rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Financial inclusion for financial
            stability : access to bank deposits and the growth of
            deposits in the Global Financial Crisis
In crisis times, depositors get anxious,
            can run on banks, and withdraw their deposits. Correlated
            withdrawals of bank deposits could be mitigated if bank
            deposits are more diversified, that is, held by more
            individuals. This paper examines the link between the
            broader access to bank deposits prior to the 2008 crisis and
            the dynamics of bank deposit growth during the crisis, while
            controlling for relevant covariates. Employing proxies for
            access to deposits and the use of bank deposits, the authors
            find that greater access to bank deposits can make the
            deposit funding base of banks more resilient in times of
            financial stress. Policy efforts to enhance financial
            stability should thus not only focus on macroprudential
            regulation, but also recognize the positive effect of
            broader access to bank deposits on financial stability.
Disquiet on the weather front : the
            welfare impacts of climatic variability in the rural Philippines
Three recent rounds (2003, 2006, and
            2009) of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey are
            matched to rainfall data from 43 rainfall stations in the
            Philippines to quantify the extent to which unusual weather
            has any negative effects on the consumption of Filipino
            households. It is found that negative rainfall shocks
            decrease consumption, in particular food consumption.
            Rainfall below one standard deviation of its long-run
            average causes food consumption to decrease by about 4
            percent, when compared with rainfall within one standard
            deviation. Positive deviations above one standard deviation
            have a limited impact. Moreover, for households close to a
            highway or to a fixed-line phone, consumption appears to be
            fully protected from the impact of negative rainfall shocks.
Village sanitation and
            children's human capital : evidence from a randomized
            experiment by the Maharashtra government
Open defecation is exceptionally
            widespread in India, a county with puzzlingly high rates of
            child stunting. This paper reports a randomized controlled
            trial of a village-level sanitation program, implemented in
            one district by the government of Maharashtra. The program
            caused a large but plausible average increase in child
            height (95 percent confidence interval [0.04 to 0.61]
            standard deviations), which is an important marker of human
            capital. The results demonstrate sanitation externalities:
            an effect even on children in households that did not adopt
            latrines. Unusually, surveyors also collected data in
            districts where the government planned but ultimately did
            not conduct an experiment, permitting analysis of the
            importance of the set eligible for randomization.
Financial development in Latin
            America and the Caribbean : stylized facts and the road ahead
The paper documents the major trends in
            financial development in Latin America and the Caribbean
            since the early 1990s. The paper compares trends in Latin
            America and the Caribbean with those in Asia, Eastern
            Europe, and advanced countries and compares countries within
            Latin America and the Caribbean. The findings show that
            financial systems in the Latin America and the Caribbean
            region have become more diversified and more complex. In
            particular, domestic financial systems have become less
            bank-based, with bond and stock markets playing a larger
            role; institutional investors have gained some space in
            channeling domestic savings, thus increasing the
            availability of funds for investment in capital markets; and
            several economies in the region have started to reduce
            currency and maturity mismatches. Nonetheless, a few large
            companies continue to capture most of the domestic savings.
            And because these trends have unfolded more slowly than
            pro-market reformers had envisioned, broad, market-based
            financial systems with dispersed ownership have yet to
            materialize fully in the region. As a result, convergence is
            still largely failing to happen and the region's
            financial systems remain less developed than those of the
            advanced economies and several other emerging economies,
            most notably those in Asia.
Organizing for prosperity :
            collective action, political parties and the political
            economy of development
The ability of citizens to act
            collectively plays a central role in major debates in the
            political economy of development, including the causes and
            consequences of democratization and clientelism. This essay
            uses two lines of research to underscore the importance of
            explicitly introducing the organization of collective action
            into these debates. Exhaustive research on the management of
            open access resources demonstrates that citizens'
            ability to act collectively depends on non-trivial
            organizational arrangements that allow leaders to sanction
            free-riding and allow members to replace leaders if they
            shirk. Other research demonstrates wide variability in the
            organization of political parties. In countries where
            political parties do not have these two organizational
            characteristics, public policies are less friendly to
            economic development. This evidence suggests that in future
            research on democracy, state-building and development,
            citizen organization should be a central object of analysis.
