rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Cost of Achieving
            the Sustainable Development Goals
This paper presents a review of studies
            that estimate the cost of achieving the Sustainable
            Development Goals. Although the Sustainable Development
            Goals provide useful benchmarks for fiscal authorities and
            donors, typical cross-country costing exercises can be
            misleading, for a variety of reasons: double counting,
            sensitivity to underlying assumptions, downplaying the
            critical role of policy and institutions in advancing toward
            the goals, failure to discount costs or consider operation
            and maintenance costs in a consistent manner, and
            overlooking the tendency for different types of Sustainable
            Development Goal–related spending to have distinct effects.
            Recent costing studies by the World Bank Group have been
            developed to minimize the drawbacks of earlier studies. The
            paper also briefly reviews how the World Bank Group engages
            with stakeholders on the Sustainable Development Goals agenda.
Paying More for Less : Why
            Don't Households in Tanzania Take Advantage of Bulk Discounts
Do poor households shop in a way that
            leaves money on the table? A simple way to maximize
            consumption, conditional on available cash, is to avoid
            regularly purchasing small amounts of nonperishable goods
            when bulk discounts are available at modestly larger
            quantities. Using two-week transaction diaries covering
            48,501 purchases by 1,493 households in Tanzania, this paper
            finds that through bulk purchasing the average household
            could spend 8.7 percent less without reducing purchasing
            quantities. Several explanations for this pattern are
            investigated, and the most likely mechanisms are found to be
            worries about over-consumption of stocks and avoidance of
            social taxation. Contrary to prior work, there is little
            indication that liquidity constraints prevent poorer
            households in the sample from buying in bulk, possibly
            because the bulk quantities under examination are not very large.
Effect of Armed Conflict on Intimate
            Partner Violence : Evidence from the Boko Haram Insurgency
            in Nigeria
Intimate partner violence is the most
            common form of violence against women in conflict and
            non-conflict settings, but in conflict settings it often
            receives less attention than other forms of gender-based
            violence, such as conflict-related sexual violence. Using
            data from the 2008 and 2013 Domestic Violence module of the
            Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey spatially linked to
            the Boko Haram actor file of the Armed Conflict Location and
            Events Database, this paper employs a kernel-based
            difference-in-difference model to examine the effect of the
            Boko Haram insurgency on women's experience of physical
            and sexual intimate partner violence. It also examines the
            effect of the Boko Haram insurgency on women's
            experience of controlling behavior from a husband or
            partner, women's autonomy in household decision making,
            and their control over their own earnings. The paper finds
            that the Boko Haram insurgency is associated with slower
            progress toward preventing and eliminating women's
            experiences of physical and sexual intimate partner
            violence. Controlling behaviors from husbands/partners and
            reductions in women's autonomy in household decision
            making are heightened in locations that are impacted by the
            Boko Haram insurgency, indicating that the Boko Haram
            insurgency adversely affects women's agency and
            exacerbates behaviors that are often precursors to intimate
            partner violence.
Learning from Power Sector Reform
            Experiences: The Case of Vietnam
Vietnam's power sector has
            developed rapidly since the 1990s to become a top performer
            among developing countries. This success has occurred mostly
            under a state-owned utility, Electricity Vietnam. Select
            market-oriented reforms to date have also had some positive
            impact. By the late 1990s, the Government realized the need
            to gradually introduce competition to ensure long-term
            sustainability without jeopardizing security of supply for
            the fast-growing economy. Vietnam's 2004 Electricity
            Law has provided the framework to develop a competitive
            power market, unbundle Electricity Vietnam, set prices that
            better reflect costs, promote private investment, and
            establish a regulatory authority. Today, state-owned
            entities continue to dominate the sector. Whereas the power
            market is partially competitive, improved operational
            efficiency and financial performance of generators in this
            market has contributed to keeping generation costs
            relatively low. Plans are broadly on track for further
            extensive reforms, including a clean energy transition.
            Lessons include that state-centric institutions can develop
            the power sector with top-level government commitment,
            highly-qualified staff, and consensus among sector
            institutions. Gradual reforms offer an opportunity to learn
            by doing; yet, the sequence of reforms matters. Introducing
            market mechanisms ahead of other elements may limit the
            market effectiveness and even make subsequent reform steps
            more difficult.
