rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The morphology of African cities
This paper illustrates how the
            capabilities of GIS and satellite imagery can be harnessed
            to explore and better understand the urban form of several
            large African cities (Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es
            Salaam, and Dakar). To allow for comparability across very
            diverse cities, this work looks at the above mentioned
            cities through the lens of several spatial indicators and
            relies heavily on data derived from satellite imagery.
            First, it focuses on understanding the distribution of
            population across the city, and more specifically how the
            variations in population density could be linked to
            transportation. Second, it takes a closer look at the land
            cover in each city using a semi-automated texture based land
            cover classification that identifies neighborhoods that
            appear more regular or irregularly planned. Lastly, for the
            higher resolution images, this work studies the changes in
            the land cover classes as one moves from the city core to
            the periphery. This work also explored the classification of
            slightly coarser resolution imagery which allowed analysis
            of a broader number of cities, sixteen, provided the lower cost.
Residential electricity subsidies in
            Pakistan : targeting, welfare impacts, and options for reform
This paper examines the economic and
            social implications of the current system of residential
            electricity subsidies in Pakistan, and assesses the
            potential to improve the system's outcomes through
            alternative targeting and program design. The analysis is
            multi-disciplinary in nature, drawing on national household
            survey data, electric company data on household electricity
            consumption, a welfare database, and a specially
            commissioned qualitative assessment of household and service
            provider attitudes and experiences. Affordability is only
            one of many concerns among electricity users, with
            reliability of supply and customer service being arguably
            more important. The analysis finds that targeting could be
            improved considerably by allocating subsidies according to
            proxy-means test scores using an existing national
            proxy-means test database. Providing a flat credit rather
            than a price subsidy could also alleviate certain governance
            concerns. The paper concludes with some guidance on how to
            carry out these reforms based on international experience.
The political economy of teacher
            management in decentralized Indonesia
Indonesia faces serious challenges in
            the number, cost, quality, and distribution of teachers.
            This paper examines the role of political economy factors in
            producing these challenges and shaping efforts to resolve
            them. It argues that the challenges have their origins in
            the way in which political and bureaucratic elites have for
            decades used the school system to accumulate resources,
            distribute patronage, mobilize political support, and
            exercise political control. This orientation has meant that
            teacher numbers, quality, and distribution have been managed
            to maximize flows of rents and votes from schools to the
            elite, lubricate patronage and political networks, and
            ensure that elites maintain political control rather than
            maximize educational performance and equity. The fall of the
            New Order, the authoritarian and centralized regime that
            ruled Indonesia from 1965 to 1998, led to efforts to change
            this situation, but these have had little impact so far. The
            paper concludes by assessing what can be done by proponents
            of teacher management reform in this context to promote
            better outcomes.
Dodging bullets : the heterogeneous
            effect of political violence on greenfield FDI
The relationship between political
            violence and greenfield foreign direct investment is
            contingent on the type of violence, characteristics of the
            investment-receiving sector, and extent to which the
            investing firm is geographically diversified. This paper
            presents an analysis with a dynamic fixed effects model for
            a panel of 90 developing countries from 2003 to 2012. The
            analysis shows that nationwide political conflict is
            negatively associated with total and non-resource-related
            greenfield foreign direct investment, but not with
            resource-related greenfield foreign direct investment. The
            insensitivity to political conflict of multinational firms
            in the resource sector is associated with the high
            profitability of natural resource extraction and the
            companies' geographic constraints on location choice
            during the period of estimation. In the non-resource sector,
            the less geographically diversified firms are most sensitive
            to the risk of conflict.
A poor means test econometric
            targeting in Africa
Proxy-means testing is a popular method
            of poverty targeting with imperfect information. In a now
            widely-used version, a regression for log consumption
            calibrates a proxy-means test score based on chosen
            covariates, which is then implemented for targeting
            out-of-sample. In this paper, the performance of various
            proxy-means testing methods is assessed using data for nine
            African countries. Standard proxy-means testing helps filter
            out the nonpoor, but excludes many poor people, thus
            diminishing the impact on poverty. Some methodological
            changes perform better, with a poverty-quantile method
            dominating in most cases. Even so, either a basic-income
            scheme or transfers using a simple demographic scorecard are
            found to do as well, or almost as well, in reducing poverty.
            However, even with a budget sufficient to eliminate poverty
            with full information, none of these targeting methods
            brings the poverty rate below about three-quarters of its
            initial value. The prevailing methods are particularly
            deficient in reaching the poorest.
