rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Estimating the gravity model when
            zero trade flows are frequent and economically determined
This paper evaluates the performance of
            alternative estimators of the gravity equation when zero
            trade flows result from economically-based data-generating
            processes with heteroscedastic residuals and
            potentially-omitted variables. In a standard Monte Carlo
            analysis, the paper finds that this combination can create
            seriously biased estimates in gravity models with
            frequencies of zero frequently observed in real-world data,
            and that Poisson Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood models can be
            important in solving this problem. Standard threshold–Tobit
            estimators perform well in a Tobit-based data-generating
            process only if the analysis deals with the
            heteroscedasticity problem. When the data are generated by a
            Heckman sample selection model, the Zero-Inflated Poisson
            model appears to have the lowest bias. When the data are
            generated by a Helpman, Melitz, and Rubinstein-type model
            with heterogeneous firms, a Zero-Inflated Poisson estimator
            including firm numbers appears to provide the best results.
            Testing on real-world data for total trade  throws up
            additional puzzles with truncated Poisson
            Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood and Poisson
            Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood estimators being very similar, and
            Zero-Inflated Poisson and truncated Poisson
            Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood identical. Repeating the Monte
            Carlo analysis taking into account the high frequency of
            very small predicted trade flows in real-world data
            reconciles these findings and leads to specific
            recommendations for estimators.
Small firms’ formalization : the
            stick treatment
Firm informality is pervasive throughout
            the developing world, Bangladesh being no exception. The
            informal status of many firms substantially reduces the tax
            basis and therefore impacts the provision of public goods.
            The literature on encouraging formalization has
            predominantly focused on reducing the direct costs of
            formalization and has found negligible impacts of such
            policies. This paper focuses on a stick intervention, which
            to the best of the knowledge of the authors is the first one
            in a developing country setting that deals with the most
            direct and dominant form of informality, i.e. registration
            with the tax authority with a direct link to the
            country's potential revenue base and thus public goods
            provision. The paper implements an experiment in which firms
            are visited by tax representatives who deliver an official
            letter from the Bangladesh National Tax Authority stating
            that the firm is not registered and the consequential
            punishment if the firm fails to register. The paper finds
            that the intervention increases the rate of registration
            among treated firms, while firms located in the same market
            but not treated do not seem to respond significantly. The
            paper also finds that only larger revenue firms at baseline
            respond to the threat and register. These findings have at
            least two important policy implications: i. the enforcement
            angle, which could be an important tool to encourage
            formalization; and ii. targeting of government resources for
            formalization to the high-end informal firms. The effects
            are generally small in levels and this leaves open the
            question of why many firms still do not register.
Community managed forest groups and
            preferences for REDD contract attributes: a choice
            experiment survey of communities in Nepal : Community
            managed forest groups and preferences for REDD+ contract
            attributes: a choice experiment survey of communities in Nepal
A significant portion of the world’s
            forests that are eligible for Reducing Emission from
            Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD ,
            payments are community managed forests. However, there is
            little knowledge about preferences of households living in
            community managed forests for REDD  contracts, or the
            opportunity costs of accepting REDD  contracts for these
            communities. This paper uses a choice experiment survey of
            rural communities in Nepal to understand respondents’
            preferences toward the institutional structure of REDD
            contracts. The sample is split across communities with
            community managed forests groups and those without community
            managed forest groups to see how prior involvement in
            community managed forest groups affects preferences. The
            results show that respondents care about how the payments
            are divided between households and communities, the severity
            of restrictions on firewood use, the restrictions on
            grazing, and the fairness of access to community managed
            forest resources as well as the level of payments. The
            preferences for REDD contracts are in general similar
            between community managed and non-community managed forest
            resource respondents, but there are differences, in
            particular with regard to how beliefs influence the
            likelihood of accepting the contracts. Finally, the paper
            finds that the opportunity cost of REDD  payments, although
            cheaper than many other carbon dioxide abatement options, is
            higher than previously suggested in the literature.
