rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Clean-development investments : an
            incentive-compatible CGE modeling framework
The Clean Development Mechanism
            established under the Kyoto Protocol allows industrialized
            Annex I countries to offset part of their domestic emissions
            by investing in emissions-reduction projects in developing
            non-Annex I countries. Computable general equilibrium
            analysis of the Clean Development Mechanism's impacts
            so far mimics the Clean Development Mechanism as a sector
            emissions trading scheme, thereby overstating its potential
            to save climate change mitigation costs. This study develops
            a novel approach that represents the Clean Development
            Mechanism more realistically by compensating Clean
            Development Mechanism implementing sectors for additional
            abatement cost and by endogenizing Clean Development
            Mechanism credits as a function of investment.  Compared
            with previous representations, the proposed approach is more
            consistent in its incentive structure and investment
            characteristics at the sector level. An empirical
            application of the new methodology demonstrates that the
            economy-wide cost savings from the Clean Development
            Mechanism tend to be lower than suggested by conventional
            modeling approaches while Clean Development Mechanism
            implementing sectors do not lose in output.
Triggers of contract breach :
            contract design, shocks, or institutions
This paper constructs a large
            contract-level data set to examine factors that trigger
            breach of foreign investment contracts. Similar to the case
            of outright expropriation, political regime type is an
            important determinant of breach of contract. Furthermore,
            although investors' bargaining power becomes obsolete
            as contracts mature, contracts can be designed to mitigate
            the risk of breach of contract by involving multilateral
            organizations and creating buffers to absorb commodity price
            shocks. The paper examines the type of countries prone to
            contract breaches. After controlling for regional and sector
            fixed effects, less-democratic and resource-dependent
            governments are more likely to breach contracts, especially
            after large global shocks, notably natural disasters.
Is extreme poverty going to end an
            analytical framework to evaluate progress in ending extreme poverty
The World Bank has recently adopted a
            target of reducing the proportion of population living below
            US$1.25 a day at 2005 international prices to 3 percent by
            2030. This paper reviews different projection methods and
            estimates the global poverty rate of 2030 modifying
            Ravallion (2013)'s approach in that it introduces
            country-specific economic and population growth rates and
            takes into account the effect of changes in within-country
            inequality. This paper then identifies key obstacles to
            meeting the target and proposes a simple intermediate growth
            target under which the global poverty rate can be reduced to
            3 percent by 2030. The findings of the analysis lend support
            to Basu (2013)'s argument that accelerating growth is
            not enough and sharing prosperity within and across
            countries is essential to end extreme poverty in one generation.
Evaluating aid for trade : a survey
            of recent studies
The demand for accountability in
            aid-for-trade is increasing but monitoring has focused on
            case studies and impressionistic narratives. The paper
            reviews recent evidence from a wide range of studies,
            recognizing that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to
            learn what works and what does not. The review concludes
            that there is some support for the emphasis on reducing
            trade costs through investments in hard infrastructure (like
            ports and roads) and soft infrastructure (like customs). But
            failure to implement complementary reform -- especially the
            introduction of competition in transport services -- may
            erode the benefits of these investments. Direct support to
            exporters does seem to lead to diversification across
            products and destinations, but it is not yet clear that
            these benefits are durable. In general, it is difficult to
            rely on cross-country studies to direct aid-for-trade. More
            rigorous impact evaluation is an underutilized alternative,
            but situations of clinical interventions in trade are rare
            and adverse incentives (because of agency problems) and
            costs (because of the small size of project) are a hurdle in implementation.
School Resource and Performance
            Inequality : evidence from the Philippines
This paper examines inequality patterns
            of school and teacher resources as well as student
            performance in the Philippines. School and teacher
            resources, measured by pupil classroom and teacher ratios
            and per-pupil teacher salary, became more unequal over time.