Building an ex ante simulation model
            for estimating the capacity impact, benefit incidence, and
            cost effectiveness of child care subsidies : an application
            using provider-level data from Turkey
Public financing of child care can allow
            for more equitable access to these services in places where
            public provision and capacity are low. However, the
            mechanisms of subsidy delivery will affect who benefits, and
            the overall cost effectiveness of such subsidies. This paper
            sets out an ex ante simulation model for estimating the
            benefit incidence of expanded capacity and enrollments
            resulting from different child care subsidy mechanisms. It
            uses a supply-side provider level and a demand-side
            household model, and combines the two models. The paper
            considers investment grants to providers, operational
            monthly grants to child care providers, combinations of the
            investment and operational grants, and demand-side vouchers
            to households. The model is applied to empirical data from
            child care centers and households in Turkey. The results
            reveal that the choice of the subsidy delivery model has a
            strong bearing on the benefit incidence and cost
            effectiveness of the subsidy. In the case of Turkey, where
            significant supply-side constraints exist in the market, a
            demand-side voucher system is shown to be the least
            cost-effective subsidy delivery model. A targeted
            demand-side voucher does not necessarily deliver the most
            "pro-poor results," and combinations show
            different benefits and costs. The proposed simulation model
            can be applied in other country contexts, with the only data
            requirements being micro data on the costs and pricing
            structure of child care providers, as well as household data
            with variables on household welfare and child care utilization.
Are automation and trade polarizing
            developing country labor markets, too
The automation and out-sourcing of
            routine, codifiable tasks are seen as driving polarization
            in labor markets in high-income countries. This paper first
            offers several explanations for why developing countries
            might show differing dynamics, at least for the present.
            Census data then confirms this, showing on average no
            evidence of polarization in developing countries. However,
            incipient polarization in a few countries as well as major
            drives to automate in some large, labor intensive producers
            suggests this may not remain the case. This raises concerns
            first about the impact on equity within those countries, but
            second the possibility that the traditional flying geese
            pattern" -- whereby low skilled jobs are progressively
            off-shored to poorer and poorer countries -- may be short circuited.
Understanding India's urban
            frontier : what is behind the emergence of census towns in India
This paper presents the results of an
            investigation of selected census towns in northern India.
            Census towns are settlements that India's census
            classifies as urban although they continue to be governed as
            rural settlements. The 2011 census featured a remarkable
            increase in the number of census towns, which nearly tripled
            between 2001 and 2011, from 1,362 to 3,894. This increase
            contributed to nearly a third (29.5 percent) of the total
            increase in the urban population during this period. Only
            part of this evolution can be attributed to the gradual
            urbanization of settlements in the vicinity or larger towns.
            Instead, the majority of census towns appear as small
            "market towns," providing trade and other local
            services to a growing rural market. The case studies of
            representative census towns in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, and
            West Bengal show the role of increased connectivity and
            growing rural incomes in driving the demand for the
            small-scale and non-tradable services, which are the main
            sources of nonfarm employment in these settlements. The case
            studies also reveal that the trade-offs between urban and
            rural administrative statuses are actively debated in many
            of these settlements. Although statistical comparisons do
            not show a significant impact of urban or rural
            administrative status on access to basic services, urban
            status is often favored by the social groups involved in the
            growing commercial and services sectors, and resisted by the
            residents still involved in the traditional farming sectors.
Labor drops : experimental evidence
            on the return to additional labor in microenterprises
The majority of enterprises in many
            developing countries have no paid workers. This paper
            reports on a field experiment conducted in Sri Lanka that
            provided wage subsidies to randomly chosen microenterprises
            to test whether hiring additional labor would benefit such
            firms. In the presence of labor market frictions, a
            short-term subsidy could have a lasting impact on firm
            employment. Using 12 rounds of surveys to track dynamics
            four years after the end of the subsidy, the study finds
            that firms increased employment during the subsidy period,
            but there was no lasting impact on employment,
            profitability, or sales. Two supplementary interventions and
            treatment heterogeneity suggest the lack of impact is not
            due to complementarities with capital or management skills,
            and detailed survey data help rule out a number of
            theoretical mechanisms that could result in sub-optimally
            low employment. The study concludes that the urban labor
            market facing microenterprises does not have large frictions
            that would prevent own-account workers from becoming employers.
The public/private wage differential
            in the land of gross national happiness
In Bhutan, the public sector is usually
            seen as the most desirable employer. This study asks if this
            can be attributed to public sector employees receiving
            higher wages than comparable private sector workers. To
            answer the question, the study combines an Oaxaca-type
            decomposition of wage differentials into characteristics and
            coefficients effects with a multinomial logit model for
            self-selection into labor force participation and the public
            or private sector. The study finds that the public/private
            wage differential is sizeable but can entirely be accounted
            for by observable characteristics. At the same time, there
            is strong evidence that preferences for public sector jobs
            are caused by pronounced intersectoral differences in
            overall compensation packages, in particular fringe benefits.
Pass-through of competitors'
            exchange rates to us import and producer prices
This paper shows that in theory and BLS
            microdata, the prices of imported goods respond to the
            exchange rates (ER) of the producer's foreign
            competitors. In contrast, standard models have no role for
            competitors' ERs. Excluding the effects of
            competitors' exchange rates typically biases upwards
            estimates of bilateral exchange rate pass-through because
            competitors' ERs and bilateral ERs are positively
            correlated. A multi-country version of Atkeson and
            Burstein's (2008) industry aggregation model is able to
            explain a sizable proportion of pass-through of
            competitors' exchange rates to import prices, and also
            predicts pass-through of foreign competitors' prices
            and pass-through of competitors' ERs to US producer
            prices -- both of which are supported in the data. The
            results suggest that pass-through will be larger for ER
            movements shared by a greater fraction of foreign competitor countries.
