rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Financial systems, growth, and
            volatility : searching for the perfect fit
This paper builds on recent research
            examining the impact of finance on growth, looking at the
            effect of the financial system on volatility in gross
            domestic product per capita and consumption per capita
            growth. It also examines the impact of credit on the
            composition of growth. The findings show that financial
            development smooths growth in gross domestic product and
            consumption per capita, but only up to a point. At high
            levels of credit, further credit is positively associated
            with volatility even after controlling for the quality of
            institutions and periods of financial crises. In large
            financial systems, finance may not help individuals smooth
            consumption volatility. The threshold at which
            finance's effect may be volatility enhancing may be
            lower than previously thought. In terms of the impact on
            growth, total credit (and credit to firms) has a nonlinear
            relationship, with rising credit supporting higher growth up
            to a point, beyond which the additional impact of finance on
            growth is negative. This can be explained by finance flowing
            into less productive activities (or drawing other resources
            into less productive activities). In addition, household
            credit is negatively related to manufacturing sector growth,
            although credit to firms has a positive relationship to
            manufacturing growth. This may be explained by the fact that
            much of household credit is used to finance the consumption
            (including imports) of goods and services broadly (not just
            manufacturing sector goods) or investment in housing.
Estimation of climate change damage
            functions for 140 regions in the GTAP9 database
Climate change damage (or, more
            correctly, impact) functions relate variations in
            temperature (or other climate variables) to economic impacts
            in various dimensions, and are at the basis of quantitative
            modeling exercises for the assessment of climate change
            policies. This document provides a summary of results from a
            series of meta-analyses aimed at estimating parameters for
            six specific damage functions, referring to: sea level rise,
            agricultural productivity, heat effects on labor
            productivity, human health, tourism flows, and
            households' energy demand. All parameters of the damage
            functions are estimated for each of the 140 countries and
            regions in the Global Trade Analysis Project 9 data set. To
            illustrate the salient characteristics of the estimates, the
            change in real gross domestic product is approximated for
            the different effects, in all regions, corresponding to an
            increase in average temperature of +3°C. After considering
            the overall impact, the paper highlights which factor is the
            most significant one in each country, and elaborates on the
            distributional consequences of climate change.
Does the 2015 peace accord in Mali
            reflect the priorities of households and local leaders
Using unique household level data
            collected in northern Mali in August and September 2015,
            this paper explores whether the content of the 2015 Peace
            Accord reflects the concerns and priorities of the citizens,
            local leaders, and refugees, or whether it is an exclusive
            agreement between elites who fail to represent the interests
            of the population at large. The study finds that local
            leaders’ opinions are appropriate proxies for the citizens
            they represent, and most (but not all) of the measures
            stipulated in the Peace Accord align. The greatest
            divergence between citizen preferences and actions specified
            in the Peace Accord is the emphasis in the latter on road
            infrastructure. When different activities are costed, this
            disconnect becomes very apparent. The bulk of funds (45
            percent) are apportioned to infrastructure construction,
            while the typical respondent prefers job creation; the
            poorest prefer investments in social services. However, most
            of infrastructure spending has been earmarked for the medium
            term. Short-term priorities reflect the preferences of the
            population in northern Mali much better. It is concluded
            that although the Peace Accord had all the elements to be an
            exclusive elite pact, its priorities largely reflect those
            of the population, granting it much higher probability of success.
Public versus Private Protection
            against Crime : The Case of Somali Piracy
This paper analyzes the rise and demise
            of piracy off the coast of Somalia to highlight the
            interplay between public and private crime protection
            measures. Using unique data on attacks, hijacks, and
            ransoms, the authors estimate a structural model of Somali
            piracy to calculate the elasticity of crime with respect to
            two forms of protection: the publicly-provided deployment of
            international navies in the Western Indian Ocean and the
            private provision of maritime security contractors on board
            vessels. They assess both positive and negative spillovers
            associated with private security. Their findings have
            implications for the optimal composition of protective
            measures and the regulation of the market for private security.
