rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Vulnerabilities of Networked Energy
            Infrastructure : A Primer
Considerable work has been done to
            understand and improve the resilience of individual
            infrastructure components. However, systems of components,
            or even systems of systems, are far less well understood.
            Cascade effects, where the loss of one infrastructure
            affects others, is a major source of vulnerability which can
            lead to catastrophic disruptions of essential services.
            Interdependencies can also lead to large-scale failures when
            even a single component is disrupted and results in
            'cascading' failures within and between networks.
            This is particularly true for power systems, as many other
            lifeline infrastructure systems rely on electricity. In this
            study we review the literature and give a primer on the
            vulnerabilities of networked energy infrastructure. Several
            recurrent themes emerge from across different systems: (1)
            Electricity is essential for many lifeline infrastructure
            systems to function; (2) Electrical distribution systems are
            particularly vulnerable to disruption from natural and
            manmade hazards; (3) Highly networked systems can be
            unstable even when their individual components are
            functioning as intended; (4) Redundancy and network density
            can increase reliability but also increase the likelihood of
            cascade effects when failures do occur; (5) Disruption of
            ports and roads can limit fuel supplies for generators and
            replacement components. Based on these insights, this study
            offers suggestions for further research and policy actions.
Informality, Harassment, and
            Corruption : Evidence from Informal Enterprise Data from
            Harare, Zimbabwe
New representative survey data for
            Harare, Zimbabwe are used to analyze the conditions under
            which informal businesses encounter requests for bribes. A
            simple model develops basic expectations of bribe exposure:
            those with higher opportunity costs of formalizing and with
            a higher ability to pay (resources) are expected to face a
            higher bribe risk. Empirical results find that informal
            businesses operating out of necessity are likelier to have a
            bribe demanded of them. Robustness checks are performed to
            account for the endogeneity of the main regressors, through
            a bivariate probit specification, using an instrumental
            variable of whether an informal business owner started in
            the area of activity before the country's 2009
            dollarization. Limited significant results are found for the
            effect of revenues (ability to pay).
Welfare Impact of Value-Added Tax
            Reform : The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo
The adoption of the value-added tax the
            Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012 led to price increases
            that are thought to adversely affect the welfare of most
            Congolese households. To date, research has not yet examined
            the poverty and distributional impacts of this tax reform.
            Using data from the 2012 Living Standards Measurement
            Survey, this paper investigates whether the current
            value-added tax regime, with its exemptions, is progressive.
            Relying on the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System and
            several welfare measures, the analysis finds that the
            adoption of the value-added tax erodes the purchasing power
            of all Congolese households by a factor of 10 to 12 percent.
            Yet, the value-added tax appears to be highly progressive.
            Households in the top food expenditure quintile bears
            approximately 40 percent of the welfare loss compared with
            less than 10 percent among households in the bottom food
            expenditure quintile. Other inequality measures, such as the
            Gini coefficient, further support this finding that the
            value-added tax is progressive. Finally, the study finds
            that the adoption of the value-added tax leads to a
            worsening of the food poverty headcount by approximately 1.2
            percentage points.
Stability and Evolution of
            Preferences for Improved Cookstoves -- A
            Difference-in-Difference Analysis of a Choice Experiment
            from Ethiopia
There is a growing effort in the
            non-market valuation literature toward better understanding
            of the stability and evolution of preferences over time. The
            study uses a novel approach combining a repeated choice
            experiment with a randomized controlled trial on stove
            adoption in Ethiopia to analyze the stability and evolution
            of preferences. The treatment group in the randomized
            controlled trial received an improved fuelwood stove with
            less fuelwood use, whereas the control group continued to
            use traditional cooking methods. Respondents were given the
            exact same choice questions in 2013 and 2016. The study
            began with 504 households in 36 communities in 2013, and 486
            of the same households participated in 2016 (a 96 percent
            retention rate). The results show that preferences of the
            respondents from the control group are stable over the study
            period, while preferences of the respondents from the
            treatment group evolve. Moreover, households in the
            treatment group still using the stoves have significantly
            higher willingness to pay for all the stove's
            attributes in 2016 compared with 2013, indicating how longer
            experience can increase the willingness to pay for
            technology with environmentally preferable attributes.
