rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Caloric intake and energy
            expenditures in India
Total energy expenditures for the Indian
            population between 1983 and 2012 are estimated to shed light
            on the debate concerning falling measured caloric intake
            during the period (Deaton and Dre ze 2009). Anthropometric,
            time-use, and detailed employment surveys are used to
            estimate the separate components of total energy expenditure
            related to metabolism and physical activity levels. Despite
            a significant drop in adult physical activity levels, total
            energy expenditures are flat overall between 1983 and 2012.
            Rising metabolic requirements due to increases in weight
            dampened the effect of falling activity levels on total
            energy expenditure. In addition, the 10 percent decline in
            the population share of children in the period raised
            average total energy expenditures considerably as children
            have much lower metabolic requirements and activity levels
            than adults.
Estimating Capital Formation and
            Capital Stock by Economic Sector in China : The Implications
            for Productivity Growth
This paper aims to fill a gap in the
            literature on capital formation in China by estimating the
            capital stock in four economic sectors: business,
            infrastructure, government, and housing. Such a breakdown is
            necessary for the purpose of analysis of economic
            development in China, as the normal models of economic
            development are based on a competitive economy, which is
            clearly not the case for the country's infrastructure
            and government sectors. Moreover, the contribution of
            housing to gross domestic product in China is very poorly
            measured. Although the results of this analysis can only be
            approximate, as the required detailed information for a
            better estimate is not published, they nonetheless suggest
            that there has not been overinvestment in the Chinese
            business sector -- its capital-output ratio has risen only
            slightly over the past 40 years. Yet, there have been surges
            in the stocks of housing and infrastructure in the past
            decade. These sectors account nearly all the recent increase
            in the capital-output ratio in China.
Recent Trends in Bank Privatization
This paper revisits trends in bank
            privatization and analyzes their economic impact over the
            past 25 years. Building on a novel data set of privatization
            events for 70 developed and developing countries, it shows
            that bank privatization became more frequent since the
            Global Financial Crisis, especially in emerging markets such
            as China and India, but also smaller in that the fraction of
            a bank's ownership relinquished during privatization
            events declined. The majority of privatizations happened via
            public sales in domestic capital markets. The banks that
            were chosen to be privatized tended to underperform their
            peers and had weaker asset quality pre-privatization, but
            the empirical evidence on banks' post-privatization
            performance is mixed. The paper finds that privatized banks
            turn toward more traditional banking models and increase
            credit extension with no apparent negative distributional
            implications. However, the analysis does not reveal
            significant differences in bank profitability
            post-privatization, although differences exist between
            developed and developing countries. Notably, banks that have
            been recapitalized prior to privatization perform
            significantly better afterward privatization.
Contagious Protests
This paper explores the spillover of
            protests across countries using data on nonviolent and
            spontaneous demonstrations for 200 countries from 2000 to
            2020. Using an autoregressive spatial model, the analysis
            finds strong evidence of "contagious protests,"
            with a catalyzing role of social media. In particular,
            social media penetration in the source and destination of
            protests leads to protest spillovers between countries.
            There is evidence of parallel learning between streets of
            nations alongside the already documented learning between governments.
Coping with the Influx : Service
            Delivery to Syrian Refugees and Hosts in Jordan, Lebanon,
            and Kurdistan, Iraq
The Syrian crisis has led to rapid and
            large-scale population displacement. This paper uses several
            sources of data, including the United Nations Higher
            Commissioner for Refugees' registration database and
            multi-country, multi-topic surveys collected in 2015-16, to
            characterize service delivery in the context of a rapid
            influx of displaced populations. The study encompasses
            infrastructure services, such as electricity and garbage
            disposal, and social services, such as health and education,
            and considers both measures of access to services and their
            perceived quality.
Gender Empowerment, Supply-Chain
            Linkages and Foreign Direct Investment : Evidence on Bangladesh
This paper studies foreign direct
            investment spillovers on the gender-related labor market
            practices of domestic firms, based on a unique firm-to-firm
            data set of Bangladesh's textiles and garment sectors.
