rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Simulating poverty in Europe : the
            potential contributions of employment and education to
            reducing poverty and social exclusion by 2020
This paper sheds light on the impact of
            improving employment and education conditions on poverty and
            social exclusion indicators. More specifically, it answers
            the following question: Will achieving the Europe 2020
            national targets on employment and education lead countries
            to achieve the Europe 2020 poverty and social exclusion
            target with no other policy interventions? The paper
            presents a simple partial equilibrium model that is flexible
            enough to be implemented in a number of different settings
            and uses widely available household survey data. The
            simulation model analyzes poverty and social exclusion
            outcomes in response to changes in education completion
            rates and employment rates. The model is applied to ten of
            the European Union's new Member States -- Bulgaria, the
            Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
            Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia -- and the model's
            performance is evaluated through a validation exercise. The
            Europe 2020 national employment targets are ambitious in
            many of the new Member States, given historical employment
            patterns in the countries. Especially in light of the slow
            and uncertain recovery, labor markets remain weak and
            employment rates in 2020 could fall short of rates targeted
            by national policy makers. In this eventuality, the poverty
            and social exclusion goals may not be reached in many of the
            new Member States without additional policy measures.
Estimating the effects of credit
            constraints on productivity of Peruvian agriculture
This paper proposes an estimator for the
            endogenous switching regression models with fixed effects.
            The estimator allows for endogenous selection and for
            conditional heteroscedasticity in the outcome equation.
            Applying the estimator to a dataset on the productivity in
            agriculture substantially changes the conclusions compared
            to earlier analysis of the same dataset. This paper proposes
            an estimator for the endogenous switching re-gression models
            with fixed effects. The estimator allows for endogenous
            selection and for conditional heteroscedasticity in the
            outcome equation. Applying the estimator to a dataset on the
            productivity in agriculture substantially changes the
            conclusions compared to earlier analysis of the same dataset.
The mechanics of job creation :
            seizing the new dividends of globalization
This paper assesses some of the main
            strands of the theoretical literature on unemployment and
            employment and shows that their interesting conclusions may
            not be transferable to low-income countries whose endowment
            and production structures are profoundly different from that
            of high-income economies. It then tackles the knowledge
            deficit on employment creation by shedding light on the new
            economic opportunities that latecomers may derive from the
            dynamics of globalization -- especially the economic success
            of large emerging economies such as China and Brazil. It
            offers a simple analytical framework for identifying
            opportunities for labor arbitrage in the global economy and
            suggests a practical policy framework for exploiting them.
Perverse supply response in the
            Liberian mining sector
Under neoclassical assumptions, and the
            usual ceteris paribus stipulations, a profit maximizing firm
            is expected to increase production in response to rising
            prices. These situations normally produce the rather
            well-known upward sloping supply curve for the firm which
            can usually be generalized to the industry. This paper
            examines whether these situations held for firms in the iron
            ore mining sector in Liberia between 1951 and 1985 under a
            system where royalties were levied on the per unit level of
            production and on the basis of the price of the ore. It
            investigates whether iron ore mining companies have an
            incentive to increase ore production when prices are low to
            attract lower total royalty payments under conditions where:
            (a) base-mining operations are vertically integrated and
            firms employ transfer pricing between mining and upstream
            processing entities and (b) large quantities of ore can be
            shipped at relatively low prices and held in inventory
            either as ore or added-value products, such as steel, to
            take advantage of higher prices in the future. The paper
            specifies and estimates two simple linear supply models of
            the Liberian iron ore industry. It uses data for 1951-1985,
            the period for which the most consistent and reliable data
            exist prior to the start of the 14-year conflict in 1989.
            The analysis finds that the price coefficient estimates from
            both models are robust but negative and suggest that a
            perverse response in the supply behavior of mining companies
            in Liberia over the period 1951-1985 cannot be ruled out.