            Strikingly, a large portion of the variation is attributed
            to their within-division distributions, especially the
            non-city areas in each province (rural schools), where pupil
            classroom and teacher ratios have significantly positive
            returns in terms of student test scores. Concavity built
            into the education production function implies that
            reallocation of teachers and classrooms within a division
            can potentially increase average test scores. The estimates
            also imply that it is optimal to deploy young, inexperienced
            teachers to rural schools and reassign them to urban schools
            when the teachers are more experienced.
Structural change in Ethiopia : an
            employment perspective
This paper investigates whether the
            Ethiopian economy is undergoing a virtuous process of
            structural change. In particular, it assesses the relative
            contributions of within-sector and between-sector
            productivity to output per capita growth. Based on data
            disaggregated into eight sectors for the period 1996-2011,
            the analysis suggests that the structure of output has
            changed considerably -- predominantly from agriculture to
            services -- but changes in the composition of employment
            have lagged behind. Labor productivity growth has been
            strong across most sectors, albeit mainly driven by
            within-sector productivity improvements. Nonetheless, the
            pace of structural change is accelerating and its relative
            contribution to output growth is increasing.
Individual diversity and the Gini decomposition
The paper defines the Gini index as the
            sum of individual contributions where individual
            contributions are interpreted as the degree of diversity of
            each individual from all other members of society. Among
            various possible forms of individual contributions to the
            Gini found in the literature, the paper shows that only one
            form satisfies a set of desirable properties. This form can
            be used for decomposing the Gini into population subgroups.
            An empirical illustration shows the use of this approach.
Economic growth and crime against
            small and medium sized enterprises in developing economies
Several studies have explored the
            relationship between economy-level crime rates or
            individual-level crime and economic growth. However, few
            studies have examined the relationship between economic
            growth and crime against firms. This study uses data for
            about 12,000 firms in 27 developing countries and finds that
            economic growth is negatively associated with crime. This
            relationship is stronger for small and medium firms than
            large firms. The study also explores several economy-wide
            factors and their influence on the growth-crime relationship
            for small and medium enterprises. The results are robust to
            various sensitivity checks.
Sovereign wealth funds and long-term
            development finance : risks and opportunities
Sovereign wealth funds represent a large
            and growing pool of savings. An increasing number of these
            funds are owned by natural resourceexporting countries and
            have a variety of objectives, including intergenerational
            equity and macroeconomic stabilization. Traditionally, these
            funds have invested in external assets, especially
            securities traded in major markets. But the persistent
            infrastructure financing gap in developing countries has
            motivated some governments to encourage their sovereign
            wealth funds to invest domestically. This paper proposes
            some basic elements of a conceptual framework to create a
            system of checks and balances to help ensure that the
            sovereign wealth funds do not undermine macroeconomic
            management or become a vehicle for politically driven
            "investments." First, the risks and opportunities
            of domestic investment by sovereign wealth funds are
            analyzed. Central issues are the relationship of sovereign
            wealth fund financing to the budget process and to the
            procurement systems of sector ministries, as well as the
            establishment of appropriate benchmarks and safeguards to
            ensure the integrity of investment decisions. The paper
            argues that a well-governed sovereign wealth fund, with a
            sound mandate and professional management and staffing, can
            possibly improve the quality of the public investment
            program. But its mandate should not duplicate that of other
            government institutions with investment mandates, such as
            the budget, the national development bank, the investment
            authority, and state-owned enterprises. Establishing rules
            on the type of investment (for example, commercial and/or
            quasi-commercial) and its modalities (for example, no
            controlling stakes, leveraging private investment) is one
            way to ensure separation between the activities of the
            sovereign wealth fund and those of other institutions. The
            critical issue remains that of limiting the sovereign wealth
            fund's investment scope to that appropriate for a
            wealth fund. If investments that generate quasi-market
            returns are permitted, the size of the home bias should be
            clearly stipulated and these investments should be reported separately.
