rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Trickle Down Tax Morale : A Cross
            Country Survey Experiment
Studies have encouraged pro-social
            behavior by experimentally manipulating people's views
            of what others like them tend to do (descriptive norms).
            These studies positively change behaviors, including
            charitable giving, littering, organ donation, and tax
            compliance. This paper argues that these results may be
            explained by a tendency to reciprocate positive actions and
            avoid being taken advantage of. The descriptive norm account
            predicts that positively describing the behavior of ordinary
            people will be most effective at increasing citizens’
            willingness to pay taxes, and messages describing the
            behavior of other groups should be less effective. However,
            reciprocity theory suggests that highlighting pro-social
            behavior by groups believed not to contribute their fair
            share, such as rich people, should be effective because it
            will reduce the subject's perception that they are
            being taken advantage of when they pay taxes. These theories
            are tested in an online experiment in Kenya, Australia, the
            United States, the Philippines, and South Africa. The
            findings show that the descriptive norms treatment is
            ineffective, while the rich people treatment significantly
            increases tax morale, supporting reciprocity theory. The
            findings suggest that tax agencies may increase tax
            compliance by visibly tackling tax avoidance among groups
            believed to avoid taxes, such as rich citizens.
Incentives for Mayors to Improve
            Learning : Evidence from state reforms in Ceará, Brazil
Financial incentives for students,
            teachers, and schools are often used to promote learning.
            Yet, little is known about whether similar incentives for
            mayors produce analogous findings. This paper investigates
            this question by exploring a results-based financing reform
            in Ceará, Brazil, which redistributes state resources to
            municipalities based on education performance. Comparing
            schools on both sides of Ceará's border over key
            implementation periods, the paper shows that ninth  grade
            students who were exposed to the results-based financing
            performed 0.15 standard deviation higher on mathematics and
            language tests. These impacts increase twofold when Ceará
            offers technical assistance to municipalities (pedagogical
            and managerial) and become significant for fifth graders.
            These gains are seen among students in the top performance
            quantiles, but reformulating the results-based financing
            rule to penalize municipalities with more low performers
            significantly reduces learning gaps. The paper discuss
            several mechanisms: the selection of school principals,
            teacher training, the provision and quality of textbooks,
            curriculum coverage, and school homework.
The Early Labor Market Impacts of
            COVID-19 in Developing Countries : Evidence from
            High-Frequency Phone Surveys
The economic crisis caused by the
            COVID-19 pandemic has sharply reduced mobility and economic
            activity, disrupting the lives of people around the globe.
            This paper presents estimates on the early impact of the
            crisis on labor markets in 39 countries based on
            high-frequency phone survey data collected between April and
            July 2020. Workers in these countries experienced severe
            labor market disruptions following the COVID-19 outbreak.
            Based on simple averages across countries, 34 percent of the
            respondents reported stopping work, 20 percent of wage
            workers reported lack of payment for work performed, 9
            percent reported job changes due to the pandemic, and 62
            percent reported income loss in their household. Stopping
            work was more prevalent in the industrial and service
            sectors than in agriculture. Measures of work stoppage and
            income loss in the high-frequency phone survey are generally
            consistent with gross domestic product growth projections in
            Latin America and the Caribbean but not in Sub-Saharan
            Africa. This suggests that the survey data contribute new
            and important information on economic impacts in low-income countries.
The Early Labor Market Impacts of
            COVID-19 in Developing Countries : Evidence from
            High-Frequency Phone Surveys
Policy Research Working Paper 9510 The Early Labor Market Impacts of COVID-19 in Developing Countries Evidence from High-Frequency Phone Surveys _Melanie Khamis Daniel Prinz David Newhouse Amparo Palacios-Lopez Utz Pape Michael Weber_ Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice & Poverty and Equity Global Practice January 2021
COVID-19, Public Procurement
            Regimes, and Trade Policy
This paper analyzes a prominent
            dimension of the initial policy response to the COVID-19
            pandemic observed in many countries: the imposition of
            export restrictions and actions to facilitate imports.
