rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The uncertainty channel of contagion
The 2007 subprime crisis in the United
            States has triggered a succession of financial crises around
            the globe, reigniting interest in the contagion phenomenon.
            Not all crises, however, are contagious. This paper models a
            new channel of contagion where the degree of anticipation of
            crises, through its impact on investor uncertainty,
            determines the occurrence of contagion. Incidences of
            surprise crises lead investors to doubt the accuracy of
            their information-gathering technology, which endogenously
            increases the probability of crises elsewhere. Anticipated
            crises, instead, have the opposite effect. Importantly, this
            channel is empirically shown to have an independent effect
            beyond other contagion channels.
School enrollment, selection and
            test scores : School enrollment, selection and test scores
There is a strong association between
            schooling attained and test scores in many settings. If this
            association is causal, one might expect that programs that
            increase school enrollment and attainment would also improve
            test scores. However, if there is self-selection into school
            based on expected gains, marginal children brought into
            school by such programs may be drawn disproportionately from
            the left-hand side of the ability distribution, which could
            limit the extent to which additional schooling translates
            into more learning. To test this proposition, this paper
            uses data from Cambodia. The results show that a program
            that provides scholarships to poor students had a large
            effect on school enrollment and attendance, which increased
            by approximately 25 percentage points. However, there is no
            evidence that, 18 months after the scholarships were
            awarded, recipient children did any better on mathematics
            and vocabulary tests than they would have in the absence of
            the program. The paper discusses results that suggest that
            the self-selection of lower-ability students into school in
            response to the program is an important part of the
            explanation. The analysis also shows minimal program effects
            on other outcomes, including knowledge of health practices,
            expectations about the future, and adolescent mental health.
How land title affects child labor
Secure property rights are considered a
            key determinant of economic development. However, evaluation
            of the causal effects of land titling is a difficult task.
            Since 2004, the Brazilian government, through a program
            called "Papel Passado," has issued titles to more
            than 85,000 families and has the goal to reach 750,000.
            Another topic in public policy that is crucial for
            developing economies is child labor force participation. In
            Brazil, about 5.4 million children and teenagers between 5
            and 17 years old are working full time. This paper examines
            the direct impact of securing a property title on child
            labor force participation. In order to isolate the causal
            role of ownership security, this study uses a comparison
            between two close and similar communities in the City of
            Osasco case (a town with 650,000 people in the São Paulo
            metropolitan area). The key point of this case is that some
            units participate in the program and others do not. One of
            them, Jardim Canaã, received land titles in 2007; the other,
            Jardim DR, given fiscal constraints, will not be part of the
            program until 2012, and for that reason became the control
            group. Estimates, generated using the
            difference-in-difference econometric technique suggest that
            titling results in a substantial decrease in child labor
            force participation for the families that received the title
            compared with the others. These findings are relevant for
            future policy tools for dealing with informality and how it
            affects economic growth.
The trade response to global
            downturns : historical evidence
The author examines the impact of
            historical global downturns on trade flows. The results
            provide insight into why trade has dropped so dramatically
            in the current crisis, what is likely to happen in the
            coming years, how global imbalances are affected, and which
            regions and industries suffer most heavily. The author finds
            that the elasticity of global trade volumes to real world
            GDP has increased gradually from around 2 in the 1960s to
            above 3 now. The author also finds that trade is more
            responsive to GDP during global downturns than in tranquil
            times. The results suggest that the overall drop in real
            trade this year is likely to exceed 15 percent. There is
            significant variation across industries, with food and
            beverages the least affected and crude materials and fuels
            the most affected. On the positive side, trade tends to
            rebound very rapidly when the outlook brightens. The author
            also finds evidence that global downturns often lead to
            persistent improvements in the ratio of the trade balance to
            GDP in borrower countries.
