rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Does Culture Matter or Firm Demand
            for Female Labor in Three Indian Cities
In discussing the inordinately low
            employment of Indian women in urban areas, several studies
            have argued that culture and attitudes have created a labor
            market that is inherently discriminatory. The unsaid
            corollary is that culture is slow and hard to change and so,
            women will stay out of the labor market until social change
            occurs. The empirical evidence on the role of culture is
            slim at best. This paper fills the void in the policy
            literature, as it assesses the relative role of culture, as
            signified by attitudes of employers, and firm
            characteristics in hiring women. The paper is based on a
            unique survey of 618 firms in three of the largest cities in
            the state of Madhya Pradesh (India)—Bhopal, Indore, and
            Gwalior. Using detailed descriptive, bivariate and
            multivariate analysis at the firm level, the hiring process,
            and attitudes toward male and female workers, the paper
            addresses the issue of culture and firm characteristics,
            while noting that the two are not necessarily in binary
            opposition. The results reinforce the conventional wisdom in
            some ways and are surprising in others. The most salient
            result is that employer attitudes matter much less for the
            chance that women will be hired, than do firm and location
            characteristics. This has significant policy implications,
            the most important of which is that female employment in
            urban India is amenable to policy intervention, and that it
            is not necessary to wait for culture to change.
Are They Really Being Served :
            Assessing Effective Infrastructure Access and Quality in 15
            Kenyan Cities
This paper proposes a framework that
            examines three levels of access to infrastructure --
            nominal, effective, and quality-adjusted access. Most
            conventional indicators measure nominal access --whether a
            household has physical access to a service in or near the
            house. By contrast, effective access incorporates
            functionality and use of service, and quality-adjusted
            access raises the bar by incorporating quality metrics. The
            paper illustrates the analytical utility of this conceptual
            framework by deploying data from a survey of 14,200
            households in 15 Kenyan cities in 2012-13. First, the
            analysis finds that these cities fall far short of
            delivering universal access to basic infrastructure. Second,
            for most services there a large gap -- 3 to 41 percentage
            points—between nominal and effective access. When the bar is
            raised to include quality of service, the drop-off in the
            proportion of those with access is even more dramatic. These
            findings suggest that conventional nominal measures
            overreport the level of service in urban communities, and
            that current approaches to infrastructure delivery might be
            enhancing availability of a service without ensuring that
            the service is usable -- that is, functional, reliable and
            affordable. Third, there is an infrastructure access gap
            between nonpoor and poor households, as well as formal and
            informal settlements. Fourth, hedonic regression analysis
            reveals that four services -- electricity, water, toilets,
            and garbage collection—are associated with higher rents. The
            analysis has broader implications for understanding and
            measuring service access. It raises important questions as
            global discussions turn to indicators for the Sustainable
            Development Goals.
Integration and Price Transmission
            in Key Food Commodity Markets in India
This paper examines patterns of market
            integration for food commodities in India. First, it tests
            the extent of domestic spatial market integration for retail
            and wholesale markets in 2006–14 and 2008–15, respectively,
            and looks at patterns of price transmission of shocks from
            international sources. Second, it measures vertical
            integration from wholesale to retail markets and tests for
            asymmetric speed of adjustment to shocks. Third, it examines
            the determinants of spatial integration. The results reveal
            that in India, food markets are imperfectly integrated
            across space, with the law of one price being systematically
            rejected, with heterogeneities across states and products.
            There is substantial co-movement between wholesale and
            retail prices, although integration is still imperfect in
            all commodities but one: rice, for which perfect vertical
            integration cannot be rejected. Retail prices adjust faster
            when wholesale prices rise than when wholesale prices fall.
            The analysis of the determinants of spatial integration
            reveals that prior to implementation of the Goods and
            Services Tax, the mere act of crossing a state border
            increased prices; unexploited gains from arbitrage persisted
            after considering the effects of transport costs; and
            information frictions and menu costs reduced market integration.
International Willingness to Pay for
            the Protection of the Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon rainforest, the world's
            largest tropical rainforest and an important constituent of
            the global biosphere, continues degrading by rapid
            deforestation, which is expected to continue despite
            policies to prevent it. Current international funding to
            protect the Amazon rainforest focuses on benefits from
            reduced carbon emissions. This paper examines an additional
            rationale for Amazon protection: the valuation of its
            biodiversity and forests as natural heritage to the
            international community. To measure the economic value of
            this benefit, the paper examines U.S. and Canadian
            households' willingness to pay to help finance Amazon
            rainforest protection. The analysis finds that mean
            willingness to pay to avoid forest losses projected to occur
            by 2050 despite current protective policies is $92 per
            household per year. Aggregating across all households and
            considering the area protected, the analysis finds that
            preserving the Amazon rainforest is worth $3,168 per hectare
            (95-percent confidence interval $1,580-$4,756), on average,
            to households in the United States and Canada. Considering
            households in other developed countries would generate yet
            larger estimates of aggregate value, likely comparable to
            the carbon benefits from rainforest protection. The results
            reveal high values of the Amazon rainforest to people
            geographically distanced from it, lending support to
            international efforts to reduce deforestation in the Amazon.
