rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
The demand for base money and the
            sustainability of public debt
Key (related) factors in an analysis of
            debt sustainability should include: the demand for base
            money (or high powered money); projected fiscal balance; the
            real interest rate; and the rate of income growth. The
            author emphasizes the demand for base money, a variable that
            has received scant attention in the literature of fiscal
            debt sustainability. Given a constant base multiplier, the
            demand for real base money goes hand-in-hand with the demand
            for money. In fact, if we adjust the stock of money for
            changes in the base multiplier, shifts in the monetary base
            have to mirror changes in the money stock; and anything that
            changes the demand for money will also change the demand for
            base money. Consequently, a change in the expected cost of
            holding money, a change in permanent income, or an change in
            regime - which would no doubt affect the demand for real
            money- would also affect the real stock of base money.
            Naturally, base multipliers are not constant and more
            research on the relative stability of base money in debt
            ridden countries is warranted. Real interest rates are also
            important. Many Latin American countries have issued
            domestic bonds to sterilize the effect of capital inflows on
            the real exchange rate and, consequently, have significantly
            increased their real interest rate burden affecting their
            debt sustainability. Permanently increasing the fiscal
            surplus would improve debt sustainability if other variables
            remain unchanged. Furthermore, the author claims that a
            permanent increase in the fiscal primary surplus through
            expenditure reduction would have and important effect on
            debt sustainability because it would reduce real interest
            rates (less crowding out), increase income growth
            (allocation effect), and increase demand for monetary base
            (reduced inflation expectations and higher expected income growth).
Using economic policy to improve
            environmental protection in Pakistan
The author studies Pakistan's major
            environmental problems, both green and brown, and assesses
            the extent to which economic policies affect incentives to
            protect the environment. Experience in other countries shows
            that nondistortionary economic policies that promote
            economic growth by improving the allocation of resources
            also create appropriate incentives for protecting the
            environment. Sound economic policies alone are not enough,
            of course. Environmental policies designed to correct market
            failures are also necessary. Pakistan, like many countries,
            has relied mostly on command-and-control environmental
            policies, which have often failed because its regulatory
            institutions lack the resources to monitor compliance.
            Pakistan would be better off using incentive- or
            market-based policies, which use prices to encourage
            pollution abatement and the appropriate use of resources.
            Failures in economic policy contribute significantly to
            Pakistan's "brown" environmental problems,
            which include industrial and domestic wastewater pollution,
            as well as air pollution (especially from motor vehicle
            emissions). Pollution problems exist both in urban and
            industrial areas, as well as in marine and coastal zone
            waters.  Failures in economic policy also contribute to
            "green" environmental problems, affecting behavior
            in forests, rangelands, and both rainfed and irrigated
            agriculture. Subsidies for irrigation water, for example,
            encourage farmers to overuse water, exacerbating the
            problems of waterlogging and salinity that plague irrigated
            agriculture. Lack of property rights in communal forests and
            the failure to give local communities incentives to
            participate in forest-management decisions have contributed
            to the problems of deforestation and the degradation of
            Pakistan's rangeland.
The restructuring of large firms in Slovakia
The restructuring of large enterprises
            has received much attention in the transition of centrally
            planned economies to market economies. The need to transform
            these enterprises into viable firms is widely acknowledged.
            The extent of such restructuring and the determinants that
            underlie a successful transformation are less studied.
            Various schemes for dealing with large enterprises have been
            tried. The effect of such programs is hard to measure since
            the restructuring of enterprises (or the lack thereof) has
            taken place in the context of significant changes in the
            overall economic environment. Notwithstanding the difficulty
            in such measurement, a proper evaluation is crucial for
            designing further reform policies. This paper extends the
            literature on the microeconomics of transition by
            re-examining the stylized facts about firm restructuring in
            the light of new empirical evidence. The study is based on
            twenty-one case studies of Slovak firms and uses detailed
            financial information for the 1991-96 period and interviews
            with top management. A large part of sample represents firms
            that were initially classified as non-viable loss-makers.
