rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The distributional impact of taxes
            and social spending in Croatia
This paper describes the impact of
            fiscal policy on inequality and poverty, and examines recent
            policy changes and whether there is room for an increased
            role for fiscal policy in improving the well-being of the
            poor. Taxes and social spending reduced inequality in
            Croatia; however, once the impacts of indirect taxes are
            considered, the system is unable to reduce poverty,
            especially for families with children and retirees.
            Beginning in the second decile, households are net payers to
            the treasury, as the share of taxes paid exceeded the cash
            benefits received for all but the poorest 10 percent of the
            population. Microsimulations of recent tax changes find that
            inequality after taxes and transfers is expected to increase
            slightly in 2017, as most of the benefits of the reform were
            concentrated at the top of the distribution. Although the
            impact of lower value-added taxes on electricity and utility
            bills is expected to be slightly poverty reducing, this
            effect is small relative to the relief that is needed. A
            reduction in the standard value-added tax rate from 25 to 24
            percent would result in a small decline in poverty and
            inequality. However, the impact may be much smaller,
            depending on how this measure would be financed.
How does port efficiency affect
            maritime transport costs and trade evidence from Indian and
            western Pacific Ocean countries
Would improvements in port performance
            increase trade in countries on the Indian and Western
            Pacific Oceans? Previous studies attempted to answer this
            question using ad hoc measures of port efficiency that do
            not control for the actual use of port assets or measures
            that can be very noisy. To avoid these problems, this paper
            builds a measure of economic efficiency based on the use of
            port inputs to deliver port output. Using data envelop
            analysis, it ranks countries on the Indian and Western
            Pacific Oceans in terms of their port efficiency, and
            assesses the effect of increased efficiency. It finds that
            becoming as efficient as the country with the most efficient
            port sector would reduce their average maritime transport
            costs by up to 14 percent and increase their exports by up
            to 2.2 percent.
Making it easier to apply for a bank
            account: a study of the Indian market
This paper draws on new individual-level
            survey data from India to study the costs of opening an
            account and the efficiency of the account application
            process. The data show a recent increase in account
            ownership, especially by women and poor adults. The data
            also suggest that India's flagship financial inclusion
            program, the Jan Dhan Yojana scheme, has made it easier to
            get an account, through lower costs and greater ease of
            applying. Yet despite the scheme's initial successes,
            people who wish to apply for an account continue to incur a
            range of costs. The survey results suggest several
            recommendations that could improve the account application
            process and increase ownership and usage of accounts.
Trade creation and trade diversion
            in deep agreements
Preferential trade agreements have
            boomed in recent years and extended their reach well beyond
            tariff reduction, to cover policy areas such as investment,
            competition, and intellectual property rights. This paper
            uses new information on the content of preferential trade
            agreements to examine the trade effects of deep agreements
            and revisit the classic Vinerian question of trade creation
            and trade diversion. The results indicate that deep
            agreements lead to more trade creation and less trade
            diversion than shallow agreements. Furthermore, some
            provisions of deep agreements have a public good aspect and
            increase trade also with non-members.
Measuring the effectiveness of
            service delivery : delivery of government provided goods and
            services in India
This paper uses new survey data to
            measure the government's capacity to deliver goods and
            services in a manner that includes: high coverage of the
            population; equal access; and high quality of service
            delivery. The paper finds variation in these indicators
            across and within Indian states. Overall: (i) access to
            government provided goods and services is low -- about 60
            percent of the surveyed population are unable to apply for
            goods and services they self-report needing; (ii) inequality
            in access is high -- women and poor adults are more likely
            to report an inability to apply for goods and services they
            need; and (iii) less than a third of the respondents who did
            manage to apply for a government delivered good or service
            found the application process to be easy. Access can be
            improved by reducing application costs and processing times,
            simplifying the application process, and providing
            alternative channels to receive applications.
