rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The cost of nutritious food in South Asia
The high cost of nutritious foods can
            worsen poor diets and nutrition outcomes especially among
            low-income households. Yet little is known about the spatial
            and temporal patterns of the cost of nutritious diets in
            South Asia, where malnutrition in multiple forms remains
            high. Using existing food price data from Sri Lanka,
            Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India, two methods are applied to
            assess the affordability of nutritious foods: Cost of a
            Recommended Diet (CoRD) and Nutritious Food Price Index
            (NPI). The analysis finds that the cost of a nutritious diet
            is 38 percent higher in Sri Lanka using CoRD compared to the
            cost of a (calorie-based) diet that meets basic food needs,
            and 15 percent higher in Afghanistan. In addition, CoRD
            varies across cities due to variability in the price of
            dairy and vegetables. Comparison of the NPI and the food
            Consumer Price Index (CPI) indicates that, for some
            countries, the price of a nutritious food basket varies more
            by season and has been increasing at a faster rate than the
            price of a typical food basket. This phenomenon is largely
            due to the variable cost of vegetables.
The distributional effects of
            tobacco taxation: the evidence of white and clove cigarettes
            in Indonesia
Despite the well-known positive impact
            of tobacco taxes on health outcomes, policy makers hesitate
            to use them because of their possible regressive effect,
            that is, poorer deciles are proportionally more negatively
            affected than richer ones. Using an extended cost-benefit
            analysis to estimate the distributional effect of white and
            clove cigarettes in Indonesia, this study finds that the
            long-run impact may be progressive. The final aggregate
            effect incorporates the negative price effect, but also
            changes in medical expenditures and additional working
            years. The analysis includes estimates of the distributional
            impacts of price rises on cigarettes under various scenarios
            using 2015–16 Indonesia National Socioeconomic Surveys. One
            contribution is to quantify the impacts by allowing price
            elasticities to vary across consumption deciles. Overall,
            clove cigarette taxes exert an effect that depends on the
            assumptions of conditional price elasticity. If the
            population is more responsive to tobacco price changes, then
            people would experience even more gains from the health and
            work benefits. More research is needed to clarify the
            distributional effects of tobacco taxation in Indonesia.
Land fragmentation and food
            insecurity in Ethiopia
This paper revisits the economic
            consequences of land fragmentation, taking seriously
            concerns regarding the exogeneity of fragmentation, its
            measurement and the importance of considering impacts in
            terms of welfare metrics. Using data that are well-suited to
            addressing these issues, the analysis finds that land
            fragmentation reduces food insecurity. This result is robust
            to how fragmentation is measured and to how exogeneity
            concerns are addressed. Further, the paper finds that land
            fragmentation mitigates the adverse effects of low rainfall
            on food security. This is because households with diverse
            parcel characteristics can grow a greater variety of crop types.
Explaining spatial variations in
            productivity : evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean
There is a large and extensive
            literature examining the strength of agglomeration economies
            and, more generally, the determinants of spatial variations
            in productivity for developed countries. However, the
            corresponding literature for developing countries is
            comparatively scant. This paper contributes to filling this
            knowledge gap by providing estimates for city productivity
            premiums and different sources of agglomeration effects for
            16 countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
            While two of the countries in our sample -- Brazil and
            Colombia -- have been considered by the literature, the
            remaining 14 countries have not been previously analyzed.
            The paper presents estimates for the region as well as
            comparable estimates for each country using a harmonized
            data set with characteristics of individual workers and
            features of the cities in which the workers live. In
            addition to examining the strength of agglomeration
            economies, the roles of human capital externalities and
            market access in explaining subnational productivity
            variations are assessed. The paper finds that citywide human
            capital externalities appear much stronger than
            agglomeration economies in explaining productivity variation
            in all the considered countries.  There is considerable
            heterogeneity in the estimated strength of human capital
            externalities across countries, which could be a reflection
            of country differences in educational quality.
Creating new positions direct and
            indirect effects of a subsidized apprenticeship program
Evaluations of employment programs
            usually focus on direct impacts on participants. Yet
            employment programs can have a range of indirect effects
            that are rarely quantified. This paper analyzes the impact
            of a subsidized apprenticeship program offering dual
            on-the-job and theoretical training in Côte d'Ivoire.
