rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Inclusion in Indonesia's
            Education Sector : A Subnational Review of Gender Gaps and
            Children with Disabilities
This study seeks to examine gender gaps
            and disability issues in education in Indonesia, and to
            suggest policy actions as well as future analytical and
            operational work to address these differences. Field visits
            were conducted to uncover drivers of gender differences, as
            well as issues of social inclusion, and to explore policy
            approaches to improve learning outcomes and educational
            achievement for all children. Secondary data analysis shows
            that Indonesia has demonstrated great progress on gender
            parity in education; however, the national averages mask
            important variations at the subnational level, including
            variations of significant male and female disadvantage
            between and within provinces. Women are still
            underrepresented in school and government leadership
            positions, as well as the workforce overall. Despite women
            making up the majority of the teaching workforce, men
            dominate the management and leadership roles in schools. The
            study also reveals significant challenges and offers policy
            recommendations to ensure inclusivity in education for
            children with disabilities.
Simulating the Potential Impacts of
            COVID-19 School Closures on Schooling and Learning Outcomes
            : A Set of Global Estimates
School closures due to COVID-19 have
            left more than a billion students out of school. This paper
            presents the results of simulations considering three, five
            and seven months of school closure and different levels of
            mitigation effectiveness resulting in optimistic,
            intermediate and pessimistic global scenarios. Using data on
            157 countries, the analysis finds that the global level of
            schooling and learning will fall. COVID-19 could result in a
            loss of between 0.3 and 0.9 years of schooling adjusted for
            quality, bringing down the effective years of basic
            schooling that students achieve during their lifetime from
            7.9 years to between 7.0 and 7.6 years. Close to 7 million
            students from primary up to secondary education could drop
            out due to the income shock of the pandemic alone. Students
            from the current cohort could, on average, face a reduction
            of $355, $872, or $1,408 in yearly earnings. In present
            value terms, this amounts to between $6,472 and $25,680
            dollars in lost earnings over a typical student's
            lifetime. Exclusion and inequality will likely be
            exacerbated if already marginalized and vulnerable groups,
            like girls, ethnic minorities, and persons with
            disabilities, are more adversely affected by the school
            closures. Globally, a school shutdown of 5 months could
            generate learning losses that have a present value of $10
            trillion. By this measure, the world could stand to lose as
            much as 16 percent of the investments that governments make
            in the basic education of this cohort of students. The world
            could thus face a substantial setback in achieving the goal
            of halving the percentage of learning poor and be unable to
            meet the goal by 2030 unless drastic remedial action is taken.
Does Corruption Hurt Employment
            Growth of Financially Constrained Firms More
Payments of bribes and the expenses
            incurred on rent-seeking activities impose a significant
            financial burden on private firms, which is compounded when
            they do not have enough funds of their own or find it costly
            to borrow externally. This paper hypothesizes that financial
            constraints magnify the harmful effects of corruption. It
            applies this idea to the impact of corruption on employment
            growth among private firms. Using firm-level survey data for
            109 countries, the analysis finds that corruption has a much
            larger negative impact on employment growth for firms that
            are financially constrained compared with firms that are not
            financially constrained. For the baseline specification, a
            one standard deviation increase in the bribery rate brings
            about a decline in the annual growth rate of employment of
            financially constrained firms that is 2.3 percent greater
            than that for firms that are not financially constrained.
            This is a large difference given that the mean employment
            growth is about 5.1 percent. The results show that
            corruption "sands the wheel" at high levels of
            financial constraint and "greases the wheels" of
            an otherwise slow bureaucracy at low levels of financial constraint.
Reversal of Fortune for Political
            Incumbents : Evidence from Oil Shocks
Using a new dataset of 207 national
            elections across 50 democracies, this paper is the first to
            systematically examine the effects of oil price shocks on
            incumbents’ political fortunes in developed oil-importing
            countries. We find that oil price increases systematically
            lower the odds of reelection for incumbents and increase the
            likelihood of changes in the ideology of the incoming
            government. These shocks are found to operate through
            lowering consumption growth.