            Weekly data on the use of trade policy instruments during
            the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic
            (January-July 2020) are used to assess the relationship
            between the use of trade policy instruments and attributes
            of pre-crisis public procurement regulation. Controlling for
            country size, government effectiveness and economic factors,
            the analysis finds that use of export restrictions targeting
            medical products is strongly positively correlated with the
            total number of steps and time required to complete
            procurement processes in the pre-crisis period. Membership
            in trade agreements encompassing public procurement
            disciplines is associated with actions to facilitate trade
            in medical products. These findings suggest that future
            empirical assessments of the drivers of trade policy during
            the pandemic should consider public procurement systems.
Coping with COVID-19: Does
            Management Make Firms More Resilient
The spread of COVID-19 has disrupted
            firm operations on a global scale. Using a comprehensive
            data set that observes over 3,000 firms in 16 countries,
            including several developing countries, shortly before and
            after the pandemic, we relate firms’ structured management
            practices to post-COIVD-19 outcomes, and report four main
            findings. First, structured management practices are
            associated with more limited downside impacts of the crisis
            on firm sales and survival in manufacturing but not in
            services. Better managed manufacturing firms, on average,
            experience a smaller reduction in sales. Second, in both
            manufacturing and services, structured management practice
            scores are correlated with a firm’s ability to adjust or
            convert product mix and shift to online work arrangements.
            Third, management scores are not correlated with firm’s
            ability to adjust on employment margins. Fourth, the
            resilience of better managed firms is related primarily to
            incentive practices and is uncorrelated with operations or
            targeting practices. Monitoring practice scores show a
            modest correlation with a firm’s ability to switch to remote
            work arrangements.
Does Competition from Informal Firms
            Hurt Job Creation by Formal Firms Evidence Using Firm-Level
            Survey Data
The informal sector is an important
            source of livelihoods and jobs for a vast majority of people
            in developing countries. However, there is concern that the
            informal sector may undermine job creation in the formal
            sector. According to the “parasite” view of informality,
            informal firms can compete against formal firms, and often
            "unfairly" so as they do not have to comply with
            costly regulations and pay taxes. This "unfair"
            advantage makes it difficult for formal firms to compete
            against informal firms, implying a significant loss of
            formal sector jobs. Using firm-level survey data for
            manufacturing small and medium-size enterprises in 109
            mostly developing countries, this study estimates the impact
            of competition from informal firms on the growth rate of
            employment among formal sector small and medium-size
            enterprises. The results show that the growth rate of
            employment declines significantly as competition from
            informal firms rises. According to the baseline
            specification, for each one standard deviation increase in
            informal competition, the employment growth rate declines by
            1 percentage point. Consistent with the parasite view of
            informality, the negative impact on job growth is much
            larger when the business environment is less conducive to
            operating formally versus informally due to factors such
            high corruption, weak rule of law, more burdensome
            regulations, and high profit tax rate. Several checks are
            provided against endogeneity concerns.
Characterization of Ambient Air
            Quality in Selected Urban Areas in Uganda : A Low-Cost Approach
Many cities and urban centers around the
            world experience high air pollution episodes attributable to
            increased anthropogenic alterations of natural environmental
            systems. World Health Organization estimates indicate strong
            exceedances of prescribed limits in developing countries.
            However, the evidence on local pollution measures is limited
            for such cities and Uganda is no exception. Informed by the
            practical realities of air quality monitoring, this paper
            employs a low-cost approach using passive and active
            monitors to obtain characterization of pollution levels
            based on particulate matter 2.5, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone
            over a six-month period (starting in December 2018) for
            selected urban centers in three of the four macro-regions in
            Uganda. This is the first attempt to comprehensively assess
            pollution levels at a near-national level in Uganda. A
            combination of distributed stationary monitors and mobile
            monitors installed on motorcycle taxis (boda-boda) was
            employed in selected parishes to obtain spatiotemporal
            variations in the pollutant concentrations. The results
            suggest that seasonal particulate levels heavily depend on
            precipitation patterns with a strong inverse relation, which
            further corroborates the need for longer monitoring periods
            to reflect actual seasonal variations. Informed by the
            observed level of data completeness and quality in all the
            monitoring scenarios, the paper highlights the
            practicability and potential of a low-cost approach to air
            quality monitoring and the potential to use this information
            to inform citizens.
