rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Wage dynamics, turnover, and human
            capital : evidence from adolescent transition from school to
            work in the Philippines
This paper examines wage dynamics and
            turnover using tracking data of adolescents from the
            Philippines. The analysis uses individual test scores in
            grade 6 to proxy abilities. The empirical results show that
            (i) returns to labor market experience are large, nearly a
            half of the conventional estimate of returns to schooling;
            (ii) returns to experience are higher if educational
            attainment and/or test scores are higher; and (iii) ability,
            measured by test scores, positively influences the upgrading
            of occupations toward more skilled categories, although
            educational attainment plays an important role in
            determining the first occupation. The complementarity
            between schooling and experience is greater among good
            performers who show high test scores; education and ability
            augment gains from accumulating labor market experiences.
Gender differentials and
            agricultural productivity in Niger
Most of the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa
            live in rural areas where agriculture is the main income
            source. This agriculture is characterized by low performance
            and its productivity growth has been identified as a key
            driver of poverty reduction. In Niger, as in many other
            African countries, productivity is even lower among female
            peasants. To build policy interventions to improve
            agricultural productivity among women, it is important to
            measure the potential gap between men and women and
            understand the determinants that explain the gap. This paper
            uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methodology at the
            aggregate and detailed levels to identify the factors that
            explain the productivity gap. The analysis finds that in
            Niger on average plots managed by women produce 19 percent
            less per hectare than plots managed by men. It also finds
            that the gender gap tends to be widest among Niger's
            most productive farmers. The primary factors that contribute
            to the gender productivity gap in Niger are: (i) farm labor,
            with women facing significant challenges in accessing,
            using, and supervising male farm labor; (ii) the quantity
            and quality of fertilizer use, with men using more inorganic
            fertilizer per hectare than women; and (iii) land ownership
            and characteristics, with men owning more land and enjoying
            higher returns to ownership than women.
Income shocks and conflict :
            evidence from Nigeria
This paper extends the micro evidence on
            the impact of income shocks on civil conflict using data
            across Nigerian states over the past decade. The paper uses
            an innovative empirical strategy matching household survey,
            oil production, and domestic and international price data to
            capture three separate channels linking income changes to
            conflict. Price increases of consumed items have a
            significant conflict-inducing effect consistent with the
            hypothesis that they reduce real incomes and thus the
            opportunity cost of fighting. Failure to include this
            consumption impact severely biases (toward zero) the
            conflict-reducing effect of price rises of agricultural
            commodities via production. In addition, oil price hikes
            increase conflict intensity in oil producing areas,
            consistent with the "rapacity" hypothesis.
            However, this effect disappears in the period after the
            agreement granting amnesty to militant groups in
            oil-producing areas. The paper also discusses the importance
            of factors mediating the impact of the shocks on conflict
            and a number of policy implications following the analysis.
            Finally, the empirical strategy is employed to unveil a
            strong relationship between income shocks and violence in
            the current Boko Haram conflict. The analysis suggests some
            policy implications, which may be relevant for the Nigerian
            context and beyond.
Fossil fuel subsidies : approaches
            and valuation
Numbers ranging from half a trillion to
            two trillion dollars have been cited in recent years for
            global subsidies for fossil fuels. How are these figures
            calculated and why are they so different? The most commonly
            used methods for measuring subsidies are the price-gap
            approach -- quantifying the gap between free-market
            reference prices and the prices charged to consumers -- the
            inventory approach, which constructs an inventory of
            government actions benefiting production and consumption of
            fossil fuels. Practitioners are not faced with two choices.
            The two methods are complementary and should be used
            together -- price gaps cause distortions throughout the
            economy and quantification is needed for improving pricing
            policies; an inventory is useful for examining budgetary
            allocation. An inventory based on a full accounting
            framework for producer and consumer support estimates in
            fact captures price gaps as market transfers to producers or
            consumers. Differences in subsidy valuation arise from
            assumptions made to compensate for missing data and the
            scope of subsidy measurement. Having a common understanding
            of terms and standardizing calculation methods would go a
            long way in enabling comparison of subsidies across
            countries and sectors, benchmarking pricing, and assessing
            subsidy policies. Subsidy measurement should not be viewed
            as a one-off exercise to inform subsidy reform strategies.
            Just as subsidy reform in many countries does not have a
            clear end but is a continuous process of adjustment, so too
            is subsidy tracking. Devoting resources to data collection
            and analysis to track subsidies on a continuous basis can
            bring rich dividends by increasing transparency and enabling
            informed decisions.
The (non-) effect of violence on
            education : evidence from the "war on drugs" in Mexico
This paper studies the sharp increase in
            violence experienced in Mexico after 2006, known as
            "The War on Drugs," and its effects on human
            capital accumulation. The upsurge in violence is expected to
            have direct effects on individuals' schooling
            decisions, but not indirect effects, because there was no
            severe destruction of infrastructure. The fact that the
            marked increases in violence were concentrated in some
            municipalities (and not in others) allows for implementation
            of a fixed-effects methodology to study the effects of
            violence on educational outcomes. Different from several
            recent studies that have found significant negative effects
            of violence on economic outcomes in Mexico, the paper finds
            evidence that this is not the case, at least for human
            capital accumulation. The paper uses several sources of data
            on homicides and educational outcomes and shows that, at
            most, there are very small effects on total enrollment.