Technology in the Classroom and
            Learning in Secondary Schools
This paper studies the impact of a
            computer-assisted learning program on learning outcomes
            among high school students in The Gambia. The program uses
            innovative technologies and teaching approach to facilitate
            the teaching of mathematics and science. Since the pilot
            schools were not randomly chosen, the study first used
            administrative and survey data, including a written test, to
            build a credible counterfactual of comparable groups of
            control students. It used these data to conduct a
            pre-analysis plan prior to students taking the high-stakes
            certification exam. The study later used the certification
            exam data on the same students to replicate the results. The
            findings show that the program led to a 0.59 standard
            deviation gains in mathematics scores and an increase of 15
            percentage points (a threefold increase) in the share of
            students who obtained credit in mathematics and English, a
            criterion for college admission in The Gambia. The impact is
            concentrated among high-achieving students at the baseline,
            irrespective of their gender or socioeconomic background.
A Decade after the 2009 Global
            Recession : Macroeconomic and Financial Sector Policies
Unprecedented monetary policy
            accommodation in advanced economies and a large, coordinated
            fiscal stimulus by G20 countries helped to support a solid
            rebound in global output right after the 2009 Global
            Recession. However, global growth subsequently slowed to a
            sluggish pace by pre-recession standards, and many emerging
            market and developing economies (EMDEs) have been struggling
            to unwind their fiscal stimulus and contain a buildup of
            debt. The experience of the global recession in 2009
            highlights the need for well-timed, appropriately calibrated
            domestic stabilization policies, but also the benefits of
            international cooperation and coordination in support of
            strong and sustained global growth and financial system
            stability. Sound policy frameworks can help create room for
            stabilization policies, such as fiscal rules to safeguard
            fiscal sustainability or macroprudential policies and
            capital flow management measures to better manage systemic risks.
A Decade after the 2009 Global
            Recession : Macroeconomic Developments
Emerging markets and developing
            economies (EMDEs) weathered the 2009 global recession
            relatively well. However, the impact of the global recession
            varied across economies. EMDEs with stronger pre-crisis
            fundamentals -- such as large foreign exchange reserves,
            sound fiscal positions, and low inflation -- suffered milder
            growth slowdowns, in part due to their greater capacity to
            engage in monetary and fiscal stimulus. Low-income countries
            were also resilient, as foreign aid and inflows of
            remittances remained relatively stable. In contrast, EMDEs
            that were heavily dependent on short-term capital flows --
            such as portfolio investment and cross -- border bank
            lending—fared less well, especially those in Europe and
            Central Asia. A key lesson for EMDEs is the need to
            strengthen macroeconomic frameworks and create policy space
            to prepare for future global downturns.
Examining the Economic Impact of
            COVID-19 in India through Daily Electricity Consumption and
            Nighttime Light Intensity
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted
            economic activity in India. Adjusting policies to contain
            trans- mission while mitigating the economic impact requires
            an assessment of the economic situation in near real-time
            and at high spatial granularity. This paper shows that daily
            electricity consumption and monthly nighttime light
            intensity can proxy for economic activity in India. Energy
            consumption is compared with the predictions of a
            consumption model that explains 90 percent of the variation
            in normal times. Energy consumption declined strongly after
            a national lockdown was implemented on March 25, 2020 and
            remained a quarter below normal levels throughout April. It
            recovered somewhat subsequently, but electricity consumption
            was on average still 13.5 percent lower than normal in May.
            Not all states and union territories have been affected
            equally. While electricity consumption halved in some,
            others were not affected at all. Part of the heterogeneity
            is explained by the prevalence of manufacturing and return
            migration. At the district level, higher COVID-19 infection
            rates were associated with larger declines in nighttime
            light intensity in April. Together, daily electricity
            consumption and nighttime light intensity allow monitoring
            economic activity in near real-time and high spatial granularity.
Changes in Female Employment in
            Mexico : Demographics, Economics, and Policies
The unemployment and labor force
            participation gender gaps narrowed in Mexico after the 2008
            global economic crisis, when female labor force
            participation increased. This paper aims to understand
            female labor force participation growth and identify its
            main determinants. For that purpose, the paper estimates a
            probit model with data from the National Employment Survey
            of 2007 and 2017, when the unemployment rate returned to the
            pre-crisis level. Broadly, the results show that increasing
            labor force participation of women ages 36 to 65 sustained
            the growth of overall female labor force participation,
            women's educational attainment can offset any
            individual or household obstacle to women's
            employability, and childcare availability significantly
            supports mothers' employability.