            This study also throws some new queries on the effectiveness
            of different privatization methods in enhancing corporate
            governance and improving access to skills and capital.
            Author find that privatization to insiders through
            management-employee buy-outs did not hamper firm
            restructuring as the new owners (old managers) invested
            heavily in new technology, laid off substantial part of
            their workforce, sought foreign partnerships, and were
            prepared to sell controlling stakes to outsiders in return
            for fresh financial resources. The main objective of the
            privatization program should be the speedy transformation of
            ownership, not the selection of perfect owner.
Pension reform, growth, and the
            labor market in Ukraine
In recent years -as a result of economic
            contraction, declining employment and real wages, and
            changes in  labor market behavior- Ukraine's tax base
            of the social security system has declined, threatening its
            sustainability.  About 40 percent of the labor force works
            in the informal sector, paying no taxes, and many members of
            the formal workforce underpay taxes because they also do
            informal work.  Using a model that links the social security
            system, the labor market, and the macroeconomy, the authors
            ran simulations to assess the sustainability of the current
            pension system and the relevance and viability of possible
            reforms.  All simulations assume economic reform and the
            resumption of growth.  They conclude: (1) Economic
            contraction is not the only cause of problems with the
            pension system.  To reverse current trends, most of the
            labor force would need to be working in the formal sector
            -an unlikely event, given current incentives.  (2) Reform is
            essential. Restoring the former system would be too costly,
            and maintaining the status quo would make the system
            unsustainable.  (3) Reforms focusing on short-term budgetary
            effects and neglecting the interactions between the social
            security and the labor market are likely to fail.  (4)
            Raising the retirement age to 65 would have a significant
            financial impact, but would need to be accompanied by deeper
            structural reforms.  Raising the retirement age quickly may
            entail the least political cost, as many old people are
            currently working.  (5) For the deeper structural reforms
            needed, introducing a funded-tier should be considered.  It
            would be an effective way to correct distortions and restore
            credibility.  (6) Introducing such reforms will be costly
            and affect several generations of workers and pensioners in
            different ways.  Tradeoffs must be carefully evaluated.
Shifting responsibility for social
            services as enterprises privatize in Belarus
In Belarus, divestiture of social
            assets, a misnomer for fringe benefits that comprise a part
            of wages, is needed to transform enterprises so they can
            function appropriately in a market economy.  Maintaining
            supply of these services after enterprise divestiture is an
            important public policy problem in transition economies.
            These fringe benefits, issued mainly in the form of housing
            and kindergarten services, were cut by at least two-thirds
            as a proportion of employee remuneration between 1994 and
            1995 because of the economic downturn.  This report debates
            whether most of these fringe benefits should continue to be
            subsidized or receive preferential tax treatment.  A strong
            case is made for some government funding of the public
            health and kindergarten services, and public utility and
            housing services divested by enterprises.  The reasons for
            assigning services such as education and health to local
            governments is debated and financing arrangements such as
            revenue sharing are examined.  Among the problems cited with
            the latter are interregional imbalances caused by unequal
            resources distribution, tax breaks given to agriculture
            which has reduced payments to rural local governments, the
            absence of close links between beneficiaries and payers
            justifying extrabudgetary funding, and inadequate
            subnational government taxation raising insignificant
            amounts  of revenue.  Where transfers to local governments
            are required, formula financing is suggested for
            unconditional grants to low-income local governments and
            conditional grants to support specific objectives.
