rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Roads and the geography of economic
            activities in Mexico
This paper estimates the impacts of road
            improvements on local employment and specialization in
            Mexico for 1986-2014, through changes in access to domestic
            markets and travel costs to ports and the U.S. border.
            Instrumenting for road placement endogeneity and addressing
            the recursion problem in regressions that involve access to
            markets, the analysis finds significant and positive causal
            effects of improved domestic accessibility on employment and
            specialization. It also finds that employment is stimulated
            by lower transport costs to the U.S. border, but harmed by
            lower transport costs to ports. Heterogeneous effects are
            found across sectors and regions.
Productivity and health :
            alternative productivity estimates using physical activity
This paper investigates an alternative
            proxy for individual worker productivity in physical work
            settings: a direct measure of physical activity using an
            accelerometer. First, the paper compares worker labor
            outcomes, such as labor supply and daily productivity
            obtained from firm personnel data, with physical activity;
            they are strongly related. Second, the paper investigates
            the effect of a health intervention on physical activity,
            using a temporally randomized offer of malaria testing and
            treatment. Workers who are offered this program reallocate
            time from lower intensity activities in favor of higher
            intensity activities when they work.
What are the effects of expanding a
            social pension program on extreme poverty and labor supply
            evidence from Mexico's pension program for the elderly
In 2013, Mexico's Social Pension
            Program for the Elderly was expanded by changing its
            eligibility threshold from age 70 to age 65. Using pooled
            cross-sectional data from Mexico's National Household
            Income and Expenditure Survey, the exogenous variation
            around eligibility age was exploited to uncover the causal
            effects of this expansion on extreme poverty and labor
            supply of the newly eligible population, and to explore
            potential transmission mechanisms. Applying
            quasi-experimental methods, results show that the expansion
            of Mexico's Social Pension Program for the Elderly not
            only reduced the probability of the elderly being extreme
            poor, but it also reduced the extreme poverty gap, and the
            extreme poverty severity indexes of the elderly population.
            These effects on extreme poverty are generalizable to all
            individuals of the treated household. The results suggest
            that the expansion of the Social Pension Program for the
            Elderly did not have short-term effects on the labor force
            participation of the elderly. Accordingly, the analysis does
            not find that the program reduced labor income. In contrast
            with other impact evaluations of similar programs, the
            analysis does not find that the expansion of Mexico's
            program had a crowding out effect on domestic or
            international private transfers to the elderly.
What are the effects of expanding a
            social pension program on extreme poverty and labor supply
            evidence from Mexico's pension program for the elderly
WPS8229 Policy Research Working Paper 8229 What Are the Effects of Expanding a Social Pension Program on Extreme Poverty and Labor Supply? Evidence from Mexico’s Pension Program for the Elderly _Authors Clemente Avila-Parra David Escamilla-Guerrero_ Social Protection and Labor Global Practice Group October 2017
How much oil is the Islamic state
            group producing evidence from remote sensing
Accurately measuring oil production in
            low-governance contexts is an important task. Many terrorist
            organizations and insurgencies -- including the Islamic
            State group, also known as ISIL/ISIS or Daesh -- tap oil as
            a revenue source. Understanding spatial and temporal
            variation in production in their territory can help address
            such threats by providing near real-time monitoring of their
            revenue streams, helping to assess long-term economic
            potential, and informing reconstruction strategies. More
            broadly, remotely measuring extractive industry activity in
            conflict-affected areas and other regions without reliable
            administrative data can support a broad range of public
            policy decisions and academic research.  This paper uses
            satellite multi-spectral imaging and ground-truth pre-war
            output data to effectively construct a real-time day-to-day
            census of oil production in areas controlled by the
            terrorist group. The estimates of production levels were
            approximately 56,000 barrels per day (bpd) from
            July-December 2014, drop to an average of 35,000 bpd
            throughout 2015, before dropping further to approximately
            16,000 bpd in 2016.
The impact of large-scale migration
            on poverty, expenditures, and labor market outcomes in Nepal
This paper studies the impact of
            migration on poverty, expenditures, and labor market
            outcomes in Nepal. Between 2001 and 2011, the share of male
            working age population abroad more than doubled, mostly due
            to young men leaving to work in Malaysia and the Persian
            Gulf countries. The paper studies the impact using
            instrumental variables as well as difference-in-difference
            methods. The findings show that increases in migration to
            Gulf-Malaysia explain 40 percent of the decline in poverty
            between 2001 and 2011. The estimates of the marginal
            propensity of consumption show that a $1 increase in
            remittance income increases consumption by $0.5, with the
            largest share going to expenditures on food. The paper also
            finds that migration increases school enrollment of
            children, particularly of girls. Furthermore, the findings
            show that large-scale migration in villages improves labor
            market outcomes for households without a migrant. An
            increase in village migration rates of 10 percentage points
            increases wages by 25 percent, and labor force participation
            by 4 percentage points. The participation effects are driven
            by increases in female participation in non-farm sectors,
            and increased male participation in agriculture. The wage
            effects are driven by higher agricultural wages for all, and
            higher non-farm wages for females.