Unpacking youth unemployment in
            Latin America
High youth unemployment rates may be a
            signal of difficult labor market entry for youth or may
            reflect high churning. The European and United States
            literature finds the latter conclusion while the Latin
            American literature suggests the former. This paper uses
            panel data to examine whether Latin American youth follow
            OECD patterns or are, indeed, unique.  By decomposing
            transition matrices into propensity to move and rate of
            separation matrices and estimating duration matrices, the
            authors find that Latin American youth do follow the OECD
            trends: their high unemployment reflects high churning while
            their duration of unemployment is similar to that of
            non-youth. The paper also finds that young adults (age
            19-24) have higher churning rates than youth; most churning
            occurs between informal wage employment, unemployment, and
            out-of-the labor force, even for non-poor youth; and
            unemployment probabilities are similar for men and women
            when the analysis control for greater churning by young men.
            The findings suggest that the "first employment"
            programs that have become popular in the region are not
            addressing the key constraints to labor market entry for
            young people and that more attention should be given to job
            matching, information, and signaling to improve the
            efficiency of the churning period.
Competition, imitation, and
            technical change : quality vs. variety
Some researchers have documented that
            the path of development is remarkably related to the pattern
            of sectoral diversification. Others have highlighted the
            relation between productive specialization and economic
            progress. This paper explores the role of product market
            competition and intellectual property rights protection in
            the pattern of sectoral diversification. The paper confirms
            the insight of the innovation literature, that competition
            induces firms to specialize and upgrade the quality of
            existing goods. However, it reveals a new force, called the
            imitation effect, through which competition biases technical
            change toward product diversification. The paper shows that
            if knowledge spillovers increase with imitation, or the
            degree of product substitution is high, weak protection of
            property rights encourages firms to create low-quality
            goods, thereby directing technical change toward
            diversification. The predictions are tested with data on
            Italian firms' innovation activity. They are found to
            be consistent with observed behavior.
On interfuel substitution : some
            international evidence
This paper estimates interfuel
            substitution elasticities in selected developing and
            industrialized economies at the national and sector levels.
            In doing so, it employs state-of-the-art techniques in
            microeconometrics, particularly the locally flexible
            normalized quadratic functional forms, and provides evidence
            consistent with neoclassical microeconomic theory. The
            results indicate that the interfuel substitution
            elasticities are consistently below unity, revealing the
            limited ability to substitute between major energy
            commodities (i.e., coal, oil, gas, and electricity). While
            the study finds some evidences of larger interfuel
            substitution potential in high-income economies as compared
            to that in the middle- and low-income economies in the
            industrial and transportation sectors, no such evidence is
            observed in the residential and electricity generation
            sectors or at the national level. The implication is that
            interfuel substitution depends on the structure of the
            economy, not the level of economic development. Moreover, a
            higher change in relative prices is needed to induce
            switching toward a lower carbon economy.
Do poorer countries have less
            capacity for redistribution
Development aid and policy discussions
            often assume that poorer countries have less internal
            capacity for redistribution in favor of their poorest
            citizens. The assumption is tested using data for 90
            developing countries. The capacity for redistribution is
            measured by the marginal tax rate on those who are not poor
            by rich-country standards that is needed to cover the
            poverty gap or to provide a poverty-level of basic income,
            judged by developing-country standards. For most (but not
            all) countries with annual consumption per capita under
            $2,000 (at 2005 purchasing power parity) the required tax
            burdens are found to be prohibitive-often calling for
            marginal tax rates of 100 percent or more. By contrast, the
            required tax rates are quite low (1 percent on average)
            among all countries with consumption per capita over $4,000,
            as well as some poorer countries. Most countries fall into
            one of two groups: those with little or no realistic
            prospect of addressing extreme poverty through
            redistribution from the "rich" and those that
            would appear to have ample scope for such redistribution.
            Economic growth tends to move countries from the first group
            to the second. Thus the appropriate balance between growth
            and redistribution strategies can be seen to depend on the
            level economic development.
