rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
School autonomy and accountability
            in Thailand: a systems approach for assessing policy intent
            and implementation
There is a consensus on the need for
            Thailand to reform its education system to be able to
            compete with other high performing countries in the region.
            In terms of learning outcomes, the most recent evidence from
            the Programme for International Student Assessment shows
            little improvement over time. This paper uses the World
            Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results
            (SABER) approach in Thailand to contrast policy intent and
            policy implementation in school autonomy and accountability.
            The policy implementation data were obtained from a survey
            of school principals of the schools that participated in the
            Programme for International Student Assessment and merged
            the data sets. First, the study analyzes the gap between
            policy intent and policy implementation. Then it examines
            the effect of the gaps on various schooling outcomes while
            controlling for covariates. The analysis finds significant
            differences between the Systems Approach for Better
            Education Results indicators of policy intent and policy
            implementation in all areas assessed by the indicators.
            Schools in Thailand exercise more flexibility in their
            personnel management in practice than what is intended by
            policy; student assessments need to address issues of
            content, reliability, and validity and school accountability
            needs to improve the interpretation of student assessments
            to make schools more accountable. There is a positive
            association between the Programme for International Student
            Assessment scores and school autonomy and accountability.
Barriers to the implementation of
            environmental policies at the local level in China
China's national leaders have
            recently made a priority of changing lanes from a
            pollution-intensive, growth-at-any-cost model to a
            resource-efficient and sustainable one. The immense
            challenges of rapid urbanization are one aspect of the
            problem. Central-local government relations are another
            source of challenges, since the central government's
            green agenda does not always find willing followers at lower
            levels. This paper identifies barriers to a more
            comprehensive implementation of environmental policies at
            the local level in China's urban areas and suggests
            ways to reduce or remove them. The research focuses
            particularly on the reasons for the gap between national
            plans and policy outcomes. Although environmental goals and
            policies at the national level are quite ambitious and
            comprehensive, insufficient and inconsistent local level
            implementation can hold back significant improvements in
            urban environmental quality. By analyzing local
            institutional and behavioral obstacles and by highlighting
            best-practice examples from China and elsewhere, the paper
            outlines options that can be used at the national and local
            levels to close the local "environmental implementation
            gap." The findings emphasize the need to create
            additional incentives and increase local implementation capacities.
Corporate governance and bank
            insolvency risk : international evidence
This paper finds that
            shareholder-friendly corporate governance is positively
            associated with bank insolvency risk, as proxied by the
            Z-score and the Merton's distance to default measure,
            for an international sample of banks over the 2004-08
            period. Banks are special in that "good" corporate
            governance increases bank insolvency risk relatively more
            for banks that are large and located in countries with sound
            public finances, as banks aim to exploit the financial
            safety net. Good corporate governance is specifically
            associated with higher asset volatility, more nonperforming
            loans, and a lower tangible capital ratio. Furthermore, good
            corporate governance is associated with more bank
            risk-taking at times of rapid economic expansion. Consistent
            with increased risk-taking, good corporate governance is
            associated with a higher valuation of the implicit insurance
            provided by the financial safety net, especially in the case
            of large banks. These results underline the importance of
            the financial safety net and too-big-to-fail policies in
            encouraging excessive risk-taking by banks.
Female labor participation in the
            Arab world : some evidence from panel data in Morocco
Female labor participation in the Arab
            world is low compared with the level of economic development
            of Arab countries. Beyond anecdotal evidence and
            cross-country studies, there is little evidence on what
            could explain this phenomenon. This paper uses the richest
            set of panel data available for any Arab country to date to
            model female labor participation in Morocco. The paper finds
            marriage, household inactivity rates, secondary education,
            and gross domestic product per capita to lower female labor
            participation rates. It also finds that the category urban
            educated women with secondary education explains better than
            others the low level of female labor participation. These
            surprising findings are robust to different estimators,
            endogeneity tests, different specifications of the female
            labor participation equations, and different sources of
            data. The findings are also consistent with previous studies
            on the Middle East and North Africa region and on Morocco.