Shorter, cheaper, quicker, better :
            linking measures of household food security to nutritional
            outcomes in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda, and Tanzania
Using nationally representative
            household survey data from five countries -- three from
            South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal) and two from
            Sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania and Uganda) -- this paper
            conducts a systematic assessment of the correlation between
            various measures of household food security and nutritional
            outcomes of children. The analysis, following the
            universally accepted and applied definition of food
            security, is based on some of the most commonly used
            indicators of food security. The results show that the
            various measures of household food security do appear to
            carry significant signals about the nutritional status of
            children that reside within the household. This result holds
            even after the analysis controls for a wide array of other
            socio-economic characteristics of the households that are
            generally also thought to be associated with the quality of
            child nutrition. If using these food security indicators as
            proxy measures for the underlying nutritional status of
            children is of some interest, then the results show that
            simple, cost-effective, and easy-to-collect measures, such
            as the food consumption score or the dietary diversity
            score, may carry at least as much information as other
            measures, such as per capita expenditure or the starchy
            staple ratio, which require longer and costlier surveys with
            detailed food consumption modules. Across five different
            countries in South Asia and Africa, the results suggest that
            the food consumption score, in particular, performs
            extremely well in comparison with all other measures from
            the perspective of nutritional targeting as well as for
            monitoring nutritional outcomes.
Does the semi-autonomous agency
            model function in a low-governance environment the case of
            the road development agency in Zambia
This paper uses Zambia as a case study
            to assess empirically whether political interference in a
            low-governance environment has diminished in the past years
            as expected after a semi-autonomous agency model was set up
            ten years ago. The road sector in Zambia has experienced
            some significant developments since then. The paper uses
            data on contract from 2008 to 2011 and analyses a number of
            key trends related to Road Development Agency governance and
            staffing dynamics as well as procurement and project
            selection within the institution. The main findings indicate
            that, after some years of implementation of these reforms,
            there is reason to question whether the model of
            semi-autonomous agency enables road management to be
            shielded from political interference. Zambia may be an
            isolated case but, so far, this model does not seem to have
            been able to decrease political interference in the
            selection or supervision of projects and there seems to have
            been an increased lack of accountability of civil servants
            working in this sector.
Evaluation of development programs :
            randomized controlled trials or regressions
Can project evaluation methods be used
            to evaluate programs: complex interventions involving
            multiple activities? A program evaluation cannot be based
            simply on separate evaluations of its components if
            interactions between the activities are important. In this
            paper a measure is proposed, the total program effect (TPE),
            which is an extension of the average treatment effect on the
            treated (ATET). It explicitly takes into account that in the
            real world (with heterogeneous treatment effects) individual
            treatment effects and program assignment are often
            correlated. The TPE can also deal with the common situation
            in which such a correlation is the result of decisions on
            (intended) program participation not being taken centrally.
            In this context RCTs are less suitable even for the simplest
            interventions. The TPE can be estimated by applying
            regression techniques to observational data from a
            representative sample from the targeted population. The
            approach is illustrated with an evaluation of a health
            insurance program in Vietnam.
Friend or foe or family a tale of
            formal and informal plants in India
This paper examines the interaction
            between formal (organized) and informal (unorganized) plants
            in the manufacturing sector in India. How has the size and
            productivity of the plants in the organized sector affected
            the plants in the unorganized sector? How have informal
            plants affected formal plants? Are the magnitudes of the
            effects symmetric in either direction? The evidence shows
            that there are positive horizontal and vertical spillovers
            in each direction. Informal firms are an important supplier
            of inputs to formal firms. Employment and output in the
            organized sector is greater in those states in India that
            have a greater presence of unorganized suppliers of inputs.