            The experiment simultaneously randomized whether
            apprenticeship positions opened by firms were filled by the
            program, and whether interested youths were assigned to a
            formal apprenticeship. This design allows for estimating
            direct impacts on youths and indirect impacts on firms
            selected to host apprentices. The analysis identifies
            whether individuals forgo other employment or training
            opportunities, and whether firms replace other workers with
            program participants. The share of youths in apprenticeships
            increased by 52.8 percentage points. This estimate accounts
            for a significant windfall effect: 26 percent of the formal
            apprentices who were placed substituted out of traditional
            apprenticeships. The inflow of apprentices into firms
            increased significantly, but also induced substitution
            effects, as firms hired 0.23 fewer traditional apprentices
            per formal apprentice placed. Overall, the net number of
            apprenticeship positions created was between 51 and 74
            percent of the number of formal apprentices placed. In the
            short term, impacts on earnings were not significant for
            youths, but firms benefited from an increase in the net
            value of work provided by apprentices.
Financial development, exchange rate
            regimes, and growth dynamics
This paper utilizes data for African
            countries to analyze the extent to which financial
            development affects the dynamics of the relationship between
            exchange rate flexibility and economic growth. The findings
            indicate that financial development exerts a positive
            influence on the relationship between exchange rate
            flexibility and GDP growth as well as total factor
            productivity growth. The paper also documents a positive
            impact of trade openness on the relationship between
            exchange rate flexibility and growth. Moreover, the results
            show a strong and positive association between exchange rate
            flexibility and financial development. The findings,
            therefore, suggest that discussions and decisions on
            exchange rate policy should be undertaken with consideration
            for structural policies that address the development of the
            financial sector. In addition, the paper asserts that policy
            makers should adopt a stance that facilitates some
            flexibility in exchange rates to foster development of the
            financial infrastructure in these economies.
Upping the ante: the equilibrium
            effects of unconditional grants to private schools
This paper tests for financial
            constraints as a market failure in education in a low-income
            country. In an experimental setup, unconditional cash grants
            are allocated to one private school or all private schools
            in a village. Enrollment increases in both treatments,
            accompanied by infrastructure investments. However, test
            scores and fees only increase in the setting of all private
            schools along with higher teacher wages. This differential
            impact follows from a canonical oligopoly model with
            capacity constraints and endogenous quality: greater
            financial saturation crowds-in quality investments. The
            findings of higher social surplus in the setting of all
            private schools, but greater private returns in the setting
            of one private school underscore the importance of
            leveraging market structure in designing educational subsidies.
The Heterogeneous Effects of Trade
            Policy Uncertainty : How Much Do Trade Commitments Boost Trade
This paper studies the effects of trade
            policy uncertainty on the extensive and intensive margins of
            trade for a sample of 65 exporters at the Harmonized System
            six-digit level. The paper measures trade policy uncertainty
            as the gap between binding tariff commitments under trade
            agreements (multilateral and regional agreements) and
            applied tariffs -- what is also known as tariffs'
            water. The results show that trade policy uncertainty is an
            important barrier to exports and its effects are
            heterogeneous. On average and at the current level of tariff
            commitments, the paper estimates that the elimination of
            water, without any change of the applied tariff, would
            increase the probability of exporting by 6 percent and trade
            volumes by 1.3 percent. The negative impact of trade policy
            uncertainty on export participation is higher for countries
            with low-quality institutions and in the presence of global
            value chains. For a sample of new acceding countries, the
            analysis finds that removing water would boost the
            probability of trading by 50 percent and exports by 16
            percent. The paper also estimates that the current system of
            commitments boosts trade by between 10 and 30 percent,
            compared with a world where at any moment tariffs could be
            raised to an arbitrarily high level.
