rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Active Trading and (Poor)
            Performance : The Social Transmission Channel
Active investors often generate inferior
            returns. Social interactions might exacerbate this tendency,
            but the causal link between peer effects and active trading
            is difficult to identify empirically. This paper exploits
            the exogenous assignment of students to classrooms in a
            large-scale financial education initiative to evaluate the
            transmission of trading strategies among individual
            investors. The paper shows that students assigned to groups
            where classmates have more trading background, are more
            likely to start trading after completing the program. These
            social effects are stronger when peers have experienced
            favorable outcomes. The paper documents a negative
            consequence from social interactions: students that
            registered for courses where peer returns are large,
            generate lower trading profits than other investors. The
            evidence is consistent with social learning under biased
            information -- people share their most successful
            experiences, encouraging stock trading among uninformed
            investors. The results shed light on the role of selective
            communication in the transmission and adoption of ideas, and
            more importantly, in the behavior of people expose to biased
            information. The findings show that social learning can lead
            to misguided decisions when peer choices are not accurately
            observed by members of the social network.
Input Substitutability and
            Cross-Country Variation in Sectoral Linkages
Using panel data on input-output
            intensities and expenditure prices from 28 countries, this
            paper finds the elasticity of substitution across sectoral
            inputs to be less than one in each of the three broad
            sectors of the economy. Intermediates are most complementary
            in the production of services while it is easiest to
            substitute across intermediates in the production of
            agricultural goods. Differences in relative prices alone
            account for a non-trivial fraction of the cross-country
            variation in sectoral linkages. Abstracting from the price
            channel that allows for substitution across inputs in
            response to changes in relative prices delivers biased
            aggregate implications of changes in productivity and distortions.
Morocco's Growth and Employment
            Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
This paper studies Morocco's growth
            and employment prospects in the context of a new growth
            model aimed at allowing the country, in a rapidly changing
            international environment marked by increased competition
            from low-wage economies and growing automation of
            low-skilled jobs, to avoid falling into a middle-income
            trap. The first part reviews the growth model that Morocco
            has pursued in the past few decades and discusses its
            limitations going forward. The second part characterizes the
            proposed growth model, which involves, in particular,
            promoting the transition from labor-intensive imitation
            activities to technology-intensive innovation activities,
            increasing public investment in advanced infrastructure,
            improving the quality of education, improving productivity
            and increasing value added in key sectors (including
            agriculture, high-end tourism, and renewable energy), and
            implementing measures designed to promote women's
            participation in the labor force and reduce gender
            inequality. The third part attempts to quantify the
            medium-run effects of these policies on growth, employment,
            and unemployment in Morocco. The paper concludes that to
            achieve high-income status and reduce unemployment
            significantly, Morocco will need to implement far-reaching
            reforms, to increase growth to a range of 6-7 percent and
            improve employment creation to about 35,000 jobs per
            percentage point of growth.
Learning from Developing Country
            Power Market Experiences : The Case of Colombia
The Colombian power market was
            established in 1995, driven primarily by concerns about the
            reliability of supply in the largely hydro-based domestic
            power system. The power sector reform was expected to help
            avoid blackouts by attracting private investment and
            increasing the efficiency of existing capacity. However, two
            decades after its inception, the market has not been
            successful in providing reliable supply along competitive
            outcomes. This paper analyzes the experience of Colombia
            with power markets, including market design, implementation,
            and outcomes. A single-node, bid-based market was
            established overnight, with bilateral contracts among market
            participants (mostly short-to-medium term). The original
            regulated capacity payment was replaced in 2004 by a
            reliability market intended to ensure supply during tight
            hydrological conditions (mainly due to El Nino phenomena).