Excluding the rural population: the
            impact of public expenditure on child malnutrition in Peru
Why is the urban-rural gap in child
            malnutrition increasing in Peru despite government efforts
            to improve the provision of public services? To answer this
            question, the impact of regional public expenditure in Peru
            on young children's nutritional outcomes is examined.
            To account for policy endogeneity, public expenditures are
            instrumented using unanticipated regional mining revenues.
            Even after accounting for changes in expenditure composition
            due to increases in mining revenues, public spending has a
            significant and positive impact on children's outcomes
            only in urban areas. However, even in urban areas, barriers
            exist that diminish the effectiveness of public expenditure,
            so indigenous and frailer children in these areas do not
            benefit from public spending. These children face
            constraints that limit their ability to use public services.
            This result reveals the paramount importance of initial
            conditions. In rural areas, possibly because of the lower
            quantity and quality of public services, there is no
            positive effect for any children.
The connection between Wall Street
            and Main Street : measurement and implications for monetary policy
This paper proposes a measure of the
            extent to which a financial sector is connected to the real
            economy. The Measure of Connectedness is a measure of the
            composition of assets, namely the share of credit to the
            non-financial sectors over the total credit market
            instruments. The aggregate Measure of Connectedness for the
            United States declines by about 27 percent in the period
            1952-2009. The authors suggest that this increase in
            disconnectedness between the financial sector and the real
            economy may have dampened the sensitivity of the real
            economy to monetary shocks. They present a stylized model
            that illustrates how interbank trading can reduce the
            sensitivity of lending to the entrepreneur's net worth,
            thereby dampening the credit channel transmission of
            monetary policy. The Measure of Connectedness is interacted
            with both a structural vector autoregressive model and a
            factor-augmented vector autoregressive model for the United
            States economy. The analysis establishes that the impulse
            responses to monetary policy shocks are dampened as the
            level of connection declines.
Financial inclusion and the role of
            the post office
Given their widespread presence in rural
            and poor areas, post offices can play a leading role in
            advancing financial inclusion. Yet little is known about the
            type of clients that post offices reach through their
            financial service offerings as compared with clients of
            traditional financial institutions (such as commercial
            banks). This paper documents and analyzes account ownership
            patterns at post offices in comparison with traditional
            financial institutions, using the Global Financial Inclusion
            Indicators (Global Findex) database, which collects data on
            account ownership at post offices in 60 countries where
            postal accounts are offered. Controlling for a host of
            individual characteristics and country fixed effects, the
            paper finds that post offices are relatively more likely
            than traditional financial institutions to provide accounts
            to individuals who are most likely to be from financially
            vulnerable groups, such as the poor, less educated, and
            those out of the labor force. The paper also uses data from
            the Universal Postal Union to explore the degree to which
            different postal business models and the size of the postal
            network help explain differences in account ownership
            patterns. The results suggest that post offices can boost
            account ownership by acting as cash-merchants for
            transactional financial services, such as electronic
            government and remittance payments, and that partnerships
            between the post office and other financial institutions
            coincide with a higher bank account penetration. The paper
            also finds that the size of the postal network matters; the
            larger the network-relative to the network of traditional
            financial institutions -- the more likely it is that adults
            have an account at the post office.
How much is the Amazon worth the
            state of knowledge concerning the value of preserving amazon rainforests
This paper surveys the current state of
            knowledge concerning the value of the Amazon rainforest,
            including a survey of work to date to quantify changes in
            economic values when the rainforest cover changes. The focus
            is on local and regional impacts of forest loss or
            protection, including both gross values of forest protection
            and opportunity costs of converting the forest to other uses
            including agriculture. Important gross value items surveyed
            are timber and non-timber product extraction from a
            sustainably maintained rainforest; local values of
            eco-tourism; biological resources including bio-prospecting;
            a range of hydrological impacts including watershed
            protection, hydropower production, and changes in rainfall
            patterns; and impacts of forest fires and their control.