The Distributive Impact of Taxes and
            Expenditures in Colombia
Colombia has reduced extreme poverty in
            the past 16 years by almost half, moderate poverty by 22
            percentage points, and made more than four million
            Colombians jump the threshold of multidimensional poverty.
            However, it remains one of the most unequal countries in the
            region, after Brazil and Panama. Fiscal policy is one of the
            instruments that allow governments to speed up the decline
            in inequality levels and reduce poverty. This study presents
            an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of the
            distributional impacts of taxes and expenditures in Colombia
            in 2017. It makes a methodological comparison with the
            Commitment to Equity, which was previously implemented, and
            includes multiple improvements in the methodology. The
            results suggest that the combined effect of taxes and social
            spending in Colombia contributes to poverty reduction
            between 0.3 and 2.6 percentage points for US$5.5 and US$3.2
            per day per person respectively, while inequality is reduced
            by almost one Gini point. Taxes and direct transfers, as
            well as indirect transfers, are progressive and pro-poor,
            while indirect taxes are regressive and contribute to an
            increase in inequality. Finally, transfers in-kind for
            education and health services are progressive and contribute
            to the reduction of inequality.
Global Recessions
The world economy has experienced four
            global recessions over the past seven decades: in 1975,
            1982, 1991, and 2009. During each of these episodes, annual
            real per capita global gross domestic product contracted,
            and this contraction was accompanied by weakening of other
            key indicators of global economic activity. The global
            recessions were highly synchronized internationally, with
            severe economic and financial disruptions in many countries
            around the world. The 2009 global recession, set off by the
            global financial crisis, was by far the deepest and most
            synchronized of the four recessions. As the epicenter of the
            crisis, advanced economies felt the brunt of the recession.
            The subsequent expansion has been the weakest in the
            post-war period in advanced economies, as many of them have
            struggled to overcome the legacies of the crisis. In
            contrast, most emerging market and developing economies
            weathered the 2009 global recession relatively well and
            delivered a stronger recovery than after previous global recessions.
Falling Short : A Global Survey of
            Electricity Tariff Design
This paper provides a comprehensive
            overview of electricity pricing practices and tariff
            structure design in more than 60 developed and developing
            countries worldwide as of 2015-16. It evaluates the
            performance of electricity tariff designs according to a
            variety of important dimensions, notably cost recovery,
            vertical equity (affordability), and horizontal equity (or
            price differentiation). It also reflects on the extent to
            which current electricity tariff designs are well-suited to
            incentivize efficient adoption of emerging technologies,
            such as distributed generation and storage, electric
            vehicles, and demand-side participation. The results of the
            survey indicate that electricity tariffs stand at $0.13 per
            kilowatt-hour (when fully averaged across countries and
            customer groupings); but differ hugely across jurisdictions
            by a factor of 40:1. Electricity tariffs are far from
            recovering limited capital costs and have not kept up with
            inflation over time. Substantial price differentiation is
            the norm, and affordability remains a significant concern.
            Most countries' tariff structures are ill-adapted to
            emerging technological disruption in the sector, due to the
            scant use of load-related charges to cover the fixed costs
            of the network, the continued preponderance of increasing
            block tariffs for residential customers, and the limited
            application of time-of-use pricing.
Short and Long-Run Labor Market
            Effects of Developing Country Exports : Evidence from Bangladesh
This paper studies how a positive export
            shock -- the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that
            began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) --
            spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the
            end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, the
            authors instrument export demand with OECD imports to ensure
            identification. The paper compares estimates of the local
            labor market effects (wages and informality) and estimates
            from wage equations that reflect the predictions from
            long-run, general-equilibrium neoclassical trade theory. As
            in other studies, this paper finds that the export shock was
            localized both in terms of sector and geography. Wages
            increased and informality decreased in sub-districts more
            exposed to the export shock. Unlike in other studies, these
            local labor market effects dissipate quickly. Furthermore,
            Bangladesh's export shock was sector specific, limited
            predominantly to the female-intensive garment and textile
            sector. The paper shows that, following the increase in
            exports of the female-intensive good, the male-female wage
            gap closes considerably throughout the country -- not just
            in the apparel sector. In relatively small Bangladesh, the
            national labor market seems to be more integrated compared
            to larger countries studied, possibly suggesting that labor
            adjustment costs are lower in smaller countries.
