rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Standards and agro-food exports from
            developing countries: rebalancing the debate
The proliferation and increased
            stringency of food safety and agricultural health standards
            is a source of concern among many developing countries.
            These standards are perceived as a barrier to the continued
            success of their exports of high-value agro-food products
            (including fish, horticultural, and other products), either
            because these countries lack the technical and
            administrative capacities needed for compliance or because
            these standards can be applied in a discriminatory or
            protectionist manner. The authors draw on available
            literature and work in progress to examine the underlying
            evidence related to the changing standards environment and
            its impact on existing and potential developing country
            exporters of high-value agricultural and food products. The
            evidence the authors present, while only partial, suggests
            that the picture for developing countries as a whole is not
            necessarily problematic and certainly less pessimistic than
            the mainstream "standards-as-barriers"
            perspective. Indeed, rising standards serve to accentuate
            underlying supply chain strengths and weaknesses and thus
            impact differently on the competitive position of individual
            countries and distinct market participants. Some countries
            and industries are even using high quality and safety
            standards to successfully (re-)position themselves in
            competitive global markets. This emphasizes the importance
            of considering the effects of food safety and agricultural
            health measures within the context of wider capacity
            constraints and underlying supply chain trends and drivers.
            The key question for developing countries is how to exploit
            their strengths and overcome their weaknesses such that they
            are gainers rather than losers in the emerging commercial
            and regulatory context.
Do households gain from
            community-based natural resource management An evaluation of
            community conservancies in Namibia
Community-based natural resource
            management is an important strategy to conserve and
            sustainably use biodiversity and wildlife in Namibia. The
            authors examine the extent to which conservancies have been
            successful in meeting their primary goal of improving the
            lives of rural households. They evaluate the benefits of
            community conservancies in Namibia by asking three
            questions: Do conservancies increase household welfare?  Are
            conservancies pro-poor? And, do participants in
            conservancies gain more relative to those who choose not to
            participate?   The authors base their analyses on a 2002
            survey covering seven conservancies and 1,192 households.
            The results suggest that community conservancies have a
            positive impact on household welfare. This impact is
            poverty-neutral in some regions and pro-poor in others.
            Further, welfare benefits from conservancies appear to be
            somewhat evenly distributed between participant and
            nonparticipant households.
Productivity and the investment
            climate : what matters most
The authors explore the links between
            the investment climate and firm-level productivity and
            attempt to identify which dimensions of the investment
            climate matter most for productivity. Their analysis is
            based on data collected in a recent investment climate
            survey of garment and food processing firms in five
            countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The authors
            use the first principal components of a series of indicators
            to summarize broad aspects of the investment climate and
            identify those most important in determining productivity.
            Their results indicate that competitive pressure is the most
            critical factor in the investment climate, accounting for
            more variation in firm-level productivity than
            infrastructure provision or issues related to government
            rent seeking and bureaucratic burden. This suggests that to
            improve productivity, increase output, and reduce poverty,
            policymakers should focus reform efforts on removing
            barriers to entry and creating open, highly competitive markets.
Do stronger intellectual property
            rights increase international technology transfer Empirical
            evidence from U.S. firm-level panel data
One of the alleged benefits of the
            recent global movement to strengthen intellectual property
            rights (IPRs) is that such reforms accelerate transfers of
            technology between countries. The paper examines how
            technology transfer among U.S. multinational firms changes
            in response to a series of IPR reforms undertaken by 12
            countries over the 1982-99 period. The analysis of detailed
            firm-level data reveal that royalty payments for intangibles
            transferred to affiliates increase at the time of reforms,
            as do affiliate research and development (R&D)
            expenditures and total levels of foreign patent
            applications. Increases in royalty payments and R&D
            expenditures are more than 20 percent larger among
            affiliates of parent companies that use U.S. patents more
            extensively prior to reform and therefore are expected to
            value IPR reform most.
Globalization, poverty, and
            inequality since 1980
One of the most contentious issues of
            globalization is the effect of global economic integration
            on inequality and poverty.  This paper documents five trends
            in the modern era of globalization, starting around 1980.
