rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Optimal transition from coal to gas
            and renewable power under capacity constraints and
            adjustment costs
This paper studies the optimal
            transition from existing coal power plants to gas and
            renewable power under a carbon budget. It solves a model of
            polluting, exhaustible resources with capacity constraints
            and adjustment costs (to build coal, gas, and renewable
            power plants). It finds that optimal investment in renewable
            energy may start before coal power has been phased out and
            even before investment in gas has started, because doing so
            allows for smoothing investment over time and reduces
            adjustment costs. Gas plants may be used to reduce
            short-term investment in renewable power and associated
            costs, but must eventually be phased out to allow room for
            carbon-free power. One risk for myopic agents comparing gas
            and renewable investment is thus to overestimate the
            lifetime of gas plants -- e.g., when computing the levelized
            cost of electricity -- and be biased against renewable
            power. These analytical results are quantified with
            numerical simulations of the European Commission's 2050
            energy roadmap.
Mobile phone coverage and producer
            markets : evidence from West Africa
Mobile phone coverage has expanded
            considerably throughout the developing world, particularly
            within sub-Saharan Africa. Existing evidence suggests that
            increased access to information technology has improved
            agricultural market efficiency for consumer markets and
            certain commodities, but there is less evidence of its
            impact on producer markets. Building on the work of Aker
            (2010), this paper estimates the impact of mobile phone
            coverage on producer price dispersion for three commodities
            in Niger. The results suggest that mobile phone coverage
            reduces spatial producer price dispersion by 6 percent for
            cowpea, a semi-perishable commodity. These effects are
            strongest for remote markets and during certain periods of
            the year. The introduction of mobile phone coverage has no
            effect on producer price dispersion for millet and sorghum,
            two staple grains that are less perishable and are commonly
            stored by farmers. There are no impacts of mobile phone
            coverage on traders' gross margins or producer price
            levels, but mobile phone coverage is associated with a
            reduction in the intra-annual price variation for cowpea.
            These results are potentially explained by the fact that
            farmers engage in greater storage for storable commodities
            such as millet and sorghum.
Integrating border regions :
            connectivity and competitiveness in South Asia
Deeper regional integration can be
            beneficial especially for regions along international
            borders. It can open up new markets on opposite sides of
            borders and give consumers wider access to cheaper goods.
            This paper uses data from five contiguous districts of
            India, Nepal, and Bangladesh in the northeast of the
            subcontinent to measure the degrees of trade complementarity
            between districts. The paper illustrates that the regions
            are underexploiting the potential of intraregional commerce.
            Price wedges of up to 90 percent in some important
            consumption products along with measures of complementarity
            between households' production and consumption suggest
            the potential for relatively large gains from deeper trade
            integration. Furthermore, an examination of a specific
            supply chain of tea highlights factors that help industries
            scale up, aided by institutions such as an organized auction
            and decent physical and legal infrastructure. However,
            districts alike in geography but located across
            international boundaries face different development
            prospects, suggesting that gains from reduced
            "thickness of borders" would not accrue
            automatically. Much rests on developing intrinsic industry
            competitiveness at home, including the reform of regulatory
            and business practices and infrastructural bottlenecks that
            prevent agglomeration of local economies.
Can tax simplification help lower
            tax corruption
This paper seeks to find empirical
            evidence of a link between tax simplification and corruption
            in tax administration. It attempts to do this by first
            defining "tax simplicity" as a measurable variable
            and exploring empirical relationships between simpler tax
            regimes and corruption in tax administration. Corruption in
            tax administration is calculated with data series from the
            World Bank's Enterprise Survey Database. The focus is
            on business taxes. The study includes 104 countries from
            different income groups and regions of the world. The time
            period is 2002-12. The empirical findings support the
            existence of a significant link between the measure of tax
            corruption and tax simplicity, so a less complex tax system
            is shown to be associated with lower corruption in tax
            administration. It is predicted that the combined effect of
            a 10 percent reduction in both the number of payments and
            the time to comply with tax requirements can lower tax
            corruption by 9.64 percent. Some interesting regional
            differences are observed in the results. Similarly, the
            income level of countries plays an important role in
            determining the impact of tax simplification on tax
            corruption; specifically, the link is stronger for
            lower-income level countries. The positive link between tax
            simplicity and lower tax corruption has useful policy implications.
