rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Human capital and industry wage
            structure in Guatemala
The presence and persistence of
            substantial wage differentials between industries has been
            documented.  Differences between industries could result
            from (1) the normal functioning of competitive labor markets
            (compensating differential levels of human capital), (2)
            institutional factors, such as the presence of a union, and
            (3) efficiency wages paid on some industries (employers
            finding they can increase profits by paying workers
            above-market wages).  Using the testable model of endogenous
            growth, the author analyzes microdata from the Guatemala
            Household Survey to estimate the external effects of
            education.  First, he estimates a wage equation and filters
            out the internal effects of education.  Then, to isolate
            external effects, he regresses the resulting wage premiums
            in industry on average human capital as well as on
            industry-specific characteristics.  Stronger conclusions
            cannot be drawn, but the analysis does not reject the
            hypothesis that external effects are present.
Trade reform, efficiency, and growth
The main objective of trade reform is to
            make markets more competitive and, by introducing
            competition among previously protected domestic firms, to
            change the behavior and performance of firms. Efficiency
            gains are achieved through increased productivity - more
            efficient use of resources - and a shift in resources from
            inefficient to efficient sectors. As a result of increased
            efficiency, output grows. But the transition from a
            restrictive to an open trade regime can impose short-term
            adjustment costs for industries newly exposed to external
            competition. This can be compounded by efforts to restore
            macroeconomic stabilization, such as reductions in fiscal
            deficits that could hurt the country's infrastructure.
            The authors examine the impact of trade reform on
            productivity and GDP growth, export growth, the
            diversification of exports, and the trade balance. They also
            examine whether trade reform affects different reforming
            countries differently - whether its outcome is related to
            such factors as the functioning of markets or the level of
            diversification in production at the time reform is begun.
            Their findings confirm the link between trade reform and
            efficiency gains. Reduced average tariffs and quantitative
            restrictions on imports are associtaed with increased output
            growth for a given level of investment and capacity use. But
            the extent to which trade reform helps a country reflects
            the initial conditions prevailing in the country. Ghana,
            Indonesia, and Turkey began their trade reform programs
            under different conditions. Indonesia and Turkey had a more
            diversified production structure and a better functioning
            market than Ghana. All three countries carried out intensive
            trade reform, but Indonesia and Turkey benefited more than
            Ghana did. In short, countries with well-functioning markets
            and a better human resource base benefit more from
            productivity gains resulting from trade reform than
            countries with less well-functioning markets do.
An empirical model of sunk costs and
            the decision to export
Exports respond unpredictably to a
            change in real exchange rates, suggests evidence from the
            1980s. Recent theoretical work explains this as a
            consequence of the sunk costs associated with breaking into
            foreign markets. Sunk costs include the cost of packaging,
            upgrading product quality, establishing marketing channels,
            and accumulating information on demand sources. The authors
            use micro panel data to estimate a dynamic discrete-choice
            model of participation in export markets, a model derived
            from the Krugman-Baldwin sunk-cost hysteresis framework.
            Applying the model to data on manufacturing plants in
            Colombia (1981-89), they test for the presence of sunk entry
            costs and quantify the importance of those costs in
            explaining export patterns. The econometric results reject
            the hypothesis that sunk costs are zero. The results, which
            control for both observed and unobserved sources of plant
            heterogeneity, indicate that prior export market experience
            has a substantial effect on the probability of exporting,
            but its effect depreciates fairly quickly. The reentry costs
            of plants that have been out of the export market for a year
            are substantially lower than the costs of a first-time
            exporter. After a year out of the export market, however,
            the reentry costs are not significantly different from the
            entry costs. Plant characteristics are also associated with
            export behavior: large old plants owned by corporations are
            more likely to export than other plants. Variations in
            plant-level cost and demand conditions have much less effect
            on the profitability of exporting than variations in
            macroeconomic conditions and sunk costs do. It appears
            especially difficult to break into foreign markets during
            periods of world recession.