Governance of securities regulators
            : a framework
This paper reviews the published work on
            the governance of regulatory authorities in order to
            identify the basic governance standards that apply and some
            of the factors that affect the implementation of good
            governance. There are four pillars of good regulatory
            governance: independence, accountability, transparency, and
            integrity.  The regulator should be operationally
            independent from commercial and political influences in the
            exercise of its functions and powers. Accountability is the
            means whereby a regulatory authority is held responsible for
            the actions it takes. Transparency refers to the publication
            of relevant information designed to demonstrate consistency
            and openness. The fourth governance pillar, integrity,
            refers to the internal processes that the authority adopts
            to ensure there is discipline and consistency in its
            operations and to limit the risks of regulatory staff acting
            in their own self-interest as opposed to that of the
            authority and the market. These four elements are mutually
            reinforcing, in that accountability is necessary to provide
            legitimacy to independence, transparency is necessary to
            demonstrate that independence does not lead to abuse or
            improper behavior, and integrity is necessary to provide the
            discipline to control the exercise of independent powers.
            Available evidence suggests that independence and
            accountability are far from being universally applied in
            practice. The paper concludes with some practical
            suggestions that experience indicates are likely to enhance
            the effectiveness of the governance of securities
            regulators. Good governance of the securities regulator is
            necessary for effective regulation. It is also of importance
            in setting an example to encourage good corporate governance
            in the private sector.
Re-re-reply to "the impact of
            microcredit on the poor in Bangladesh : revisiting the evidence"
"The Impact of Microcredit on the
            Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence," by David
            Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2014) (henceforth RM) is the
            most recent of a sequence of papers and web postings that
            seeks to refute the findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998;
            henceforth PK) article "The Impact of Group-Based
            Credit on Poor Households in Bangladesh: Does the Gender of
            Participants Matter?" that microcredit for women had
            significant, favorable effects on household consumption and
            other outcomes. In this version of RM, the authors have
            backed off many of their prior claims and methods after
            earlier replies noted their faults (see Pitt (1999), Pitt
            (2011a), Pitt (2011b), and Pitt and Khandker (2012)).
            Nonetheless, important claims against PK remain in this new
            version of RM and are addressed below. Readers should refer
            to Pitt and Khandker (2012) for a discussion of other issues
            with RM, including a discussion of the bimodal likelihood.
Implementation of REDD+ mechanisms
            in Tanzania
This paper explains the major issues and
            lessons derived from the national forest management program
            and REDD+ initiatives in Tanzania. It finds that addressing
            the most important drivers of forest degradation and
            deforestation, in particular the country energy needs and
            landownership, is essential for success in reducing
            emissions regardless of the type of program implemented. It
            also finds that, through the national program, forest users
            have learned to maximize profit from the sustainable use of
            the forest; however, the program reports great variability
            in the success of forest conservation. REDD+ may complement
            the national program by adding funding and other resources
            to start projects at the local level while giving additional
            payments for the permanence of carbon stocks may help to
            improve the social outcomes of those villages practicing
            sustainable forest management. However, a careful
            characterization of the national projects is necessary to
            generalize how REDD+ can be effectively implemented so that
            additional economic and environmental benefits are generated
            over what the national program is already achieving.
            Addressing this issue is key for identifying the conditions
            under which REDD+ achieves environmental additionality in Tanzania.
Labor market regulations : what do
            we know about their impacts in developing countries
Labor market regulation is a
            high-profile, and often contentious, area of public policy.
            Although these regulations have been studied most
            extensively in developed countries, there is a growing body
            of literature on their effects in developing countries. This
            paper reviews that literature and focuses on the impacts of
            two important types of labor market regulation, minimum
            wages and employment protection legislation (EPL), on
            employment, earnings, and productivity. Strong and opposing
            views exist regarding the costs and benefits of these
            regulations, but the results of this review suggest that
            their impacts are generally smaller than the heat of the
            debates would suggest. Efficiency effects are found
            sometimes, but not always, and the effects can be in either
            direction and are usually modest. The distributional impacts
            of both minimum wage and employment protection legislation
            are clearer, with two effects predominating: an equalizing
            effect among covered workers, but with groups such as youth,
            women, and the less skilled disproportionately outside the
            coverage and its benefits. Although the overall conclusion
            is one of modest effects in most cases, the policy
            implication is not that these regulations do not matter. On
            the one hand, both minimum wages and EPL can affect
            distributional objectives. On the other hand, these
            regulations can generate undesirable economic or social
            impacts if they are established or operate in ways that
            exacerbate the labor market imperfections that they were
            designed to address.