Common Transport Infrastructure : A
            Quantitative Model and Estimates from the Belt and Road Initiative
This paper presents a structural general
            equilibrium model to analyze the effects on trade, welfare,
            and gross domestic product of common transport
            infrastructure. Specifically, the model builds on the
            framework by Caliendo and Parro (2015) -- a Ricardian model
            with sectoral linkages, trade in intermediate goods and
            sectoral heterogeneity -- to allow for changes in trade
            costs due to improvements in transportation infrastructure,
            financed through domestic taxation, connecting multiple
            countries. The model highlights the trade impact of
            infrastructure investments through cross-border input-output
            linkages. This framework is then used to quantify the impact
            of the Belt and Road Initiative. Using new estimates on the
            effects on trade costs of transport infrastructure related
            to the initiative based on Geographic Information System
            analysis, the model shows that gross domestic product will
            increase by up to 3.4 percent for participating countries
            and by up to 2.9 percent for the world. Because trade gains
            are not commensurate with projected investments, some
            countries may experience a negative welfare effect due to
            the high cost of the infrastructure. The analysis also finds
            strong complementarity between infrastructure investment and
            trade policy reforms.
Measuring What Matters in Global
            Value Chains and Value-Added Trade
The spread of global value chains (GVCs)
            has given rise to new statistical tools, the Inter-Country
            Input-Output tables and new analytical frameworks aimed at
            properly identifying production linkages between and within
            economies. However, several important questions remain
            unaddressed. This paper proposes a new toolkit for
            value-added accounting of trade flows at the aggregate,
            bilateral, and sectoral levels that can be used to
            investigate a broad set of empirical questions -- including
            an assessment of the share of trade related to GVCs. The
            paper shows how different empirical issues require distinct
            accounting perspectives, and maps these methodologies onto
            the economic questions they are best suited to address. In
            this way, in addition to providing novel tools, the paper
            brings a large part of the related literature under one
            comprehensive framework.
E-Commerce Development and Household
            Consumption Growth in China
China has quickly become the largest
            e-commerce market in the world. By matching a nationally
            representative China Family Panel Studies survey with
            county-level e-commerce information obtained from Alibaba,
            this paper examines how e-commerce development has shaped
            household consumption growth in China. The paper presents
            three major findings. First, e-commerce development is
            associated with higher consumption growth. Second, the
            relationship is stronger for the rural sample, inland
            regions, and poor households, suggesting that e-commerce
            development helps reduce spatial inequality in consumption.
            Third, the consumption of durable goods and in-style goods
            has grown faster than the consumption of local services.
How Well is Humanitarian Assistance
            Targeted in Fragile Environments Evidence from the
            Announcement of a Food Emergency in Yemen
The amount of assistance delivered
            during conflict is increasing to support the growing share
            of the extreme poor living in these settings. However,
            little is known about how well assistance is targeted, which
            can have implications for conflict itself. Using a novel
            data source in Yemen that tracks food assistance, which
            accounts for the largest share of assistance in the country,
            the authors find that the share of households receiving food
            assistance significantly increased following the U.N.
            announcement of a food emergency and that the increases were
            larger in regions identified by the U.N. as being closer to
            famine. Furthermore, the increases in assistance helped to
            maintain food access through repeated and strong
            conflict-related shocks. The results demonstrate that the
            humanitarian community can rapidly and effectively increase
            assistance when needed. However, the lack of a stronger and
            more immediate impact on food access suggests potential
            improvements to data collection, which could help to better
            identify households most in need of humanitarian assistance
            and could help to better identify how food assistance
            impacts households in humanitarian emergencies.
Factions, Local Accountability, and
            Long-Term Development : County-Level Evidence from a Chinese Province
This paper investigates, both
            theoretically and empirically, the role of factional
            competition and local accountability in explaining the
            enormous but puzzling county-level variations in development
            performance in Fujian province of China. When the Communist
            armies took over Fujian from the Nationalist control circa
            1949, Communist cadres from two different army factions were
            assigned as county leaders. For decades the Fujian
            Provincial Standing Committee of the Communist Party had
            been dominated by members from one particular faction, which
            we refer as the strong faction. Counties also differed in
            whether there was local guerrilla presence prior to the
            Communist takeover. The model predicts that county leaders
            from the strong faction were less likely to pursue policies
            friendly to local development, because their political
            survival relied more on their loyalty to the provincial
            leader than on the grassroots support from local residents.
            In contrast, the political survival of county leaders from
            the weak faction was based more on local grassroots support,
            which could be best secured if these leaders focused on
            local development. In addition, the local guerrilla presence
            in the county further improved the development performance
            either because it intensified local accountability of the
            county leader, or because it better facilitated the
            provision of local public goods beneficial to development.
            The paper finds consistent and robust evidence supporting
            these assumptions; being affiliated with weak factions and
            having local accountability are both associated with sizable
            long-term benefits in terms of growth, education,
            private-sector development, and survival in the Great
            Famine. The paper also finds that being affiliated with the
            strong faction and adopting pro-local policies are
            associated with higher likelihood of political survival. The
            empirical findings here suggest that factional competition
            contributes to efficiency in non-democratic countries, and
            that local accountability is a key ingredient for balanced development.