Enterprise restructuring in Eastern
            Europe : how much how fast where - preliminary evidence from
            trade data
What kind of privatization program is
            best suited to stimulate enterprise restructuring in former
            centrally planned economies? One view, expressed by most
            Western business and political leaders, is that
            privatization is best pursued case by case, with emphasis on
            sales to new owners, including foreign investors. Another
            view, espoused by a minority of "radical"
            economists and economists-turned-politicians, was that
            restructuring is best pursued through economic incentives,
            combined with "mass privatization of state enterprises
            so that they become widely held (public) joint stock
            corporations. The ultimate test, of course, is future
            productivity growth and rising welfare standards. We cannot
            yet measure these. The disaggregated data on production and
            employment by industry required for such a measure either
            are not available or are unreliable. The only objective
            measure available - comparable across countries - is export
            performance. Trade data reveal to what extent firms have
            been able to reorient themselves to create and exploit
            competitive advantages. We now have four years of data,
            enough to get an idea of what is going on, and to compare
            one Central or Eastern European country's performance
            against another's. The data suggest that the Czech
            Republic, the country that has pursued mass privatization
            most actively and credibly, has also done best in
            restructuring its industries and reorienting them toward
            world markets. Those that pursued a gradualist approach -
            Hungary being the main example - have changed their export
            structure less, but export growth has also been above average.
Using financial futures in trading
            and risk management
The authors explain the features of an
            array of futures contracts and their basic pricing
            relationships and describe a few applications to show how
            investors and risk managers can use these contracts.
            Futures - and derivatives generally - allow economic agents
            to fine-tune the structure of their assets and liabilities
            to suit their risk preferences and market expectations.
            Futures are not a financing or investment vehicle per se,
            but a tool for transferring price risks associated with
            fluctuations in asset values.  Some may use them to spread
            risk, others to take on risk.  Financial futures (along with
            options) are best viewed as building blocks.  Futures have
            facilitated the modern trend of separating conventional
            financial products into their basic components.  They allow
            not only the reduction of transformation of investment risk
            but also the understanding and measurement of risk.  The
            market for derivatives has grown enormously over the past
            decade.  The value of exchange-traded eurodollar derivatives
            (futures and options) is equal to roughly 13 times the value
            of the underlying market.  The volume of trading in
            financial futures now dwarfs the volume in traditional
            agricultural contracts.  As emerging markets develop, given
            their inherently risky nature, expect financial futures to
            play a prominent role in risk management.
The industrial pollution projection system
The World Bank's technical
            assistance work with new environmental protection
            institutions stresses cost-effective regulation, with
            market-based pollution control instruments implemented
            wherever feasible.  But few environmental protection
            institutions can do the benefit-cost analysis needed because
            they lack data on industrial emissions and abatement costs.
            For the time being, they must use appropriate estimates.
            The industrial pollution projection system (IPPS) is being
            developed as a comprehensive response to this need for
            estimates.  The estimation of IPPS parameters is providing a
            much clearer, more detailed view of the sources of
            industrial pollution.  The IPPS has been developed to
            exploit the fact that industrial pollution is heavily
            affected by the scale of industrial activity, by its
            sectoral composition, and by the type of process technology
            used in production.  Most developing countries have little
            or no data on industrial pollution, but many of them have
            relatively detailed industry-survey information on
            employment, value added, or output.  The IPPS is designed to
            convert this information to a profile of associated
            pollutant output for countries, regions, urban areas, or
            proposed new projects.  It operates through sectoral
            estimates of pollution intensity, or pollution per unit of
            activity.  The IPPS is being developed in two phases.  The
            first prototype has been estimated from a massive U.S. data
            base developed by the Bank's Policy Research
            Department,  Environment, Infrastructure, and Agriculture
            Division, in collaboration with the Center for Economic
            Studies of the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Environmental
            Protection Agency.  This database was created by merging
            manufacturing census data with Environment Protection Agency
            data on air, water, and solid waste emissions.  It draws on
            environmental, economic, and geographic information from
            about 200,000 U.S. factories.  The IPPS covers about 1,500
            product categories, all operating technologies, and hundreds
            of pollutants.  It can project air, water, or solid waste
            emissions, and it incorporates a range of risk factors for
            human toxins and ecotoxic effects.  The more ambitious
            second phase of IPPS development will take into account
            cross-country and cross-regional variations in relative
            prices, economic and sectoral policies, and strictness of regulation.
