analysis in Stata has been the large size of target data
            sets. The package introduces new mata functions and a plugin
            used to circumvent memory limitations that inevitably arise
            when working with big data. From an estimation perspective,
            the paper starts by implementing a methodology that has been
            widely used for the production of several poverty maps.
Busting the Myth : The Impact of
            Increasing the Minimum Wage : The Experience of Romania
This paper discusses the impact of a
            gradual, pre-announced significant increase of the minimum
            wage during 2013–16 in Romania. The main finding is that the
            positive effects prevail when the starting level of increase
            in the minimum wage is very low and the economy is in a
            negative output gap. Evidence shows that employment has
            increased, mainly at the minimum wage level, therefore
            making a shift toward a more balanced wage distribution.
            This measure might have contributed to a decrease of the
            shadow economy and a decrease in the share of people at risk
            of poverty. The impact on inflation was very limited, and
            the impact on the public budget was positive. Moreover,
            firms' profits were not affected, as the negative
            impact of the measure on unit labor costs and exports was limited.
On the Allocation of Resources in
            Developing East Asia and Pacific
Over the past decades, East Asia and
            Pacific's productivity has been gradually catching up
            with the frontier (the United States), with China leading
            the pack. Productivity growth has been driven by sustained
            within-sector productivity growth. Reallocation of labor to
            sectors with higher productivity, such as industry and
            services, also contributed to productivity improvements.
            Nevertheless, resource misallocation remains. Firm-level
            evidence from four East Asia and Pacific countries
            (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) suggests
            that resource misallocation across firms within a sector is
            large, albeit declining over time. Private domestic firms
            and firms with higher productivity face larger distortions.
Preventing More "Missing
            Girls" : A Review of Policies to Tackle Son Preference
In parts of Asia, South Caucasus, and
            the Balkans, son preference is strong enough to trigger
            significant levels of sex selection, result in the excess
            mortality of girls, and skew child sex ratios in favor of
            boys. Every year, 1.8 million girls under the age of five go
            “missing” because of the widespread use of sex selective
            practices in these regions. The pervasive use of such
            practices is reflective of the striking inequities girls
            face today, and it also has negative implications for
            efforts to improve women's status in the long term.
            Consequently, governments of countries in these regions have
            employed direct measures, such as banning the use of
            prenatal sex selection technology and providing financial
            incentives to families that have girls. This paper takes
            stock of the direct measures used across countries grappling
            with skewed child sex ratios and compares the efficacy of
            direct measures with measures that indirectly raise the
            value of daughters. The stocktaking suggests that there is
            no conclusive evidence that direct approaches reduce the
            higher mortality risk for girls. Bans on the use of sex
            selection technology may inadvertently worsen the status of
            the very individuals they intend to protect, and financial
            incentives to families with girls offer short-term benefits
            at most. Alternatively, indirect measures, such as legal
            reform to promote gender equity and advocacy efforts, offer
            more promise by bringing about permanent shifts in the
            relative value of daughters. The stocktaking also
            underscores the paucity of causal studies in this literature.
Backyarding : Theory and Evidence
            for South Africa
This paper explores the incentives for
            backyarding, an expanding category of urban land-use in
            developing countries that has proliferated South Africa. The
            theoretical model exposes the trade-off faced by the
            homeowner in deciding how much backyard land to rent out:
            loss of yard space consumption in return for a gain in
            rental income. Under common forms for preferences, the
            homeowner's own-consumption of yard space falls as land
            rent increases, causing more land to be rented to
            backyarders. With better job access for backyarders raising
            land rent by increasing their willingness-to-pay, the
            analysis then predicts that the extent of backyarding will
            be higher for parcels with good job access. This hypothesis
            is tested by combining a satellite- based count of backyard
            dwellings per parcel with job-access data. The empirical
            results strongly confirm the prediction that better job
            access increases the extent of backyarding.