Global inequality recalculated : the
            effect of new 2005 PPP estimates on global inequality
The results of new direct price level
            comparisons across 148 countries in 2005 have led to large
            revisions of purchasing power parity exchanges rates,
            particularly for China and India. The recalculation of
            international and global inequalities, using the new
            purchasing power parity rates, shows that inequalities are
            substantially higher than previously thought. Inequality
            between global citizens is estimated at 70 Gini points
            rather than 65 as before. The richest decile receives 57
            percent of global income rather than 50 percent.
Do value-added estimates add value
            accounting for learning dynamics
Evaluations of educational programs
            commonly assume that what children learn persists over time.
            The authors compare learning in Pakistani public and private
            schools using dynamic panel methods that account for three
            key empirical challenges to widely used value-added models:
            imperfect persistence, unobserved student heterogeneity, and
            measurement error. Their estimates suggest that only a fifth
            to a half of learning persists between grades and that
            private schools increase average achievement by 0.25
            standard deviations each year. In contrast, estimates from
            commonly used value-added models significantly understate
            the impact of private schools on student achievement and/or
            overstate persistence. These results have implications for
            program evaluation and value-added accountability system design.
Distributional impact analysis of
            past climate variability in rural Indonesia
In rural Indonesia, around 60 percent of
            workers engage in agriculture and face regular climatic
            shocks that may threaten their crop production, household
            income, and human capital investments. Little is known about
            households ability to maintain consumption in response to
            these shocks. This paper uses both longitudinal and repeated
            cross-sectional data to examine the extent to which farm
            profits and household consumption are reduced by delayed
            monsoon onset, an important determinant of rice production
            in Indonesia. It also investigates whether poor households
            are more vulnerable to delayed onset. Overall, delayed onset
            has minor effects on rural households profit and
            consumption. For poor households, defined as those with
            average per capita consumption in the lowest quintile,
            delayed onset the previous year is associated with a 13
            percent decline in per capita consumption. Most of this
            decline is due to an increase in household size, however,
            and delayed onset two years ago is positively correlated
            with consumption. The findings suggest that poor households
            experience greater volatility but no lasting reduction in
            consumption following delayed monsoon onset.
Cyclical effects of bank capital
            requirements with imperfect credit markets
This paper analyzes the cyclical effects
            of bank capital requirements in a simple model with credit
            market imperfections. Lending rates are set as a premium
            over the cost of borrowing from the central bank, with the
            premium itself depending on firms effective collateral.
            Basel I- and Basel II-type regulatory regimes are defined
            and a capital channel is introduced through a signaling
            effect of capital buffers on the cost of bank deposits. The
            macroeconomic effects of various shocks (a drop in output,
            an increase in the refinance rate, and a rise in the capital
            adequacy ratio) are analyzed, under both binding and
            nonbinding capital requirements. Factors affecting the
            procyclicality of each regime (defined in terms of the
            behavior of the risk premium) are also identified and policy
            implications are discussed.
Governance in health care delivery :
            raising performance
The impacts of health care investments
            in developing and transition countries are typically
            measured by inputs and general health outcomes. Missing from
            the health agenda are measures of performance that reflect
            whether health systems are meeting their objectives; public
            resources are being used appropriately; and the priorities
            of governments are being implemented. This paper suggests
            that good governance is central to raising performance in
            health care delivery. Crucial to high performance are
            standards, information, incentives and accountability. This
            paper provides a definition of good governance in health and
            a framework for thinking about governance issues as a way of
            improving performance in the health sector. Performance
            indicators that offer the potential for tracking relative
            health performance are proposed, and provide the context for
            the discussion of good governance in health service delivery
            in the areas of budget and resource management, individual
            provider performance, health facility performance, informal
            payments, and corruption perceptions. What we do and do not
            know about effective solutions to advance good governance
            and performance in health is presented for each area,
            drawing on existing research and documented experiences.