            Trend #1: Poor country growth rates have accelerated and are
            higher than rich country growth rates - for the first time
            in modern history.  The developing world economy grew at
            more than 3.5 percent per capita in the 1990s.  Trend #2:
            The number of poor people in the world has declined
            significantly - by 375 million people since 1981 -- the
            first such decline in history.  The share of the developing
            world population living on less than $1 per day was cut in
            half since 1981.  Trend #3:  Global inequality (among
            citizens of the world) has declined - modestly  -- reversing
            a 200-year-old trend toward higher inequality.  Trend #4:
            There is no general trend toward higher inequality within
            countries.  Trend #5:  Wage inequality is rising worldwide
            (which may seem to contradict trend #4, but it does not
            because wages are a small part of household income in
            developing countries, which make up the bulk of the world in
            terms of countries and population).  Furthermore, the trends
            toward faster growth and poverty reduction are strongest in
            the developing countries in which there has been the most
            rapid integration with the global economy, supporting the
            view that integration has been a positive force for
            improving peoples lives in the developing world.
Market access for sale : Latin
            America's lobbying for U.S. tariff preferences : Market
            access for sale: Latin America's lobbying for U.S.
            tariff preferences
This paper assesses the foreign lobbying
            forces behind the tariff preferences that the United States
            grants to Latin American and Caribbean countries. The basic
            framework is the one developed that is extended to explain
            the relationship between foreign lobbying and tariff
            preferences. Results suggest that returns to Latin American
            and Caribbean exporters lobbying for tariff preferences in
            the United States are around 50 percent. The reason for
            these large returns is the relatively low estimated weight
            given to social welfare in the U.S. government's
            objective function when deciding whether or not to grant
            tariff preferences to Latin American and Caribbean exporters.
Linking participatory poverty
            assessments to policy and policymaking - experience from Vietnam
The year 1999 was important for
            poverty-related research, and policy development in Vietnam.
            The General Statistics Office had collected household data
            in the second Vietnam Living Standards Survey in 1998, and
            made it available for analysis in 1999. And four
            participatory poverty assessments (PPAs) were implemented
            during 1999. The author's case study describes how
            government agencies, donors, and nongovernmental
            organizations collaborated in implementing the PPAs. The
            considerable amount of qualitative information about poverty
            produced in Vietnam over the past eight to ten years has
            rarely grabbed the attention of policymakers, who tend to
            view such information as "unscientific" and
            lacking in credibility. By contrast, the PPAs implemented in
            1999 have been widely circulated, used, and quoted. What was
            different about those PPAs that led their findings to be
            brought into local, and national policy debates, as previous
            findings had not been? Working partnerships among donors,
            and nongovernmental organizations were important, and helped
            build consensus on the research findings, but more crucial
            was the active engagement of government partners from the
            very early stages. Establishing a Poverty Working Group
            provided a structure for implementing the PPAs, for feeding
            analysis through to the poverty assessment, and for keeping
            government fully involved. The Poverty Working Group now
            supports the government in drafting its poverty reduction
            strategy. Strong World Bank leadership, financial support
            from the U.K. Department for International Development, the
            technical expertise, and commitment of the PPA partners
            agencies, and the availability of recent high-quality
            household survey data, played an important part in ensuring
            the PPAs' credibility.
Trade policy and market access
            issues for developing countries : implications for the
            Millennium Round
The author analyzes 61 trade policy
            reviews prepared for the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
            its predecessor, GATT - reviews that document the progress
            developing countries have made in integration with the world
            trading system over the past decade. Based on an analysis of
            post-Uruguay Round tariff and nontariff barriers worldwide,
            he then recommends developing country positions on major
            issues in the new round of WTO trade negotiations. His key
            conclusions and recommendations: 1) Agriculture. Developing
            countries should support the Cairns Group in its push for
            greater liberalization of industrial countries'
            agricultural trade policies; the revised Food Aid Convention
            is not a substitute for but a complement to worldwide
            liberalization of agriculture. 2) Manufactures. The
            existence of tariff peaks and escalation in industrial
            country markets and the limited bindings at relatively high
            levels of developing country tariffs on manufactures present
            opportunities for negotiations with good prospects for
            shared and balanced benefits. The remaining nontariff
            barriers in industrial countries that affect manufactures
            are concentrated in textiles and clothing. Developing
            countries should ensure that industrial countries implement
            their commitments to liberalize this sector and impose no
            new nontariff barriers in this or other sectors under the
            guise of other rules or arrangements. The remaining
            nontariff barriers in developing countries should be
            converted into tariffs and reduced over time as part of the
            negotiations. 3) Antidumping. The increased use of
            antidumping measures by high- and middle-income developing
            countries in recent periods offers an opportunity for
            balanced negotiations to restrict their use. Reduced use of
            antidumping measures would increase efficiency and benefit
            consumers in all countries. But it is unclear whether a
            supportive climate for such negotiations exists in either
            industrial or developing countries.