Improving the Measurement of Rural
            Women's Employment : Global Momentum and Survey
            Research Priorities
Rural economies are in transition around
            the world; in many countries, improved technology and
            linkages across sectors have expanded access to markets and
            accelerated production for some farmers. At the same time,
            rural areas globally are facing a growing base of landless
            and smallholder farmers, out-migration to urban areas, and
            persistence of low-skilled, informal, and seasonal jobs
            where women are often heavily concentrated. Recent global
            initiatives are examining programs that can effectively
            raise rural incomes, including how addressing shortfalls in
            wome's hours worked and earnings can raise rural
            productivity and growth. But well-designed policies to
            address these issues require improved counting of
            individuals' employment, accounting for the complexity
            of measuring rural women's labor force participation,
            as well as data on social, economic, and institutional
            constraints that women face in seeking better economic
            opportunities. Using recent rounds of the Ethiopia, Malawi,
            Nigeria, and Uganda Living Standards and Measurement
            Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture, as well as findings
            from recent country pilots conducted by the International
            Labour Organization, this paper discusses best practices and
            issues to consider when examining rural women's
            employment in socioeconomic surveys, as well as a survey
            research agenda to improve measurement.
Preventing Violence in the Most
            Violent Contexts : Behavioral and Neurophysiological Evidence
This paper provides experimental
            evidence of the impact of an after-school program on
            vulnerable public-school students in El Salvador. The
            program combined a behavioral intervention with ludic
            activities for students aged 10-16 years old. The authors
            hypothesize that it affects violence, misbehaviors, and
            academic outcomes by modulating emotional regulation or
            automatic reactions to external stimuli. Results indicate
            the program reduced reports of bad behavior and school
            absenteeism while increasing students’ grades.
            Neurophysiological results suggest that the impacts on
            behavior and academic performance are driven by the positive
            effects of the program on emotional regulation. Finally, the
            study finds positive spillover effects for untreated children.
Technology Adoption and the
            Middle-Income Trap : Lessons from the Middle East and East Asia
This paper documents the existence of a
            "middle-income trap" for the Middle East and North
            Africa region and contrasts the evidence with that of the
            East Asia and Pacific region. The results are two-folds.
            First, non-parametric regressions show that the average rate
            of economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa has
            not only been significantly lower than that in the East Asia
            and Pacific region, but it has also tended to drop at an
            earlier level of income. Second, econometric results point
            to Middle East and North Africa having experienced a
            relatively slow pace of technology adoption in
            general-purpose technologies and that a slower adoption pace
            of technology is associated with lower levels of economic
            growth. The paper concludes that barriers to the adoption of
            general-purpose technologies related to the lack of
            contestability in key sectors constitute an important
            channel of transmission for the middle-income trap.
No Household Left Behind :
            Afghanistan Targeting the Ultra Poor Impact Evaluation
The share of people living in extreme
            poverty fell from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent in 2015
            but has continued to increase in many fragile and
            conflict-affected areas where half of the extreme poor are
            expected to reside by 2030. These areas are also where the
            least evidence exists on how to tackle poverty. This paper
            investigates whether the Targeting the Ultra Poor program
            can lift households out of poverty in a fragile context:
            Afghanistan. In 80 villages in Balkh province, 1,219 of the
            poorest households were randomly assigned to a treatment or
            control group. Women in treatment households received a
            one-off "big-push" package, including a transfer
            of livestock assets, cash consumption stipend, skills
            training, and coaching. One year after the program ended --
            two years after assets were transferred -- significant and
            large impacts are found across all the primary pre-specified
            outcomes: consumption, assets, psychological well-being,
            total time spent working, financial inclusion, and
            women's empowerment. Per capita consumption increases
            by 30 percent (USD 24 purchasing power parity, USD 7 nominal
            per month) with respect to the control group, and the share
            of households below the national poverty line decreases from
            82 percent in the control group to 62 percent in the
            treatment group. Using modest assumptions about consumption
            impacts, the intervention has an estimated internal rate of
            return of 26 percent, excluding non-monetized improvements
            in psychological well-being, women's empowerment, and
            children's health and education. These findings suggest
            that "big-push" interventions can dramatically
            reduce poverty in fragile and conflict-affected regions.
Better Policies from
            Policy-Selective Aid
This paper shows that the increased
            policy-selectivity of aid allocations observed in recent
            years provides recipient countries an incentive to improve
            policies. The paper estimates that a change in the World
            Banks Country Policy and Institutional Assessment policy
            index from 1.5 to 2 for a recipient is associated with an
            increase of about 13 percent in aid. The analysis also finds
            a modest but statistically significant positive relationship
            between the share of policy-selective aid in the global aid
            budget and policy, suggesting that policy-selective aid
            improves policies. This effect is properly identified, as
            the share of policy-selective aid in the global aid budget
            is exogenous to recipient country policy choices.
            Furthermore, the paper provides a game theoretic model that
            establishes the link between the policy-selectivity of the
            global budget and better recipient country policies in equilibrium.