The Drivers and Impacts of Water
            Infrastructure Reliability : A Global Analysis of
            Manufacturing Firms
Inadequate infrastructure impedes the
            productivity of manufacturing firms, with negative
            consequences for the wider economy. This study examines how
            water infrastructure copes with severe weather fluctuations
            and analyzes the effect of unreliable water supplies on the
            productivity of manufacturing firms, focusing predominately
            on firms in developing economies. This is achieved using
            firm-level data from World Bank Enterprise Surveys covering
            more than 16,000 manufacturing firms in a cross-section of
            103 countries between 2009 and 2015. The study finds that
            periods of significantly low rainfall lead to higher water
            outages, and that the overall impact is driven by the
            effects of drought on low-income and lower-middle-income
            economies, with upper-middle-income and high-income
            economies benefitting from more resilient water
            infrastructure. Furthermore, the study finds that incidents
            of water outages lead to lower firm productivity for firms
            in less developed economies. For the average firm located in
            a low-income or lower-middle-income economy, one additional
            water outage incident per day in a typical month can lead to
            losses of approximately 8.2 percent of annual sales. This
            finding calls for increased policy focus on water
            infrastructure services, particularly in poorer countries
            where water infrastructure and firms seem to be particularly
            vulnerable to the vagaries of rainfall.
Poverty, Inequality, and Agriculture
            in the EU
Boosting convergence and shared
            prosperity in the European Union achieved renewed urgency
            after the global financial crisis of 2008. This paper
            assesses the role of agriculture and the Common Agricultural
            Program in achieving this. The paper sheds light on the
            relationship between poverty and agriculture as part of the
            process of structural transformation. It positions each
            member country on the path toward a successful structural
            transformation. The paper then evaluates at the regional
            level where the Common Agricultural Program funding tends to
            go, poverty-wise, within each country. This approach enables
            making more informed policy recommendations on the current
            state of the Common Agricultural Program funding, as well as
            evaluating the role of agriculture as a driver of shared
            prosperity. The analysis performed throughout the paper uses
            a combination of data sources at several spatial levels.
Traders' Dilemma : Developing
            Countries' Response to Trade Disputes
If trade tensions between the United
            States and certain trading partners escalate into a
            full-blown trade war, what should developing countries do?
            Using a global, general-equilibrium model, this paper first
            simulates the effects of an increase in U.S. tariffs on
            imports from all regions to about 30 percent (the average
            non-Most Favored Nation tariff currently applied to imports
            from Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Korea) and
            retaliation in kind by major trading partners—the European
            Union, China, Mexico, Canada, and Japan. The paper then
            considers four possible responses by developing countries to
            this trade war: (i) join the trade war; (ii) do nothing;
            (iii) pursue regional trade agreements (RTAs) with all
            regions outside the United States; and (iv) option (iii) and
            unilaterally liberalize tariffs on imports from the United
            States. The results show that joining the trade war is the
            worst option for developing countries (twice as bad as doing
            nothing), while forming RTAs with non-U.S. regions and
            liberalizing tariffs on U.S. imports (“turning the other
            cheek”) is the best. The reason is that a trade war between
            the United States and its major trading partners creates
            opportunities for developing countries to increase their
            exports to these markets. Liberalizing tariffs increases
            developing countries’ competitiveness, enabling them to
            capitalize on these opportunities.
Definition Matters : Metropolitan
            Areas and Agglomeration Economies in a Large Developing Country
A variety of approaches to delineate
            metropolitan areas have been developed. Systematic
            comparisons of these approaches in terms of the urban
            landscape that they generate are however few. This paper
            aims to fill this gap. The paper focuses on Indonesia and
            makes use of the availability of data on commuting flows,
            remotely-sensed nighttime lights, and spatially fine-grained
            population, to construct metropolitan areas using the
            different approaches that have been developed in the
            literature. The analysis finds that the maps and
            characteristics of Indonesia’s urban landscape vary
            substantially, depending on the approach used. Moreover,
            combining information on the metro areas generated by the
            different approaches with detailed micro-data from
            Indonesia's national labor force survey, the paper
            shows that the estimated size of the agglomeration wage
            premium depends nontrivially on the approach used to define
            metropolitan areas.
High-Growth Firms: Rising Tide Lifts
            All Boats
How do high-growth firms affect the rest
            of the economy? This paper explores this question using
            Hungarian administrative microdata. It finds evidence of
            stronger productivity growth for firms supplying and
            operating in industries with more high-growth firms. The
            surge of high-growth firms' demand for intermediate
            inputs could explain this positive vertical spillover. Firms
            with intermediate productivity levels seem most likely to
            benefit from this effect. The results hold irrespective of
            the level of spatial aggregation.