            These small effects may be driven by some students being
            displaced from high-violence municipalities to low-violence
            municipalities; but the education decisions of individuals
            do not seem to be highly impacted. The analysis discards the
            possibility that the effects on enrollment of young adults
            appear small because of a counteracting effect from
            ex-workers returning to school. The results stand in
            contrast with recent evidence of the negative effects of
            violence on short-term economic growth, since minimal to 0
            effects on human capital accumulation today should have
            little to no adverse effects on long-term growth outcomes in Mexico.
Information, knowledge and behavior:
            evaluating alternative methods of delivering school
            information to parents
Improving education outcomes by
            disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging
            them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is
            attractive, since it can be done relatively cheaply. This
            study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to
            disseminating information about a school grants program in
            Indonesia on parents' knowledge about the program in
            general, knowledge about the implementation of the program
            in their child~^!!^s school, and participation in school
            activities related to the program as well as beyond it. Not
            all dissemination approaches yielded impacts, and different
            modes of dissemination conveyed different types of
            information best, resulting in different impacts on
            behavior. Specifically, the low-intensity approaches that
            were tried—sending a letter from the principal home with the
            child, or sending a colorful pamphlet home with the
            child—had no impact on knowledge or participation. On the
            other hand, holding a facilitated meeting with a range of
            school stakeholders or sending targeted text messages to
            parents did increase knowledge and participation.
            Facilitated meetings mostly increased overall knowledge and
            fostered a feeling of transparency on the part of parents,
            which resulted in greater participation in formal channels
            for providing feedback to the school. The text messages
            increased knowledge about specific aspects of the program,
            such as the grant amount, and tended to increase
            participation through informal channels.
Parental human capital and effective
            school management : evidence from The Gambia
Education systems in developing
            countries are often centrally managed in a top-down
            structure. In environments where schools have different
            needs and where localized information plays an important
            role, empowerment of the local community may be attractive,
            but low levels of human capital at the local level may
            offset gains from local information. This paper reports the
            results of a four-year, large-scale experiment that provided
            a grant and comprehensive school management training to
            principals, teachers, and community representatives in a set
            of schools. To separate the effect of the training from the
            grant, a second set of schools received the grant only with
            no training. A third set of schools served as a control
            group and received neither intervention. Each of 273 Gambian
            primary schools were randomized to one of the three groups.
            The program was implemented through the government education
            system. Three to four years into the program, the full
            intervention led to a 21 percent reduction in student
            absenteeism and a 23 percent reduction in teacher
            absenteeism, but produced no impact on student test scores.
            The effect of the full program on learning outcomes is
            strongly mediated by baseline local capacity, as measured by
            adult literacy. This result suggests that, in villages with
            high literacy, the program may yield gains on students'
            learning outcomes. Receiving the grant alone had no impact
            on either test scores or student participation.
Asset price effects of peer
            benchmarking : evidence from a natural experiment
This paper estimates the effects of peer
            benchmarking by institutional investors on asset prices. To
            identify trades purely due to peer benchmarking as separate
            from those based on fundamentals or private information, the
            paper exploits a natural experiment involving a change in a
            government imposed underperformance penalty applicable to
            Colombian pension funds. This change in regulation is
            orthogonal to stock fundamentals and only affects incentives
            to track peer portfolios allowing the authors to identify
            the component of demand due to peer benchmarking. The
            authors find that peer effects among pension fund managers
            generate excess in stock return volatility, with stocks
            exhibiting short-term abnormal returns followed by returns
            reversal in the subsequent quarter. Additionally, peer
            benchmarking produces an excess in comovement across stock
            returns beyond the correlation implied by fundamentals.
The dark side of disclosure :
            evidence of government expropriation from worldwide firms
This paper studies the effects of
            voluntary accounting information disclosure through auditing
            on firm access to finance, exposure to corruption, and sales
            growth. Relying on a data set of more than 70,000 firms in
            121 countries, the analysis finds that disclosure can be a
            double-edged sword. On the one hand, audited firms exhibit a
            slightly lower level of financial constraints than unaudited
            firms. On the other hand, audited firms face a significantly
            higher level of corruption obstacles. The net effects of
            voluntary information disclosure on firm growth are
            negative, which can largely be explained by the fact that
            most of the countries in the sample are developing countries
            where institutions are weak. The beneficial effect of
            disclosure increases as a country’s property rights
            protection improves. The qualitative results are robust to
            considerations of the endogeneity of auditing and to
            alternative measures of corruption and financial
            constraints. The findings reveal the dark side of voluntary
            information disclosure: exposing firms to government
            expropriation where institutions are weak.