The maturity structure of debt :
            determinants and effects on firms' performance -
            evidence from the United Kingdom and Italy
The authors empirically investigate the
            determinants and consequences of the maturity structure of
            debt, using data from a panel of UK and Italian firms.  They
            find that in choosing a maturity structure for debt,
            firms'tend to match assets and liabilities.  They
            conclude that more profitable firms'(as measured by the
            ratio of cash flow to capital) tend to have more long-term
            debt.  The data do not support the hypothesis that
            short-term debt, through better monitoring and control,
            boosts efficiency and growth -rather, the opposite can be
            concluded. In both countries, the data suggest a positive
            relationship between initial debt maturity and the
            firms' subsequent medium-term performance (i.e.,
            profitability and growth in real sales).  In both countries
            total factor productivity (TFP) depends positively on the
            length of debt maturity when the maturity variable is
            entered both contemporaneously and lagged.  But in Italy the
            positive effect of the length of maturity on productivity is
            substantially reduced or even reversed when the proportion
            of subsidized credit increases.  The authors: document the
            relationship between firms' characteristics and their
            choice of shorter or long-term debt by estimating a maturity
            equation and interpreting the results in light of insights
            from theoretical literature, and by analyzing the effects of
            maturity on firms' later performance in terms of
            profitability, growth, and productivity; assess how TFP
            depends on the degree of leverage  and the proportion of
            longer and shorter-term debt; and analyze the relationship
            between firms' debt maturity and investment.
Why paper mills clean up :
            determinants of pollution abatement in four Asian countries
The authors find strong evidence that
            despite weak or nonexistent formal regulation and
            enforcement of environmental standards, many plants in South
            and Southeast Asia are clean.  At the same time, many plants
            are among the world's worst polluters.  To account for
            the extreme variation among plants, the authors review
            evidence from a survey of pollution abatement by 26 pulp and
            paper plants in four countries: Bangladesh, India,
            Indonesia, and Thailand.  They incorporate 3 sets of factors
            affecting pollution intensity: plant characteristics,
            economic considerations, and external pressure from the
            government and private stakeholders.  They find that the
            level of pollution abatement is positively associated with
            scale and competitiveness, negatively associated with public
            ownership, and unaffected by foreign links (in ownership or
            financing).  Informal regulation, or community pressure on
            plants works to abate pollution, with high income being a
            powerful predictor of effectiveness.  Privatization, to the
            extent that it increases plant efficiency, can significantly
            improve environmental performance.  To prevent environmental
            injustice in poor or marginalized communities, the authors
            conclude, governments may want to consider strategies for
            improving their participation, and may want to target
            regulation to address pollution problems among them.
Trade and the accumulation and
            diffusion of knowledge
The author examines the properties of a
            dynamic disequilibrium model focused on trade specialization
            and the accumulation of knowledge. Steady state analysis
            shows that: a) under perfectly balanced growth international
            diffusion of knowledge is irrelevant for growth; and b)
            under unbalanced growth, the process of structural change
            may be enhanced by the effects on the domestic accumulation
            of knowledge of domestic spillover. The growth of foreign
            knowledge has an ambivalent effect on domestic performance
            because it is both a complement to, and a substitute for,
            domestic knowledge. Whenever these two effects do not
            perfectly match, the diffusion of international knowledge is
            associated with unbalanced growth. Imports of knowledge
            intensive goods may not lead to higher growth unless there
            is sufficiently strong trade performance in the knowledge
            -intensive sectors. Unbalanced growth is also associated
            with "output catching up". "Technological
            catching up" is necessary but not sufficient for
            balanced growth. Parameter estimates were obtained for
            France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
            Results appear to be consistent with theoretical
            expectations about the importance of "price" and
            "nonprice" determinants of trade performance in
            the four sectors as well as with the distribution of
            revealed comparative advantages. Simulation exercises
            confirm steady-state results on the relevance of country
            differences in trade specialization and in the domestic
            accumulation of knowledge as they affect growth. They also
            clarify the relationship between growth and changes in the
            structure of trade specialization.