Do improved biomass cookstoves
            reduce fuelwood consumption and carbon emissions evidence
            from rural Ethiopia using a randomized treatment trial with
            electronic monitoring
This paper uses a randomized
            experimental design with real-time electronic stove
            temperature measurements and controlled cooking tests to
            estimate the fuelwood and carbon dioxide savings from an
            improved cookstove program in the process of being
            implemented in rural Ethiopia. Knowing more about how
            households interact with improved cookstoves is important,
            because cooking uses a majority of the fuelwood in the
            country and therefore is an important determinant of
            greenhouse gas emissions and indoor air pollution. Creating
            local networks among stove users generally appears to
            increase fuelwood savings, and among monetary treatments the
            most robust positive effects come from free distribution.
            The paper estimates that on average one improved stove saves
            approximately 634 kilograms of fuelwood per year or about
            0.94 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, which is
            about half of previous estimates. Using the May 2015
            California auction price of $13.39/ton, the carbon
            sequestration from each stove deployed is worth about
            $12.59. Such carbon market offset revenues would be
            sufficient to cover the cost of the stove within one year.
Women left behind poverty and
            headship in Africa
This paper is motivated by two stylized
            facts about poverty in Africa: female-headed households tend
            to be poorer, and poverty has been falling in the aggregate
            since the 1990s.  These facts raise two questions: How have
            female-headed households fared? And what role have they
            played in Africa's impressive recent aggregate growth
            and poverty reduction? Using data covering the entire
            region, the paper reexamines the current prevalence and
            characteristics of female-headed households, and asks
            whether their prevalence has been rising over time, what
            factors have been associated with such changes since the
            mid-1990s, and whether poverty has fallen
            equi-proportionately for male- and female-headed households.
            Rising gross domestic product has dampened rising female
            headship. However, other subtle transformations occurring
            across Africa—changes in marriage behavior, family
            formation, health, and education—have put upward pressure on
            female headship, with the result that the share of
            female-headed households has been growing. This has been
            happening alongside declining aggregate poverty incidence.
            However, rather than being left behind, female-headed
            households have generally seen faster poverty reduction. As
            a whole, this group has contributed almost as much to the
            reduction in poverty as male-headed households, despite the
            smaller share of female-headed households in the population.
Using national statistics to
            increase transparency of large land acquisition : evidence
            from Ethiopia
The 2007/08 commodity price boom
            triggered a ‘rush’ for land in developing countries. Yet,
            many affected countries lacked the regulatory infrastructure
            to cope with such demand and reliable data on investors’
            performance. This study uses the example of Ethiopia to show
            how simple improvements in administrative data collection
            can help to address this by (i) allowing assessment of the
            productivity of land use and taking measures to increase it;
            (ii) comparing productivity between large and small farms to
            identify spillovers and ways to improve these; and (iii)
            setting in motion a process of continuing improvement.
            Implications for global investment in this area are drawn out.
Hukou and highways : the impact of
            China’s spatial development policies on urbanization and
            regional inequality
China has used two main spatial policies
            to shape its geographic patterns of development: restricted
            labor mobility through the Hukou residential registration
            system and massive infrastructure investment, notably a
            96,000 kilometer national expressway network. This paper
            develops a structural new economic geography model to
            examine the impacts of these policies. Fitting the model to
            available data allows simulating counterfactual scenarios
            comparing each policy’s respective impact on regional
            economic development and urbanization patterns across China.
            The results suggest large overall economic benefits from
            constructing the national expressway network and abolishing
            the Hukou system. Yet, the spatial impacts of the two
            policies are very different. The construction of the
            national expressway network reinforced existing urbanization
            patterns. The initially lagging regions not connected to the
            network have not benefitted much from its construction. By
            contrast, removal of the Hukou restrictions, which Chinese
            policy makers are considering, would result in much more
            widespread welfare gains, allowing everyone to gain by
            moving to where he or she is most productive. Removal of the
            Hukou restrictions would also promote urbanization in
            currently lagging (inland) regions, mostly by stimulating
            rural to urban migration.