            However, the Colombian power sector is currently showing
            signs of structural weakness: the reliability market has
            shown dysfunctionalities, the government has intervened the
            market during critical situations, and concerns persist
            regarding market power exercise. The experience of Colombia
            is important for other developing countries, since it
            highlights the challenges of designing and implementing a
            power market that successfully provides reliability,
            competitive outcomes, and sustainability. Although key local
            hydrological conditions were considered in the design of
            Colombia's capacity market, the market had difficulties
            delivering intended outcomes due to design and institutional
            issues, particularly the lack of a comprehensive approach to
            gas supply and transport.
Learning from Developing Country
            Power Market Experiences : The Case of Peru
The Peruvian power market was
            established in 1992, amid serious supply constraints and
            financially distressed power utilities. Since its inception,
            the market has been adapted by competitive market reforms
            and adaptations due to government-driven public policy
            objectives. This paper analyzes the experience of Peru with
            power markets, including market design, implementation, and
            outcomes. A cost-based power pool with locational marginal
            prices was established overnight, with bilateral contracts
            among market participants and regulated capacity payments.
            After an initial period of rapid investment, sluggish
            capacity additions and a prolonged drought in 2003-04
            motivated the successful introduction of competitive supply
            auctions in 2006, to ensure that needed capacity additions
            were made to meet demand growth. Competitive auctions for
            renewable capacity have also been successful, attracting
            investment at falling prices. However, the market has been
            adapted by the government, pushing technology-specific
            auctions to develop a balanced mix of gas and hydro power
            generation, with additional costs passed through to final
            customers. As a result, supply is less prone to hydrological
            conditions, but it is now subject to gas transport
            constraints; prices are depressed at US$9/megawatt hour; and
            the reserve margin increased to 81 percent in 2017. Overall,
            continuous adaptations to the Peruvian power market have
            delivered competitive outcomes, with concentration falling
            steadily and security of supply increasing over the past
            decade. However, the mixed approach of competitive forces
            and government-driven adaptations for public policy
            objectives calls into question the long-term efficiency of
            the market.
Mobilizing Resources for Education
            and Improving Spending Effectiveness : Establishing
            Realistic Benchmarks Based on Past Trends
This paper looks at how countries have
            mobilized additional resources for education and assesses
            their impact on access and learning outcomes, using the
            World Bank's new Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling
            measure. The paper shows that global spending on education
            has risen significantly over the past two decades, although
            spending as a share of gross domestic product has remained
            relatively unchanged, at about 4.5 percent. However, global
            trends mask large differences across regions and country
            income groups. For example, low-income countries recorded
            the largest increases in terms of the share of GDP spent on
            education, but the absolute amount they devoted to education
            remained low compared to other countries. Economic growth
            has been the main driver of increases in public education
            spending. Yet, countries that achieved the largest and most
            rapid spending increases did this through a combination of
            increases in overall government revenues, a greater
            prioritization of education in the government budget as well
            as healthy economic growth. Increases in public education
            spending did not generally result in major improvements in
            average education outcomes. Using the available data, the
            paper shows that a doubling of government spending per child
            led to an increase in learning-adjusted years of schooling
            of only half a year. Preliminary findings also show that
            countries with lower efficiency and spending are expected to
            get the most from increases in spending in improved
            education outcomes. The paper concludes by outlining an
            approach that allows countries to assess their potential for
            increasing education funding and the expected effects on
            their education outcomes, based on benchmarks drawing from
            the data of comparable countries. It also underscores the
            urgent need to improve data on public education spending and
            education outcomes, to extend this analysis to cover a wider
            set of countries and increase the robustness of
            country-level benchmarks.
Pioneering Firms in Fragile and
            Conflict-Affected States : Why and How Development Finance
            Institutions Should Support Them
The role of 'first movers' in
            fragile states is critical: they grow and diversify markets
            in ways that no other firms do, generating disproportionate
            impact in terms of development and stability. But pioneer
            firms are rare in fragile states. This study documents their
            profile, their challenges, and the barriers that prevent
            them from realizing their potential. The study also explores
            the rationale for development finance institutions to
            support them, and proposes new ways to offset costs, risks,
            and the "unknown unknowns" that generate radical
            uncertainty. Through a process of social learning and
            resetting negative self-fulfilling investor narratives,
            development finance institutions can help pioneering firms
            shift the growth trajectory of fragile and conflict-affected states.