            The paper looks at the female employment of domestic firms
            that are directly and indirectly related to foreign direct
            investment firms through supply chain linkages. These
            domestic firms are either the local suppliers or customers
            of foreign direct investment firms, or they share local
            suppliers and customers with foreign direct investment
            firms. The estimates show that domestic firms related to
            foreign direct investment firms have significantly more
            female administrative workers, but not necessarily female
            non-administrative workers, due to the former participating
            in more firm-to-firm interactions.
The Information Content of Capital Controls
Capital controls, policy measures used
            by governments to regulate cross-country financial flows,
            have become standard policy options in many emerging market
            economies. This paper will focus on what capital controls
            reveal about the state of the economy and the implications
            of such revelation for policy efficacy. Using a small open
            economy model with a collateral constraint and overborrowing
            relative to the social optimum, this paper incorporates a
            representative agent's Bayesian updating of information
            in response to change in policy and show that the efficacy
            of capital controls to contain financial crises and improve
            welfare could be undermined if the agent rationally learns
            from policy. Empirically, this paper finds that capital
            controls convey important information market participants
            use to improve their understanding of fundamentals. This
            paper highlights the need for policymakers to consider the
            unintended consequences of information revelation in the
            design of capital flow management policies.
Slow Rockets and Fast Feathers or
            the Link between Exchange Rates and Exports : A Case Study
            for Pakistan
Export responses to real exchange rate
            (RER) depreciations in Pakistan are lower than those to
            appreciations. This paper empirically documents this
            asymmetric response using macro-level data. It then relies
            on a disaggregated export product–level data set for 2003-17
            to test, within a panel fixed-effects framework, three
            hypotheses explaining the low export response to
            depreciations, focusing on information costs, supply
            constraints, and pricing to market. The analysis finds that
            (i) exports of differentiated products grow more slowly when
            the RER depreciates than they fall when it appreciates; (ii)
            exports from sectors with relatively greater supply
            constraints -- in particular related to accessing finance-
            respond less to depreciations than to appreciations; and
            (iii) dollar prices for Pakistani exports tend to fall after
            nominal depreciations of the Pakistani rupee, in violation
            of the Dominant Currency Paradigm and consistent with
            pricing-to-market behavior, further accounting for the low
            response of exports to RER depreciations.
Banking Sector Performance During
            the COVID-19 Crisis
This paper analyzes bank stock prices
            around the world to assess the impact of the COVID-19
            pandemic on the banking sector. Using a global database of
            policy responses during the crisis, the paper also examines
            the role of financial sector policy announcements on the
            performance of bank stocks. Overall, the results suggest
            that the crisis and the countercyclical lending role that
            banks are expected to play have put banking systems under
            significant stress, with bank stocks underperforming their
            domestic markets and other non-bank financial firms. The
            effectiveness of policy interventions has been mixed.
            Measures of liquidity support, borrower assistance, and
            monetary easing moderated the adverse impact of the crisis,
            but this is not true for all banks or in all circumstances.
            For example, borrower assistance and prudential measures
            exacerbated the stress for banks that are already
            undercapitalized and/or operate in countries with little
            fiscal space. These vulnerabilities will need to be
            carefully monitored as the pandemic continues to take a toll
            on the world’s economies.
Autonomy and Specificity in
            Agricultural Technology Adoption : Evidence from Mexico
This paper explores heterogeneity in
            soil quality, lack of knowledge, and autonomy as
            explanations for the low adoption of improved agricultural
            practices. The paper uses data from a randomized field
            experiment that combined localized soil analyses, tailored
            input recommendations, extension services, and an in-kind
            grant. The analysis finds that while neither the degree of
            recommendation specificity (plot versus cluster level) nor
            the extent of autonomy (defined as the freedom of choice in
            spending the in-kind grant) had any effect on adoption
            during the intervention, farmers with autonomy had
            substantially higher adoption of improved practices two
            years after the intervention ended.