            The explanation seems to reside in the nature of economic
            growth and gender norms. Economic growth has not been labor
            intensive, has generated few jobs, and has not been in
            female-friendly sectors, resulting in weak demand for women,
            especially urban educated women with secondary education.
            And when men and women compete for scarce jobs, men may have
            priority access because of employers' and
            households' preferences.
Infrastructure, growth, and
            inequality : an overview
Academics and policy makers have long
            considered an adequate supply of infrastructure services to
            be essential for economic development. This paper reviews
            recent theoretical and empirical literature on the effects
            of infrastructure development on growth and income
            distribution. The theoretical literature has employed a
            variety of analytical settings regarding the drivers of
            income growth, the degree to which infrastructure represents
            a public or a private good, and the extent of market
            distortions, notably in capital markets. In turn, the
            empirical literature has used various econometric
            methodologies on time-series and cross-section macro and
            microeconomic data to test for the effects of infrastructure
            development. However, these empirical tests face challenging
            issues of measurement, identification, and heterogeneity.
            Overall, the literature finds positive effects of
            infrastructure development on income growth and, more
            tentatively, on distributive equity. Still, the precise
            mechanisms through which these effects accrue, and their
            full impact on welfare, remain relatively unexplored.
Does mandating nondiscrimination in
            hiring practices influence women's employment evidence
            using firm-level data
This study explores the relationship
            between mandating a nondiscrimination clause in hiring
            practices along gender lines and the employment of women
            versus men in 58 developing countries. The study finds a
            strong positive relationship between a nondiscrimination in
            hiring clause and women's relative to men's
            employment. The relationship is robust to several controls
            at the firm and country levels. The results also show sharp
            heterogeneity in the relationship between the
            nondiscrimination in hiring clause and women's versus
            men's employment, with the relationship being much
            larger in richer countries and in countries with more women
            in the population as well as among relatively smaller firms.
Can conditional cash transfers
            improve education and nutrition outcomes for poor children
            in Bangladesh evidence from a pilot project
There is an increasing recognition that
            investment in human development at an earlier age can have a
            significant impact on the lifetime earnings capacity of an
            individual. This notion is the basis for the popularity of
            conditional cash transfer programs to help boost child
            health and education outcomes. The evidence on the impact of
            conditional cash transfers on health and education outcomes,
            however, is mixed. This paper uses panel data from a pilot
            project and evaluates the impact of conditional cash
            transfers on consumption, education, and nutrition outcomes
            among poor rural families in Bangladesh. Given
            implementation challenges the intervention was not able to
            improve school attendance. However the analysis shows that
            the pilot had a significant impact on the incidence of
            wasting among children who were 10-22 months old when the
            program started, reducing the share of children with
            weight-for-height below two standard deviations from the
            World Health Organization benchmark by 40 percent. The pilot
            was also able to improve nutrition knowledge: there was a
            significant increase in the proportion of beneficiary
            mothers who knew about the importance of exclusively
            breastfeeding infants until the age of six months.  The
            results also suggest a significant positive impact on food
            consumption, especially consumption of food with high
            protein content.