An evaluation of border management
            reforms in a technical agency
Impact evaluations of trade facilitation
            reforms have almost exclusively focused on reforms by
            data-rich customs agencies. Other "technical"
            agencies also intervene in the logistics of international
            trade, and do so in ways that can cause significant
            interruptions in the flow of the imported products they
            oversee. This paper is the first to evaluate a reform by a
            technical agency, namely, the agency responsible for food
            safety and animal health in the former Yugoslav Republic of
            Macedonia. The data environment is much more challenging
            than in customs, but enables the investigation of novel
            questions. The study finds that on-the-ground practices
            regarding sampling of import shipments departed
            substantially from those planned in the reform. It finds
            little evidence that the reform was successful in its
            attempt to improve the targeting of risky shipments. There
            is limited evidence that the reform increased trade flows,
            but circumstances make it difficult to establish a strong
            causal link to the specific reform studied.
Information disclosure and demand
            elasticity of financial products : evidence from a
            multi-country study
This study tests the effectiveness of
            behavioral-based disclosure formats. Around 1,700
            individuals from Mexico and Peru chose among loans and
            savings accounts presented in different formats, including a
            simplified key facts statement (KFS) and current marketing
            brochures. The study finds that the price elasticity of
            loans is -1.04 using brochures and -3.19 using the
            simplified KFS, with smaller effects for savings products.
            Finally, while financial literacy is correlated with better
            decision-making, the effect of the disclosure format for
            loans is about three times as large as that of financial
            literacy. More importantly, the KFS helps financially
            illiterate individuals relatively more.
Demand and supply curves in
            political markets : understanding the problem of public
            goods and why governments fail them
This paper brings the economic tools of
            demand and supply curves to better understand how political
            markets shape the selection of government policies. It does
            so to tackle a problem at the intersection of political
            science and economics: government failure to pursue policies
            on the basis of sound technical evidence. Too often, the
            leaders who wield policy-making power within governments
            deliberately and knowingly ignore sound technical advice, or
            are unable to pursue it despite the best of intentions,
            because of political constraints. The paper shows how the
            prevailing dominant explanation for suboptimal policies and
            weak institutions, of special interest and elite capture,
            can be understood as the selection of a point on the
            political demand curve by oligopolistic political
            competition. Further, it shows how elite capture is only one
            of many possible outcomes, and is endogenous to preferences
            and beliefs in society. Preferences in society for public
            goods (or the lack thereof), and beliefs about how others
            are behaving in the public sector, are the primitive or
            fundamental elements driving the shapes of political demand
            and supply curves and thence the selection of public
            policies and institutions. This framework highlights the
            need for future research to understand where political
            preferences and beliefs come from, which is essential to the
            design of institutions that address problems of public goods.
Technological change and the labor
            market in Argentina and Uruguay : a task content analysis
The objective of this paper is to
            analyze the employment profile trends in Argentina and
            Uruguay according to the task content performed by the
            workers in their jobs. The paper aims to produce an
            approximation of the impact of technological change on the
            labor market. The paper uses the definition of an indicator
            that captures the relative importance of four types of
            tasks, cognitive/manual and routine/nonroutine, based on the
            information provided by Occupational Information Network and
            household surveys. The analysis finds that in the last two
            decades the relative importance of cognitive tasks in the
            workplace has increased in line with the reduction of manual
            tasks, particularly among the youngest cohorts.
Fiscal incidence in Belarus : a
            commitment to equity analysis
The paper employs the Commitment to
            Equity framework to present a first attempt at a
            comprehensive fiscal incidence analysis for Belarus,
            encompassing the revenue and expenditures components of the
            fiscal system, including direct and indirect taxes, as well
            as direct, indirect, and in-kind transfers. The analysis
            reveals that fiscal policies in Belarus effectively
            redistribute income from the top to the bottom of the income
            distribution. Direct transfers, especially pensions, are the
            most equalizing and pro-poor of the fiscal
            interventions—direct transfers and direct taxes lower the
            national poverty headcount by 17 percentage points and lower
            the Gini index of inequality from 0.407 to 0.267. Some of
            the indirect taxes, by contrast, are regressive and indirect
            transfers -- poorly targeted, such that the effect of these
            components of the fiscal system is not equalizing. Finally,
            the cost-efficiency of different parts of the fiscal system
            in Belarus varies considerably. Unemployment benefits,
            pensions, and child benefits are found to be cost --
            efficient, while indirect subsidies are highly
            cost-inefficient. The analysis points toward possible
            reforms that would allow reducing poverty and inequality
            more efficiently.