Women managers and the gender-based
            gap in access to education : evidence from firm-level data
            in developing countries
Several studies explore the differences
            in men’s and women’s labor market participation rates and
            wages. Some of these differences have been linked to gender
            disparities in education attainment and access. The present
            paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the
            relationship between the proclivity of a firm to have a
            female top manager and access to education among women
            relative to men in the country. The paper combines the
            literature on women’s careers in management, which has
            mostly focused on developed countries, with the development
            literature that has emphasized the importance of access to
            education. Using firm-level data for 73 developing
            countries, the analysis finds strong evidence that countries
            with a higher proportion of female top managers also have
            higher enrollment rates for women relative to men in
            primary, secondary, and tertiary education.
Ethiopia’s growth acceleration and
            how to sustain it—insights from a cross-country regression model
Ethiopia has experienced a growth
            acceleration over the past decade on the back of an economic
            strategy emphasizing public infrastructure investment and
            supported by heterodox macro-financial policies. To analyze
            the country’s growth performance during 2000–13, the paper
            employs a neoclassical cross-country System Generalized
            Method of Moments regression model. The analysis finds that
            accelerated growth was driven by public infrastructure
            investment and restrained government consumption, and
            supported by a conducive external environment. Macroeconomic
            challenges arising from declining private credit, real
            currency overvaluation, and relatively high inflation held
            back some growth. The model accurately predicts Ethiopia’s
            growth over the period of analysis and is robust to
            country-specific parameter heterogeneity and alternative
            infrastructure variables. Looking ahead, model simulations
            under alternative policy scenarios are indicative that
            growth may decelerate in the coming decade, making it
            challenging for Ethiopia to attain its middle-income country
            target by 2025. Although simulated growth rates do not vary
            much by policy scenario, the paper discusses some of the
            emerging risks associated with a continued reliance on the
            current infrastructure financing model and potential future adjustments.
The improved biomass stove saves
            wood, but how often do people use it evidence from a
            randomized treatment trial in Ethiopia
This paper uses a randomized
            experimental design and real-time electronic stove use
            monitors to evaluate the frequency with which villagers use
            improved biomass-burning Mirt injera cookstoves in rural
            Ethiopia. Understanding whether, how much, and why improved
            cookstoves are used is important, because use of the
            improved stove is a critical determinant of indoor air
            pollution reductions, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions
            due to lower fuelwood consumption. Confirming use is, for
            example, a critical aspect of crediting improved cookstoves’
            climate change benefits under the United Nations Reducing
            Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
            Programme. The paper finds that Ethiopian households in the
            study area do use the Mirt stove on a regular basis, taking
            into account regional differences in cooking patterns. In
            general, stove users also use their Mirt stoves more
            frequently over time. Giving the Mirt stove away for free
            and supporting community-level user networks are estimated
            to lead to more use. The study found no evidence, however,
            that stove recipients use the stoves more if they have to
            pay for them, a hypothesis that frequently arises in policy
            arenas and has also been examined in the literature.
Do capital inflows boost growth in
            developing countries evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper examines whether domestic
            output growth helps attract capital inflows and, in turn,
            capital inflows help boost output growth in a set of 38
            Sub-Saharan African countries. Using a two-step approach to
            address reverse causality and omitted variable issues, the
            paper finds that output growth in countries in Sub-Saharan
            Africa does not attract capital inflows. However, aid and
            foreign direct investment inflows enhance growth, while
            sovereign debt inflows do not. A 1 percent increase in the
            level of real aid inflows raises growth of real output per
            capita by 0.022 percentage point. For foreign direct
            investment inflows, the figure is 0.002 percentage point.
Determinants of tobacco consumption
            in Papua New Guinea : challenges in changing behaviors
This paper analyzes smoking prevalence
            and smoking behaviors in Papua New Guinea.  Using the
            2009–10 Papua New Guinea Household Income and Expenditure
            Survey, the paper analyzes the determinants of tobacco use
            and tobacco choices in Papua New Guinea. The results show
            that adults (18 years and above) in the poorest quartile are
            more likely to smoke. Tobacco consumption imposes a large
            financial burden to poor households. Tobacco consumption
            accounts for about 23 percent of total household food
            expenditure for households in the poorest quartile, compared
            with 15 percent for the entire sample. However, most of
            these households consume non-processed tobacco. The study
            reveals the urgency to control tobacco consumption in Papua
            New Guinea and considers some practical challenges that the
            country may face.
Teacher performance pay :
            Experimental evidence from Pakistan
This paper presents evidence from the
            first three years of a randomized controlled trial of a
            government-administered pilot teacher performance pay
            program in Punjab, Pakistan. The program offers yearly cash
            bonuses to teachers in a sample of public primary schools
            with the lowest mean student exam scores in the province.
            Bonuses are linked to three school-level indicators: the
            gain in student exam scores, the gain in school enrollment,
            and the level of student exam participation. Bonus receipt
            and size are also randomly assigned across schools according
            to whether or not the teacher is the school’s head. On
            average, the program increases school enrollment by 4.1
            percent and student exam participation rates by 3.4
            percentage points, both in the third year. The analysis does
            not find that the program increases student exam scores in
            any year. Mean impacts are similar across program variants.
            The positive mean impact on school enrollment is mainly seen
            in urban schools and the positive mean impact on student
            exam participation rates is only seen in rural schools.