Returns to Education in the Russian
            Federation : Some New Estimates
This paper presents new estimates of the
            returns to education in the Russian Federation using data
            from 1994 to 2018. Although the returns to schooling
            increased for a time, they are now much lower than the
            global average. Private returns to education are three times
            greater for higher education compared with vocational
            education, and the returns to education for females are
            higher than for males. Returns for females show an inverse
            U-shaped curve over the past two decades. Female education
            is a policy priority and there is a need to investigate the
            labor market relevance of vocational education. Higher
            education may have reached an expansion limit, and it may be
            necessary to investigate options for increasing the
            productivity of schooling.
How Useful is CPI Price Data for
            Spatial Price Adjustment in Poverty Measurement : A Case
            from Ghana
Measuring and comparing the levels of
            household welfare and poverty in a country require
            cost-of-living differences across regions to be properly
            adjusted. In measuring the spatial cost of living, the
            recent literature underscores the importance of detailed
            product quality information in the price data. Taking
            advantage of the price data availability in Ghana, this case
            study explores the Consumer Price Index price data as a
            source for spatial price measurement. It applies the country
            product dummy method to the Consumer Price Index price data
            and compares the results with other methods based on
            different price data. The empirical analysis indicates a
            potential bias in estimating spatial prices stemming from
            the lack of product quality information and, therefore,
            suggests the potential usefulness of the Consumer Price
            Index price data for spatial price adjustment in poverty
            analysis in low- and middle-income countries.
What is the Impact of Weather Shocks
            on Prices : Evidence from Ethiopia
The impact of drought on household
            welfare is the cumulative effect of crop losses and price
            changes in a local economy that are triggered by these
            initial losses. This paper combines data on monthly grain
            prices and wages in 82 retail markets over 17 years with
            data on district-level weather shocks to quantify the impact
            of drought on local prices and how this impact varies by
            month after harvest. The results show that price increases
            occur immediately after the completion of harvest and then
            dissipate so that inflationary effects are quite low during
            the lean season, contrary to commonly held views. The impact
            of shocks on prices is quite low now in Ethiopia -- 4
            percent at its peak post-2005 compared with 12 percent
            before 2005. In areas of the country where infrastructure
            investments have been high, there is now almost no
            inflationary impact of drought on prices. It is not clear
            whether it is infrastructure investments or something else
            that has driven that, but it shows that it is possible for
            rainfall shocks to have no inflationary impacts in low
            income economies. Inflationary impacts were also reduced
            more in districts where the Productive Safety Net Program
            was introduced. Comparing inflationary effects in districts
            with food versus cash transfers suggests that cash transfers
            do not have inflationary effects on grain prices during
            times of drought.
Making Gravity Great Again
The gravity model is now widely used for
            policy analysis and hypothesis testing, but different
            estimators give sharply different parameter estimates and
            popular estimators are likely biased because dependent
            variables are limited-dependent, error variances are
            nonconstant and missing data frequently reported as zeros.
            Monte Carlo analysis based on real-world parameters for
            aggregate trade shows that the traditional Ordinary Least
            Squares estimator in logarithms is strongly biased
            downwards. The popular Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood
            model also suffers from downward bias. An Eaton-Kortum
            maximum-likelihood approach dealing with the identified
            sources of bias provides unbiased parameter estimates.