The World Trade Organization's
            agreement on government procurement : expanding disciplines,
            declining membership
The authors analyze the new Government
            Procurement Agreement (GPA) that was negotiated between a
            subset of General Agreement on Tariffs an Trade (GATT)
            members in the Uruguay Round, focusing especially on the
            expansion of coverage to services and on the strengthening
            of enforcement mechanisms. Coverage objective were
            substantially achieved, although commitments contain many
            exceptions for services. The transparency of
            signatories' procurement practices was enhanced and
            enforcement provisions were strengthened, particularly by
            the introduction of a bid-protest challenge mechanism, which
            allows private parties (firms) to invoke the Agreement
            before national courts. (A potential problem: domestic
            courts could produce divergent interpretations of the GPA).
            Unlike most of the other Tokyo Round codes - for example,
            the agreements on technical barriers to trade (standards),
            import licensing, customs valuation, subsidies, and
            antidumping - the GPA could not be
            "multilateralized." Its disciplines apply only to
            World Trade Organization (WTO) members that have signed it.
            Public procurement represents a major source of demand for
            goods and services in most countries. Getting domestic
            procurement policies "right" can therefore have
            major effects on welfare. And improving developing
            countries' access to global procurement markets could
            help induce governments to adopt multilateral rules, if
            those could be shown to be in their interests. The authors
            explore why only a limited number of countries have signed
            the GPA. They suggest the pursuit of tariffication as one
            avenue through which the Agreement might be expanded to
            cover all WTO members. In the process, the GPA could be
            improved economically by eliminating current provisions that
            allow for measures with quota-like effects, and by weakening
            incentives to seek "absolute" sector-by-sector reciprocity.
Energy price increases in developing
            countries : case studies of Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia,
            Malaysia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe
When domestic energy prices in
            developing countries fall below opportunity costs, price
            increases are recommended to conserve fiscal revenue and to
            ensure efficient use of resources.  Using six case studies,
            the authors investigate the effect of energy price increases
            on the poor, inflation, growth, public revenues, and
            industrial competitiveness.  The effect on household in
            various income classes depends on the energy
            commodity's share in the household budget and the price
            elasticity of demand.  For energy as a whole (electricity
            and fuels, traditional and commercial), budget shares often
            decline with income.  So in terms of income distribution,
            taxing energy is not ideal.  But commercial fuel consumption
            increases greatly with income, so any subsidies applied will
            largely benefit nonpoor urban households.  For each
            commercial energy source (electricity, kerosene, diesel, and
            gasoline) proportionate household spending will generally be
            lower, and some energy sources will be luxuries.  In no
            instance does energy spending exceed 10 percent of the
            typical household budget for any income group.  The effect
            on industry is generally modest, since cost shares for
            energy typically range from 0.5 to 3 percent (with typical
            value being 1.5).  In addition, many industries are flexible
            enough to substitute when energy prices increase.  Energy
            prices tended to increase in adjustment and liberalization
            programs, and industrial output usually increased even with
            the higher energy prices.  This suggests that the effects of
            the price increase is modest compared with the effects of
            other changes in the environment.  There are exceptions, of
            course, such as energy-intensive industries with limited
            possibilities for substitution.  Estimating the effects on
            public deficits is straight-forward, even with uncertainty
            about demand elasticities: energy price increases reduce the
            drain on public resources significantly.  It is harder to
            trace the effects on inflation and growth in national
            income.  The effects on inflation will generally not be
            severe, and inflation may even be reduced in the
            intermediate to long run, through lowered public deficits.
            Income growth rates were generally higher after the years of
            energy price adjustments than they were in the years before
            the price increases (with one exception).  Income growth
            rates were higher during the years of price increases than
            before in about half of the case study countries.