Pyramid capitalism : political
            connections, regulation, and firm productivity in Egypt
This paper uses an original database of
            469 politically connected firms under the Mubarak regime in
            Egypt to explore the economic effects of close
            state-business relations. Previous research has shown that
            political connections are lucrative. The paper addresses
            several questions raised by this research. Do connected
            firms receive favorable regulatory treatment? They do:
            connected firms are more likely to benefit from trade
            protection, energy subsidies, access to land, and regulatory
            enforcement. Does regulatory capture account for the high
            value of connected firms? In the sample, regulatory capture
            as revealed by energy subsidies and trade protection account
            for the higher profits of politically connected firms. Do
            politically connected firms hurt aggregate growth? The paper
            identifies the growth effects of the entry of politically
            connected firms by comparing detailed 4-digit sectors where
            they entered, between 1996 and 2006, and sectors that
            remained unconnected. The entry of connected firms into new,
            modern, and previously unconnected sectors slows aggregate
            employment growth and skews the distribution of employment
            toward less productive, smaller firms.
Electoral rules and political
            selection : theory and evidence from a field experiment in Afghanistan
Voters commonly face a choice between
            competent candidates and those with policy preferences
            similar to their own. This paper explores how electoral
            rules, such as district magnitude, mediate this trade-off
            and affect the composition of representative bodies and
            policy outcomes. The paper shows formally that anticipation
            of bargaining over policy causes voters in elections with
            multiple single-member districts to prefer candidates with
            polarized policy positions over more competent candidates.
            Results from a unique field experiment in Afghanistan are
            consistent with these predictions. Specifically,
            representatives elected in elections with a single
            multi-member district are better educated and exhibit less
            extreme policy preferences.
Estimating poverty with panel data,
            comparably : an example from Jordan
Poverty estimates based on enumeration
            from a single point in time form the cornerstone for much of
            the literature on poverty. Households are typically
            interviewed once about their consumption or income, and
            their wellbeing is assessed from their responses. Global
            estimates of poverty that aggregate poverty counts from all
            countries implicitly assume that the counts are comparable.
            This paper illustrates that this assumption of comparability
            is potentially invalid when households are interviewed
            multiple times with repeat visits throughout the year. The
            paper provides an example from Jordan, where the
            internationally comparable approach of handling the data
            from repeat visits yields a poverty rate that is 26 percent
            greater than the rate that is currently reported as the
            official estimate. The paper also explores alternative
            definitions of poverty, informed in part by the
            psychological and biophysical literature on the long-run
            effects of short-term exposure to poverty or generally
            adverse environments.  This alternative concept of poverty
            suggests that the prevalence of those who have been affected
            by poverty in Jordan during 2010 is more than twice as large
            as the official 2010 estimate of poverty.
Does longer compulsory education
            equalize schooling by gender and rural/urban residence
This study examines the effects of the
            extension of compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years in
            Turkey in 1997—which involved substantial investment in
            school infrastructure—on schooling outcomes and, in
            particular, on the equality of these outcomes between men
            and women, and urban and rural residents using the Turkish
            Demographic and Health Surveys. This policy is peculiar
            because it also changes the sheepskin effects (signaling
            effects) of schooling, through its redefinition of the
            schooling tiers. The policy is also interesting due to its
            large spillover effects on post-compulsory schooling as well
            as its remarkable overall effect; for instance, we find that
            the completed years of schooling by age 17 increases by 1.5
            years for rural women. The policy equalizes the educational
            attainment of urban and rural children substantially. The
            urban-rural gap in the completed years of schooling at age
            17 falls by 0.5 years for men and by 0.7 to 0.8 years for
            women. However, there is no evidence of a narrowing gender
            gap with the policy. On the contrary, the gender gap in
            urban areas in post-compulsory schooling widens.
Identifying and spurring high-growth
            entrepreneurship : experimental evidence from a business
            plan competition
Almost all firms in developing countries
            have fewer than 10 workers, with the modal firm consisting
            of just the owner. Are there potential high-growth
            entrepreneurs with the ability to grow their firms beyond
            this size? And, if so, can public policy help alleviate the
            constraints that prevent these entrepreneurs from doing so?
