rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
India's Growth Story
India has attained much economic success
            in the past three decades. Yet an economic deceleration in
            recent years has generated worried commentaries about the
            country's growth outlook. This paper offers a long-term
            perspective on India's growth experience. Analyzing the
            past five decades of data, the paper notes that growth has
            slowly but steadily accelerated, become less erratic, and
            been well diversified across sectors and states. A more
            granular assessment of the period since the early 1990s
            finds that there were three distinct phases of growth: a
            period of slow acceleration from 1991 to the early 2000s; a
            short period of unusually rapid growth, with certain
            features of unsustainability, during 2004-08; and a
            corrective slowdown that started with the global financial
            crisis in 2008. The slowdown has been reflected most
            profoundly in investment, credit, and exports. Even as the
            economy has now recovered to a growth rate of 7 to 7.5
            percent, durably accelerating it to a higher level will
            require a concerted policy momentum that succeeds in
            reversing the slowdown in investment, credit supply, and
            exports; and support from the global economy. Maintaining
            the hard-won macroeconomic stability, implementing a
            definite and durable solution to the banking sector issues,
            and realizing the expected growth and fiscal dividend from
            the Goods and Services Tax are some of the other factors
            that can help attain a higher growth rate.
Trade Liberalization and Integration
            of Domestic Output Markets in Brazil
This paper describes how different
            policy distortions have been impeding better integration of
            Brazil's external and internal product markets and
            discusses how these distortions have prevented domestic
            firms from benefiting from multiple sources of efficiency
            gains. The paper first focuses on the costs of barriers to
            global integration, followed by an overview of policy
            induced stringencies hampering domestic integration. Drawing
            from general and partial equilibrium analyses, the paper
            also provides evidence of potential impacts of removing some
            of those distortions and discusses policy options to promote
            better allocation of resources across the economy. The main
            conclusion of the paper is that Brazil could gain
            significantly from opening to foreign trade. Yet, for Brazil
            to take full advantage of the opportunities that external
            integration offers, domestic markets also need to function
            better, so it is key to ensure that the removal of external
            barriers to integration is coordinated with the removal of
            internal distortions to domestic market integration.
Exporting Firms and the Demand for
            Skilled Tasks
This paper explores the link between
            exports and the demand for skilled tasks. Using the Chilean
            Encuesta Nacional Industrial Anual (ENIA), an annual census
            of manufacturing firms, the analysis first shows that
            Chilean exporters utilize more skills than Chilean
            non-exporters. More importantly, there is  a distinct
            pattern of task differentiation among exporters both within
            skilled and unskilled tasks. Exporting firms demand the
            services of skilled specialized workers (engineers) as
            opposed to skilled administrative workers and managers. In
            addition, exporters demand less unskilled labor, especially
            blue-collar operatives. This suggests that exporters
            substitute skilled engineers for unskilled blue-collar
            workers to perform export-related tasks.
A Proxy Means Test for Sri Lanka
This paper intends to inform the effort
            of the Sri Lankan government to reform the targeting
            efficacy of its social protection programs, in particular,
            Samurdhi, which currently distributes benefits based on
            self-reported income. The paper develops a proxy means test
            for Sri Lanka based on the Household Income and Expenditure
            Survey 2016 and evaluates its performance for targeting
            benefits of Samurdhi. The paper considers a range of models
            and policy parameters that could be applied depending on
            data availability and country preferences. The results
            indicate that switching to a proxy means test could
            considerably improve the targeting performance of Samurdhi
            and would significantly improve the poverty impact of the
            program. The analysis finds that the performance of the
            proposed proxy means test model suffers when the
            coefficients are estimated from samples smaller than 1,000
            households. However, the analysis does not find a similar
            loss of model performance when the model is estimated from
            seasonal data, provided the sample size is sufficiently
            large. The proposed model could be applied to targeting a
            variety of safety net programs after validating and refining
            the model by conducting a pilot survey.