Competition Reform and Household
            Welfare : A Microsimulation Analysis of the
            Telecommunication Sector in Ethiopia
This paper presents a novel method for
            estimating the likely welfare effects of competition reforms
            for both current and new consumers. Using household budget
            survey data from 2015/16 for Ethiopia and assuming a reform
            scenario that dilutes the market share of the
            telecommunications state-owned monopoly to 45 percent, the
            model predicts a 25.3 percent reduction in the price of
            mobile services and an increase of 4.6 million new users of
            mobile phone services. This reform is expected to generate a
            welfare gain of 1.37 percent among all consumers. Poverty
            rates are expected to decline by 0.31 percentage point,
            driven by a reduction of 0.22 percentage point for current
            consumers and 0.09 percentage point among new users.
            Inequality would increase by 0.23 Gini point since
            better-off consumers are more likely to reap the benefits of
            greater competition. This method represents a powerful tool
            for supporting the analysis of competition reforms in
            developing countries, particularly in sectors known for
            excluding significant segments of the population due to high
            consumer prices.
The Impact of Language of
            Instruction in Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from
            Malaysia Using the Synthetic Control Method
This paper employs the synthetic control
            method to examine the impact of using a non-native language
            as the medium of instruction in schools on a student’s
            learning. Exploiting an unanticipated policy change in
            Malaysia and using data from the Trends in International
            Mathematics and Science Studies, the results show that
            changing the medium of instruction negatively influenced
            eighth graders’ achievement in mathematics and science. The
            differential performance, by year and gender, suggests that
            using a non-native language throughout a student’s schooling
            may have greater negative impact on the student’s learning
            than switching the language of instruction in the middle of
            the student’s schooling does. This paper sheds light on the
            various manners in which a language policy can adversely
            affect a student’s learning outcomes. It also highlights how
            the transition in switching the language of instruction in
            schools can be implemented more effectively to mitigate its
            adverse effects.
The Unintended Consequences of
            Deportations : Evidence from Firm Behavior in El Salvador
Can repatriation inflows impact firm
            behavior in origin countries? This paper examines this
            question in the context of repatriation inflows from the
            United States and Mexico to El Salvador. The paper combines
            a rich longitudinal data set covering all formal firms in El
            Salvador with individual-level data on all registered
            repatriations from 2010 to 2017. The empirical strategy
            combines variation in the municipality of birth of
            individuals repatriated over 1995-2002—before a significant
            change in deportation policies—with annual variation in
            aggregate inflows of repatriations to El Salvador. The
            findings show that repatriations have large negative effects
            on the average wages of formal workers. This is mainly
            driven by formal firms in sectors that face more intense
            competition from the informal sector, which deportees are
            more likely to join. Repatriation inflows also reduce total
            employment among formal firms in those sectors. Given that
            most deportees spend less than a month abroad, these
            findings suggest that the experience of being detained and
            deported can have strong negative effects not only on the
            deportees, but also on their receiving communities.
Does Central Bank Independence
            Increase Inequality
Since the 1980s, income inequality has
            increased substantially in several countries. Yet the
            political logic that triggered rising inequality in some
            places but not in others remains poorly understood. This
            paper builds a theory that links central bank independence
            to these dynamics. It posits the existence of three
            mechanisms that tie central bank independence to inequality.
            First, central bank independence indirectly constrains
            fiscal policy and weakens a government's ability to
            engage in redistribution. Second, central bank independence
            incentivizes governments to deregulate financial markets,
            which generates a boom in asset values. These assets are
            predominantly in the hands of wealthier segments of the
            population. Third, to contain inflationary pressures,
            governments actively promote policies that weaken the
            bargaining power of workers. Together, these policies
            strengthen secular trends towards higher inequality
            according to standard indicators. Empirically, the analysis
            finds a strong relation between central bank independence
            and inequality, as well as support for each of the
            mechanisms. From a policy perspective, our findings
            contribute to knowledge on the undesirable side effects of
            central bank independence.