Subdued Potential Growth : Sources
            and Remedies
Global potential output growth has been
            flagging. At 2.5 percent in 2013-17, post-crisis potential
            growth is 0.5 percentage point below its longer-term average
            and 0.9 percentage point below its average a decade ago.
            Compared with a decade ago, potential growth has declined
            0.8 percentage point in advanced economies and 1.1
            percentage point in emerging market and developing
            economies. The slowdown mainly reflected weaker capital
            accumulation but is also evidence of decelerating
            productivity growth and demographic trends that dampen labor
            supply growth. Unless countered, these forces are expected
            to continue and to depress global potential growth further
            by 0.2 percentage point over the next decade. A menu of
            policy options is available to help reverse this trend,
            including comprehensive policy initiatives to lift physical
            and human capital and to encourage labor force participation
            by women and older workers.
Can This Time Be Different Policy
            Options in Times of Rising Debt
Episodes of debt accumulation have been
            a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past
            fifty years. Since 2010, emerging and developing economies
            have experienced another wave of historically large and
            rapid debt accumulation. Similar past debt buildups have
            often ended in widespread financial crises in these
            economies. This paper examines the factors that are likely
            to determine the outcome of the most recent debt wave, and
            considers policy options to help reduce the likelihood that
            it ends again in widespread crises. It reports two main
            results. First, the rapid increase in debt has made emerging
            and developing economies more vulnerable to shifts in market
            sentiment, notwithstanding historically low global interest
            rates. Second, policy options are available to lower the
            likelihood of financial crises, and to help manage the
            adverse impacts of crises when they do occur. These include
            sound debt management, strong monetary and fiscal
            frameworks, and robust bank supervision and regulation. The
            post-crisis debt buildup has coincided with a period of
            subdued growth as well as the emergence of non-traditional
            creditors. As a result, policy priorities also need to
            ensure that debt is spent on productive purposes to improve
            growth prospects and that all debt-related transactions are
            transparently reported.
New Set of Indicators to Measure
            Population Remoteness and Dispersion : Estimates for 100
            Countries, with Detailed Analysis of Pacific Island Countries
This paper defines three new indicators
            that capture the remoteness of local communities within a
            country context and the overall scale of population
            dispersion and settlement sparsity across a country. The
            paper also exploits the World Bank’s subnational geography
            database to estimate the geographical scale of population
            dispersion and dispersion-adjusted population sparsity for
            100 countries around the world. The new indicators are
            evaluated and explored for several Pacific Island countries,
            which are often characterized as being remote (in a global
            context) and highly dispersed. However, within each Pacific
            Island country, there is enormous variation in the
            remoteness of individual communities and the extent to which
            communities are clustered or dispersed from one another, and
            these conditions can be related to communities'
            socioeconomic characteristics. The results reflect this. The
            paper empirically contextualizes the settlement patterns
            evident in the Pacific Island countries within a broader
            global context, highlighting the extreme degree of
            population sparsity in the Pacific, relative to all the
            other countries that are assessed.
Policy Challenges for Emerging and
            Developing Economies : Lessons from the Past Decade
The 2009 global recession demonstrated,
            once again, the importance of crisis prevention as well as
            the critical need for preserving policy room so that
            emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) can act
            when their economies are hit by shocks. And now, with the
            global growth outlook still weak and vulnerabilities rising,
            these lessons underscore the need for comprehensive policies
            to improve EMDEs' resilience to shocks and lift
            long-term growth prospects. On the macroeconomic front,
            priorities include shoring up fiscal positions, keeping
            adequate foreign reserves, and strengthening policy
            frameworks. Financial sector policies to adapt to a changing
            global financial environment include strengthening home-host
            supervisor coordination and establishing prudential
            authorities with the appropriate tools and mandates to
            mitigate systemic risks. Structural policy priorities
            include investment in human capital and infrastructure to
            offset the decline in potential growth that is expected to
            continue over the next decade. Renewed reform momentum is
            needed to create the environment that generates private
            sector-led, productivity-driven growth supported by measures
            to improve governance and business climates.