Fiscal multipliers in recessions and
            expansions : does it matter whether government spending is
            increasing or decreasing
Using non-linear methods, this paper
            finds that existing estimates of government spending
            multipliers in expansion and recession may yield biased
            results by ignoring whether government spending is
            increasing or decreasing. For industrial countries, the
            problem originates in the fact that, contrary to one's
            priors, it is not always the case that government spending
            is going up in recessions (i.e., acting countercyclically).
            In almost as many cases, government spending is actually
            going down (i.e., acting procyclically). Since the economy
            does not respond symmetrically to government spending
            increases or decreases, the "true" long-run
            multiplier for bad times (and government spending going up)
            turns out to be 2.3 compared to 1.3 if we just distinguish
            between recession and expansion. In the case of developing
            countries, the bias results from the fact that the
            multiplier for recessions and government spending going down
            (the "when-it-rains-it-pours" phenomenon) is
            larger than when government spending is going up.
International remittances and
            financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper uses World Bank survey data,
            including about 10,000 households in five countries --
            Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda -- to
            investigate the link between international remittances and
            households' financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa.
            The paper finds that receiving international remittances
            increases the probability that the household opens a bank
            account in all the five countries. This result is robust to
            controlling for the potential endogeneity of remittances,
            using as instruments indicators of the migrants'
            economic conditions in the destination countries.
Strategic interactions and portfolio
            choice in money management : evidence from Colombian pension funds
This paper studies the portfolio choice
            of strategic fund managers in the presence of a peer-based
            underperformance penalty. Evidence is taken from the
            Colombian pension fund management industry, where six asset
            managers are in charge of portfolio allocation for the
            mandatory contributions of the working population. These
            managers are subject to a peer-based underperformance
            penalty, known as the Minimum Return Guarantee. The trading
            behavior by the managers is studied before and after a
            change in the strictness of the guarantee in June 2007. The
            evidence suggests that a tighter minimum return guarantee
            results in more trading in the direction of peers, a
            behavior that is more pronounced for underperforming
            managers. These managers rebalance their portfolios by
            buying securities in which they are underexposed relative to
            their peers, as opposed to selling assets in which they are
            overexposed. Overall, the results suggest that incentives
            for managers to be close to industry benchmarks play an
            important role in the portfolio allocation of these funds.
Strategic information revelation and
            capital allocation
It is commonly believed that stock
            prices help firms' managers make more efficient real
            investment decisions, because they aggregate information
            about fundamentals that is not otherwise known to managers.
            This paper identifies a limitation to this view. It shows
            that if informed traders internalize that firms use prices
            as a signal, stock price informativeness depends on the
            quality of managers' prior information. In particular,
            managers with low quality information would like to learn
            about their own fundamentals by relying on the information
            aggregated in the stock price. However, in this case, the
            profitability of trading falls for informed speculators, who
            therefore reduce their trading volume, reducing the
            informativeness of prices. As a result, stock prices are not
            as useful in guiding capital toward its most productive use,
            leading to inefficient investment decisions. Using a sample
            of U.S. publicly traded companies between 1990 and 2010, the
            paper documents a positive correlation between the quality
            of managerial information and stock price informativeness.
            Contrary to the conventional view that less informed
            managers should rely more on stock prices when making
            investment decisions, the author finds no differences in the
            sensitivity of investment to stock prices for different
            levels of managerial information. The evidence suggests that
            while firms do learn from prices, the learning channel and
            its effects on real investment are limited.