rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Making poor Haitians count--poverty
            in rural and urban Haiti based on the first household survey
            for Haiti
This paper analyzes poverty in Haiti
            based on the first Living Conditions Survey of 7,186
            households covering the whole country and representative at
            the regional level. Using a USD1 a day extreme poverty line,
            the analysis reveals that 49 percent of Haitian households
            live in absolute poverty. Twenty, 56, and 58 percent of
            households in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas,
            respectively, are poor. At the regional level, poverty is
            especially extensive in the northeastern and northwestern
            regions. Access to assets such as education and
            infrastructure services is highly unequal and strongly
            correlated with poverty. Moreover, children in indigent
            households attain less education than children in nonpoor
            households. Controlling for individual and household
            characteristics, location, and region, living in a rural
            area does not by itself affect the probability of being
            poor. But in rural areas female headed households are more
            likely to experience poverty than male headed households.
            Domestic migration and education are both key factors that
            reduce the likelihood of falling into poverty. Employment is
            essential to improve livelihoods and both the farm and
            nonfarm sector play a key role.
Fiscal policy for growth and
            development in Tajikistan
Tajikistan's economy has recovered
            strongly after the collapse of the 1990s, but sustaining
            rapid economic growth over the long term and reducing
            poverty present major challenges for policymakers. This
            paper contributes to the debate over the strategic role for
            fiscal policy to play in meeting these challenges, utilizing
            the "fiscal space" approach to assess the
            long-term potential for expanding public provision of
            growth-promoting goods and services and evaluating the
            priorities for public spending. It also analyzes the
            long-term risks to fiscal sustainability, from external
            public debt and the quasi fiscal deficit of the electricity
            sector. The paper contends that institutional reforms in key
            areas, notably public financial management, tax
            administration, and the energy sector, are crucial for
            generating fiscal space and for ensuring that higher levels
            of public spending are translated into stronger economic
            growth and poverty reduction. The priorities for government
            spending should be education, health, and the maintenance of
            the core networks of the existing infrastructure for energy
            and transport, rather than new public investment projects.
Effects of improving infrastructure
            quality on business costs : evidence from firm-level data
Economic development is affected by
            infrastructure services in both volume and quality terms.
            However, the quality of infrastructure is relatively
            difficult to measure and assess. The current paper, using
            firm-level data collected by a business environment
            assessment survey in 26 countries in Europe and Central
            Asia, estimates the marginal impacts on firm costs of
            infrastructure quality. The results suggest that the
            reliability or continuity of services is important for
            business performance. Firm costs significantly increase when
            electricity outages occur more frequently and the average
            outage duration becomes longer. Similarly, increased hours
            of water supply suspensions also reduce firms'
            competitiveness. In these countries, it is found that the
            total benefit for the economy from eliminating the existing
            electricity outages ranges from 0.5 to 6 percent of gross
            domestic product. If all water suspensions are removed, the
            economy could receive a gain of about 0.5 to 2 percent of
            gross domestic product. By contrast, the quality of
            telecommunications services seems to have no significant impact.
Health reform, population policy and
            child nutritional status in China
This paper examines the determinants of
            child nutritional status in seven provinces of China during
            the 1990s, focusing specifically on the role of two areas of
            public policy, namely health system reforms and the one
            child policy. The empirical relationship between income and
            nutritional status, and the extent to which that
            relationship is mediated by access to quality healthcare and
            being an only-child, is investigated using ordinary least
            squares, random effects, fixed effects, and instrumental
            variables models. In the preferred model - a fixed effects
            model where income is instrumented - the author find that
            being an only-child increases height-for-age z-scores by
            0.119 of a standard deviation. The magnitude of this effect
            is found to be largely gender and income neutral. By
            contrast, access to quality healthcare and income is not
            found to be significantly associated with improved
            nutritional status in the preferred model. Data are drawn
            from four waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey.
Medical migration : what can we
            learn from the UK's perspective
This paper seeks to determine the
            macro-economic impacts of migration of skilled medical
            personnel from a receiving country's perspective. The
            resource allocation issues are explored in theory, by
            developing an extension of the Rybczynski theorem in a
            low-dimension Heckscher-Ohlin framework, and empirically, by
            developing a static computable general equilibrium model for
            the United Kingdom with an extended health sector component.
            Using simple diagrams, an expansion of the health sector by
            recruiting immigrant skilled workers in certain cases is
            shown to compare favorably to the (short-term) long-term
            alternative of using domestic (unskilled) workers. From a
            formal analysis, changes in non-health outputs are shown to
            depend on factor-bias and scale effects. The net effects
            generally are indeterminate. The main finding from the
            applied model is that importing foreign doctors and nurses
            into the United Kingdom yields higher overall welfare gains
            than a generic increase in the National Health Service
            budget. Welfare gains rise in case of wage protection.
