rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
U.S.-Japan and U.S.-China trade
            conflict : export growth, reciprocity, and the international
            trading system
First Japan and more recently China have
            pursued export-oriented growth strategies. While other Asian
            countries have done likewise, Japan and China are of
            particular interest because their economies are so large and
            the size of the associated bilateral trade imbalances with
            the United States so conspicuous. In this paper the authors
            focus on U.S. efforts to restore the reciprocal GATT/WTO
            market-access bargain in the face of such large imbalances
            and the significant spillovers to the international trading
            system. The paper highlights similarities and differences in
            the two cases. The authors describe U.S. attempts to reduce
            the bilateral imbalances through targeted trade policies
            intended to slow growth of U.S. imports from these countries
            or increase growth of U.S. exports to them. They then
            examine how these trade policy responses, as well as U.S.
            efforts to address what were perceived as underlying causes
            of the imbalances, influenced the evolution of the
            international trading system. Finally, the authors compare
            the macroeconomic conditions associated with the bilateral
            trade imbalances and their implications for the conclusions
            of the two episodes.
Trade in health services:
            what's in it for developing countries
This study summarizes the existing
            knowledge and relevant abstracts and case-studies on the
            design of health and/or trade reforms and policies. The
            study aims to contribute to the understanding of the
            potential benefits and risks - and ways to maximize the
            former and minimize the latter - of trade in the health
            sector. It is designed for non-trade (health) experts to
            understand how trade can help to improve health systems and
            access to health services, and for trade specialists to
            understand the specific characteristics of the health sector.
The association between remarriage
            and HIV infection : evidence from national HIV surveys in Africa
The literature shows that divorced,
            separated, and widowed individuals in Africa are at
            significantly increased risk for HIV. Using nationally
            representative data from 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa,
            this paper confirms that formerly married individuals are at
            significantly higher risk for HIV. The study goes further by
            examining individuals who have remarried. The results show
            that remarried individuals form a large portion of the
            population - usually larger than the divorced, separated, or
            widowed - and that they also have higher than average HIV
            prevalence. This large number of high-risk remarried
            individuals is an important source of vulnerability and
            further infection that needs to be acknowledged and taken
            into account in prevention strategies.
Responding to threats of climate
            change mega-catastrophes
There is a low but uncertain probability
            that climate change could trigger
            "mega-catastrophes," severe and at least partly
            irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This
            paper first discusses the state of current knowledge and the
            defining characteristics of potential climate change
            mega-catastrophes. While some of these characteristics
            present difficulties for using standard rational choice
            methods to evaluate response options, there is still a need
            to balance the benefits and costs of different possible
            responses with appropriate attention to the uncertainties.
            To that end, the authors present a qualitative analysis of
            three options for mitigating the risk of climate
            mega-catastrophes - drastic abatement of greenhouse gas
            emissions, development and implementation of geoengineering,
            and large-scale ex ante adaptation - against the criteria of
            efficacy, cost, robustness, and flexibility. They discuss
            the composition of a sound portfolio of initial investments
            in reducing the risk of climate change mega-catastrophes.
Privatization in development : some
            lessons from experience
This paper briefly reviews the main
            theories of state versus private ownership and empirical
            evidence on the impact of privatization in developing
            countries (including transition economies). The paper draws
            some lessons for policy and offers some suggestions on how
            to assess privatization, at least in countries where there
            is still scope for it. The paper suggests that although
            understanding of the efficiency gains of privatization has
            increased significantly in recent years, there is an
            important area about which little is known: the
            distributional effects of privatization. Whether arguing
            from the standpoint of welfare economics or political
            economy, distributional effects are critical to the outcome,
            or the perceived outcome, of privatization. Thus, there is a
            need to fully evaluate the ex ante and ex post impacts of
            privatization, the most effective types of regulation and
            ownership regimes, and the way in which losers, when there
            are any, can be compensated. This is a need that must be met
            by academics and development agencies, including the World
            Bank and regional development banks.
