rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The evolution of agricultural trade flows
Earlier research showed that during the
            1980s and 1990s most of the global agricultural trade
            expansion took place among the industrial countries and
            among countries within trade blocs. These were also periods
            of declining agricultural prices. These prices increased
            during the 2000s, there were continuous trade reforms, and
            many developing countries started to support their
            agricultural sectors. This paper analyzes trade flows during
            the past two decades, and tries to measure whether all these
            developments have changed the trade balances and the share
            of different groups within the global trade flows. In
            addition, it looks at the trade balances on food to see the
            impact of these changes on net food importing countries. In
            conclusion, unlike the case with manufacturing, developing
            countries have not been able to increase their export shares
            in agriculture as significantly. They have maintained their
            trade shares by primarily expanding exports to other
            developing countries.
Fiscal competition in developing
            countries : a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature
The last two decades have witnessed a
            sharp increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and
            increased competition among developing countries to attract
            FDI, resulting in higher investment incentives offered by
            host governments and removal of restrictions on operations
            of foreign firms in their countries. Fiscal competition
            between governments can take the form of business tax
            rebates, productivity-enhancing public infrastructure or
            investment incentives such as tax holidays, accelerated
            depreciation allowances or loss carry-forward for income tax
            purposes. It can take place between governments of different
            countries or between local governments within the same
            country. This paper surveys the recent theoretical and
            empirical economic literature on decentralization which
            attempts to answer three questions. First, does theoretical
            literature on fiscal competition and "bidding
            races" contribute to a better understanding of such
            phenomenon in developing countries? Second, are FDI inflows
            in developing countries sensitive to fiscal incentives and
            is there empirical evidence of strategic behavior from the
            part of developing countries in order to attract FDI? Third,
            what evidence is there about fiscal competition among local
            governments in developing countries?
Financial globalization and the
            Russian crisis of 1998
Russia had more-or-less completed the
            privatization of its manufacturing and natural resource
            sectors by the end of 1997. And in February 1998, the annual
            inflation rate at last dipped into the single digits.
            Privatization should have helped with stronger
            micro-foundations for growth. The conquest of inflation
            should have cemented macroeconomic credibility, lowered real
            interest rates, and spurred investment. Instead, Russia
            suffered a massive public debt-exchange rate-banking crisis
            just six months later, in August 1998. In showing how this
            turn of events unfolded, the authors focus on the
            interaction among Russia's deteriorating fiscal
            fundamentals, its weak micro-foundations of growth and
            financial globalization. They argue that the expectation of
            a large official bailout in the final 10 weeks before the
            meltdown played an important role, with Russia's
            external debt increasing by $16 billion or 8 percent of
            post-crisis gross domestic product during this time. The
            lessons and insights extracted from the 1998 Russian crisis
            are of general applicability, oil and geopolitics
            notwithstanding. These include a discussion of when
            financial globalization might actually hurt and a cutoff in
            market access might actually help; circumstances in which an
            official bailout could backfire; and why financial
            engineering tends to fail when fiscal solvency problems are present.
Growth identification and
            facilitation : the role of the state in the dynamics of
            structural change
Active economic policies by developing
            countries governments to promote growth and
            industrialization have generally been viewed with suspicion
            by economists, and for good reasons: past experiences show
            that such policies have too often failed to achieve their
            stated objectives. But the historical record also indicates
            that in all successful economies, the state has always
            played an important role in facilitating structural change
            and helping the private sector sustain it across time. This
            paper proposes a new approach to help policymakers in
            developing countries identify those industries that may hold
            latent comparative advantage. It also recommends ways of
            removing binding constraints to facilitate private firms
            entry into those industries. The paper introduces an
            important distinction between two types of government
            interventions. First are policies that facilitate structural
            change by overcoming information and coordination and
            externality issues, which are intrinsic to industrial
            upgrading and diversification. Such interventions aim to
            provide information, compensate for externalities, and
            coordinate improvements in the "hard" and
            "soft" infrastructure that are needed for the
            private sector to grow in sync with the dynamic change in
            the economys comparative advantage. Second are those
            policies aimed at protecting some selected firms and
            industries that defy the comparative advantage determined by
            the existing endowment structureeither in new sectors that
            are too advanced or in old sectors that have lost
            comparative advantage.