Differential adaptation strategies
            by agro-ecological zones in African livestock management
This paper examines how farmers have
            adapted their livestock operation to the current climate in
            each agro-ecological zone in Africa. The authors examine how
            climate has affected the farmer's choice to raise
            livestock or not and the choice of animal species. To
            measure adaptation, the analysis regresses the farmer's
            choice on climate, soil, water flow, and socio-economic
            variables. The findings show that climate does in fact
            affect the farmer's decision about whether to raise
            livestock and the species. The paper also simulates how
            future climates may alter these decisions using forecasts
            from climate models and the estimated model. With a hot dry
            scenario, livestock ownership will increase slightly across
            all of Africa, but especially in West Africa and high
            elevation agro-ecological zones. Dairy cattle will decrease
            in semi-arid regions, sheep will increase in the lowlands,
            and chickens will increase at high elevations. With a mild
            and wet scenario, however, livestock adoption will fall
            dramatically in lowland and high latitude moist
            agro-ecological zones. Beef cattle will increase and sheep
            will fall in dry zones, dairy cattle will fall precipitously
            and goats will rise in moist zones, and chickens will
            increase at high elevations but fall at mid elevations.
            Livestock adaptations depend on the climate scenario and
            will vary across the landscape. Agro-ecological zones are a
            useful way to capture how these changes differ from place to place.
Pitfalls of participatory programs :
            evidence from a randomized evaluation in education in India
Participation of beneficiaries in the
            monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as key to
            improving their efficiency.  In India, the current
            government flagship program on universal primary education
            organizes community members, specifically locally elected
            leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools,
            into committees and gives these powers over resource
            allocation, monitoring and management of school performance.
            However, in a baseline survey this paper finds that people
            were not aware of the existence of these committees and
            their potential for improving education. The paper evaluates
            three different interventions to encourage
            beneficiaries' participation: providing information,
            training community members in a new testing tool, and
            training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading
            camps for illiterate children. The authors find that these
            interventions had no impact on community involvement in
            public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning
            outcomes in those schools. However, the intervention that
            trained volunteers to teach children to read had large
            impact on activity outside public schools -- local youths
            volunteered to be trained, and children who attended these
            camps substantially improved their reading skills. These
            results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints
            in participating to improve the public education system,
            even when they care about education and are willing to do
            something to improve it.
Intertemporal adjustment and fiscal
            policy under a fixed exchange rate regime
The paper presents a dynamic model for
            small to medium open economies operating under a fixed
            exchange rate regime. The model provides a partial
            explanation of the channels through which fiscal and
            monetary policy affects the real exchange rate. An empirical
            investigation is conducted for the case of Argentina during
            the currency board period of 1991-2001. Empirical estimates
            show that fiscal policy may indeed be an efficient
            instrument for promoting macroeconomic stability insofar as
            it encourages convergence toward long-run equilibrium and
            alters the long-term balance between exports and
            consumption, both private and public. The simulation applied
            to Argentina shows that if the share of public spending in
            the economy is higher than the share of imports, an increase
            in the tax rate will stimulate capital stock slightly, at
            least in the short term, and depreciate the real effective
            exchange rate. In the long run, the fiscal policy affects
            the value of the real exchange rate and consequently
            external competitiveness.
Beyond aid : new sources and
            innovative mechanisms for financing development in
            Sub-Saharan Africa
Given Sub-Saharan Africa's enormous
            resource needs for growth, poverty reduction, and other
            Millennium Development Goals, the development community has
            little choice but to continue to explore new sources of
            financing, innovative private-to-private sector solutions,
            and public-private partnerships to mobilize additional
            international financing. The paper suggests several new
            instruments for improving access to capital. An analysis of
            country creditworthiness suggests that many countries in the
            region may be more creditworthy than previously believed.
            Establishing sovereign rating benchmarks and credit
            enhancement through guarantee instruments provided by
            multilateral aid agencies would facilitate market access.
            Creative financial structuring, such as the International
            Financing Facility for Immunization, would help front-load
            aid commitments, although these may not result in additional
            financing in the long run. Preliminary estimates suggest
            that Sub-Saharan African countries can potentially raise USD
            1-3 billion by reducing the cost of international migrant
            remittances, USD 5-10 billion by issuing diaspora bonds, and
            USD 17 billion by securitizing future remittances and other
            future receivables. African countries that have recently
            received debt relief however need to be cautious when
            resorting to market-based borrowing.
Real exchange rates, saving and
            growth : is there a link
The view that policies directed at the
            real exchange rate can have an important effect on economic
            growth has been gaining adherents in recent years. Unlike
            the traditional "misalignment" view that temporary
            departures of the real exchange rate from its equilibrium
            level harm growth by distorting a key relative price in the
            economy, the recent literature stresses the growth effects
            of the equilibrium real exchange rate itself, with the claim
            being that a depreciated equilibrium real exchange rate
            promotes economic growth. While there is no consensus on the
            precise channels through which this effect is generated, an
            increasingly common view in policy circles points to saving
            as the channel of transmission, with the claim that a
            depreciated real exchange rate raises the domestic saving
            rate -- which in turn stimulates growth by increasing the
            rate of capital accumulation. This paper offers a
            preliminary exploration of this claim. Drawing from standard
            analytical models, stylized facts on saving and real
            exchange rates, and existing empirical research on saving
            determinants, the paper assesses the link between the real
            exchange rate and saving. Overall, the conclusion is that
            saving is unlikely to provide the mechanism through which
            the real exchange rate affects growth.