Long-Term Effects of Free Primary
            Education on Educational Achievement : Evidence from Lesotho
Many Sub-Saharan African countries have
            instituted free primary education policies, and this has led
            to a significant increase in the primary school enrollment
            rate. However, many children who are in school are not
            learning. It is not clear whether free primary education
            policies have contributed to the decline in the quality of
            education and whether these learning effects are
            long-lasting. This paper addresses the latter question and
            estimates the long-term effects of free primary education on
            educational achievement in Lesotho where the program was
            phased-in on a grade-by-grade basis, beginning with grade
            one in 2000. The timing of the implementation created
            changes in program coverage across age (and grade) groups
            over time. A semiparametric difference-in-differences
            strategy is employed that exploits these variations to
            identify the long-term effects of the free primary education
            policy on educational achievement, using university
            examinations records data for student cohorts with and
            without free primary education. The results indicate that
            the effect of free primary education on academic performance
            is bounded between 2 and 19 percentage points, implying that
            the program increased enrollment without hurting education quality.
Small Business Training to Improve
            Management Practices in Developing Countries: Reassessing
            the Evidence for 'Training Doesn’t Work'
Despite the popularity of business
            training among policy makers, the use of business training
            has faced increasing skepticism. This is, in part, fueled by
            the fact that most of the first wave of randomized
            experiments in developing countries could not detect
            statistically significant impacts of training on firms'
            profits or sales. This paper revisits and reassesses the
            evidence for whether small business training works,
            incorporating the results of more recent studies. A
            meta-analysis of these estimates suggests that training
            increases profits and sales on average by 5 to 10 percent.
            The author argues that this is in line with what is
            optimistic to expect given the relatively short length of
            most training programs, and the expected return on
            investment from the cost of such training. However, impacts
            of this magnitude are too small for most experiments to
            detect statistically. Emerging evidence is provided on five
            approaches for improving the effectiveness of traditional
            training by incorporating gender, kaizen methods,
            localization and mentoring, heuristics, and psychology.
            Training programs that incorporate these elements appear to
            deliver improvements over traditional training programs on
            average, although with considerable variation. Given that
            training delivers some benefits for firms, the challenge is
            then how to deliver a quality program on a cost-effective
            basis at a much larger scale. Three possible approaches to
            scaling up training are discussed:  using the market, using
            technology, or targeting and funneling firms.
Stochastic Modeling of Food Insecurity
Recent advances in food insecurity
            classification have made analytical approaches to predict
            and inform response to food crises possible. This paper
            develops a predictive, statistical framework to identify
            drivers of food insecurity risk with simulation capabilities
            for scenario analyses, risk assessment and forecasting
            purposes. It utilizes a panel vector-autoregression to model
            food insecurity distributions of 15 Sub-Saharan African
            countries between October 2009 and February 2019.
            Statistical variable selection methods are employed to
            identify the most important agronomic, weather, conflict and
            economic variables. The paper finds that food insecurity
            dynamics are asymmetric and past-dependent, with low
            insecurity states more likely to transition to high
            insecurity states than vice versa. Conflict variables are
            more relevant for dynamics in highly critical stages, while
            agronomic and weather variables are more important for less
            critical states. Food prices are predictive for all cases. A
            Bayesian extension is introduced to incorporate expert
            opinions through the use of priors, which lead to
            significant improvements in model performance.
Modeling and Predicting the Spread
            of Covid-19: Comparative Results for the United States, the
            Philippines, and South Africa
A model of Covid-19 transmission among
            locations within a country has been developed that is (1)
            implementable anywhere spatially-disaggregated Covid-19
            infection data are available; (2) scalable for locations of
            different sizes, from individual regions to countries of
            continental scale; (3) reliant solely on data that are free
            and open to public access; (4) grounded in a rigorous,
            proven methodology; and (5) capable of forecasting future
            hotspots with enough accuracy to provide useful alerts.
            Applications to the United States, the Philippines, and
            South Africa's Western Cape province demonstrate the
            model's usefulness. The model variables include
            indicators of interactions among infected residents, locally
            and at a greater distance, with infection dynamics captured
            by a Gompertz growth model.  The model results for all three
            countries suggest that local infection growth is affected by
            the scale of infections in relatively distant places.
            Forecasts of hotspots 14 and 28 days in advance, using only
            information available on the first day of the forecast,
            indicate an imperfect but nonetheless informative
            identification of actual hotspots.