Impacts of Improved Biomass
            Cookstoves on Child and Adult Health : Experimental Evidence
            from Rural Ethiopia
This paper presents the three-year
            impacts of an improved biomass cookstove on child and adult
            health in rural Ethiopia. After near complete stove adoption
            during an initial one-year randomized controlled trial, 60
            percent of treatment households continued to use the
            improved stoves three-years on and experienced reductions in
            hazardous airborne particulate matter. The study finds that
            treatment status is associated with a precisely estimated
            0.3-0.4 standard deviation improvement in height-for-age of
            young children exposed during their first years of life,
            compared with a control group of households that never used
            the improved stove.  This is a substantial effect with
            implications for greater health and well-being throughout
            the life course. However, the study finds no changes in the
            respiratory symptoms or physical functioning of older
            children and adult cooks in treated households relative to
            control households. The results advance understanding of the
            health impacts of hazardous air pollution while also
            refining the design and implementation options for
            interventions geared toward improving well-being in similar environments.
Do Improved Biomass Cookstoves
            Reduce PM2.5 Concentrations If So, for Whom Empirical
            Evidence from Rural Ethiopia
Improved biomass cookstoves have been
            promoted as important intermediate technologies to reduce
            fuelwood consumption and possibly cut household air
            pollution in low-income countries. This study uses a
            randomized controlled trial to examine household air
            pollution reductions from an improved biomass cookstove
            promoted in rural Ethiopia, the Mirt improved cookstove.
            This stove is used to bake injera, which is very energy
            intensive and has a very particular cooking profile. In the
            overall sample, the Mirt improved cookstove leads to only
            minor reductions in mean household air pollution (10 percent
            on average). However, for those who bake injera in their
            main living areas, the Mirt improved cookstove reduces
            average mean household air pollution by 64 percent and
            median household air pollution by 78 percent -- although the
            resulting household air pollution levels are still many
            times greater than the World Health Organization's
            guideline. These large percentage reductions may reflect
            decreased emissions due to less use of fuelwood, given
            Mirt's energy-efficient design, and the likelihood that
            higher-emissions three-stone cooking is moved outside the
            main living area once a Mirt improved cookstove is
            installed.  Households in the subsample who experience a
            greater decline in household air pollution tend to be less
            wealthy and more remotely located and burn less-preferred
            biomass fuels, like agricultural waste and animal dung, than
            households that cook in a separate area.
Learning to Grow from Peers :
            Experimental Evidence from Small Retailers in Indonesia
Business practices and performance vary
            widely among local peers. This paper identifies key
            determinants of such heterogeneity among a sample of small
            urban retail shops in Indonesia, and experimentally tests
            whether learning about the best practices of local peers is
            valuable for business growth. Through extensive baseline
            quantitative and qualitative fieldwork, the study develops a
            handbook that associates specific business practices with
            performance and provides detailed implementation guidance
            informed by exemplary local shop owners. Instead of offering
            formal training or in-depth counseling, this handbook is
            simply distributed to a randomly selected sample of shop
            owners and complemented with three experiential learning
            modules:  one group is invited to watch a documentary video
            on experiences of highly successful peers, another is
            offered light in-shop assistance on the implementation of
            the handbook, and a third group is offered both. Eighteen
            months after the intervention, the study finds no effect of
            offering the handbook alone, but significant impact on
            practice adoption when the handbook is coupled with
            experiential learning. On business performance, the study
            finds sizable and significant improvements as well, up to an
            increase of 35 percent in profits and an increase of 16.7
            percent in revenues. The types of practices adopted map
            these performance improvements to efficiency gains rather
            than other channels. The analysis suggests that these
            interventions are simple, scalable, and highly cost-effective.
A Novel Downside Risk Measure and
            Expected Returns
Several studies have found that the
            cross-section of stock returns reflects a risk premium for
            bearing downside risk; however, existing measures of
            downside risk have poor power for predicting returns.