Pro-cyclical fiscal policy in
            brazil: evidence from the states
The empirical literature on budget
            cyclicality has generally focused more on assessing the
            degree of pro-cyclicality in federal (central government)
            revenues and expenditures and less on budget cyclicality at
            the sub-national level in multi-tiered systems. This paper
            attempts to contribute to the literature on budget
            cyclicality by examining how sub-national fiscal revenues
            and expenditures are linked to the business cycle in Brazil,
            particularly after the introduction of the Fiscal
            Responsibility Law. It explains the degree of
            pro-cyclicality across Brazilian states, and assesses
            whether intergovernmental transfers help to stabilize
            states finances. These issues are addressed using both a
            time-series and a cross-section dimension at the Brazilian
            state level for the period 1991-2006. The empirical evidence
            suggests the existence of a pro-cyclical fiscal policy in
            Brazil at the state level. However, the introduction of the
            Fiscal Responsibility Law helped to reduce Brazilian states
            spending-side pro-cyclicality. For the Brazilian states, the
            main source of the observed pro-cyclicality is found in the
            behavior of tax revenues directly collected by the state
            governments. Intergovernmental transfers (federal transfers
            to the states) are not associated with changes in gross
            state product, but they are pro-cyclically aligned with
            national gross domestic product, which could amplify the
            pro-cyclical behavior of sub-national expenditures.
Are irrigation rehabilitation
            projects good for poor farmers in Peru
This paper analyzes changes in
            agricultural production and economic welfare of farmers in
            rural Peru resulting from a large irrigation infrastructure
            rehabilitation project.  The analysis uses a ten-year
            district panel and a spatial regression discontinuity
            approach to measure the causal effect of the intervention.
            While general impacts are modest, the analysis shows that
            the project is progressive--poor farmers consistently
            benefit more than non-poor farmers.  Farmers living in
            districts with a rehabilitated irrigation site experience
            positive labor dynamics, in terms of income and agricultural
            jobs.  Poor farmers increase their total income by more than
            $220 per year compared with the control group, while rich
            farmers do not experience such an income gain.  The results
            also show crop specialization patterns in the economic
            status of farm households; poorer farm households increase
            their production of staple crops, such as beans and
            potatoes, while non-poor beneficiary farmers cultivate more
            industrial crops.  Findings from this evaluation have
            important implications for pro-poor policy design in the
            agricultural sector.
The margins of labor cost adjustment
            : survey evidence from European firms
Firms have multiple options at the time
            of adjusting their wage bills. However, previous literature
            has mainly focused on base wages. This paper broadens the
            analysis beyond downward rigidity in base wages by
            investigating the use of other margins of labor cost
            adjustment at the firm level. Using data from a unique
            survey, the authors find that firms make frequent use of
            other, more flexible, components of compensation to adjust
            the cost of labor. Changes in bonuses and non-pay benefits
            are some of the potential margins firms use to reduce costs.
            The paper also shows how the margins of adjustment chosen
            are affected by firm and worker characteristics.
Price elasticity of nonresidential
            demand for energy in south eastern Europe
Recent volatility in international
            energy prices has revealed South Eastern Europe as one of
            the most vulnerable regions to such external shocks. Under
            the current global economic downturn, in addition, the
            regions energy-intensive industries are faced with the
            challenge of the weakening demand for their outputs. This
            paper casts light on the relationship between the price and
            the demand for energy. Based on firm level data, it is shown
            that the price elasticity of industrial energy demand is
            about -0.4 on average. There are a number of data issues to
            interpret the results correctly. But Albania and Macedonia
            are systematically found to have a relatively elastic demand
            for energy on the order of -0.7 to -0.8. In these countries,
            therefore, price adjustments would be one of the effective
            policy options to balance demand with supply during the
            period of energy crisis. In other countries, the demand
            response would be much weaker; pricing cannot be the only
            solution. Other policy measures, such as facilitation of
            firm energy efficiency and improvements in the quality of
            infrastructure services, may be required.
Valuation effects with transitory
            and trend productivity shocks
In the past two decades, cross-border
            portfolio holdings of a large variety of assets have risen
            sharply. This has created an important role for changes in
            asset prices of a country's external assets and
            liabilities (i.e. "valuation effects") in
            affecting the country's net foreign asset position.