The socioeconomics of fish
            consumption and child health in Bangladesh
Child malnutrition in Bangladesh exceeds
            WHO's threshold for public health emergencies. Using
            more than 36,000 records from several waves of the
            Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey, the research
            focuses on the socioeconomic determinants of household
            consumption of all animal-source foods; the socioeconomic
            determinants of fish consumption, given its importance in
            the Bangladeshi diet; and the impact of observed consumption
            patterns on mortality and resistance to infectious diseases
            for children in their first years of life. Better maternal
            education and family economic status significantly increase
            the level of animal-source food intake, but they decrease
            the consumption share of fish. This suggests that increased
            income and education impart a "status bias" toward
            eggs and meat, even though they are more expensive and less
            beneficial than fish for child health. In addition,
            mothers' individual preferences for different
            animal-source foods, and the seasonal availability of fish
            during the pre- and post-partum periods have large effects
            on child mortality and significant effects on resistance to
            several common childhood illnesses. These findings highlight
            the importance of programs to increase supply of fish,
            maternal nutrition education and more public health programs
            to promote fish consumption.
Product and factor market
            distortions : the case of the manufacturing sector in Morocco
This paper studies the effect of market
            distortions in the manufacturing sector in Morocco. Recent
            microdata are used to calculate the extent of resource
            misallocation associated to these distortions and the
            potential total factor productivity (TFP) gain resulting
            from their removal. Market distortions in the manufacturing
            sector in Morocco are higher compared with developed
            countries and slightly more important compared with other
            developing countries, such as China and India. These
            distortions decreased between 2007 and 2013. Full
            liberalization would raise TFP by about 84 percent. If
            distortions are removed to the level of selected developed
            countries with better resource allocation, the increase in
            TFP would be of 56 percent. The paper also finds that
            industries that are more opened to competition
            (international and domestic) such as machinery and textiles
            industries present lower levels of market distortions
            compared with more protected industries with relatively
            little competition, such as the food industry. Besides, a
            higher level of TFP can be achieved if more resources are
            allocated to “young” and “small” firms. The main results of
            the paper are robust to an alternative estimation that uses
            a different methodological framework with a less extensive
            theoretical framework. The paper discusses policies to
            further limit the extent of product and factor market
            distortions in Morocco.
Revisiting the national innovation
            system in developing countries
The paper argues that there is a greater
            commonality of approach between the National Innovation
            Systems approach and mainstream economic analysis than is
            often asserted, and that a better dialogue between the two
            could strengthen both perspectives. To this end, the paper
            uses an off-the-shelf neoclassical model to provide a
            tentative structure for what a National Innovation Systems
            schematic might look like and where its boundaries should
            be. Simulations from the model suggest how present
            benchmarking techniques may be misleading.
Who escaped poverty and who was left
            behind a non-parametric approach to explore welfare dynamics
            using cross-sections
This paper proposes a non-parametric
            adaptation of a recently developed parametric technique to
            produce point estimates of intra-generational economic
            mobility in the absence of panel data sets that follow
            individuals over time. The method predicts past individual
            income or consumption using time-invariant observable
            characteristics, which allows the estimation of mobility
            into and out of poverty, as well as household-level income
            or consumption growth, from cross-sectional data. The paper
            validates this method by sampling repeated cross-sections
            out of actual panel data sets from three countries in the
            Latin America region and comparing the technique with
            mobility from panels. Overall, the method performs well in
            the three settings; with few exceptions, all estimates fall
            within the 95 percent confidence intervals of the panel
            mobility. The quality of the estimates does not depend in
            general on the sophistication level of the underlying
            welfare model's specifications. The results are
            encouraging even for those specifications that include few
            time-invariant variables as regressors.