Assessing public debt sustainability
            in Mauritania with a stochastic framework
This work presents a stochastic
            framework for assessing public debt sustainability and
            applies it to the case of Mauritania. The sustainability
            assessment projects solvency and liquidity indicators --
            public debt stock and gross financing needs relative to GDP
            -- for 2014-23. The analysis uses deterministic scenarios
            and stochastic simulations to analyze policy options and
            fiscal risks. The study relies on simple econometric models
            to generate forecasts of key macroeconomic variables driving
            the public debt dynamics and to compute debt-distress
            probabilities and debt thresholds. The study builds on basic
            techniques to determine optimal portfolios suitable as
            benchmarks for public debt management. A main result is
            that, if Mauritania maintains a strong growth performance
            and pursues sound policies to balance the budget and take
            advantage of concessional financing opportunities, it could
            reduce the public debt from 74 percent of GDP in 2013 to 30
            percent by 2023, and the gross financing needs from 12
            percent of GDP to 4 percent. Further scaling up capital
            spending is likely to deteriorate public debt sustainability
            because the estimated (marginal) growth-dividend is small. A
            more promising avenue would be to improve the quality of
            public investment and institutions, as opposed to the volume
            of capital expenditure. Different debt strategies can
            significantly affect the liquidity needs and the on-budget
            interest bill. But it is the fiscal policy geared toward
            balanced budgets that ultimately would permit Mauritania to
            improve the solvency indicators, and thus the public debt sustainability.
Local foundations for better
            governance : A Review of Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra
            Rao's Localizing Development (Vol. 1of1)
In Localizing Development, Mansuri and
            Rao survey theory and evidence for development strategies
            based on local community empowerment. This note extends
            their theoretical argument by focusing on local government
            as a vital source of new leadership. Local leaders who
            provide better public service can prove their qualifications
            for higher office, but new competition from popular local
            leaders may be against the interests of incumbent national
            leaders. Thus, decentralization reforms that could benefit
            economic development may face powerful resistance.
            International assistance should promote a balanced
            development of local and national governments, along with a
            free press to monitor government at all levels. To better
            inform public discussions of decentralization reforms, the
            World Bank should actively support research on comparative
            subnational politics.
Addressing access and behavioral
            constraints through social intermediation services : a
            review of Chile Solidario and Red Unidos (Vol. 1of1)
Social programs are often designed under
            the assumption that individuals make rational decisions that
            improve their welfare. Yet, informational and behavioral
            constraints limit the extreme and chronic poor's access
            and participation in social programs. This paper reviews the
            implementation and performance of two "social
            intermediation services" that were designed to address
            these constraints, improve beneficiaries' access to
            social programs, and help the poor surmount poverty: Chile
            Solidario, the first such service in Latin America, and Red
            Unidos, implemented later in Colombia. The analysis provides
            insights on key factors influencing performance, cost
            effectiveness, and the impacts that such services can be
            expected to have.
The rise of China and labor market
            adjustments in Latin America
This paper assesses the impact of the
            rise of China on the trade of Latin American and Caribbean
            economies. The study proposes an index to measure the impact
            on trade, which suggests sizable effects, especially in
            Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, and Paraguay.
            The paper uses the index and a model of labor mobility, to
            calculate the impact of China's growth on labor markets
            in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. The resulting evidence
            suggests that the rise of China has had positive effects on
            agriculture and mining in Argentina and Brazil, which offset
            negative impacts on manufacturing industries, thus leaving
            total employment and real wages virtually unchanged in the
            long run. In contrast, the estimated impacts of China's
            rise on Mexico imply that the sizable shock to manufacturing
            was not offset by the positive shocks on mining and
            agriculture, reducing employment in the long run. The paper
            also discusses the effect of China on the degree of
            informality in these three economies and contrasts short-run
            and long-run effects on employment and wages across industries.
Firm heterogeneity and costly trade:
            a new estimation strategy and policy experiments
This paper builds a tractable partial
            equilibrium model to help explain the role of trade
            preferences given to developing countries, as well as the
            efficacy of various subsidy policies. The model allows for
            firm level heterogeneity in demand and productivity and lets
            the mass of firms that enter be endogenous. Trade
            preferences given by one country have positive spillovers on
            exports to others in this model. Preferences given by the
            European Union to Bangladesh in an industry raise profits,
            resulting in entry, and some of these firms also export to
            the United States. The parameters of the model are estimated
            using cross sectional customs data on Bangladeshi exports of
            apparel to the United States and European Union.