Decentralized structures for
            providing roads : a cross-country comparison
Minimizing costs is often cited as
            essential for optimizing service delivery.  Roads are the
            oldest, most important infrastructure services provided by
            governments.  They require construction, rehabilitation,
            maintenance, and administration.  Various institutional
            arrangements affect the degree to which costs can be
            minimized.  Drawing on analyses of experiences with
            decentralized road provision in eight countries, a
            longitudinal change analysis of Korea, and vertical and
            horizontal analysis across states and local governments in
            Germany, the authors found that the impact of
            decentralization varies depending on which aspect one is
            considering: the efficiency of producing road services or
            the impact on road users.  Resources costs are concave,
            increasing first and decreasing at later stages of
            decentralization.  Preference costs are downward sloping,
            suggesting that road conditions improve as decentralization
            advances.  In short, decentralization entails initial costs,
            mostly as losses in economies of scale.  But those losses
            can be outweighed by increases in efficiency when the locus
            of roadwork is closer to the people.  The advantages or
            limitations of decentralization are function-specific: a)
            maintenance functions are best provided locally; b) to
            minimize resource costs, construction should be either
            completely centralized or completely decentralized; and c)
            administrative activities are more efficiently provided by
            local units similar to local maintenance units.
Banking risks around the world - the
            implicit safety net subsidy approach
The author calculates gross safety net
            subsidies for a large sample of banks in 12 countries, to
            assess the relationship between the risk-taking behavior of
            banks, and certain ban characteristics. He finds that gross
            safety net subsidies are higher for banks that have
            concentrated ownership, that are affiliated with a business
            group, that are small, or that have high credit growth, and
            for banks in countries with low GDP per capita, high
            inflation, or poor quality, and enforcement of the legal
            system. These findings suggest that the moral hazard
            behavior of a bank depends on its institutional environment,
            and its corporate governance structure. The author also
            presents a matrix that shows estimates of safety net
            subsidies for a range of given combinations of equity
            volatilities, and equity-to-deposit ratios. These figures
            could be used as input to an early warning system, for both
            individual, and systemic banking problems.
The credit crunch in East Asia :
            what can bank excess liquid assets tell us
The authors propose a two-step approach
            for assessing the extent to which the fall in credit in
            crisis-stricken East Asian countries was a supply- or
            demand-induced phenomenon. The first step involves
            estimating a demand function for excess liquid assets held
            by commercial banks. The second step involves establishing
            dynamic projections for the periods after the crisis and
            assessing whether or not residuals are large enough to be
            viewed as indicators of an "involuntary"
            accumulation of excess reserves. The results for Thailand
            suggest that the contraction in bank lending that
            accompanied the crisis was the result of supply factors.
            Thai firms (presumably small and medium-size ones) faced
            binding constraints in getting access to credit markets
            after the crisis.
Perspectives on the sources of
            heterogeneity in Indian industry
The authors examine technical efficiency
            variation across four industrial sectors in India, using a
            stochastic production frontier technique. The results are
            comparable to technical efficiency distribution patterns
            obtained in other countries. The authors examine
            heterogeneity in firm-level efficiency against internal,
            firm-level characteristics and against external
            characteristics (industry and location). The results suggest
            that managerial effectiveness significantly influences
            efficiency and that considerable benefits derive from
            location within established industrial clusters for
            particular industries. The methodology and findings indicate
            that the study of industry-specific technical efficiency
            patterns is a useful analytical tool for tracking domestic
            firms' response to liberalization and the advance of
            market forces. An important policy implication of the
            authors' results: There is considerable room for
            efficiency gains through better organization and management
            of production processes and improved supply chain
            management, even in the highly organized corporate sector.
            These gains could be achieved by purely internal learning
            processes with no extra investment in physical plant or
            equipment, or with the help of outside consultants, or
            through business alliances with partners from industrial
            countries (a rising trend). The results also show that
            greater technical efficiency correlates with better energy
            use and higher investments in plant management. How firms
            can be induced to undertake such investments in the
            "software" of production is an important issue.
            Liberalization and globalization are likely to bring
            significant productivity gains even in low-technology
            industries as managers gear up to meet the challenges of competition.