            Conversely, unorganized employment and output are greater in
            states that have a greater presence of organized buyers of
            inputs. But there are two important asymmetries in the
            relationship between the organized and unorganized sectors.
            First, the unorganized sector is much more dependent on and
            responsive to organized sector presence than vice versa.
            Second, unorganized sector productivity is dependent on and
            responsive to organized sector productivity and presence but
            the reverse is not true.
The use of random geographic cluster
            sampling to survey pastoralists
Livestock are an important component of
            rural livelihoods in developing countries, but data about
            this source of income and wealth are difficult to collect
            because of the nomadic and semi-nomadic nature of many
            pastoralist populations. Most household surveys exclude
            those without permanent dwellings, leading to undercoverage.
            This study explores the use of a random geographic cluster
            sample as an alternative to the household-based sample. In
            this design, points are randomly selected and all eligible
            respondents found inside circles drawn around the selected
            points are interviewed. This approach should eliminate
            undercoverage of mobile populations. The results of a random
            geographic cluster sample survey are presented with a total
            sample size of 784 households to measure livestock ownership
            in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 2012. The paper explores
            the data quality of the random geographic cluster sample
            relative to a recent household survey and discusses the
            implementation challenges.
Improving access to banking :
            evidence from Kenya
Using household surveys and bank
            penetration data at the district-level in 2006 and 2009,
            this paper examines the impact of Equity Bank -- a leading
            private commercial bank focusing on microfinance -- on
            access to banking in Kenya. Unlike other commercial banks in
            Kenya, Equity Bank pursues distinct branching strategies
            that target underserved areas and less-privileged
            households. Equity Bank presence has a positive and
            significant impact on households' use of bank accounts
            and bank credit, especially for Kenyans with low income, no
            salaried job, and less education and those who do not own
            their own home. The findings are robust to using the
            district-level proportion of people speaking a minority
            language as an instrument for Equity Bank presence. It
            appears that Equity Bank's business model -- providing
            financial services to population segments typically ignored
            by traditional commercial banks and generating sustainable
            profits in the process -- can be a solution to the financial
            access problem that has hindered the development of
            inclusive financial sectors in many African countries.
Efficiency and equity implications
            of oil windfalls in Brazil
Large oil reserves off the coast of
            Brazil may substantially increase the countrys oil revenue
            in the future. A natural resource "curse" could be
            the consequence if an appropriate share of the oil revenue
            is not invested. This issue is addressed in this paper for
            Brazil both theoretically and empirically by focusing on (i)
            the efficient allocation of oil revenue between investment
            and consumption; and (ii) because it may be efficient to
            consume a certain share of the oil revenue, the
            distributional implications across generations of higher
            public consumption. The main finding is that, if the
            Pre-Salt oil revenue brings the aggregate oil revenue in
            Brazil above 10 percent of gross domestic product, there
            will be scope for consuming a certain share of it while
            still maintaining efficiency. But unless oil revenue reaches
            10 percent or more of gross domestic product, then all of it
            should be invested in order for the economy to approach the
            efficient investment level. If oil revenue as a share of
            gross domestic product was 10 percent, then the achievable
            growth in gross domestic product could reach 9.0 percent.
            The distributional implications are positive for all
            generations, but vary across generations depending on how
            much of the oil revenue is invested. As a result, transfer
            policies could be adjusted to ensure equality in its distribution.
Testing information constraints on
            India's largest antipoverty program
Public knowledge about India's
            ambitious Employment Guarantee Scheme is low in one of
            India's poorest states, Bihar, where participation is
            also unusually low. Is the solution simply to tell people
            their rights? Or does their lack of knowledge reflect deeper
            problems of poor people's agency and an unresponsive
            supply side? This paper reports on an information campaign
            that was designed and implemented in the form of an
            entertaining movie to inform people of their rights under
            the scheme. In randomly-assigned villages, the movie brought
            significant gains in knowledge and more positive perceptions
            about the impact of the scheme. But objectively measured
            employment showed no gain on average, suggesting that the
            movie created a "groupthink," changing social
            perceptions about the scheme but not individual efficacy in
            accessing it. The paper concludes that awareness generation
            needs to go hand-in-hand with supply-side changes.