            Counterfactual experiments regarding the effects of reducing
            costs, both fixed and marginal, or of trade preferences
            offered by an importing country are performed. The
            counterfactuals show that reducing fixed costs at various
            levels has very different effects and suggest that such
            reductions are more effective in promoting exports when
            applied at later stages when firms are more committed to
            production. A subsidy of 1.5 million dollars to industry
            entry costs raises exports by only 0.4 dollars for every
            dollar spent, but when applied to fixed costs of production,
            it raises exports by $25 per dollar spent.
Increasing access by waiving tuition
            : evidence from Haiti
Despite impressive gains in increasing
            access to school over the last twenty years, an estimated 57
            million children worldwide do not go to school. Abolishing
            school fees has increased enrollment rates in several
            countries where enrollments were low and school fees were
            high. However, such policies may be less effective, or even
            have negative consequences, when supply-side responses are
            weak. This paper evaluates the school-level impacts of a
            tuition waiver program in Haiti, which provided public
            financing to non-public schools conditional on these schools
            not charging tuition. The paper concludes that a
            school's participation in the program results in having
            more students enrolled, more staff, and slightly higher
            student-teacher ratios. The program also reduces grade
            repetition and the share of students who are over-age. While
            the increase in students at participating schools does not
            directly equate to a reduction in the number of children out
            of school, it does demonstrate strong demand from families
            for the program, and a correspondingly strong supply
            response from the non-public sector.
Correlates of success in World Bank
            development policy lending
This paper examines the correlates of
            success of development policy lending operations of the
            World Bank between 2004 and 2012. The paper uses a data set
            constructed of individual loan characteristics and ex-post
            loan ratings produced by the World Bank's Independent
            Evaluation Group. Departing from the related literature, the
            paper focuses mostly on examining the impact of loan
            characteristics, reform program design features, and task
            team leader skills, among other variables, on intended
            development results, while still controlling for country
            characteristics. It finds that a variable used to reflect
            congruence or "line of sight" between the policy
            reforms supported and the results framework is a critical
            ingredient for success. Task team leader skills in general,
            and task team leadership by staff affiliated with the former
            "Economic Policy" department of the World Bank,
            also increase the chance of success. Conversely, a weaker
            set of supported reforms in these operations tends to reduce
            the chance of success. Reforms supported in the energy
            sector seem to reduce the likelihood of success, perhaps
            because of the inherent political difficulties of
            implementing reforms in this sector. The paper also draws
            important policy and institutional implications from these
            and other findings.
Same question but different answer :
            experimental evidence on questionnaire design's impact
            on poverty measured by proxies
Does the same question asked of the same
            population yield the same answer in face-to-face interviews
            when other parts of the questionnaire are altered? If not,
            what would be the implications for proxy-based poverty
            measurement? Relying on a randomized household survey
            experiment implemented in Malawi, this study finds that
            observationally equivalent as well as same households answer
            the same questions differently when interviewed with a short
            questionnaire versus the longer counterpart that, in a prior
            survey round, would have informed the prediction model for a
            proxy-based poverty measurement exercise. The analysis
            yields statistically significant differences in reporting
            between the short and long questionnaires across all topics
            and types of questions. The reporting differences result in
            significantly different predicted poverty rates and Gini
            coefficients. While the difference in predictions ranges
            from approximately 3 to 7 percentage points depending on the
            model specification, restricting the proxies to those
            collected prior the variation in questionnaire design,
            namely demographic variables from the household roster and
            location fixed effects, leads to same predictions in both
            samples. The findings emphasize the need for further
            methodological research, and suggest that short
            questionnaires designed for proxy-based poverty measurement
            should be piloted, prior to implementation, in parallel with
            the longer questionnaire from which they have evolved. The
            fact that at the median it took 25 minutes to complete the
            food and non-food consumption sections in the long
            questionnaire also implies that the implementation of these
            sections might not be as overly costly as usually assumed.