Prospects, Risks, and
            Vulnerabilities in Emerging and Developing Economies :
            Lessons from the Past Decade
Growth in emerging markets and
            developing economies (EMDEs) has generally disappointed
            since the 2009 global recession, with sizable forecast
            downgrades in most years. EMDEs continue to face downside
            risks to growth outlook over the next couple of years. These
            include heightened global policy uncertainty, trade
            tensions, spillovers from weaker-than-expected growth in
            major economies, and disorderly financial market
            developments. These risks are accompanied by region-specific
            risks, including geopolitical tensions, armed conflict, and
            severe weather events. If risks materialize, their impact on
            EMDEs depends on the magnitude of spillovers and domestic
            vulnerabilities. Since the 2009 global recession, external,
            corporate sector and sovereign vulnerabilities have risen in
            most EMDEs, leaving them less well-prepared for future
            shocks. Low-income countries, in particular, face elevated
            vulnerabilities, with about 40 percent of them currently in
            debt distress. Over the longer run, EMDEs also face
            weakening potential growth, reflecting decelerations in
            capital accumulation and productivity growth, as well as
            demographic headwinds. These constraints are likely to
            hamper growth in the next decade unless they are mitigated
            by ambitious and credible reform agendas.
Electricity Access and Structural
            Transformation : Evidence from Brazil's Electrification
This study proposes a novel supply-side
            mechanism driving economic structural transformation: grid
            electrification. Increasing electricity availability affects
            the reallocation of inputs to more productive activities
            through generating higher returns and lowering entry costs
            in sectors with greater infrastructure intensity. The
            results of modeling and econometric analysis based on
            Brazil's historical data over the period 1970-2006
            confirm that the manufacturing sector benefits the most in
            these two dimensions, followed by services and agriculture.
            The expansion of electricity infrastructure explains about
            17 percent of this process and 32 percent of the observed
            increase in GDP per capita. Simulations of a multisector
            neoclassical growth model with heterogeneous firms help
            assessing the effectiveness of different electrification policies.
Urban Agglomerations and Employment
            Transitions in Ethiopia
Agglomeration boosts economic growth. A
            vast literature has empirically assessed the effects of
            agglomeration by estimating the city population elasticity
            on wages. This conventional approach is not necessarily
            suitable for analyzing urbanization at the early stage in
            developing countries, where a majority of urban workers
            engage in self-employment and/or informal jobs.  Focusing on
            one of the poorest and largest among those countries, this
            paper sheds light on an aspect of urbanization and
            agglomeration: the transition in the mode of labor from
            self-employment/informal jobs to wage employment/formal
            jobs. Applying the instrumental variable approach to
            national labor force survey data sets, the analysis
            underscores several labor market transitions across space in
            urban Ethiopia. First, the town population size and the
            share of workers with wage employment are strongly
            correlated. The probability of engaging in wage work
            increases by 4.5 percentage points with a log increase in
            population size. Second, this relationship is particularly
            strong among disadvantaged workers, such as the female,
            young, and/or less educated population. Finally, the study
            documents higher labor force participation and lower
            underemployment in larger towns.
Traffic, Air Pollution, and
            Distributional Impacts in Dar es Salaam : A Spatial Analysis
            with New Satellite Data
Air pollution from vehicular traffic is
            a major source of health damage in urban areas. The problems
            of urban traffic and pollution are essentially geographic,
            because their incidence and impacts depend on the spatial
            distribution of economic activities, households, and
            transport links. This paper uses satellite images to
            investigate the spatial dynamics of vehicle traffic, air
            pollution, and exposure of vulnerable residents in the Dar
            es Salaam metro region of Tanzania. The results highlight
            significant impacts of seasonal weather (temperature,
            humidity, and wind-speed factors) on the spatial
            distribution and intensity of air pollution from vehicle
            emissions. These effects on the metro region's air
            quality vary highly by area. During seasons when weather
            factors maximize pollution, the worst exposure occurs in
            areas along the wind path of high-traffic roadways. The
            research identifies core areas where congestion reduction
            would yield the greatest exposure reduction for children and
            the elderly in poor households.