Economic Growth and equality of opportunity
The paper proposes an approach to
            understand the relationship between inequality and economic
            growth obtained by shifting the analysis from the space of
            final achievements to the space of opportunities. To this
            end, it introduces a formal framework based on the concept
            of the Opportunity Growth Incidence Curve. This framework
            can be used to evaluate the income dynamics of specific
            groups of the population and to infer the role of growth in
            the evolution of inequality of opportunity over time. The
            paper shows the relevance of the introduced framework by
            providing two empirical analyses, one for Italy and the
            other for Brazil. These analyses show the distributional
            impact of the recent growth experienced by Brazil and the
            recent crisis suffered by Italy from both the income
            inequality and opportunity inequality perspectives.
The effect of weather-induced
            internal migration on local labor markets : evidence from Uganda
Relying on census data collected in 2002
            and historical weather data for Uganda, this paper estimates
            the impact of weather-induced internal migration on the
            probability for non-migrants living in the destination
            regions to be employed. Consistent with the prediction of a
            simple theoretical model, the results reveal a larger
            negative impact than the one documented for developed
            countries. They further show that this negative impact is
            significantly stronger in Ugandan regions with lower road
            density and therefore less conducive to capital mobility: a
            10 percentage points increase in the net in-migration rate
            in these areas decreases the probability of being employed
            of non-migrants by more than 10 percentage points.
Lending concentration, bank
            performance and systemic risk : exploring cross-country variation
Using both market-based and annual
            report-based approaches to measure lending specialization
            for a broad cross-section of banks and countries over the
            period 2002 to 2011, this paper is the first to empirically
            gauge the relationship between bank lending specialization
            and bank performance and stability in an international
            sample. Theory suggests that banks might benefit from
            specialization in the form of higher screening and
            monitoring efficiency, while a diversified loan portfolio
            might also enhance stability. This paper finds that sectoral
            specialization increases volatility and systemic risk
            exposures, while not leading to higher returns. The paper
            also documents important time, cross-bank, and cross-county
            variation in this relationship, which is stronger post 2007,
            for richer countries, countries without regulatory
            requirements on diversification, banks with lower market
            power, and banks with more traditional intermediation models.
The relative income and relative
            deprivation hypotheses : a review of the empirical literature
The paper provides a review of the
            empirical literature in economics that has attempted to test
            the relative income hypothesis as put forward by Duesemberry
            (1949) and the relative deprivation hypothesis as formalized
            by Runciman (1966). It is argued that these two hypotheses
            and the empirical models used to test them are essentially
            similar and make use of the same relative income concept.
            The review covers the main intellectual contributions that
            led to the formulation and tests of these hypotheses, the
            main formulations of the utility and econometric equations
            used in empirical studies, the main econometric issues that
            complicate tests of the hypotheses, and the empirical
            results found in the literature. The majority of studies
            uses absolute and relative income together as explanatory
            factors in utility models and finds absolute income to have
            a positive and significant effect on utility (happiness).
            The majority of studies also finds relative income to be a
            significant factor in explaining utility but the sign of
            this relation varies across studies. The source of this
            variation is complex to detect given that few results are
            directly comparable across studies because of differences in
            model specifications.
The art of currency manipulation :
            how to profiteer by deliberately distorting exchange rates
A frequent charge in foreign exchange
            markets in developing countries is that of manipulators
            being at work. Since to buy is to raise prices and to sell
            is to lower prices, the question that naturally arises is
            whether the widespread charge of market manipulation is
            valid. The paper shows that (whether or not
            "widespreadness" has any merit) it is possible for
            a player to manipulate and profiteer. By using some simple
            principles of game theory, the paper outlines a strategy
            that a manipulator may use. The aim of this paper is not to
            provide a manual for the manipulator but to enable the
            regulator to understand the art and develop policies to curb manipulation.