The rise, the fall, and ... : the
            emerging recovery of project finance transport
Recent developments in emerging
            financial markets have dramatically changed the appetite for
            (and terms of) transport infrastructure projects. As a
            result of defaults in Asia and Russia and devaluations in
            Asia, Brazil, and Russia, political and currency and
            exchange risk premia have increased dramatically. Given
            large needs for sovereign debt financing, infrastructure
            project finance will be seeking guarantees at the same time
            as governments are issuing primary securities. Large
            portfolio outflows in emerging market funds mean that the
            sources of both equity and debt capital that became
            available in the mid-1990s are drying up for all but the
            most creditworthy projects. Moreover, real economic effects
            from financial events have consequences in the transport
            sector, since transport is a derived demand. Any decline in
            real economic activity is felt quickly in traffic levels and
            revenues. Currency devaluations that help spur exports may
            generate higher volumes for seaports and air cargo activity.
            These effects vary by sector, especially over the medium to
            longer term. Declines in real economic activity make matters
            especially difficult for toll roads, as drivers shift to
            free alternatives and reduce the number of trips taken. What
            does all this mean for project finance in transport? Risks
            have increased. Debt finance costs more. The available tenor
            of debt instruments has shortened and more equity is
            required for projects. The sources and availability of
            equity finance have changed. Project finance efforts have
            shifted from new projects to the privatization,
            rehabilitation, and expansion of existing facilities. And a
            "superclass" of sponsors, bankers, and investors
            has emerged. Failures and mistakes in project finance deals
            in the 1990s were sharp and persistent. But much has been
            learned about sound project economics, conservative
            financial structures, comprehensive sensitivity analysis,
            the effects of macroeconomic factors, and the need for
            proper incentives and sound institutional and regulatory arrangements.
Self-targeted subsidies - the
            distributional impact of the Egyptian food subsidy system
The Egyptian food subsidy system is an
            untargeted system that is essentially open to all Egyptians.
            For this reason, the budgetary costs of this system have
            been high, and the ability of this system to improve the
            welfare status of the poor has been questioned. Since the
            food riots of 1977, Egyptian policymakers have been
            reluctant to make large changes in their food subsidy
            system. Rather, their strategy has been to reduce the costs,
            and coverage of this system gradually. For example, since
            1980 policymakers have reduced the number of subsidized
            foods from 20 to just four. Despite these cutbacks, the
            author uses new 1997 household survey data to show that the
            Egyptian food subsidy system IS self-targeted to the poor,
            because it subsidizes "inferior" goods. In urban
            Egypt, for instance, the main subsidized food - coarse
            baladi bread - is consumed more by the poor (the lowest
            quintile group of the population) than by the rich (the
            highest quintile). So subsidizing baladi bread is a good way
            of improving the welfare status of the urban poor. Bur in
            rural Egypt, where the poor do not consume so much baladi
            bread, the poor receive less in income transfers than the
            rich. In many countries, administrative targeting of food
            subsidies can do a better job of targeting the poor than
            self-targeting systems. In Jamaica, for example, poor people
            get food stamps at health clinics, so the Jamaican poor
            receive double the income transfers from food subsidies than
            the Egyptian poor receive. Bur starting a comparable system
            in Egypt, would be costly both in financial, and political
            terms, because many non-poor households currently receiving
            food subsidies would have to be excluded. For these reasons,
            it is likely that the government will continue to refine the
            present food subsidy system, perhaps by eliminating current
            subsidies on sugar or edible oil. Neither of these foods is
            an "inferior" good, so eliminating these subsidies
            will have only a minimal impact on the welfare status of the poor.