Why Are So Many Children Stunted in
            the Philippines
Nearly one in three children under age
            five in the Philippines is stunted, a key marker of
            undernutrition. This rate is high for the country's
            level of income. This paper provides the first detailed
            multivariate analysis of potential drivers of stunting in
            the Philippines, using data from the 2015 National Nutrition
            Survey. Potential drivers are analyzed individually and
            grouped in major categories. The analysis finds that
            stunting between 24-60 months is principally associated with
            suboptimal prenatal conditions and inadequate food security
            and diversity. If the results are given a causal
            interpretation, they imply that if all Filipino newborns had
            adequate prenatal conditions, the fraction stunted at age
            24-60 months would fall by 20 percent. Similarly, providing
            adequate food security and diversity to all Filipino
            children would reduce stunting by 22 percent. Other factors
            -- including access to water, sanitation, and environmental
            conditions -- have less strong associations with stunting.
            The results point to a series of policy priorities to reduce
            stunting: supporting the nutrition and health of expectant
            mothers, ensuring access to contraception to reduce
            adolescent pregnancy, and ensuring that children consume a
            variety of healthy foods, including protein-dense foods such
            as milk, meat, and eggs.
Women in the Pipeline : A Dynamic
            Decomposition of Firm Pay Gaps
This paper proposes a new decomposition
            method to understand how gender pay gaps arise within firms.
            The method accounts for pipeline effects, nonstationary
            environments, and dynamic interactions between pay gap
            components. This paper assembles a new data set covering all
            employees at the World Bank Group between 1987 and 2015 and
            shows that historical differences in the positions for which
            men and women were hired account for 77 percent of
            today's average salary difference, dwarfing the roles
            of entry salaries, salary growth, or retention. Forward
            simulations show that 20 percent of the total gap can be
            assigned to pipeline effects that would resolve mechanically
            with time.
China's Productivity Slowdown
            and Future Growth Potential
China’s economy grew by an impressive 10
            percent per year over four decades. Productivity
            improvements within sectors and gains from resource
            reallocation between sectors and ownership groups drove that
            expansion. However, productivity growth has declined
            markedly in recent years. This paper extends previous macro
            and firm-level studies to show that domestic factors and
            policies contributed to the slowdown. The analysis finds
            that limited market entry and exit and lack of resource
            allocation to more productive firms were associated with
            slower manufacturing total factor productivity growth.
            Earlier reforms led to state-owned enterprises catching up
            to private sector productivity levels in manufacturing, but
            convergence stalled after 2007. Furthermore, the allocation
            of a larger share of credit and investment to infrastructure
            and housing led to lower returns to capital, a rapid buildup
            in debt, and higher risks to growth. China’s growth
            potential remains high, but its long-term growth prospects
            depend on reversing the recent decline in total factor
            productivity growth.
Attracting Private Solutions and
            Participation in the Power Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa --
            Findings from a Survey of Investors and Financiers
This paper develops a classification of
            investor risks and surveys 51 private investors and
            financiers in the power sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. The
            paper aims for a better understanding of what can be done to
            attract private solutions to fill the investment gap. It
            finds that the average investor assigns more weight to power
            sector policy and regulatory framework risks than to the
            wider sector and country context risks. And, despite many
            challenges, investors perceive three segments as ready for
            private solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa: power generation,
            off-grid electrification, and mini-grids. Investors see
            lower readiness in distribution, transmission, and retail.
            The paper finds that the average investor is
            forward-looking, as neither the track record of the power
            sector nor the firm’s personal track record is as important
            as the growth potential in the market. The paper uses the
            findings to reality-check data-based measures of regulatory
            readiness, namely the Regulatory Indicators for Sustainable
            Energy and Power Sector Reform Index and analyzes which
            elements correlate best with investor sentiment to optimize
            and streamline these indexes accordingly. The results
            provide important lessons for governments and development
            partners to devise appropriate de-risking instruments
            tailored to the risks that matter most to investors.