            Valuation effects are commonly thought as stabilizing: they
            counteract current account movements and mitigate the impact
            of the current account on the country's net foreign
            asset position. This paper shows that whether valuation
            effects are stabilizing or not depends critically on the
            nature of underlying productivity shocks. In response to
            transitory shocks, valuation effects are stabilizing; but in
            response to trend shocks, such effects amplify the impact of
            the current account on the net foreign asset position. These
            contrasting results arise because optimally smoothing
            consumers respond differently to a transitory shock than to
            a trend shock to income. The results are consistent with the
            pattern of external imbalances between the United States and
            other G.7 countries since the 1990s.
Potential benefits and risks of
            increased aid flows to Burundi
Burundi has experienced a significant
            increase in aid flows in recent years. Currently, about half
            of the budget is funded by aid, mostly grants. The high
            external assistance has, however, not yet translated into
            high and sustainable growth rates. This paper analyzes (i)
            the policy response of the government to the aid surge and
            its impact on macroeconomic variables; and (ii) the
            allocation of external assistance and its implications for
            growth. Since not all aid affects economic development in
            the same way, aid disbursements are disaggregated by sector
            as well as by their lag in impacting growth. The analysis
            shows that Burundi has mostly spent and absorbed increased
            aid flows, but has until now not suffered significantly from
            the possible negative effects of an appreciating exchange
            rate and the related loss of competitiveness, but the
            possibility of a Dutch disease effect remains a risk. The
            countrys low growth performance, despite high aid inflows,
            is not necessarily a sign that aid is ineffective or
            exceeding Burundis absorptive capacity. It reflects that a
            large share of aid has been allocated to either humanitarian
            and emergency aid or long-run growth enhancing sectors.
            Therefore, the lagged impact of aid on economic growth is
            not yet visible. Furthermore, the composition of the
            domestically financed budget is biased toward recurrent
            spending, and therefore not directly growth enhancing. In
            addition, low and often unpredictable aid disbursement
            ratios aggravate the bias away from investment and toward
            government consumption. To boost short-term growth, the
            share of aid allocated to productive sectors, such as
            agriculture and the supporting infrastructure, needs to be
            increased. Firm commitments and timely disbursements of aid
            by donors are essential and the Government of Burundi needs
            to strengthen its capacity and mechanisms for donor coordination.
Citizen-centric governance
            indicators : measuring and monitoring governance by
            listening to the people and not the interest groups
Governance indicators are now widely
            used as tools for conducting development dialogue,
            allocating external assistance, and influencing foreign
            direct investment. This paper argues that available
            governance indicators are not suitable for these purposes as
            they do not conceptualize governance and fail to capture how
            citizens perceive the governance environment and outcomes in
            their countries. The paper attempts to fill this void by
            conceptualizing governance and implementing a uniform and
            consistent framework for measuring governance quality across
            countries and over time based on citizens' evaluations.
            Using data from the World Values Survey (and other sources)
            we implement this framework into practice and build
            citizen-centric governance indicators for 120 countries over
            the period 1994 to 2005.
Earthquake propensity and the
            politics of mortality prevention
Governments can significantly reduce
            earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing
            quake-proof construction regulation. The authors examine why
            many governments do not. Contrary to intuition, controlling
            for the strength and location of actual earthquakes,
            mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake
            propensity, where the payoffs to mortality prevention are
            higher. Importantly, however, the government response to
            earthquake propensity depends on country income and the
            political incentives of governments to provide public goods
            to citizens. The opportunity costs of earthquake mortality
            prevention are higher in poorer countries; rich countries
            invest more in mortality prevention than poor countries in
            response to a higher earthquake propensity. Similarly,
            governments that have fewer incentives to provide public
            goods, such as younger democracies, autocracies with less
            institutionalized ruling parties and countries with corrupt
            regimes, respond less to an elevated quake propensity. They
            therefore have higher mortality at any level of quake
            propensity compared to older democracies, autocracies with
            highly institutionalized parties and non-corrupt regimes,
            respectively. The authors find robust evidence for these
            predictions in our analysis of earthquake mortality over the
            period 1960 to 2005.