Environmental risks and poverty :
            analyzing geo-spatial and household data from Vietnam
This study combines high-resolution,
            geo-spatial data and household data from the Vietnam Living
            Standard Measurement Surveys in 2010, 2012, and 2014 to
            investigate the relationship between environmental risks and
            poverty. Using recently developed data on air pollution,
            tree cover loss, land degradation, slope, rainfall and
            temperature variability, and flood and drought hazards, the
            study shows: (i) at the district level, there are hotspots
            of high poverty and environmental risks; (ii) ethnic
            minorities and poor households are much more exposed to
            multiple environmental risks than other groups, and also
            within rural and urban areas poorer households live in
            communes exposed to higher environmental risks; and (iii)
            environmental risks relate to lower consumption levels, but
            less so to lower consumption growth over time. Altogether
            these findings suggest that Vietnam’s poor are
            disproportionally exposed to environmental risks, which can
            result in livelihood impacts that in many ways go beyond
            consumption. In light of growing pressures due to population
            growth, economic development and climate change, green
            growth actions, ecosystem-based adaptation, and land-use
            planning could be important strategies to reduce the
            environmental burden on poor people.
The varying income effects of
            weather variation : initial insights from rural Vietnam
To estimate the impact of weather on
            rural income changes over time, this study combines data
            from the panel subsample of the latest Vietnam Household
            Living Standard Surveys 2010, 2012, and 2014 and gridded
            weather data from the Climate Research Unit. The analyses
            show: (i) crop cultivation, livestock management, forestry
            and fishing activities, and agricultural wages remain
            important income sources in rural Vietnam—especially for
            poorer households; (ii) rural communes are exposed to
            substantial inter- and intra-annual weather variation, as
            measured by annual, seasonal, abnormal, and extreme weather
            conditions and weather events; and (iii) these types of
            weather variation are indeed related to income variation. In
            particular, warmer temperatures and heat extremes can have
            negative income effects in all climate contexts and for all
            socioeconomic groups and most income activities. Only staple
            crops, forestry, and fishing seem to be less sensitive to
            hotter conditions. The effects of rainfall are more
            difficult to generalize. Some findings indicate that more
            rainfall is beneficial in drier places but harmful in wetter
            places. Interestingly, the incomes of poorer households seem
            to be negatively affected by wetter conditions, while those
            of wealthier households are more impacted by drier
            conditions. An increase in rainfall levels and flood
            conditions between 2012 and 2014, which were relatively wet
            years, is related to reduced income growth between these two
            years. Altogether these findings suggests that greater
            attention has to be paid to making rural livelihoods more
            resilient to weather variation which, is very likely to
            increase because of climate change.
Exposure to floods, climate change,
            and poverty in Vietnam
With 70 percent of its population living
            in coastal areas and low-lying deltas, Vietnam is exposed to
            many natural hazards, including river and coastal flooding.
            These hazards are expected to worsen due to climate change,
            and the impacts of any change in hazard magnitude may be
            particularly acute in this region. This paper examines the
            exposure of the population and poor people in particular to
            current and future flooding at the country level, using new
            high-resolution flood hazard maps and spatial socioeconomic
            data. The paper also examines flood exposure and poverty at
            the local level within Ho Chi Minh City. The national-level
            analysis finds that a third (33 percent) of today’s
            population is already exposed to a flood, which occurs once
            every 25 years, assuming no protection. For the same return
            period flood under current socioeconomic conditions, climate
            change may increase the number exposed to 38 to 46 percent
            of the population. Climate change impacts can make frequent
            events as important as rare ones in terms of exposure: for
            instance, the estimates suggest a 25-year flood under future
            conditions can expose more people than a 200-year flood
            under current conditions. Although poor districts are not
            found to be more exposed to floods at the national level,
            the city-level analysis of Ho Chi Minh City provides
            evidence that slum areas are more exposed than other parts
            of the city. The results of this paper show the benefits of
            investing today in flood risk management, and can provide
            guidance as to where future investments may be targeted.