Labor policy and digital technology
            use : indicative evidence from cross-country correlations
This paper exploits variation in
            country-level indicators drawn from published data to
            analyze the relationship between labor regulation and the
            use of digital technology. The analysis shows a
            statistically and economically significant association
            between digital technology use by firms and a country's
            statutory minimum wage and employment protection
            regulations. The results are robust to the inclusion of
            controls for level of development, economic stability,
            available infrastructure, and trade openness. To ensure the
            broadest country coverage, the paper develops new indexes of
            employment protection, using the World Bank's Doing
            Business indicators, which allow several aspects of labor
            market regulation—such as restrictions on hours and hiring,
            dismissal procedures, and severance costs--to be analyzed separately.
Corporate debt maturity in
            developing countries : sources of long- and short-termism
This paper documents to what extent
            firms from developing countries borrow short versus long
            term, using data on corporate bond and syndicated loan
            markets. Contrary to claims in the literature based on firm
            balance sheets, firms from developing countries borrow
            through bonds and syndicated loans at maturities similar to
            those obtained by developed country firms. The composition
            and use of financing matters. Firms from developing
            countries borrow shorter term in domestic bond markets, but
            the differences in international issuances (accounting for
            most of the proceeds) are significantly smaller. Developing
            country firms borrow longer term in syndicated loan markets,
            which they partially use for infrastructure projects.
            However, only large firms from developing countries (similar
            in size to those from developed ones) issue bonds and
            syndicated loans. The short-termism in developing countries
            is partly explained by a lower proportion of firms using
            these markets, with more firms relying on other shorter-term instruments.
Political economy of reform
This paper reviews the literature
            relevant to understanding political constraints to economic
            reforms. Reform refers to changes in government policies or
            institutional rules because status quo policies and
            institutions are not working well to achieve the goals of
            economic well-being and development. Further, reforms refer
            to the alternative policies and institutions that are
            available that would most likely perform better than the
            status quo. The main question examined in the political
            economy of reform literature has been why reforms are not
            undertaken when they are needed for the good of society. The
            succinct answer from the first generation of research is
            that conflict of interest between organized socio-political
            groups is responsible for some groups being able to stall
            reforms so that they can extract greater private rents from
            status quo policies. The next generation of research is
            tackling a more fundamental question: why does conflict of
            interest persist; or, why do some interest groups exert
            influence against reforms if there are indeed large gains to
            be had for society? These are questions about norms and
            preferences in society for public goods. The next step is to
            examine where norms and preferences for public goods come
            from, and which institutional arrangements are more
            conducive to solve the public goods problem of pursuing
            reforms. After reviewing the available and future directions
            for research, the paper concludes with what all of this
            means for policy makers who are interested in understanding
            the factors behind successful reforms.
Prospects of estimating poverty with
            phone surveys : experimental results from Serbia
Telephone surveys enable us to collect
            data in a cost-effective and timely manner, but may not be
            conducive for collecting detailed consumption or income data
            for measuring poverty due to the required length of the
            interview and complexity of the questions. Combining
            telephone surveys with a survey-to-survey imputation
            technique may be a solution, as this technique can produce
            reliable poverty estimates from only 10 to 20 simple
            questions. However, this approach may lead to biased results
            if the interview mode, that is, face-to-face versus
            telephone interviews, affects how households respond to
            questions. By conducting the first survey experiment to
            examine potential differences in poverty estimates between
            interview modes, this study finds that the reporting
            patterns changed very little between the two interview
            modes, and the bias in poverty estimates due to interview
            mode is statistically insignificant. These findings suggest
            that poverty monitoring via telephone surveys is promising,
            but additional experiments in other country contexts are encouraged.