Paying primary health care centers
            for performance in Rwanda
Paying for performance (P4P) provides
            financial incentives for providers to increase the use and
            quality of care. P4P can affect health care by providing
            incentives for providers to put more effort into specific
            activities, and by increasing the amount of resources
            available to finance the delivery of services. This paper
            evaluates the impact of P4P on the use and quality of
            prenatal, institutional delivery, and child preventive care
            using data produced from a prospective quasi-experimental
            evaluation nested into the national rollout of P4P in
            Rwanda. Treatment facilities were enrolled in the P4P scheme
            in 2006 and comparison facilities were enrolled two years
            later. The incentive effect is isolated from the resource
            effect by increasing comparison facilities' input-based
            budgets by the average P4P payments to the treatment
            facilities. The data were collected from 166 facilities and
            a random sample of 2158 households. P4P had a large and
            significant positive impact on institutional deliveries and
            preventive care visits by young children, and improved
            quality of prenatal care. The authors find no effect on the
            number of prenatal care visits or on immunization rates. P4P
            had the greatest effect on those services that had the
            highest payment rates and needed the lowest provider effort.
            P4P financial performance incentives can improve both the
            use of and the quality of health services. Because the
            analysis isolates the incentive effect from the resource
            effect in P4P, the results indicate that an equal amount of
            financial resources without the incentives would not have
            achieved the same gain in outcomes.
Formulas and flexibility in trade
            negotiations : sensitive agricultural products in the
            WTO's Doha agenda
Many trade negotiations involve large
            cuts in high tariffs, with flexibilities allowing much
            smaller cuts for an agreed number of politically-sensitive
            products. The effects of these flexibilities on market
            access opportunities are difficult to predict, creating
            particular problems for developing countries in assessing
            whether to support a proposed agreement. Some widely-used ad
            hoc approaches to identifying likely sensitive products --
            such as the highest-bound-tariff rule -- suggest that the
            impacts of a limited number of such exceptions on average
            tariffs and on market access are likely to be minor. This
            paper uses a rigorous specification based on the apparent
            objectives of policy makers in setting the pre-negotiation
            tariff. Applying this approach with detailed data allows the
            authors to assess the implications of sensitive-product
            provisions for average agricultural tariffs, economic
            welfare, and market access under the Doha negotiations. The
            authors conclude that highest-tariff rules are likely to
            seriously underestimate the impacts on average tariffs, and
            that treating even 2 percent of tariff lines as sensitive is
            likely to have a sharply adverse impact on economic welfare.
            The impacts on market access are also adverse, but much
            smaller, perhaps reflecting the mercantilist focus of the
            negotiating process.
What happens when the market shifts
            to China the Gabon timber and Thai cassava value chains
Rapid economic growth in China has
            boosted its demand for commodities. At the same time, many
            commodity sectors have experienced declining demand from
            high-income northern economies. This paper examines two
            hypotheses of the consequences of this shift in final
            markets for the organization of global value chains in
            general, and for the role played in them by southern
            producers in particular. The first is that there will be a
            decline in the importance of standards in global value
            chains. The second is that there will be increasing
            constraints in the ability of low-income producers to
            upgrade to higher value niches in their chains. Detailed
            case studies of the Thai cassava industry and the Gabon
            timber sector confirm both these hypotheses. It remains to
            be seen how widespread these trends are across other sectors.
The taxation of motor fuel :
            international comparison
This paper assesses whether the level of
            taxation of motor fuel is broadly appropriate in a group of
            countries (OECD, BRICs and South Africa) accounting for more
            than 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. The
            analysis deals with emissions from oil combustion in
            transport, which account for about 40 percent of carbon
            dioxide emissions. In the benchmark specification, six
            countries (responsible, in turn, for more than 40 percent of
            worldwide motor-fuel greenhouse gas world emissions) would
            be undertaxing motor fuel. The authors evaluate the
            sensitivity of the results to the values of the elasticities
            and externalities that used in the analysis. They find that
            varying the values of these parameters (within the level of
            uncertainty reasonably associated with them) significantly
            affects the results. This implies that, while informative,
            the results must be taken as indicative. Further analysis
            for a particular country must rely on a well-informed choice
            for the values of the country-specific parameters.