Regional trade agreements
This paper reviews the theoretical and
            empirical literature on regionalism. The formation of
            regional trade agreements has been, by far, the most popular
            form of reciprocal trade liberalization in the past 15
            years. The discriminatory character of these agreements has
            raised three main concerns: that trade diversion would be
            rampant, because special interest groups would induce
            governments to form the most distortionary agreements; that
            broader external trade liberalization would stall or
            reverse; and that multilateralism could be undermined.
            Theoretically, all of these concerns are legitimate,
            although there are also several theoretical arguments that
            oppose them. Empirically, neither widespread trade diversion
            nor stalled external liberalization has materialized, while
            the undermining of multilateralism has not been properly
            tested. There are also several aspects of regionalism that
            have received too little attention from researchers, but
            which are central to understanding its causes and consequences.
Infrastructure in Latin America :
            Infrastructure in Latin America - Working Paper
An adequate supply of infrastructure
            services has long been viewed by both academics and policy
            makers as a key ingredient for economic development. Over
            the past quarter-century, the retrenchment of Latin
            America's public sector from its dominant position in
            the provision of infrastructure, and the opening up of these
            industries to private participation, have renewed the debate
            on the role of infrastructure in the region's
            development. The focus of this paper is three-fold. First,
            it documents, in a comparative cross-regional perspective,
            the trends in Latin America's infrastructure
            development, as reflected in the quantity and quality of
            infrastructure services and the universality of their
            access. Overall, this suggests the emergence of an
            infrastructure gap vis-a-vis other industrial and developing
            regions. Second, it provides an empirical assessment of the
            contribution of infrastructure development to growth across
            Latin America. Third, it examines the trends in the
            financing of infrastructure investment -- documenting the
            changing roles of the public and private sectors -- and
            analyzes how they have been shaped by macroeconomic policy constraints.
Liquidity clienteles : transaction
            costs and investment decisions of individual investors
Theoretical papers link the liquidity
            premium to the optimal trading decisions of investors facing
            transaction costs. In particular, investors' holding
            periods determine how transaction costs are amortized and
            priced in asset returns. Using a unique data set containing
            two million trades, this paper investigates the relationship
            between holding periods and transaction costs for 66,000
            households from a large discount brokerage. The author finds
            that transaction costs are an important determinant of
            investors' holding periods, after controlling for
            household and stock characteristics. The relationship
            between holding periods and transaction costs is stronger
            among more sophisticated investors. Households with longer
            holding periods earn significantly higher returns after
            amortized transaction costs, and households that have
            holding periods that are positively related to transaction
            costs earn both higher gross and net returns. The author
            shows that there is correlation in the demand for liquid
            assets across households and, consistent with the notion of
            flight to liquidity, this demand increases during times of
            low market liquidity. Households with higher incomes and
            with higher wealth invested in the stock market supply
            liquidity when market liquidity is low.
Deals versus rules : policy
            implementation uncertainty and why firms hate it
Firms in Africa report "regulatory
            and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to
            their growth. This paper argues that often firms in Africa
            do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals:
            firm-specific policy actions that can be influenced by firm
            actions (such as bribes) and characteristics (such as
            political connections). Using Enterprise Survey data, the
            paper demonstrates huge variability in reported policy
            actions across firms notionally facing the same policy. The
            within-country dispersion in firm-specific policy actions is
            larger than the cross-national differences in average
            policy. The analysis shows that variability in this policy
            implementation uncertainty within location-sector-size cells
            is correlated with firm growth rates. These measures of
            implementation variability are more strongly related to
            lower firm employment growth than are measures of
            "average" policy action. The paper shows that the
            de jure measures such as Doing Business indicators are
            virtually uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses,
            further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in
            Africa. Strikingly, the gap between de jure and de facto
            conditions grows with the formal regulatory burden. The
            evidence also shows more burdensome processes open up more
            space for making deals; firms may not incur the official
            costs of compliance, but they still pay to avoid them.