The impact of remittances on rural
            poverty and inequality in China
Large numbers of agricultural labor
            moved from the countryside to cities after the economic
            reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an
            important role in transforming the structure of rural
            household income. This paper examines the impact of
            rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in
            the case of Hubei province using the data of a 2002
            household survey. Since remittances are a potential
            substitute for farm income, the paper presents
            counterfactual scenarios of what rural income, poverty, and
            inequality would have been in the absence of migration. The
            results show that, by providing alternatives to households
            with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture,
            migration leads to an increase in rural income. In contrast
            to many studies that suggest the increasing share of
            non-farm income in total income widens inequality, this
            paper offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends
            to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three
            reasons: (i) migration is rational self-selection - farmers
            with higher agricultural productivities choose to remain in
            local agricultural production while those with higher
            expected return in urban non-farm sectors migrate; (ii)
            poorer households facing binding constraints of land
            shortage are more likely to migrate; and (iii) the poorest
            poor benefit disproportionately from remittances.
Armed conflict and schooling :
            evidence from the 1994 Rwandan genocide
Civil war, and genocide in particular,
            are among the most destructive of social phenomena,
            especially for children of school-going age. In Rwanda
            school enrollment trends suggest that the school system
            recovered quickly after 1994, but these numbers do not tell
            the full story. Two cross-sectional household surveys
            collected before and after the genocide are used to compare
            children in the same age group who were and were not exposed
            to the genocide - and their educational outcomes are
            substantially different. Children exposed to the genocide
            experienced a drop in educational achievement of almost
            one-half year of completed schooling, and are 15 percentage
            points less likely to complete third or fourth grade.
            Sustained effort is needed to reinforce educational
            institutions and offer a "second chance" to those
            youth most affected by the conflict.
Foreign bank acquisitions and
            outreach : evidence from Mexico
Recently, developing countries have
            witnessed a sharp increase in foreign bank participation.
            The authors examine the impact on banking outreach using
            newly gathered data for Mexico, where foreign bank
            participation rose from 2 percent to 83 percent of assets
            during 1997-2005. Country-, bank-, and bank-municipality
            level estimations show a decline in the number of deposit
            and loan accounts. While country- and bank-level estimations
            indicate an increase in the share of municipalities with
            bank branches and in the likelihood of bank presence,
            bank-municipality regressions show that only rich and urban
            municipalities benefited. Overall, the evidence is
            consistent with a decline in outreach.
Assessing the impact of public
            spending on growth - an empirical analysis for seven fast
            growing countries
The goal of this paper is to understand
            better, at the empirical level, how public spending
            contributes to growth by focusing on both the level and
            composition of public spending, in connection to the
            dynamics of GDP per capita growth. It attempts to answer two
            specific questions: (a) What are the policy conditions under
            which public spending contributes positively to growth? and
            (b) What are the public spending components that have a
            stronger and longer-lasting impact on growth? The analysis
            is applied to a sample of seven fast-growing developing
            countries: Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia,
            Botswana, and Mauritius, which have been among the top
            performers in the world in terms of GDP per capita growth
            during the period (1960-2006). The rationale for this
            country sample selection is twofold. The first hypothesis is
            that, given their positive growth achievements over a
            relatively long time period, perhaps it is more
            straightforward to establish a link to public spending in
            those countries. Second, it is expected that the findings of
            the analysis will provide lessons regarding the level and
            composition of public spending that can be useful for other
            countries where growth has been less rapid. Assessing what
            role public spending has played in a dynamic growth context
            may indeed be enlightening for other cases as well. The
            paper is structured as follows. The first section is an
            introduction that provides relevant facts and information
            about the seven countries during the period of analysis,
            based on seven individual country case studies. Section II
            presents the theoretical background behind the empirical
            analysis. Section III focuses on the empirical methodology,
            function specification, and variables selected. Section IV
            is dedicated to the results obtained with the cross-country
            analysis and some specific country results, as well as some
            comparisons with previous findings by other authors.
            Finally, Section V draws policy implications and concludes.
Small enterprise growth and the
            rural investment climate : evidence from Tanzania
This paper analyzes characteristics of
            nonfarm enterprises, their employment growth patterns, and
            constraints in doing business in rural Tanzania. Using
            unique survey data, the authors describe a low-return sector
            struggling to compete in a difficult business environment.
            However, about one-third of rural enterprises are growing
            fast. Most enterprises engage in agricultural trade. Due to
            a rapidly growing agricultural sector in recent years,
            limiting demand-side constraints, rural enterprise
            constraints in Tanzania mainly operate from the supply side.
            This suggests that, in particular, access to finance, road
            infrastructure, and rural cell phone communication is
            correlated with employment growth. A major finding is that
            subjective and objective measurements of business
            constraints are broadly comparable. The authors discuss a
            number of factors that would help to unleash the full
            potential of private sector-led growth in rural areas. The
            findings show that marginal improvements in the rural
            investment climate matter for growth.