Social impacts of climate change in
            Bolivia : a municipal level analysis of the effects of
            recent climate change on life expectancy, consumption,
            poverty and inequality
This paper analyzes the direct evidence
            of climate change in Bolivia during the past 60 years, and
            estimates how these changes have affected life expectancy
            and consumption levels for each of the 311 municipalities in
            Bolivia. Contrary to the predictions of most general
            circulation models, the evidence shows a consistent cooling
            trend of about 0.2°C per decade over all highland areas,
            slight and scattered evidence of warming in the lowlands,
            and no systematic changes in precipitation.  The estimations
            indicate that the 1°C cooling experienced in the already
            cold highlands over the past five decades likely has reduced
            consumption possibilities by about 2-3 percent in these
            areas. Since the much richer population in the lowlands have
            benefitted slightly from recent climate change, the
            simulations suggest that recent climate change has
            contributed to an increase in inequality and poverty in
            Bolivia. Poor and indigenous peoples in the highlands are
            among the most severely affected populations. No
            statistically significant effect on life expectancy was found.
Why have CO2 emissions increased in
            the transport sector in Asia underlying factors and policy options
Rapidly increasing emissions of carbon
            dioxide from the transport sector, particularly in urban
            areas, is a major challenge to sustainable development in
            developing countries. This study analyzes the factors
            responsible for transport sector CO2 emissions growth in
            selected developing Asian countries during 1980-2005. The
            analysis splits the annual emissions growth into components
            representing economic development; population growth; shifts
            in transportation modes; and changes in fuel mix, emission
            coefficients, and transportation energy intensity. The study
            also reviews existing government policies to limit CO2
            emissions growth, particularly various fiscal and regulatory
            policy instruments. The study finds that of the six factors
            considered, three - economic development, population growth,
            and transportation energy intensity - are responsible for
            driving up transport sector CO2 emissions in Bangladesh, the
            Philippines, and Vietnam.  In contrast, only economic
            development and population growth are responsible in the
            case of China, India, Indonesia, Republic of Korea,
            Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. CO2 emissions
            exhibit a downward trend in Mongolia due to decreasing
            transportation energy intensity. The study also finds that
            some existing policy instruments help reduce transport
            sector CO2 emissions, although they were not necessarily
            targeted for this purpose when introduced.
Poverty in Latin America : sources
            of welfare disparities in ecuador
This paper contributes to the analysis
            of spatial poverty in Ecuador by deepening the understanding
            of the constraints faced by the poor in the country through
            an investigation of the role of portable characteristics
            (human capital) and geography in explaining welfare. At the
            national level, the results indicate that these
            characteristics explain 72 percent of the differences in
            welfare level between urban and rural areas, while returns
            to these characteristics account for 28 percent of the
            difference. Comparing a leading and a lagging region, such
            as the coast versus the Amazon, the characteristics explain
            about 90 percent of the welfare differential in urban areas,
            while the returns explain about 30 percent of the welfare
            differential in rural areas. Among the characteristics
            analyzed, education is the most important variable for
            explaining differences in living conditions between urban
            and rural areas in Ecuador.
Inter-firm trade finance in times of crisis
The paper discusses the main features
            that distinguish inter-firm international trade finance from
            alternative sources of financing. On the one hand,
            inter-firm trade finance could help overcome informational
            problems associated with other lending relationships; on the
            other, it may contribute to propagate shocks due to the
            interconnection among firms along credit chains. The paper
            evaluates the potential effects of a financial crisis on the
            use of trade credit for firms operating in developing
            countries. It argues that while the advantages of trade
            credit might remain largely unexploited due to poor legal
            institutions, the disadvantages might be exacerbated because
            of these firms greater exposure to a default chain. Based
            on these arguments, a menu of choices is identified for what
            policymakers can do to boost firms access to inter-firm
            trade finance in times of crisis.