Potential Forest Loss and
            Biodiversity Risks from Road Improvement in Lao PDR
This paper develops and applies a
            spatial econometric model that links road upgrading to
            forest clearing and biodiversity loss in the Lao
            People's Democratic Republic.  The paper uses 500-meter
            cells to estimate the relationship between the rate of
            forest clearing in a cell and its distance to the closest
            point on the nearest road link, the quality of that link,
            the cell's legal protection status, transport cost to
            the nearest urban center, the agricultural opportunity value
            of the land, and terrain elevation. The parameter estimates
            are all robust, with the expected signs and very high
            statistical significance. The paper highlights the results
            that measure the impact of improved road quality on forest
            clearing through shorter transport times to market and lower
            vehicle maintenance costs. The estimated response parameters
            and a composite biodiversity indicator are used to compute
            an index of expected biodiversity loss from road upgrading
            in each 500meter cell. The results identify areas in the Lao
            People’s Democratic Republic where high expected
            biodiversity loss may warrant additional protection as road
            upgrading continues. This analysis will help policy makers
            in the country to weigh context-specific trade-offs between
            development and conservation objectives associated with road improvement.
Comparison of Welfare Gains in the
            Armington, Krugman and Melitz Models : Insights from a
            Structural Gravity Approach
How large are the estimated gains from
            trade from a reduction in trade costs in the heterogeneous
            firms Melitz (M) model compared with the Armington (A) and
            Krugman (K) models? Surprisingly little is known beyond the
            one-sector model. This paper analyzes this question using a
            global trade model that contains ten regions and various
            numbers of sectors (1-10). Following Arkolakis et al.
            (2012), the analysis holds the local trade response constant
            across the model comparisons based on a structural gravity
            estimate. Various model features and scenarios are
            introduced that are important to real economies, almost none
            of which has been examined across the three market
            structures with a constant trade response. In response to
            global reductions in iceberg trade costs, in all the
            multi-sector models, the ranking of global welfare gains is
            Melitz > Krugman > Armington; and the Krugman model
            captures between 75 and 95 percent on the additional gains
            above the Armington model that are estimated by the Melitz
            model. However, for individual regions, there are numerous
            cases of reversed welfare rankings. i.e., Melitz <
            Krugman < Armington. For unilateral increases in tariffs,
            welfare gains are typically estimated with the Armington
            model, but welfare losses with monopolistic competition
            models. The paper constructs a multi-sector Feenstra ratio
            for the Dixit-Stiglitz variety externality and calculates
            changes in the terms-of-trade. These parameters provide
            economically intuitive explanations of the general pattern
            of results and exceptions. The paper concludes that gains
            from the reduction of trade costs for the world are: Melitz
            > Krugman > Armington. For individual regions,
            however, the welfare ranking of the Armington, Krugman and
            Melitz market structures is model, data, parameter and
            scenario dependent. The results highlight the need for data
            and structural considerations in policy analysis.
Bank Credit Allocation in Latin
            America and the Caribbean
Despite their importance, data on the
            structure of bank credit by maturity are scarce. For Latin
            America and the Caribbean, data are particularly difficult
            to obtain, as few banks report loan maturity data in
            commercial data sets such as Bankscope. With support from
            the Association of Supervisors of Banks of the Americas,
            this study assembled a novel data set on the structure of
            bank credit allocation in Latin America and the Caribbean
            covering 21 countries during 2004-14. This paper uses
            Bankscope and International Financial Statistics data to
            extended the coverage to more than 100 countries, creating
            the largest data set so far on credit by maturity.
            Benchmarking credit structure in Latin America and the
            Caribbean, the paper finds that the region is financially
            underdeveloped, because the ratio of short-term credit to
            gross domestic product is lower than in peers; long-term
            credit is at par; and consumer and commercial loans are
            lower. The paper also explores patterns of credit growth
            through nonparametric regressions. The results indicate that
            short-term credit grows faster than long-term credit as
            income grows in low-income countries, but the situation
            reverses when countries reach high- or middle-income status.
            Reflecting this trend, the share of mortgage loans rises
            with income.