The role of commercial banks in
            enterprise restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe
Many countries in Eastern Europe
            assigned banks the responsibility for restructuring
            enterprises. Such restructuring had five components: 1)
            triage of enterprises into three classes -- viable, viable
            with debt relief, and nonviable; 2) work with management  of
            overindebted firms on a restructuring plan before granting
            debt relief; 3) trigger the bankruptcy liquidation process
            on nonviable firms; 4) fund new investments needed as part
            of physical restructuring; and 5) provide corporate
            governance through representation on boards of directors.
            The initial information is that banks are performing these
            roles only to a limited degree. Signals are mixed on how
            vigorously governments want banks to pursue bankruptcy
            proceedings. With little opportunity to recover funds, banks
            are accepting even dubious restructuring programs from
            enterprises. But banks, except under government directive,
            are avoiding making new loans to loss-making enterprises.
            Together with a cut in fiscal subsidies, this is imposing a
            harder budget constraint on the enterprises. Non-viable
            enterprises seem more likely to starve to death than to die
            through execution. Corporate restructuring is not a normal
            part of commercial banking. To ask banks to restructure weak
            enterprises is to direct their attention away from what
            should be their core business: lending to strong
            enterprises. In fact, banks are under attack for being
            excessively conservative.  Enterprise restructuring is
            taking place in Central and Eastern Europe driven by the
            disintegration of regional trade relations, sharply higher
            input prices, falling domestic demand, inflation, and other
            economic dislocations in combination with the harder budget
            constraint. Thus far the restructuring has been more
            downsizing than making new investments.
Efficiency in Bulgaria's
            schools : a nonparametric study
In Eastern European countries in large
            social sectors such as education, inefficiency and technical
            deficiencies are the legacy of the old command economy. The
            authors examine the technical efficiency of classroom use
            (defined as the number of classes per classroom in one
            transitional economy -- Bulgaria. They examine the concept
            of efficiency in 199 urban and rural municipalities, using
            data envelopment analysis to generate efficiency scores.
            Those scores -- discussed in terms of frequency and regional
            distribution -- are then regressed on several socioeconomic
            variables. The researchers find significant relationships
            between the efficiency scores, on the one hand, and, on the
            other, the proportion of students in the population under
            age 20 (demand indicator), the number of teachers (variable
            input), the percentage of the municipal budget spent on
            education, and the degree of urbanization. Efficiency in the
            use of classrooms (in terms of classes) varies considerably
            among municipalities, and the efficiency is highest in the
            capital city of Sofia. To the extent that some variation in
            efficiency reflects demand or demographic factos, there is
            little that policy can do to change the pattern. But some
            changes in municipal policy could increase the efficiency of
            classroom use without jeopardizing the fundamental learning
            objective. In some rural areas, for example, where there are
            few students and classroom utilization is low, it may be
            possible to consolidate several grades into multigrade
            classes and reduce the size of the teaching (and
            nonteaching) staff, while maintaining the quality of
            learning and maximizing the use of such fixed inputs as
            classrooms. To the extent that it is possible to use such
            classrooms more efficiently, savings could be generated in
            the municipalities that need them most: in demographically
            sparse, poor municipalities with a weak economic base. Those
            savings could then be reallocated to other educational
            essentials, such as equipment and materials.
Legislative frameworks used to
            foster petroleum development
The main purpose of a legislative
            framework for petroleum development is to provide the basic
            context for, and the rules governing, petroleum operations
            in the host country; to regulate them, as they are carried
            out by domestic foreign, and international enterprises; and
            to define the principal administrative, economic and fiscal
            guidelines for investment activity in the sector. Experience
            shows that the cornerstone of effective petroleum
            legislative frameworks for exploration and production
            operations is a broad, generic, short but thorough petroleum
            law (not overdetailed), complemented by enabling regulations
            and one or several variants of a model contract. Such
            frameworks give both the host country and international oil
            company investors a clear legal and contractual context in
            which to negotiate mutually advantageous exploration and
            production arrangements that develop the host state's
            petroleum resources. The fiscal and tax aspects of the
            framework may be detailed in the petroleum law or in a
            separate petroleum revenue code, either of which would
            complete the legislative package. The author identifies and
            details the essential elements of such a framework --
            petroleum law, regulations, and model contracts -- and
            explains how these three components relate to one another.