How small should an economy's
            fiscal deficit be - a monetary programming approach
The author describes a spread-sheet
            planning model to help determine the government deficit
            consistent with a policymaker's "vector" of
            principal macroeconomic objectives (including real GDP
            growth, inflation, exchange rate, and international reserve
            accumulation). The model focuses on the monetary accounts,
            applying balance-of-payments forecasts formulated
            separately, but based on the same macroeconomic objectives.
            The model is a consistency exercise, intended as part of a
            broader consistency exercise for a given macro-economy. It
            offers one more perspective on the question of how large a
            government deficit should be - a perspective that can be
            used in conjunction with others. For each forecast period,
            the model determines consistent period-end and
            period-average stocks for the economy's outstanding
            central bank assets, and liabilities and, government
            obligations. I applies forecasting assumptions about
            interest rates to forecast central bank profit-and-loss
            flows, and takes account of these in determining the overall
            flow of resources that would be available to finance the
            government deficit. An annex describes a (purely
            illustrative) simulation carried out during 1999 for Ecuador.
Surveying surveys and questioning
            questions - learning from World Bank experience
The World Bank has increasingly focused
            on firm-level surveys to build the data foundation needed
            for accurate policy analysis in developing and transition
            economies. The authors take stock of some recent Bank
            surveys, and discuss how to improve their results. Lessons
            on data issues, and hypothesis testing: 1) Use panel data,
            if possible. 2) Have enough information about productivity
            to estimate a production function. 3) Avoid the paradigm of
            "list the severity of the obstacle/problem on a scale
            of 1 to 5". Instead, ask for data on specific
            dimensions of the problem that will shed light on
            alternative hypothesis and policy recommendations. 4) Pick
            particular disaggregated industries, and sample those
            industries in each survey. 5) Identify the most important
            interventions of interest, and consider how you will
            empirically identify specific changes by picking instruments
            useful for doing so. Lessons on questionnaire design: a)
            Incorporate only one idea or dimension in each question. Do
            not ask, in one question, about the "quality,
            integrity, and efficiency" of services, for example. b)
            Consider the costs and benefits of numeric scales compared
            with adjectival scales. Scales in which each point is
            labeled may be more precise than numeric scales in which
            only the end points are labeled. But responses are very
            sensitive to the exact adjective chosen, and it may be
            impossible to translate adjectives precisely across
            languages, making it impossible to compare responses across
            countries. c) Recognize that the share of respondents
            expressing opinions will be biased upward if the survey does
            not include a middle ("indifferent" or
            "don't know") category, and downward if it
            does include the middle category. d) When asking
            degree-of-concern and how-great-an-obstacle question,
            consider first asking a filter question (such as "Do
            you believe this regulation is an obstacle or not?").
            If the answer is yes, then ask how severe the obstacle is.
            e) Be aware of the effects of context. The act of asking
            questions can affect the answers given on subsequent,
            related questions. f) Think carefully about how to ask
            sensitive questions. Consider using a self-administered
            module for sensitive questions. alternatively, a randomized
            response mechanisms may be a useful, truth-revealing mechanism.
Disinflation and the supply side
The authors study the dynamics of
            output, consumption, and real wages induced by a
            disinflation program based on permanent and temporary
            reductions in the nominal devaluation rate. They use an
            intertemporal optimizing model of a small open economy in
            which domestic households face imperfect world capital
            markets, the labor supply is endogenous, and wages are
            flexible. The model predicts that, with a constant capital
            stock and no investment, there is an initial reduction in
            real wages and output expands. Consumption falls on impact
            but increases afterward. In addition, with a temporary
            shock, a current account deficit emerges and, later a
            recession sets in, as documented in various studies. With
            endogenous capital accumulation, numerical simulations show
            that the model can also predict a boom in investment.