Does Exposure to Other Ethnic
            Regions Promote National Integration : Evidence from Nigeria
This paper examines how temporary
            exposure to a different ethnic region affects national
            integration using original survey data from participants in
            Africa’s largest national youth service program. Seven years
            later, participants randomly assigned to serve in a state
            with a different ethnic majority are five times more likely
            to live all across the country compared to those who served
            in their ethnic region. They have more interethnic romantic
            relationships and express greater national pride.
            Nevertheless, immersion in a different ethnic region
            strengthens participants’ ethnic pride and favorable
            attitudes towards co-ethnics. The results suggest that
            national and ethnic identity can thrive together.
Are the Poor Getting Globalized
One reason that poor people may not
            capture the full benefit from participation in international
            markets is that the goods they produce tend to be subject to
            relatively high trade barriers. This paper analyzes market
            access barriers faced by households in different income
            deciles by matching household survey data from India based
            on the industrial classification of their economic activity.
            Tariffs in international markets are higher, and nontariff
            measures more numerous, on goods produced by poor workers
            than on goods produced by rich workers. Tariffs faced by
            exporters are higher on goods produced in rural and more
            remote areas than on those in urban centers, on goods
            produced by informal enterprises than by formal ones, and on
            goods produced by women than by men. Furthermore, the global
            reduction in tariffs from 1996 to 2012 failed to ameliorate
            these differences. How did we get there? Efforts to protect
            poor workers across countries resulted in a coordination
            problem. Indeed, tariff protection in China and the United
            States is higher on goods produced by poor workers than on
            goods produced by rich workers. Therefore, if poor workers
            are employed in similar sectors, then each country's
            attempts to protect its poor workers by imposing higher
            tariffs and more nontariff measures on such goods will
            reduce the access of all poor workers to international
            markets, and thus limit the gains from trade.
Living Life : Assessing Bureaucratic
            Complexity in Citizen-Government Interactions
Bureaucratic complexity in
            citizen-government interactions can be an obstacle to
            accessing basic services and exercising civil rights. This
            paper presents a methodology to collect contributor-based
            data on the regulatory framework and compliance burden of
            six key citizen-government interactions: (i) civil
            registration and identification, (ii) voting, (iii) paying
            taxes, (iv) access to health care, (v) access to education,
            and (vi) access to utilities. The methodology was tested in
            Chile, Ghana, India, and Vietnam, and it provided an
            overview of the legal and regulatory frameworks. In
            addition, the study offers some interesting observations:
            (i) two of the four economies moved toward including digital
            components to civil registration and identification systems,
            making it easier to register births/deaths and obtain an
            identification document; (ii) three of the four economies
            require a specific voter ID to cast a ballot, which can
            discourage citizens from engaging in elections; (iii)
            patients accessing certain services at primary health care
            facilities may experience longer waits for treatment than
            those seeking access to the same services in hospitals; and
            (iv) a student’s ability to access quality education can be
            limited by school placement based on residential address in
            two of the four economies. The lessons learned suggest that
            future studies should use survey data collection to
            investigate the practical experience of citizens beyond
            procedures and legal requirements. In addition, focusing on
            fewer areas and including a larger set of countries could
            generate greater variability and more robust conclusions.
Who Wins and Who Loses from Staple
            Food Price Spikes Welfare Implications for Mozambique
With a large share of the population
            dependent on agriculture and high exposure to natural
            disasters and other food price shocks, the welfare impacts
            of food price inflation in Mozambique cannot be ignored.
            This paper performs incidence analysis exploiting the
            spatial location of households to match data on consumption
            with production from agricultural activities to simulate the
            welfare effects of food price changes. The analysis focuses
            on maize, rice, and cassava, which form a substantial part
            of the Mozambican diet, as a source of calories and
            budgetary allocation. The results show large net negative
            welfare effects of food price rises in rural areas and
            small, negative effects in urban areas. A 10 percent
            increase in maize prices is associated with a reduction of
            1.2 percent in consumption per capita in rural areas and 0.2
            percent in urban areas. The effects from changes in the
            prices of rice and cassava are lower but qualitatively
            equal. Overall, the negative effects are larger for the
            bottom half of the distribution and imply that the price
            spike in 2016–17 may have translated into a poverty increase
            of 4-6 percentage points, with some of the poorest provinces
            bearing much of the brunt. The results hold to changes in
            some of the underlying assumptions of the simulations.