Roads Development Optimization for
            All-Season Service Accessibility Improvement in Rural Nepal
            Using a Novel Cost-Time Model and Evolutionary Algorithm
Existing methods of prioritizing rural
            roads for construction in hilly and mountainous settings
            require expensive data collection or major simplifications
            of ground conditions. Traditional social surplus
            based-methods favor economic and political decision criteria
            over social criteria, despite evidence of the latter's
            importance, and struggle to scale beyond major roads to
            feeder roads, forcing local governments with limited
            capacity to adopt ad-hoc alternative criteria. Using roads
            proposed for construction in Nepal's remote Karnali
            province, this paper develops a scalable method to
            prioritize these roads for inclusion in construction plans
            with the aim of optimizing potential accessibility
            improvements to specified services in dry and monsoon
            seasons -- within Karnali's infrastructure budget
            constraints. Road-specific improvements in accessibility to
            services are measured by estimating accessibility changes
            resulting from each proposed road within a multimodal
            accessibility model. In this paper, walking across
            Karnali's mountainous, high-elevation terrain is
            incorporated as a primary modality -- a rarity in related
            accessibility literature. These improvements are implemented
            within heuristic and integer-linear programming optimization
            models. Optimization-determined solutions were calculated
            within a day, and substantially outperformed the actual
            roads selected by Karnali's provincial government in
            terms of accessibility, efficiency, and political economy.
Exports and Women Workers in Formal Firms
Theory suggests several ways in which
            exporting may benefit women’s employment. However, the
            empirical evidence is mixed and limited, especially for
            developing countries. This paper uses firm-level survey data
            for 91 developing countries to estimate the relationship
            between exporting and the share of women workers at the
            firm.  The analysis pays close attention to endogeneity
            concerns. First, it proxies a given firms’ exports by the
            average exports of all other firms in the same
            country-year-industry cell. Second, it exploits the repeated
            cross-section nature of the data and analyzes how changes
            over time in exporting activity are associated with changes
            in the share of women workers. The strategy is more immune
            to endogeneity problems than pure cross-section regressions.
            Third, it tests several mechanism or mediating factors as
            predicted by the theory through which exporting impacts
            women’s employment prospects. The predictions are confirmed
            in the data, an unlikely scenario if exports were a mere
            proxy for other correlated drivers of women’s employment.
            The results show a large, positive impact of higher exports
            on the share of women workers. A conservative estimate is
            that for each percentage point increase in the ratio of
            exports to total sales, the share of women workers increases
            by 0.16 percentage point. Consistent with the theoretical
            predictions, this positive relationship is much larger (more
            positive) in industries that rely more on women workers, in
            country-industry pairs where competitive pressure is largely
            from international markets in comparison to less competitive
            domestic markets, when social attitudes and labor laws are
            more favorable toward women’s work, and when the law and
            order situation is more business friendly.
"Building Back Better" in
            Practice: A Science-Policy Framework for a Green Economic
            Recovery after COVID-19
As humanity’s current production and
            consumption patterns exceed planetary boundaries, many
            opinion leaders have stressed the need to adopt green
            economic stimulus policies in the aftermath of the COVID-19
            pandemic, in line with the United Nations Sustainable
            Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
            This paper provides an integrated framework to design an
            economic recovery strategy aligned with sustainability
            objectives through a multi-criterion, multi-stakeholder
            lens. The aim is to enable decisions by policy makers with
            the aid of transparent workflows that include expert
            evidence that is based on quantitative open-source modeling,
            and qualitative input by diverse social actors in a
            participatory approach. The paper employs an energy systems
            model and an economic input-output model to provide
            quantitative evidence and design a multi-criteria decision
            process that engages stakeholders from government,
            enterprises, and civil society. As a case study, the paper
            studies 13 green recovery measures that are relevant for
            Cyprus and assesses their appropriateness for criteria
            related to environmental sustainability, socioeconomic and
            job impact, and climate resilience. The results highlight
            trade-offs between immediate and long-run effects, between
            economic and environmental objectives, and between expert
            evidence and societal priorities. Importantly, the paper
            finds that a “return-to-normal” economic stimulus is not
            only environmentally unsustainable, but also economically
            inferior to most green recovery schemes.