Labor adjustment costs across
            sectors and regions
This paper estimates the mobility costs
            of workers across sectors and regions in a large sample of
            developing countries. The paper develops a new methodology
            that uses cross-sectional data only. This is motivated by
            the fact that panel data typically are not available for
            most developing countries. The results suggest that, on
            average, sector mobility costs are higher than regional
            mobility costs. The costs of moving across sectors and
            regions are higher than the costs of moving across only
            sectors or only regions. In poorer countries, workers face
            higher mobility costs. The paper provides evidence
            suggesting that mobility costs, particularly across sectors,
            are partially driven by information assimetries and access
            to the Internet can mitigate these costs.
Public procurement regulation and
            road quality
Public procurement regulation is an
            important instrument for using public resources efficiently
            and ensuring quality services to citizens. On average, the
            public procurement sector accounts for 14.5 percent of the
            gross domestic product globally. Using new data, this study
            documents public procurement regulation and related
            processes in 142 economies. Scores for three public
            procurement areas are constructed and amalgamated into an
            overall quality of public procurement index. The index is
            then related to a measure of road quality across countries.
            The results indicate that improvement in the public
            procurement system improves road quality, especially in
            non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.
Charting the diffusion of power
            sector reforms across the developing world
Some 25 years have elapsed since
            international financial institutions espoused a package of
            power sector reform measures that became known as the
            Washington Consensus. This package encompassed the
            establishment of autonomous regulatory entities, the
            vertical and horizontal unbundling of integrated national
            monopoly utilities, private sector participation in
            generation and distribution, and eventually the introduction
            of competition into power generation and even retail
            services. Exploiting a unique new data set on the timing and
            scope of power sector reforms adopted by 88 countries across
            the developing world over 25 years, this paper seeks to
            improve understanding of the uptake, diffusion, packaging,
            and sequencing of power sector reforms, and the extent to
            which they were affected by the economic and political
            characteristics of the countries concerned. The analysis
            focuses on describing the patterns of reform without judging
            their desirability or evaluating their impact. The paper
            finds that following rapid diffusion during 1995-2005, the
            spread of power sector reforms slowed significantly in
            2005-15. Only a small minority of developing countries fully
            implemented the reform model as originally conceived. For
            the majority, reforms were only selectively adopted
            according to ease of implementation, often stagnated at an
            intermediate stage, and were sometimes packaged and
            sequenced in ways unrelated to the original logic. Country
            characteristics such as geography, income group, power
            system size, and political economy all had a significant
            influence on the uptake of reform. Moreover, a significant
            number of countries experienced reversals of private sector
            participation, or were unable to follow through with reform
            plans that were officially announced. Overall, power sector
            reform in the developing world lags far behind what was
            achieved in the developed world during the same time period.
            Yet, even in the developed world, the full package of
            reforms does not seem to have been universally adopted.
Small firm death in developing countries
Small firms are an important source of
            income for the poor in developing countries, and the target
            of many interventions designed to help them grow. But there
            is no systematic information on the failure or death of such
            firms. The paper puts together 16 panel surveys from 12
            different developing countries to develop stylized facts
            from over 14,000 firms on how much firm death there is; on
            which types of these firms are most likely to die; and on
            why they die, paying careful attention to issues of
            measurement and attrition. The authors find small firms die
            at an average rate of 8.3 percent per year over the first
            five years of following them, so that half of all firms
            observed to be operating at a given point in time are dead
            within 6 years. Death rates are higher for small firms in
            richer countries, younger firms, retail firms, less
            productive and less profitable firms, and those whose owners
            are female and not middle-aged. The paper proposes three
            theories of why small firms die: firm competition and firm
            shocks, occupational choice, and non-separability from the
            household. It finds the cause of firm death to be
            heterogeneous, with different subgroups of firms more likely
            to die for reasons consistent with each of these theories.
Gender and enterprise development in
            Sub-Saharan Africa : a review of constraints and effective interventions
Female participation in entrepreneurial
            activities is higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than in any other
            region. However, women-owned businesses significantly
            underperform those owned by men. This paper identifies the
            main constraints that women face in developing their
            businesses in Africa and discusses how these constraints
            influence strategic choices in areas such as level of
            investment and sector of operations. The paper synthesizes
            the emerging lessons about what works and what does not work
            to address the underlying constraints to the performance of
            women-owned firms. Moreover, it identifies knowledge gaps
            and priority research questions. The paper aims to support
            the development of a gender-informed policy and research
            agenda on enterprise development that can guide
            practitioners, development partners, and researchers who
            seek to advance women's economic empowerment in Africa.