            Finally, measures of institutional capacity and better
            governance are closely associated with perceived consistency
            in implementation.
Can subjective well-being predict
            unemployment length
This paper uses 16 waves of panel data
            from the British Household Panel Survey to evaluate the role
            of subjective well-being in determining labor market
            transitions. It confirms a previous finding in the
            literature: individuals report a fall in their happiness
            when they lose a job, but they report a smaller fall when
            they are surrounded by unemployed peers, an effect called
            the "social norm". The main results of interest
            are that job search effort and unemployment duration are
            affected by the utility differential between having a job
            and being unemployed. Since this differential is also
            affected by the social norm, it implies that when
            unemployment increases, the unemployed are happier and they
            reduce their search effort. These results indicate that
            unemployment hysteresis has labor supply causes.
The impact of the business
            environment on young firm financing
This paper uses a dataset of more than
            70,000 firms in over 100 countries to systematically study
            the use of different financing sources for new and young
            firms, in comparison to mature firms. The authors find that
            in all countries younger firms rely less on bank financing
            and more on informal financing. However, they also find that
            younger firms use more bank finance in countries with
            stronger rule of law and better credit information, and that
            the reliance of young firms on informal finance decreases
            with the availability of credit information. Overall, the
            results suggest that improvements to the legal environment
            and availability of credit information are
            disproportionately beneficial for promoting access to formal
            finance by young firms.
Obstacles to growth for small and
            medium enterprises in Turkey
Many studies have shown that firm growth
            decreases monotonically with size and age. In this study,
            the authors investigate employment growth of firms in Turkey
            with an emphasis on small and medium size enterprises. In
            Turkey, small and medium size enterprises account for almost
            77 percent of employment and play a crucial role in the
            economy. However, the analysis of firm dynamics in Turkey
            shows that medium-size firms (51-250 workers) are the
            slowest growing group in the economy. Moreover, small and
            medium size enterprises grow at a slower rate in Turkey than
            in several comparator countries in the Eastern Europe and
            Central Asia region. After determining this irregularity,
            the paper analyzes how the investment climate affects firm
            growth and finds that improved access to finance is the most
            important factor that significantly increases firm growth rates.
The political, regulatory and market
            failures that caused the US financial crisis
This paper discusses the key regulatory,
            market and political failures that led to the 2008-2009
            United States financial crisis. While Congress was fixing
            the Savings and Loan crisis, it failed to give the regulator
            of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac normal bank supervisory power.
            This was a political failure as Congress was appealing to
            narrow constituencies. In the mid-1990s, to encourage home
            ownership, the Administration changed enforcement of the
            Community Reinvestment Act, effectively requiring banks to
            lower bank mortgage standards to underserved areas.
            Crucially, the risky mortgage standards then spread to other
            sectors of the market. Market failure problems ensued as
            banks, mortgage brokers, securitizers, credit rating
            agencies, and asset managers were all plagued by problems
            such as moral hazard or conflicts of interest. The author
            explains that financial deregulation of the past three
            decades is unrelated to the financial crisis, and makes
            several recommendations for regulatory reform.