            Mapping such values in geographical space is of high value
            for implementing efficient and effective (Reducing Emissions
            from Deforestation and Forest Degradation ) programs for
            protecting the remaining forest. The current data basis for
            such mapping is found to be quite weak and in need of
            improvement for all value elements.
Travel channel meets discovery
            channel or how tourism can encourage better export
            performance and diversification in Nepal
Entering and successfully surviving in
            export markets is a costly process for firms. The process
            involves learning about the existence of foreign demand,
            "discovering" production costs of exportable
            goods, building up reputation, succeeding in product
            branding to reduce competitive pressures and to be
            constantly upgrading quality standards to better serve
            demanding international clients, and remaining competitive
            vis-à-vis other players in the global marketplace. This
            paper argues that tourism can help alleviate some of these
            costs by providing a relatively inexpensive platform for
            cost-discovery and by acting as a low-cost
            "in-house" trade fair, accessible to all domestic
            producers. The analysis combines product-level data on world
            and Nepal's exports (both for goods that are related
            and unrelated to tourism) with Nepalese data on tourist
            inflows and expenditures and macro indicators on relative
            prices. For tourism-related goods, the analysis reveals a
            positive association between tourist inflows from given
            destinations and their expenditures, with future merchandise
            exports to those destinations. Instead, for goods a priori
            unrelated to tourism, the data reveal no connection between
            tourism flows and future exports. The results suggest
            spillovers from tourism into merchandise export performance
            and diversification and would imply that there are gains
            from cooperation between tourism and export promotion agencies.
Admission is free only if your dad
            is rich! distributional effects of corruption in schools in
            developing countries
In the standard model of corruption, the
            rich are more likely to pay bribes for their children's
            education, reflecting higher ability to pay. This prediction
            is, however, driven by the assumption that the probability
            of punishment for bribe-taking is invariant across
            households. In many developing countries lacking in rule of
            law, this assumption is untenable, because the enforcement
            of law is not impersonal or unbiased and the poor have
            little bargaining power. In a more realistic model where the
            probability of punishment depends on the household's
            economic status, bribes are likely to be regressive, both at
            the extensive and intensive margins. Using rainfall
            variations as an instrument for household income in rural
            Bangladesh, this paper finds strong evidence that corruption
            in schools is doubly regressive: (i) the poor are more
            likely to pay bribes, and (ii) among the bribe payers, the
            poor pay a higher share of their income. The results
            indicate that progressivity in bribes reported in the
            earlier literature may be due to identification challenges.
            The Ordinary Least Squares regressions show that bribes
            increase with household income, but the Instrumental
            Variables estimates suggest that the Ordinary Least Squares
            results are spurious, driven by selection on ability and
            preference. The evidence reported in this paper implies that
            "free schooling" is free only for the rich and
            corruption makes the playing field skewed against the poor.
            This may provide a partial explanation for the observed
            educational immobility in developing countries.
Admission is free only if your dad
            is rich! distributional effects of corruption in schools in
            developing countries
WPS6671 Policy Research Working Paper 6671

# Admission Is Free Only If Your Dad Is Rich!

Distributional Effects of Corruption in Schools in Developing Countries _M. Shahe Emran Asadul Islam Forhad Shilpi_ The World Bank Development Research Group Agriculture and Rural Development Team October 2013
Subjective wellbeing in Colombia :
            some insights on vulnerability, job security, and relative incomes
A burgeoning literature explores the
            extent to which consumption or income inadequately reflect
            people's subjective wellbeing, just as GDP at times can
            provide an incomplete and misleading picture of national
            wellbeing. Scholars are increasingly using data on
            subjective wellbeing to complement traditional welfare
            indicators and to enrich our understanding of wellbeing and
            quality of life. The paper builds on the present research
            but it analyzes a much broader, more interdisciplinary, and
            more policy-relevant range of potential determinants
            simultaneously than currently existing in the literature on
            subjective wellbeing. It first analyzes the relative
            importance of a wide range of characteristics and conditions
            at the individual, household, regional and macro levels on
            levels of subjective wellbeing in Colombia in 2010/11; and
            second, assesses the marginal effects of a number of factors
            on perceived changes in levels of subjective wellbeing over
            time for the same respondents from 2008/09 to 2010/11.