FDI and the Skill Premium : Evidence
            from Emerging Economies
Foreign direct investment may play an
            important role in transferring technologies from high-income
            to emerging economies, which can lead to uneven effects on
            the wages of skilled and unskilled workers. This paper
            combines project-level data on greenfield foreign direct
            investment with household surveys to estimate the effects of
            foreign direct investment on the wage skill premium across
            sectors and regions in seven emerging economies (Brazil,
            Colombia, Ethiopia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa,
            and Vietnam). The results suggest that foreign direct
            investment is associated with a higher probability of
            employment and higher wages for unskilled workers, relative
            to skilled workers, in six of the seven countries analyzed
            in this paper. Moreover, the effects of foreign direct
            investment on wages are relatively larger for unskilled women.
How Much Will the Belt and Road
            Initiative Reduce Trade Costs
This paper studies the impact of
            transport infrastructure projects of the Belt and Road
            Initiative on shipment times and trade costs. Based on a new
            data on completed and planned Belt and Road transport
            projects, Geographic Information System analysis is used to
            estimate shipment times before and after the Belt and Road
            Initiative. Two sets of data are computed to address
            different research questions: a global database based on an
            analysis of 1,000 cities in 191 countries and 47 sectors and
            a regional database that focuses on more granular
            information (1,818 cities) for Belt and Road economies only.
            The paper uses sectoral estimates of “value of time” to
            transform changes in shipment times into changes in ad
            valorem trade costs at the country-sector level. The
            findings show that the Belt and Road Initiative will
            significantly reduce shipment times and trade costs. For the
            world, the average reduction in shipment time will range
            between 1.2 and 2.5 percent, leading to reduction of
            aggregate trade costs between 1.1 and 2.2 percent. For Belt
            and Road economies, the change in shipment times and trade
            costs will range between 1.7 and 3.2 percent and 1.5 and 2.8
            percent, respectively. Belt and Road economies located along
            the corridors where projects are built experience the
            largest gains. Shipment times along these corridors decline
            by up to 11.9 percent and trade costs by up to 10.2 percent.
            The paper also shows that these effects are magnified by
            policy reforms that reduce border delays and improve
            corridor management.
Concentration in the Banking Sector
            and Financial Stability : New Evidence
Theory suggests that the effect of
            banking market concentration on financial stability is
            mediated by several competing variables. Using a sample of
            68 countries from 1997 to 2015, this paper proposes a
            unified empirical framework to test for the simultaneous
            presence and impact of the mediators through which
            concentration is expected to impact financial stability. The
            results indicate that the magnitude and net effect of the
            mediators depend upon the level of concentration. At lower
            levels of concentration, increasing concentration improves
            banking system stability via profitability. At higher levels
            of concentration, increasing concentration makes the banking
            system more fragile because of the cost of credit,
            diversification and the ease of monitoring. For intermediate
            levels, concentration has no significant effect on financial
            stability, as the competing moderators cancel each other
            out. The results suggest that an intermediate level of
            concentration may be optimal for welfare.
The 2018 Health Equity and Financial
            Protection Indicators Database : Overview and Insights
The 2018 database on Health Equity and
            Financial Protection indicators provides data on equity in
            the delivery of health service interventions and health
            outcomes, and on financial protection in health. This paper
            provides a brief history of the database, gives an overview
            of the contents of the 2018 version of the database, and
            then gets into the details of the construction of its two
            sides -- the health equity side and the financial protection
            side. The paper also provides illustrative uses of the
            database, including the extent of and trends in inequity in
            maternal and child health intervention coverage, the extent
            of inequities in women's cancer screening and inpatient
            care utilization, and trends and inequalities in the
            incidence of catastrophic health expenditures.