Women's entrepreneurship : how
            to measure the gap between new female and male entrepreneurs
This paper analyzes data on female and
            male entrepreneurship that were collected by the World Bank
            Group's Entrepreneurship Database. Recognizing the
            importance of a differentiated approach to entrepreneurship
            in terms of legal entities, the data on female and male
            business owners are collected at the level of limited
            liability companies and sole proprietorships. Forty-four of
            the 143 economies that participated in the Entrepreneurship
            project provided some sex-disaggregated data for 2016. The
            paper finds that the gender gap in business ownership
            remains high in many economies around the world. In the
            majority of the analyzed economies, less than one-third of
            new limited liability company owners are women. Although
            sole proprietorships are more frequently used by female
            entrepreneurs, only three economies have similar or equal
            number of women business owners relative to men. The gap in
            female entrepreneurship is especially apparent in low-income
            economies, where women are much less likely than men to
            start a new business. The paper also provides new insights
            into the relationship between female entrepreneurship and
            various institutional factors, including women's
            financial inclusion, the gender gap in education, and legal
            rights disparities. The analysis suggests a need to expand
            the collection of sex-disaggregated data, to trace the
            economies' progress in narrowing the existing gender
            gap in entrepreneurship.
Internal borders and migration in India
Internal mobility is a critical
            component of economic growth and development, as it enables
            the reallocation of labor to more productive opportunities
            across sectors and regions. Using detailed
            district-to-district migration data from the 2001 Census of
            India, the paper highlights the role of state borders as
            significant impediments to internal mobility. The analysis
            finds that average migration between neighboring districts
            in the same state is at least 50 percent larger than
            neighboring districts on different sides of a state border,
            even after accounting for linguistic differences. Although
            the impact of state borders differs by education, age, and
            reason for migration, it is always large and significant.
            The paper suggests that inter-state mobility is inhibited by
            state-level entitlement schemes, ranging from access to
            subsidized goods through the public distribution system to
            the bias for states' own residents in access to
            tertiary education and public sector employment.
Gender and youth employment in
            Sub-Saharan Africa : a review of constraints and effective interventions
Although the ratio of female to male
            labor force participation rates is higher in Sub-Saharan
            Africa than in any other region, these high rates of female
            labor force participation mask underlying challenges for
            women. A large majority of employed women work in vulnerable
            employment. In addition, youth unemployment rates in
            Sub-Saharan Africa are double those of adult unemployment,
            and unemployment rates for women are higher than rates faced
            by men. This paper discusses the specific barriers that
            youth face in accessing employment in Sub-Saharan Africa,
            and the ways in which young women's employment is
            constrained above and beyond the constraints faced by male
            youth. The paper synthesizes the emerging lessons from a
            growing evidence base on interventions that aim to support
            young women's employment, and identifies knowledge gaps
            and priority research questions for the future. The
            objective is to develop a gender-informed policy and
            research agenda on youth employment that can guide
            practitioners, development partners, and researchers who
            seek to advance young women's empowerment and
            employment in the context of youth employment programming
            and policy making.
Putting your money where your mouth
            is : geographic targeting of World Bank projects to the
            bottom 40 percent
The adoption of the shared prosperity
            goal by the World Bank in 2013 and Sustainable Development
            Goal 10, on inequality, by the United Nations in 2015 should
            strengthen the focus of development interventions and
            cooperation on the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of
            the income distribution (the bottom 40). However, little is
            known about within-country allocation patterns among the
            projects of development institutions. This paper proposes a
            new geographic targeting indicator and related methodology
            to assess the within-country aid allocations of donors by
            correlating the distribution of funding within countries
            with the geographical distribution of the bottom 40.
            Applying this methodology to World Bank funding for projects
            approved over 2005-14 shows that, of the 58 countries in the
            sample, 42 exhibit a positive correlation between the shares
            of the bottom 40 and World Bank funding, and, in almost half
            of these, the correlation is above 0.5. Slightly more than a
            quarter of the countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa,
            exhibit a negative correlation. The presence of the bottom
            40 is typically correlated with the population size of an
            administrative area. A regression analysis shows that,
            controlling for population, the correlation between the
            bottom 40 and World Bank funding switches sign and becomes
            significant and negative on average. This is entirely driven
            by Sub-Saharan Africa, because the correlation is
            insignificant in the rest of the world regions. Hence, the
            significant and positive correlation in the estimations
            without controlling for population suggests that World Bank
            project funding is concentrated in administrative areas in
            which more people live (including the bottom 40) rather than
            in poorer administrative areas.
Polarization, foreign military
            intervention, and civil conflict
In a behavioral model of civil conflict,
            foreign military intervention alters the resources available
            to warring groups and their probability of winning. The
            model highlights the importance of distributional measures
            along with the modifying effect of the intervention for
            conflict incidence. The paper confirms empirically the
            finding in the literature that ethnic polarization is a
            robust predictor of civil war, but it also finds evidence
            that religious polarization is positively and significantly
            associated with civil conflict in the presence of foreign
            military intervention of non-humanitarian and non-neutral
            nature. Such external interventions exacerbate religious
            polarization, leading to high-intensity conflicts in the
            Middle East and North Africa region, but not in the rest of
            the world. These results suggest that, unlike in the rest of
            the world, where civil conflicts are mostly about a public
            prize linked to ethnic polarization, in the Middle East and
            North Africa they are mostly about a sectarian-related
            public prize. The results are robust to allowing different
            definitions of conflict, model specifications, and data time
            spans, and to controlling for other types of foreign
            military interventions.