Drivers of Gross Capital Inflows :
            Which Factors Are More Important for Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper discusses recent trends and
            investigates the drivers of capital flows across regions in
            the world, with emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa. The
            post-global financial crisis behavior of capital flows into
            Sub-Saharan Africa is unique and differs from that of global
            capital flows. The structure of financial flows into
            Sub-Saharan Africa has shifted toward new sources, such as
            international bond issuances and debt inflows from non–Paris
            Club governments. The main message is that the behavior of
            capital flows into Sub-Saharan Africa differs from that of
            capital flows into global, industrial, and non–Sub-Saharan
            African developing countries. The regression analysis
            reveals that gross flows into Sub-Saharan African are
            predominantly influenced by external factors, such as
            foreign growth and uncertainty in global markets and
            policies. Capital flow behavior for Sub-Saharan African
            countries is different from that of industrial countries due
            to different economic structures, which render different
            transmission processes. The main findings suggest that pull
            and push factors are the driving forces of capital inflows
            for industrial countries and non–Sub-Saharan African
            developing countries—especially better economic performance,
            sound fiscal outcomes, a greater degree of financial
            openness, and stronger institutions. The impact of these
            drivers has become stronger in the 2000s. Macroeconomic
            policy can play an important role in attracting capital
            inflows. For instance, fiscal discipline promotes greater
            other investment inflows, and less flexible exchange rate
            arrangements (more exchange rate stability) foster portfolio
            investment inflows.
Employment in South Asia : A New Dataset
This paper presents a new dataset of
            comparable employment indicators for South Asian countries,
            constructed from more than 60 primary data sources from 2001
            to 2017. The main contribution of the paper is to curate the
            information provided by individual respondents to censuses
            and surveys, in a way that is consistent across countries
            and over time. The usefulness of the dataset is illustrated
            by conducting a rigorous assessment of employment
            characteristics, of changes in employment over time, and of
            the short- and long-run relationship between economic growth
            and employment growth in South Asia. The exercise shows that
            agriculture still employs the majority of the working-age
            population across the region and, except in Sri Lanka, more
            than half of the employment is self-employment or unpaid
            family work. The paper also shows that employment rates are
            generally decreasing in South Asia, and that in some
            countries female employment rates are falling rapidly.
            Seasonal growth patterns are shown to affect the composition
            of employment, while non-seasonal changes in short-run
            growth affect the overall level of employment. The paper
            estimates that, in the long run, one percentage point growth
            of gross domestic product has led on average to a 0.34
            percent increase in employment.
Inflation and Exchange Rate Pass-Through
The degree to which domestic prices
            adjust to exchange rate movements is key to understanding
            inflation dynamics, and hence to guiding monetary policy.
            However, the exchange rate pass-through to inflation varies
            considerably across countries and over time. By estimating
            structural factor-augmented vector-autoregressive models for
            47 countries, this paper brings to light two fundamental
            factors accounting for these variations: the nature of the
            shock triggering currency movements and country-specific
            characteristics. The empirical results in this paper are
            three-fold. First, an empirical investigation demonstrates
            that different domestic and global shocks can be associated
            with widely different pass-through ratios. Second, country
            characteristics matter, including policy frameworks that
            govern monetary policy responses, as well as other
            structural features that affect an economy's
            sensitivity to currency fluctuations. Pass-through ratios
            tend to be lower in countries that combine flexible exchange
            rate regimes and credible inflation targets. Finally, the
            empirical results suggest that central bank independence can
            greatly facilitate the task of stabilizing inflation
            following large currency movements and allows fuller use of
            the exchange rate as a buffer against external shocks.