            Therefore, this paper proposes a novel measure of downside
            risk, the ES-implied beta, to improve the prediction of the
            cross-section of asset returns. The ES-implied beta explains
            stock returns over the same period as well as the widely
            used downside beta, but also has strong predictive power
            over future returns. In the empirical analysis, although the
            widely used downside beta shows a weak relation with future
            expected returns, the ES-implied beta implies a
            statistically and economically significant risk premium of
            0.5 percent per month. The predictive power of the
            ES-implied beta is not explained by the cross-sectional
            effects from the CAPM beta, size, book-to-market ratio,
            momentum, coskewness, cokurtosis or liquidity beta, nor does
            it depend on the design of the empirical analysis.
Market Power and the Transmission of
            Loan Subsidies : Winners and Losers When Private Banks
            Distribute Government Loans : Evidence from Earmarked Credit
            in Brazil
A common strategy to improve access to
            credit and mitigate the effects from large financial shocks
            is to channel public funds to firms via private banks at
            regulated interest rates. Using comprehensive loan-level
            data from Brazil, the authors study how government loan
            subsidies are transmitted (or not) to targeted firms when
            banks exert market power. They conjecture that banks with
            greater market power circumvent the interest rate ceiling by
            increasing the price of other products to firms that receive
            subsidized loans. The results of this analysis have
            important policy implications for the design and
            effectiveness of government interventions in credit markets.
Temporary Trade Shocks, Spatial
            Reallocation, and Persistence in Developing Countries :
            Evidence from a Natural Experiment in West Africa
In response to rising inequality
            following decades of trade liberalization, many countries
            are adopting trade restrictions. Can temporary trade
            restrictions have long-lasting effects on the spatial
            distribution of employment and resource allocation? To
            analyze this, this paper exploits the civil war in Côte
            d'Ivoire (2002-07), which disrupted access to the world
            market for two neighboring landlocked countries: Mali and
            Burkina Faso. The Ivorian war forced rerouting of trade from
            the Abidjan route to non-Abidjan routes. This paper builds a
            general equilibrium model where a subsistence-based autarkic
            hinterland coexists with an integrated segment, and there
            are two alternative routes to international markets. A trade
            shock to one route affects resource allocation in both
            routes by shifting the spatial margins of market integration
            and sectoral specialization. The effects are heterogeneous,
            depending on the pre-war market access of a location. The
            empirical analysis takes advantage of panel data and
            estimates the effects on structural change in employment on
            the non-Abidjan route using a triple difference design with
            location fixed effects. The areas that remain in autarkic
            equilibrium before and after the trade shock provide
            plausible estimates of the changes arising from long-term
            factors unrelated to the trade shock. The estimates show
            that the temporary trade shock created divergence between
            the Abidjan and non-Abidjan routes, with accelerated
            structural change in favor of manufacturing and services
            employment in the non-Abidjan route. This paper finds
            evidence of persistence in the effects through higher sunk
            investment in built-up density, agglomeration through
            concentration of skilled labor and greater public investment
            in complementary inputs such as electricity infrastructure
            (measured by nightlights density).
Temporary Trade Shocks, Spatial
            Reallocation, and Persistence in Developing Countries :
            Evidence from a Natural Experiment in West Africa
Policy Research Working Paper 8962 Temporary Trade Shocks, Spatial Reallocation, and Persistence in Developing Countries Evidence from a Natural Experiment in West Africa _M. Shahe Emran Forhad Shilpi Harold Coulombe Brian Blankespoor_ Development Economics Development Research Group August 2019
Measuring Inequality of Access :
            Modeling Physical Remoteness in Nepal
Simple linear distances between origin
            and destination poorly describe travel in Nepal, where
            rugged terrain, underdeveloped transportation
            infrastructure, and diverse vegetation heavily influence
            favorable travel routes. In this context, expected travel
            times explain more about the remoteness of starting
            locations than geographic distance. Applied to service
            facilities, these time‐based measures of remoteness amount
            to measures of physical accessibility to services. However,
            traditional survey‐based measures of time suffer from
            problems of inaccurate reporting and standard survey error.