            Furthermore, while the main strategy in Vietnam today to
            manage flood risk is to reduce exposure, the increase in
            exposure estimated in this paper provides support that
            alternative strategies to reduce vulnerability (such as
            financing for floor-raising) or improve the ability-to-adapt
            of households (such as social safety nets) may warrant
            increased attention.
Quantifying uncertainties in global
            growth forecasts
This paper presents a procedure to
            construct an asymmetric fan chart of risks around global
            growth forecasts. The distribution of risks around global
            growth forecasts is estimated by weighting information
            extracted from option pricing and survey-based measures of
            risk factors of global growth. The weights are estimated
            using a vector autoregression analysis. The empirical
            estimates indicate that forecast uncertainty has increased
            since January 2016, while the balance of risks to global
            growth has tilted to the downside.
Geopolitics, aid, and growth: the
            impact of UN security council membership on the
            effectiveness of aid
The paper investigates the effects of
            short-term political motivations on the effectiveness of
            foreign aid. Specifically, the paper tests whether the
            effect of aid on economic growth is reduced by the share of
            years a country served on the United Nations Security
            Council (UNSC) in the period the aid is committed, which
            provides quasi-random variation in aid. The results show
            that the effect of aid on growth is significantly lower when
            aid was committed during a country's tenure on the
            UNSC. This holds when we restrict the sample to Africa,
            which follows the strictest norm of rotation on the UNSC and
            thus where UNSC membership can most reliably be regarded as
            exogenous. Two conclusions arise from this. First,
            short-term political favoritism reduces the effectiveness of
            aid. Second, results of studies using political interest
            variables as instruments for overall aid arguably estimate
            the effect of politically motivated aid and thus a lower
            bound for the effect of all aid.
Global inequality : the implications
            of Thomas Piketty's capital in the 21st century
In the 2000s, global inequality fell for
            the first time since the Industrial Revolution, driven by a
            decline in the dispersion of average incomes across
            countries. Between 1988 and 2008, a period of rapidly
            increasing global integration, income growth was largest for
            the global top 1 percent and for country-deciles in Asia,
            often in the upper halves of the national distributions,
            while the poorer deciles in rich countries lagged behind.
            Although within-country inequality increased in
            population-weighted terms, for the average developing
            country the rise in inequality slowed down in the second
            half of the 2000s. However, like any analysis based on
            household surveys, these results could miss important
            increases in inequality if they are concentrated at the top.
            These data constraints remain especially serious in
            developing countries where only very limited information on
            the top tail exists, especially regarding capital incomes.
Negative interest rate policies :
            sources and implications
Against the background of continued
            growth disappointments, depressed inflation expectations,
            and declining real equilibrium interest rates, a number of
            central banks have implemented negative interest rate
            policies (NIRP) to provide additional monetary policy
            stimulus over the past few years. This paper studies the
            sources and implications of NIRP. It reports four main
            results. First, monetary transmission channels under NIRP
            are conceptually analogous to those under conventional
            monetary policy but NIRP present complications that could
            limit policy effectiveness. Second, since the introduction
            of NIRP, many of the key financial variables have evolved
            broadly as implied by the standard transmission channels.
            Third, NIRP could pose risks to financial stability,
            particularly if policy rates are substantially below zero or
            if NIRP are employed for a protracted period of time.
            Potential adverse consequences include the erosion of
            profitability of banks and other financial intermediaries,
            and excessive risk taking. However, there has so far been no
            significant evidence that financial stability has been
            compromised because of NIRP. Fourth, spillover implications
            of NIRP for emerging market and developing economies are
            mostly similar to those of other unconventional monetary
            policy measures. In sum, NIRP have a place in a policy
            maker’s toolkit but, given their domestic and global
            implications, these policies need to be handled with care to
            secure their benefits while mitigating risks.