Teacher Professional Development
            around the World : The Gap between Evidence and Practice
Teachers, like all professionals,
            require ongoing professional development opportunities to
            improve their skills. This paper provides evidence on
            effective professional development characteristics and how
            at-scale programs incorporate those characteristics. The
            authors propose a standard set of 70 indicators—the
            In-Service Teacher Training Survey Instrument—for reporting
            on professional development programs as a prerequisite for
            understanding the characteristics of those programs that
            improve student learning. The authors apply the instrument
            to rigorously evaluated professional development programs in
            low- and middle-income countries. Across 33 programs, those
            programs that link participation to career incentives, have
            a specific subject focus, incorporate lesson enactment in
            the training, and include initial face-to-face training tend
            to show higher student learning gains. In qualitative
            interviews, program implementers also report follow-up
            visits as among the most effective characteristics of their
            professional development programs. The authors then apply
            the instruments to a sample of 139 government-funded,
            at-scale professional development programs across 14
            countries. This analysis uncovers a sharp gap between the
            characteristics of teacher professional development programs
            that evidence suggests are effective and the global
            realities of most teacher professional development programs.
Blending top-down federalism with
            bottom-up engagement to reduce inequality in Ethiopia
Donors increasingly fund interventions
            to counteract inequality in developing countries, where they
            fear it can foment instability and undermine nation-building
            efforts. To succeed, aid relies on the principle of upward
            accountability to donors. But federalism shifts the
            accountability of subnational officials downward to regional
            and local voters. What happens when aid agencies fund
            anti-inequality programs in federal countries? Does
            federalism undermine aid? Does aid undermine federalism? Or
            can the political and fiscal relations that define a federal
            system resolve the contradiction internally? This study
            explores this paradox via the Promotion of Basic Services
            program in Ethiopia, the largest donor-financed investment
            program in the world. Using an original panel database
            comprising the universe of Ethiopian woredas (districts),
            the study finds that horizontal (geographic) inequality
            decreased substantially. Donor-financed block grants to
            woredas increased the availability of primary education and
            health care services in the bottom 20 percent of woredas.
            Weaker evidence from household surveys suggests that
            vertical inequality across wealth groups (within woredas)
            also declined, implying that individuals from the poorest
            households benefit disproportionately from increasing access
            to and utilization of such services. The evidence suggests
            that by combining strong upward accountability over public
            investment with extensive citizen engagement on local
            issues, Ethiopia’s federal system resolves the instrumental
            dissonance posed by aid-funded programs to combat inequality
            in a federation.
Toward a more business friendly tax
            regime : key challenges in South Asia
This paper discusses
            competitiveness-related issues surrounding the design and
            administration of corporate and value added/sales taxes in
            four South Asian countries -- Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,
            and Sri Lanka. The paper is based largely on analysis of tax
            legislation; in addition, data from the World Bank's
            enterprise surveys, the Doing Business report, as well as
            industry studies are used for evidence on tax compliance
            costs for business. The review of tax regulations in the
            region shows several commonalities: (1) widespread use of
            tax incentives to support selected industries, types of
            firms, and industrial locations; (2) many exemptions from
            value-added taxes as well as the practice of levying
            multiple indirect taxes on the same base; and (3) high costs
            of tax compliance for businesses. The paper discusses the
            consequences of tax policies for the competitiveness of
            South Asian producers, describes the main problems in tax
            administration, and outlines key directions for reforms.
Unpacking the MPI : a decomposition
            approach of changes in multidimensional poverty headcounts
Multidimensional measures of poverty
            have become standard as complementary indicators of poverty
            in many countries. Multidimensional poverty calculations
            typically comprise three indices: the multidimensional
            headcount, the average deprivation share among the poor, and
            the adjusted headcount ratio. While several decomposition
            methodologies are available for the last index, less
            attention has been paid to decomposing the multidimensional
            headcount, despite the attention it receives from policy
            makers. This paper proposes an application of existing
            methodologies that decompose welfare aggregates--based on
            counterfactual simulations--to break up the changes of the
            multidimensional poverty headcount into the variation
            attributed to each of its dimensions. This paper examines
            the potential issues of using counterfactual simulations in
            this framework, proposes approaches to assess these issues
            in real applications, and suggests a methodology based on
            rank preservation within strata, which performs positively
            in simulations. The methodology is applied in the context of
            the recent reduction of multidimensional poverty in
            Colombia, finding that the dimensions associated with
            education and health are the main drivers behind the poverty decline.