The heterogeneous effects of HIV testing
An extensive multi-disciplinary
            literature examines the effects of learning one's HIV
            status on subsequent risky sexual behaviors. However, many
            of these studies rely on non-experimental designs; use
            self-reported outcome measures, or both. This study
            investigates the effects of a randomly assigned home based
            HIV testing and counseling (HTC) intervention on risky
            sexual behaviors and schooling investments among school-age
            females in Malawi. The study finds no overall effects on
            HIV, Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV-2), or achievement test
            scores at follow-up. However, among the small group of
            individuals who tested positive for HIV, a large increase in
            the probability of contracting HSV-2 is found, with this
            effect stronger among those surprised by their test results.
            Similarly, those surprised by HIV-negative test results see
            a significant improvement in achievement test scores,
            consistent with increased returns to investments in human
            capital. The finding of increased HSV-2 prevalence among
            HIV-positive individuals suggests that the conventional
            wisdom that those who learn they are HIV-positive will adopt
            safer sexual practices should be treated with caution.
Designing experiments to measure
            spillover effects
This paper formalizes the design of
            experiments intended specifically to study spillover
            effects. By first randomizing the intensity of treatment
            within clusters and then randomly assigning individual
            treatment conditional on this cluster-level intensity, a
            novel set of treatment effects can be identified. The paper
            develops a formal framework for consistent estimation of
            these effects, provides explicit expressions for power
            calculations, and shows that the power to detect average
            treatment effects declines precisely with the quantity that
            identifies the novel treatment effects. A demonstration of
            the technique is provided using a cash transfer program in Malawi.
Do poverty traps exist
This paper reviews the empirical
            evidence on the existence of poverty traps, understood as
            self-reinforcing mechanisms through which poor individuals
            or countries remain poor. Poverty traps have captured the
            interest of many development policy makers, because poverty
            traps provide a theoretically coherent explanation for
            persistent poverty. They also suggest that temporary policy
            interventions may have long-term effects on poverty.
            However, a review of the reduced-form empirical evidence
            suggests that truly stagnant incomes of the sort predicted
            by standard models of poverty traps are in fact quite rare.
            Moreover, the empirical evidence regarding several canonical
            mechanisms underlying models of poverty traps is mixed.
What drives the volatility of firm
            level productivity in China
The enterprise reforms of the 1990s
            profoundly changed the structure of the economy in China.
            With the deepening of market economy, the share of the
            state-owned and collective enterprises declined. Expansion
            and contraction, as well as establishment and closure, of
            firms became a common phenomenon. The level and volatility
            of firm productivity have become increasingly important
            aspects of the micro performance of the economy. This paper
            uses a firm-level data set collected annually by the
            National Bureau of Statistics of China in 1998-2007 to
            examine the role of different firm characteristics in
            productivity volatility. The paper measures productivity
            volatility at the firm level as the standard deviation of
            the annual growth rate of productivity. The main objectives
            are twofold: first, it examines the variation of
            productivity volatility across firms of different
            characteristics and their evolution over time; second, it
            investigates the sources of productivity volatility at the
            firm level in China. The results suggest that in general,
            productivity volatility at the firm level has declined over
            time in China. Among firms with different characteristics,
            large firms, old firms, foreign firms, and firms located in
            the coastal provinces are less volatile. Firm size and
            location are the two major factors that drive changes in
            productivity volatility, one in a positive way and one in a
            negative way. Although the gaps of volatility between
            smaller firms and larger firms declined, the gaps between
            firms located in the coastal provinces and inland provinces increased.