Root for the Tubers :
            Extended-Harvest Crop Production and Productivity
            Measurement in Surveys
To document the relative accuracy of
            methods for microdata collection on root and tuber crop
            production, an experiment was implemented in Malawi over a
            12-month period, randomly assigning cassava-producing
            households to one of four approaches: daily diary-keeping,
            with semi-weekly supervision visits; daily diary-keeping,
            with semi-weekly supervisory phone calls; two six-month
            recall interviews, with six months in between; and a single
            12-month recall interview. Lapses in diary-keeping can
            underestimate true production, albeit to a lesser degree
            compared to recall. And the comparisons between the diary
            variants and the variation in underestimation by recall
            period are unclear ex ante. The analysis reveals that
            compared to traditional diary-keeping, the household-level
            annual cassava production is 295 kilograms higher, on
            average, (and assumed as closer to the truth) under
            diary-keeping with phone calls. This effect corresponds to
            28 percent of the average traditional diary-keeping
            production estimate. Although the difference between the
            estimates based on six-month recall and traditional
            diary-keeping is statistically insignificant, 12-month
            recall underestimates annual production, on average, by 516
            kilograms and 221 kilograms, respectively, compared to
            diary-keeping with phone calls and traditional
            diary-keeping. While the recall-based approaches both
            underestimate true production, six-month recall does so to a
            lesser extent. The evidence additionally demonstrates likely
            gross overestimation in international and ministerial
            statistics on cassava yields in Malawi. For improved
            microdata on root and tuber crop production, the adoption of
            (i) diary-keeping with phone calls (particularly if deployed
            in a broader mobile phone–based survey) or (ii) six-month
            recall, as a second-best alternative, is recommended.
The Causal Mechanism of Financial
            Education : Evidence from Mediation Analysis
This paper uses a field experiment in
            India with multiple financial education treatments to
            investigate the causal mechanisms between financial
            education and financial behavior. Focusing on the mediating
            role of financial literacy, the paper proposes a broader
            definition of financial knowledge that includes three
            dimensions: numeracy skills, financial awareness, and
            attitudes toward personal finance. The analysis then employs
            causal mediation analysis to investigate the proportion of
            the treatment effect that can be attributed to these three
            channels. Strikingly, numeracy does not mediate any effects
            of financial education on household outcomes. For simple
            financial actions such as budgeting, both awareness and
            attitudes serve as critical pathways, while for more complex
            financial activities such as opening a savings account,
            attitudes play a more prominent role. These findings
            underscore the importance of changing perceptions about
            financial products and services as a vital mechanism for the
            success of financial education.
Inequality of Opportunity in
            Education: Accounting for the Contributions of Sibs, Schools
            and Sorting across East Africa
Inequalities in the opportunity to
            obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely
            understood to be related to household resources and
            schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have
            investigated the contributions of these two factors
            separately. This paper considers them jointly, paying
            special attention to their covariation, which indicates
            whether schools exacerbate or compensate for existing
            household-based inequalities. The paper develops a new
            variance decomposition framework and applies it to data on
            more than one million children in three low-income East
            African countries. The empirical results show that although
            household factors account for a significant share of total
            test score variation, variation in school quality and
            positive sorting between households and schools are,
            together, no less important. The analysis also finds
            evidence of substantial geographical heterogeneity in
            schooling quality. The paper concludes that promoting equity
            in education in East Africa requires policies that go beyond
            raising average school quality and should attend to the
            distribution of school quality as well as assortative
            matching between households and schools.
Inequality of Opportunity in
            Education: Accounting for the Contributions of Sibs, Schools
            and Sorting across East Africa
WPS8622 Policy Research Working Paper 8622

# Inequality of Opportunity in Education

Accounting for the Contributions of Sibs, Schools and Sorting across East Africa _Paul Anand_ _Jere R. Behrman Hai-Anh H. Dang Sam Jones_ Development Economics Development Research Group October 2018