Prevalence, economic contribution,
            and determinants of trees on farms across Sub-Saharan Africa
Trees on farms are often overlooked in
            agricultural and natural resource research and policy in
            Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper addresses this gap using data
            from the Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated
            Surveys on Agriculture in five countries: Ethiopia, Malawi,
            Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Trees on farms are
            widespread. On average, one third of rural smallholders grow
            trees. They account for an average of 17 percent of total
            annual gross income for tree-growing households and 6
            percent for all rural households. Gender, land and labor
            endowments, and especially forest proximity and national
            context are key determinants of on-farm tree adoption and
            management. These new, national-scale insights on the
            prevalence, economic contribution and determinants of trees
            on farms in Africa lay the basis for exploring the
            interaction of agriculture, on-farm tree cultivation, and
            forestry. This will improve our understanding of rural
            livelihood dynamics.
On the impact of demographic change
            on growth, savings, and poverty
Changing population age structures are
            shaping the trajectories of development in many countries,
            bringing opportunities and challenges. While aging has been
            a matter of concern for upper-middle and high-income
            economies, rapid population growth is set to continue in the
            poorest countries over the coming decades. At the same time,
            these countries will see sustained increases in the
            working-age shares of their population, and these shifts
            have the potential to boost growth and reduce poverty. This
            paper describes the main mechanisms through which
            demographic change may affect economic outcomes, and
            estimates the association between changes in the share of
            working-age population with per capita growth, savings, and
            poverty rate. An increase of one percentage point in the
            working-age population share is found to be associated with
            an increase in gross domestic product per capita growth by
            more than one percentage point, with similarly positive
            effects on savings and poverty reduction.
Mobility and pathways to the middle
            class in Nepal
This paper introduces a variety of
            concepts and methods to examine living standards
            improvements in Nepal in a dynamic perspective. Using data
            from three rounds of Nepal Living Standards Surveys
            conducted in the past two decades, together with data from a
            nationally representative survey that was implemented in
            2014 specifically to collect information on social and
            economic mobility, the paper presents novel statistics on
            the extent of inter- and intra-generational mobility in
            Nepal. The findings suggest that there has been appreciable
            upward mobility in education; that is, Nepalis today are
            increasingly more likely to be better educated than their
            parents. However, inter-generational mobility of occupations
            has been much more muted, with 47 percent of Nepal today
            remaining in the same occupation as their parents. Upward
            mobility is higher for younger cohorts and for individuals
            who move from their rural areas of birth to an urban area.
            There are also significant differences in mobility by social
            groups, with Dalits and Terai caste groups having lower
            upward mobility odds. Examining mobility within generations
            using synthetic panel techniques, the paper finds that: (a)
            for every two people who escape poverty, one slides back,
            suggesting significant churning around the poverty line; (b)
            a large fraction of those who have escaped poverty remain
            vulnerable to falling back, with an overall vulnerable
            population of 45 percent; and (c) the share of the middle
            class—defined as those with sufficiently low likelihood of
            falling back into poverty—has increased steadily over the
            past two decades, reaching 22 percent in 2010–11. However,
            triangulating subjective well-being data from Gallup, it
            appears that a majority of even those who constitute the
            middle class are fundamentally insecure about their economic
            futures. The prevalence of a large vulnerable population and
            a nascent, growing but struggling middle class represents a
            key challenge to consolidating recent gains in moving people
            out of poverty.
Trends and drivers of poverty
            reduction in Nepal : a historical perspective
Nepal made remarkable progress in
            poverty reduction between 1995 and 2010, a period coinciding
            with a decade-long violent conflict followed by tumultuous
            post-conflict recovery. Although improving agricultural
            productivity was long regarded as instrumental to lifting
            the living conditions of Nepal's impoverished rural
            areas, a bulk of the observed poverty reduction has come as
            a result of exogenous improvements in economic opportunities
            for poor Nepalis outside Nepal's borders. About 50
            percent of the poverty reduction witnessed between 1995 and
            2010 was associated with growth in labor incomes,
            particularly in nonagricultural activities. Private
            remittance receipts account for a little over a quarter of
            the total poverty reduction seen in Nepal. This is
            consistent with increased nonfarm diversification of rural
            households as well as the increase in nonfarm wages over the
            period. Household demographic changes, brought about by a
            sharp decline in fertility rates and the changing dependency
            structure as a result of migration, have also played an
            important role.