            Instead, this study built a geographic information
            system–based cost time model of travel that enables more
            accurate and generalizable assessment of accessibility.
            Having validated the generic model and compared it with
            other popular metrics, the study demonstrates its value by
            inputting a variety of services into it. This paper provides
            descriptive analyses of accessibility trends to these
            services at national, provincial, municipal, and geographic
            scales and suggests research possibilities unlocked by such
            a general purpose model. The paper concludes with thoughts
            for how the data and analysis, both freely available public
            goods, can enable additional research and better policy making.
Trust to Pay Tax Morale and Trust in Africa
Although low tax morale hits developing
            countries hardest, little is known about its determinants in
            those countries. This paper examines the impact of trust in
            public institutions and the neighborhood on individual tax
            morale in four African countries: Algeria, Ghana, Morocco,
            and Nigeria. First, the paper provides theoretical
            foundations of such a relationship. Further, the paper uses
            the World Value Survey to estimate the effects of trust in
            public institutions and the neighborhood on individual tax
            morale. The identification strategy employs the instrumental
            variables method and relies on historical data on the slave
            trade and the literature on the cultural heritage of trust.
            The paper finds that trust in public institutions and the
            neighborhood are largely associated with tax morale in the
            African countries under consideration. The findings are
            robust to an alternative identification strategy, additional
            controls, and a falsification test.
Property Rights, Political
            Connections, and Corporate Investment
Despite the literature on rural land
            property rights, studies on urban land property rights are
            rare. This paper studies the impact of an urban land titling
            program on firm investment. It finds that the program leads
            to increased investment rate for titling firms, and the
            positive effect holds only for politically connected firms.
            The effects are likely causal, because they are more
            pronounced for firms that are more likely to benefit from
            strengthened property rights. Connected titling firms
            experienced fewer disputes than nonconnected titling firms
            after the program, and the results remain robust when using
            instrumental variable estimation.
Evaluating the Accuracy of Homeowner
            Self-Assessed Rents in Peru
Attributing a rental value to the
            dwellings of homeowners is essential in various contexts,
            including distributional analysis and the compilation of
            national accounts, consumer price indexes (CPIs), and
            purchasing power parity indexes. One of the methods for
            making the attribution is to use homeowner estimates of the
            market rental value they would pay (receive) for their
            dwellings if these were rented. This is known as homeowner
            self-assessed rent. However, homeowner estimates may not be
            accurate because of the way questions aimed at soliciting
            such information are phrased, the sentimental attachment of
            the homeowners to the properties, lack of information about
            rental markets, and other reasons. Yet, researchers and
            practitioners often neglect to ascertain the accuracy of
            homeowner assessments. This study argues that comparing
            unconditional or conditional means may be misleading if one
            has not ascertained whether the observable characteristics
            of homeowner and tenant dwellings are similar. Using
            Peruvian data from 2003 to 2017, the study tests the
            accuracy of self-assessed rental values with matching
            estimators. In Metropolitan Lima, homeowners typically
            provide accurate estimates of the rental market values of
            their dwellings. In rural areas, market rental values are
            underestimated by homeowners in more instances. The
            direction and magnitude of the inaccuracies in Metropolitan
            Lima and in rural areas are comparable and range between −25
            percent and −20 percent.
Informal Employment and
            Worker's Well-Being in the Russian Federation
This paper finds that informal workers
            are more likely to have inferior work conditions, but do not
            necessarily report worse subjective well-being. Starting
            with lower wages, but also with less regularity of hours and
            paid vacation, informal workers have higher incidence of
            envelope payments than formal workers but not of hazardous
            or unstable jobs. After controlling for work conditions,
            informal workers do not have statistically significantly
            lower job satisfaction and under no specification are
            informal workers more likely to self-assess worse health
            than formal workers. Finally, there is some association
            between informal employment and household poverty and life
            satisfaction, but it is not robust to changes in econometric
            specification or sample composition. The authors conclude
            that the evidence indicates that informal employment in the
            Russian Federation is mostly a problem of labor productivity
            and the design of the social protection system, but
            worsening wages and some association between informality and
            household poverty indicate that informality may also be a
            social equity problem.