Emerging economies' versus
            advanced countries' investment impact in Africa
This paper provides evidence on the
            labor productivity growth and employment impacts of foreign
            direct investment in selected countries in Africa over the
            years 2001-2012. It uses data from five emerging economies
            (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and
            advanced countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
            the United Kingdom, and the United States of America). The
            estimation, using system generalized method of moments,
            shows that foreign direct investment from emerging economies
            and advanced countries has increased labor productivity
            growth and employment in Africa, when human capital and
            governance are controlled for. However, the level of impact
            varies based on the origin of investment.
The role of information and cash
            transfers on early childhood development : evidence from Nepal
Although substantial progress has been
            made in combating malnutrition at the global level, chronic
            maternal and child malnutrition remains a serious problem in
            many parts of the developing world. This paper, using a
            randomized control trial design in Nepal, evaluates a
            program that provided information on best practices in
            providing child care and cash to families in extremely poor
            areas with pregnant mothers and/or children below the age of
            2. The analysis finds significant and sizable impacts of the
            information plus cash intervention on maternal knowledge,
            behavior, child development, and nutrition. The sizes of
            these impacts along some measures of knowledge and
            development are significantly different from the
            information-only intervention group, suggesting a potential
            role for providing a short-term cash safety net along with
            information to tackle the problem of malnutrition.
Estimation and inference for actual
            and counterfactual growth incidence curves
Different episodes of economic growth
            display widely varying distributional characteristics, both
            across countries and over time. Growth is sometimes
            accompanied by rising and sometimes by falling inequality.
            Applied economists have come to rely on the Growth Incidence
            Curve, which gives the quantile-specific rate of income
            growth over a certain period, to describe and analyze the
            incidence of economic growth. This paper discusses the
            identification conditions, and develops estimation and
            inference procedures for both actual and counterfactual
            growth incidence curves, based on general functions of the
            quantile potential outcome process over the space of
            quantiles. The paper establishes the limiting 0 distribution
            of the test statistics of interest for those general
            functions, and proposes resampling methods to implement
            inference in practice. The proposed methods are illustrated
            by a comparison of the growth processes in the United States
            and Brazil during 1995-2007. Although growth in the average
            real wage was disappointing in both countries, the
            distribution of that growth was markedly different. In the
            United States, wage growth was mediocre for the bottom 80
            percent of the sample, but much more rapid for the top 20
            percent. In Brazil, conversely, wage growth was rapid below
            the median, and negative at the top. As a result, inequality
            rose in the United States and fell markedly in Brazil.
Can grants to consortia spur
            innovation and science-industry collaboration :
            regression-discontinuity evidence from Poland
This paper uses a regression
            discontinuity design to study the effect of Poland's
            In-Tech program on innovation activities. The analysis
            focuses on a component of the program that provides grants
            to projects that are carried out by consortia of firms and
            research entities. Data from a 2016 follow-up survey of
            applicants to the 2012 and 2013 calls for proposals show
            that In-Tech largely funds projects that would not otherwise
            get funded by other agencies or by the consortia themselves,
            increasing the probability of a project being completed by
            almost 60 percentage points. The results also show that the
            program leads to more science-industry collaboration, and
            increases the probability of applying for a patent related
            to the proposed project, as well as the probability of
            publishing a research paper related to the project. The
            analysis also finds early effects on commercialization of
            products related to the proposed project, although these
            products currently still make up a small share of
            firm's sales.
Reforming village-level governance
            via horizontal pressure : evidence from an experiment in Zimbabwe
How can patrimonial local-level
            governance be reformed? Debates on this topic have focused
            largely on the possibility of reform via pressure from above
            (superordinate leaders) or below (citizens). This paper
            tests whether horizontal pressures from civil society
            leaders can reform local governance in a context where
            neither of these mechanisms operates effectively. The study
            analyzes an experimental intervention in Zimbabwe intended
            to reduce abuse of power by village heads. Analytic leverage
            comes from the fact that the 270 study villages were
            randomly assigned to two variants of the intervention, one
            in which only village heads were trained on the framework
            governing village leadership, and one in which civil society
            leaders were trained alongside village heads. The results
            suggest that horizontal pressure from civil society leaders
            increased village heads' knowledge of and compliance
            with regulated procedures, improved their management of
            issues and raised citizens' trust in their leadership.
            A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the mechanisms
            through which the trained civil society leaders had these
            effects suggests they accomplished reform by directly
            applying social pressure on village heads to abide by regulations.
Gender-differentiated impacts of
            tenure insecurity on agricultural performance in
            Malawi's customary tenure systems
Many African countries rely on sporadic
            land transfers from customary to statutory domains to
            attract investment and improve agricultural performance.
            Data from 15,000 smallholders and 800 estates in Malawi
            allow exploring the long-term effects of such a strategy.
            The results suggest that (i) most estates are less
            productive than smallholders; (ii) fear of land loss,
            although not exclusively due to estates, is associated with
            a 12 percent productivity loss for females, which is large
            enough to finance a low-cost tenure regularization program;
            and (iii) failure to collect realistic land rents implies
            public revenue losses of up to US$50 million per year.