Trade credit contracts
This paper provides new evidence on the
            unique role of trade credit and contracting terms as a way
            for both sellers and buyers to mange business risk. The
            authors use a novel and unique dataset on almost 30,000
            supplier contracts for 56 large buyers and more than 24,000
            suppliers in Europe and North America. The sample of buyers
            and suppliers includes firms of varying size, investment
            grade, and sectors. The paper finds evidence in support of
            four important, and not mutually exclusive, reasons for
            trade credit: 1) as a method of financing; 2) as a means of
            price discrimination; 3) as a bond assuring buyers of
            product quality; and 4) as a screening mechanism to gauge
            buyer default risk. In particular, the analysis finds that
            the largest and most creditworthy buyers receive contracts
            with the longest maturities, as measured by net days, from
            smaller, investment grade suppliers. In comparison, early
            payment discounts seem to be used as a risk management tool
            to limit the potential nonpayment risk of trade credit.
            Early payment discounts are generally offered to smaller,
            non-investment grade buyers. The results suggest that
            contract terms are jointly determined by supplier and buyer characteristics.
Effects of the crisis on the
            automotive industry in developing countries : a global value
            chain perspective
This paper applies global value chain
            analysis to study recent trends in the global automotive
            industry. The authors pay special attention to the effects
            of the recent economic crisis on the industry in developing
            countries. The principal finding is that the crisis has
            accelerated pre-crisis trends toward greater importance of
            the industry in the South. More rapid growth of car
            ownership is the impetus, but the co-location and close
            interaction of suppliers and lead firms in this industry is
            an important catalyst. Opportunities to move up in the value
            chain for suppliers in emerging economies have proliferated
            and are likely to become even stronger now that an
            increasing number of new models are developed specifically
            for markets in developing countries. The co-location of
            assembly and parts plants in national and regional
            production systems has largely confined the impact of sales
            declines during the crisis to each country/region. In
            addition, the different development strategies followed by
            countries like Mexico, China, and India are slowly
            converging as their industries gain size and independence.
Consumer protection and financial
            literacy : lessons from nine country studies
The 2008 global financial crisis has
            emphasized the need for adequate consumer protection and
            financial literacy for long-term stability of the financial
            sector. This Working Paper aims to summarize key lessons
            from reviews of consumer protection and financial literacy
            in the nine middle-income countries of Europe and Central
            Asia: Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic,
            Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, the Russian Federation and
            Slovakia. All the country assessments used a systematic
            common approach, based on a set of Good Practices for
            Consumer Protection and Financial Literacy developed by the
            World Bank's Europe and Central Asia Region. A
            financial consumer protection regime should meet three
            objectives. First, consumers should receive accurate,
            simple, comparable information of a financial service or
            product, before and after buying it. Second, consumers
            should have access to expedient, inexpensive and efficient
            mechanisms for dispute resolution with financial
            institutions. Third, consumers should be able to receive
            financial education when and how they want it. A common
            challenge among the nine countries is the need of an
            adequate institutional structure for financial consumer
            protection. Regardless of the specific institutional
            structures, financial consumers should have one single
            agency where to submit complaints and inquiries. Financial
            institutions should be required to apply fair, non-coercive
            and reasonable practices when selling and advertising
            financial products and services to consumers. Personal data
            should also be carefully protected.
Seasonal and extreme poverty in
            Bangladesh : evaluating an ultra-poor microfinance project
Microfinance is often criticized for not
            adequately addressing seasonality and hard-core poverty. In
            Bangladesh, a program known as PRIME was introduced in 2006
            to address both concerns. Unlike regular microfinance, PRIME
            introduces a microfinance scheme that offers a flexible
            repayment schedule and consumption smoothing, as well as
            production, loans. It targets the ultra-poor, many of whom
            are also seasonally poor, with a severe inability to smooth
            consumption during certain months of the year. Besides
            providing loans, PRIME offers extension and training
            services. This paper uses a quasi-experimental survey design
            to evaluate PRIME against regular microfinance programs. The
            results show that PRIME is more effective than regular
            microfinance in reaching the ultra-poor, as well as the
            seasonal poor. PRIME also helps reduce seasonal deprivation
            and extreme poverty. Although the program has demonstrated
            its promise, it is too early to conclude whether the accrued
            benefits are large enough to contain both seasonal and
            chronic poverty on a sustained basis.