Transforming Finance in the Middle
            East and North Africa
This paper argues for a transformation
            of finance to support the economic and social transformation
            of the Middle East and North Africa. The paper first
            documents the existing financial system in the region. The
            system is heavily skewed toward banking, relative to
            non-banking services, such as stock and corporate bond
            markets, with significant heterogeneity across countries.
            Second, the paper discusses the stance of macroeconomic
            policy in the region, which has had important implications
            for the destination, profitability, and quality of bank
            lending and the limited evolution of the financial system.
            Third, the paper explores the impact of technology on
            financial development, with particular attention to
            prospects for the development of fintechs. Entrenched
            incumbency of banks has limited the role of non-bank
            operators in fostering market contestability and fintech
            development. The paper is a call to the authorities and
            policy makers in the Middle East and North Africa to break
            with the status quo and business as usual. It underscores
            the need for a “moonshot approach” focused on establishing
            the foundations of a new digital economy and its role in
            promoting a well-functioning and inclusive financial economy
            to support the development needs of the region.
Tax Competition : Is It a Source of
            the Corporate Savings Glut
This paper examines the determinants of
            corporate savings in a cross-country panel setting.
            Specifically, it employs firm-level data covering more than
            540,000 firm-year observations for 12 advanced and emerging
            market economies. Panel regression results suggest that
            reductions in statutory corporate income tax rates can
            explain one-third of the rise in corporate savings (defined
            as net financial assets) in 2003-17. This finding is
            supported by a propensity scores matching analysis of the
            effects of changes in corporate income tax rates.
Demystifying the Costs of
            Electricity Generation Technologies
The levelized cost of electricity is the
            most common indicator used to compare the cost
            competitiveness of electricity-generating technologies.
            Several studies claim that some renewable energy
            technologies, particularly utility-scale solar photovoltaic
            and onshore wind, are cost-competitive with fossil
            fuel–based technologies. However, there is no consensus on
            this point considering the wide variations in factors that
            influence the levelized costs of electricity across
            countries and technologies. This study calculates more than
            4,000 levelized costs of electricity for 11 technologies,
            varying key input variables. The study shows that the
            levelized costs of electricity for renewable electricity
            technologies, except concentrated solar and offshore wind,
            are lower than those for fossil fuel–based technologies at
            the lower range of capital costs and discount rates of 10
            percent or lower. However, for a reasonable range of input
            variables, calculations of the levelized costs of
            electricity for renewables based on reasonable parameter
            values do not justify the low auction prices for solar
            power, below US$20 per megawatt hour, recently observed in
            some parts of the world. The study also highlights the
            shortcomings of the levelized cost indicator for comparing
            the cost-competitiveness of different types of electricity
            generation technologies.
International Benchmarking for
            Country Economic Diagnostics : A Stochastic Frontier Approach
This paper discusses and illustrates the
            analytical foundations of international comparisons (or
            benchmarking) for assessing a country's potential for
            improvement along various dimensions of social and economic
            development. By providing a methodology for international
            benchmarking, discussing various alternatives and choices,
            and presenting a cross-country illustration, the paper can
            help practitioners be less arbitrary and more systematic in
            their approach to international comparisons, as well as more
            realistic in their expectations for a country's
            improvement. The paper presents the stochastic frontier
            approach and applies it to estimate feasible frontiers or
            benchmarks for each variable, country, and year. It then
            interprets a country's (one-sided) departure from the
            benchmark as inefficiency or potential for improvement. This
            contrasts with the literature that compares countries by
            looking at raw variables or indicators, without considering
            that countries differ in structural endowments that
            constrain the maximum performance that a country could
            achieve in a policy-relevant horizon. The Stochastic
            Frontier approach also improves upon the literature that
            uses regression residuals to measure performance. Regression
            residuals are hard to interpret as inefficiency, because
            they are mixed with noise and take positive and negative
            values. As an illustration, the paper uses a panel of 142
            countries with yearly data for 2005-14 and considers a set
            of 10 development indicators. It finds that the potential
            for improvement does not follow a simple relationship with
            economic development, with some lower-income countries being
            closer to their own feasible frontier than more advanced
            countries are.