            A large-scale national business plan competition in Nigeria
            is used to help provide evidence on these two questions. The
            competition was launched with much fanfare, and attracted
            almost 24,000 entrants. Random assignment was used to select
            some of the winners from a pool of semi-finalists, with
            US$36 million in randomly allocated grant funding providing
            each winner with an average of almost US$50,000. Surveys
            tracking applicants over three years show that winning the
            business plan competition leads to greater firm entry,
            higher survival of existing businesses, higher profits and
            sales, and higher employment, including increases of over 20
            percentage points in the likelihood of a firm having 10 or
            more workers. These effects appear to occur largely through
            the grants enabling firms to purchase more capital and hire
            more labor.
The impact of an accountability
            intervention with diagnostic feedback : evidence from Mexico
In 2009, the Mexican state of Colima
            implemented a low-stakes accountability intervention with
            diagnostic feedback among 108 public primary schools with
            the lowest test scores in the national student assessment. A
            difference-in-difference and a regression discontinuity
            design are used to identify the effects of the intervention
            on learning outcomes. The two alternative strategies
            consistently show that the intervention increased test
            scores by 0.12 standard deviations only a few months after
            the program was launched. When students, teachers, and
            parents in a school know that their scores are low, and this
            triggers a process of self-evaluation and analysis, the
            process itself may lead to an improvement in learning
            outcomes. Information on quality, without punitive measures
            but within a supportive and collaborative environment,
            appears to be sufficient to improve learning outcomes.
Nowcasting prices using Google
            trends : an application to Central America
The objective of this study is to assess
            the possibility of using Internet search keyword data for
            forecasting price series in Central America, focusing on
            Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras. The Internet search
            data comes from Google Trends. The paper introduces these
            data and discusses some of the challenges inherent in
            working with it in the context of developing countries. A
            new index is introduced for consumer search behavior for
            these countries using Google Trends data covering a two-week
            period during a single month. For each country, the study
            estimates one-step-ahead forecasts for several dozen price
            series for food and consumer goods categories. The study
            finds that the addition of the Internet search index
            improves forecasting over benchmark models in about 20
            percent of the series. The paper discusses the reasons for
            the varied success and potential avenues for future research.
Gender gap in pay in the Russian
            Federation : twenty years later, still a concern
This paper decomposes the gender gap in
            pay in the Russian Federation along the earnings
            distribution for the period 1996–2011. The analysis uses a
            reweighted, recentered influence function decomposition that
            allows estimating the contribution of each covariate on the
            wage structure and composition effects along the earnings
            distribution. The paper finds that women are in flat career
            paths compared with men; the importance of observable
            characteristics that proxy human capital in the gender pay
            gap decrease along the earnings distribution; and if women’s
            pay took into account their educational degrees as much as
            men’s, the gender pay gap would disappear or even reverse at
            the top of the earnings distribution. The results suggest
            that women at the bottom of the earnings distribution should
            be helped to increase their labor market skills, and women
            at the top of the distribution should be helped to break the
            glass ceiling and be remunerated for their skills to the
            same extent as men.
Recasting Culture to Undo Gender : A
            Sociological Analysis of Jeevika in Rural Bihar, India :
            Recasting culture to undo gender : a sociological analysis
            of Jeevika in rural Bihar, India
This paper brings together sociological
            theories of culture and gender to answer the question – how
            do large-scale development interventions induce cultural
            change? Through three years of ethnographic work in rural
            Bihar, the authors examine this question in the context of
            Jeevika, a World Bank-assisted poverty alleviation project
            targeted at women, and find support for an integrative view
            of culture. The paper argues that Jeevika created new
            “cultural configurations” by giving economically and
            socially disadvantaged women access to a well-defined
            network of people and new systems of knowledge, which
            changed women’s habitus and broke down normative
            restrictions constitutive of the symbolic boundary of gender.