            Findings show that increasing the quality of life of
            Colombians is largely conditional on minimizing risks and
            vulnerabilities: reducing the rate and duration of
            unemployment; improving the delivery of public health
            services; increasing the share of people with health and
            pension plans; enhancing safety and security in communities;
            and reducing levels of discrimination. It finds that job
            loss has particularly strong effects on levels of
            satisfaction that are larger than those for increased
            income, while also controlling for a decrease in income that
            is often related to being unemployed, suggesting that the
            human welfare (non-pecuniary) costs of unemployment are
            driving the strong effects. Moreover, any job, even a
            low-quality job, is overall better for one's subjective
            wellbeing than being unemployed. Finally, policy aimed at
            improving people's subjective wellbeing will likely
            have the greatest impact if focused on mitigating
            vulnerabilities and negative shocks that people face.
Is workfare cost-effective against
            poverty in a poor labor-surplus economy
Workfare schemes impose work
            requirements on beneficiaries. This has seemed an attractive
            idea for self-targeting transfers to poor people. This
            incentive argument does not imply, however, that workfare is
            more cost-effective against poverty than even
            poorly-targeted options, given hidden costs of
            participation. In particular, even poor workfare
            participants in a labor-surplus economy can be expected to
            have some forgone income when they take up such a scheme. A
            survey-based method is used to assess the cost-effectiveness
            of India's Employment Guarantee Scheme in Bihar.
            Participants are found to have forgone earnings, although
            these fall well short of market wages on average. Factoring
            in these hidden costs, the paper finds that for the same
            budget, workfare has less impact on poverty than either a
            basic-income scheme (providing the same transfer to all) or
            uniform transfers based on the government's
            below-poverty-line ration cards. For workfare to dominate
            other options, it would have to work better in practice.
            Reforms would need to reduce the substantial unmet demand
            for work, close the gap between stipulated wages and wages
            received, and ensure that workfare is productive -- that the
            assets created are of value to poor people.
            Cost-effectiveness would need to be reassessed at the
            implied higher levels of funding.
Dissecting foreign bank lending
            behavior during the 2008-2009 crisis
This paper analyzes the lending behavior
            of foreign-owned banks during the recent global crisis.
            Using bank-level panel data for countries in Central and
            Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America, the paper
            explores the role of affiliate and parent financial
            characteristics, host location, as well as the impact of
            parent geographic origin and reach on foreign banks'
            credit growth. Overall, the analysis finds robust evidence
            that foreign banks curtailed the growth of credit relative
            to other banks, independent of the host region. Banks from
            the United States reduced loan growth less than other parent
            banks. Neither the global nor regional reach of parent banks
            influenced the lending growth of foreign affiliates.
            However, the funding structure of foreign bank affiliates
            and the capitalization of parent banks do help explain the
            lending behavior of foreign banks during the global crisis.
            Although not the focus of the paper, it also finds that
            government-owned banks played a countercyclical role in all regions.
Can political empowerment help
            economic empowerment women leaders and female labor force
            participation in India
This study examines whether political
            empowerment of women affects their economic participation.
            In the context of mandated political representation reform
            for women in India, the study finds that the length of
            exposure to women politicians affects overall female labor
            force participation. These effects seem to arise through
            direct and indirect channels: political representation of
            women directly affects hours of work assigned to women under
            the recent national public works program, the Mahatma Gandhi
            National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. In addition, the
            level of access to public goods, as influenced by exposure
            to women leaders over time, increases the likelihood of
            women being engaged in the labor force. The findings suggest
            that women's participation in politics could be a
            useful policy tool to increase both the supply of and the
            demand for labor market opportunities for women, potentially
            helping to stem India's declining female labor force
            participation rate.