Firms' and States'
            Responses to Laxer Environmental Standards
On June 1, 2017, President Trump
            announced the United States' withdrawal from the Paris
            agreement on climate change. Despite this decision, American
            firms continued investing in low-carbon technologies and
            some states committed to tougher environmental standards. To
            understand this apparent paradox, this paper studies how a
            weakening of environmental standards affects the behavior of
            profit-maximizing firms. It finds that a relaxation of
            emission standards (i) may increase firms' incentives
            to adopt clean technologies, but not to pollute less; (ii)
            may negatively affect industry profitability if it is
            perceived as temporary; and, when this is the case, (iii)
            the unilateral adoption of stricter standards by large
            states may increase the expected profitability of every firm.
The Three-Gap Model of Health Worker Performance
The Three-Gap Model examines the
            determinants of low-quality health care by examining the
            patterns and determinants of three gaps. Using four measures
            of performance -- target performance, actual performance,
            capacity to perform, and knowledge to perform -- this paper
            defines three gaps for each health worker: the gap between
            target performance and what they have the knowledge to do
            (the know gap), the gap between their knowledge and their
            capacity to perform (the know-can gap), and the gap between
            their capacity and what they actually do (the can-do gap).
            The paper demonstrates how the patterns of these gaps across
            health workers in a sample can be used to diagnose failures
            in the system as well as evaluate the outcomes of policy
            experiments. Using data on pediatric care from hospitals in
            Liberia, the paper illustrates how the model can be used to
            investigate the potential for improvements in the quality of
            care from several possible policy interventions. The
            analysis of the relationships between these gaps across
            health workers in a health system help to paint a better
            picture of the determinants of performance and can assist
            policy makers in choosing relevant policies to improve
            health worker performance.
Are Management Practices Failing or
            Aiding the Private Sector in South America
An expanding body of literature has
            shown that better management practices can offer significant
            boosts to firms' productivity; this research
            illustrates that firms in South America are no exception.
            Using recent Enterprise Survey data from seven countries in
            South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador,
            Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay), the paper explores the various
            dimensions and drivers of management practices and analyzes
            how they are related to productivity. This is an important
            topic to investigate, given the lagging levels of
            productivity growth in the region. If management practices
            can boost firms’ productivity, this may be a cost-effective
            way to accelerate economic growth. The results show that
            improved management practices are associated with higher
            levels of productivity in all countries, and it is the
            impact of improved management specifically in larger firms
            that is driving the overall results. Indeed, in some
            countries, specifically Argentina, Paraguay, and Peru, it is
            only among larger firms that there is a positive link
            between management practices and productivity.
Why Do Fiscal Multipliers Depend on
            Fiscal Positions
The fiscal position can affect fiscal
            multipliers through two channels. Through the Ricardian
            channel, households reduce consumption in anticipation of
            future fiscal adjustments when fiscal stimulus is
            implemented from a weak fiscal position. Through the
            interest rate channel, fiscal stimulus from a weak fiscal
            position heightens investors' concerns about sovereign
            credit risk, raises economy-wide borrowing cost, and reduces
            private domestic demand. The paper documents empirically the
            relevance of these two channels using an Interactive Panel
            Vector Auto Regression model. It finds that fiscal
            multipliers tend to be smaller when fiscal positions are
            weak than strong.
Inflation Expectations : Review and Evidence
This paper presents a comprehensive
            examination of the determination and evolution of inflation
            expectations, with a focus on emerging market and developing
            economies (EMDEs). The results suggest that long-term
            inflation expectations in EMDEs are not as well anchored as
            those in advanced economies, despite notable improvements
            over the past two decades. Indeed, in EMDEs, long-term
            inflation expectations are more sensitive to both domestic
            and global inflation shocks. However, EMDEs tend to be more
            successful in anchoring inflation expectations in the
            presence of an inflation targeting regime, high central bank
            transparency, strong trade integration, and a low level of
            public debt.