rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Infrastructure investment demands in
            emerging markets and developing economies
The authors have assembled 1960–2012
            infrastructure stock data from 145 countries to estimate the
            demand for infrastructure services in emerging markets and
            developing economies. This paper identifies that the
            required resource flows to satisfy new demand while
            maintaining service for existing infrastructure amounts to
            $836 billion or 6.1 percent of current gross domestic
            product per year over the period 2014–20. The annual
            infrastructure investment gap for emerging markets and
            developing economies is $452 billion per year, which implies
            that emerging markets and developing economies should almost
            double their current spending. The paper also estimates that
            half of the spending should be allocated to maintenance of
            existing assets. Acknowledging the challenges to compare
            infrastructure investment estimates across different
            methodologies, the authors recognize this result as a lower
            bound estimate and compare the results with others available
            in the literature.
Aging, social security design, and
            capital accumulation
This paper analyzes the impact of aging
            on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a
            sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period
            overlapping generation model with endogenous retirement
            decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging and the
            type of unfunded social security system are important in
            understanding this impact. The analysis compares two types
            of demographic changes, declining fertility and increasing
            longevity; three types of pensions, defined contributions,
            defined benefits, and defined annuities; as well as
            mandatory and optimal retirement systems to investigate the
            differences in implications of aging.
Adults' Cognitive and
            Socioemotional Skills and their Labor Market Outcomes in Colombia
Previous research has shown that people
            with higher cognitive skills (mental abilities) and
            socioemotional skills (behaviors and personality) get better
            labor market outcomes. It is unclear, however, if this
            conclusion applies to low- and middle-income countries,
            given that existing literature builds on studies that are
            dominantly about high-income countries. In this paper, we
            explore how cognitive and socioemotional skills of adults,
            ages 15-64, relate to their labor market outcomes in the
            context of Colombia. Controlling for a range of confounding
            factors in a cross-sectional survey, we do find that adults
            with higher skills also have better outcomes, while
            cognitive and socioemotional skills correlate with different
            ones and seemingly through different channels. Adults with
            higher cognitive skills have better jobs (with higher
            earnings, more formal, and high-skilled) and are more likely
            to complete tertiary education. Socioemotional skills
            correlate more modestly with having a better job but more
            strongly with labor market participation and
            tertiary-education completion. Results suggest that adults
            with both cognitive and socioemotional skills tend to do
            better in the labor market and that policies boosting the
            development of both types may be beneficial in Colombia.
The impact of investment policy in a
            changing global economy : a review of the literature
Evidence shows that foreign direct
            investment can provide many benefits to host countries,
            including productivity improvements, better jobs, and
            knowledge transfer. Further, it can serve as a vehicle for
            transformation of domestic production and better integration
            with global value chains. Nonetheless, these benefits are
            not automatic. Investment policies are required to maximize
            the potential gains of foreign direct investment. One
            challenge is that there are different kinds of foreign
            direct investment, and each may have different economic,
            social, and environmental impacts. However, the literature
            analyzing foreign direct investment often tends to swing
            from an extremely case-specific focus — analyzing
            experiences in one particular country in a single sector
            during a given period — to lumping together the analysis as
            if it was a homogenous phenomenon. Investment policy
            formulation requires a framework sophisticated enough to
            differentiate between the various kinds of foreign direct
            investment, as well as potential challenges and benefits for
            development. It must also be simple enough to enable
            governments to organize and prioritize the multiple and
            complex variables affecting the maximization of investment
            benefits. This paper presents an overview of the literature
            on the impact of foreign direct investment. The paper argues
            that a logical framework is needed to organize existing
            evidence from research to fill gaps in the literature and
            make existing evidence more useful in targeting policy making.
A product space perspective on
            structural change in Morocco
Drawing on international trade data,
            this paper uses the product space approach to analyze
            changes in Morocco’s goods exports in 1990–2010 and future
            export priorities. The level of Morocco’s gross domestic
            product and its moderate growth match the predictions of
            product space analysis, informed by changes in the income
            potential of Morocco’s export basket, reflecting relatively
            strong capabilities (a high density) in products with
            relatively low potentials in income and diversification.
            Morocco’s peripheral position in the product space map
            matches its slow growth and points to the difficulty of
            diversification into more sophisticated products.
            Encouraging changes since 1990 include the development of a
            revealed comparative advantage for medium- and high-tech
            manufactures, which in 2010 represented around 40 percent of
            total goods exports. However, the number of goods involved
            is relatively small and this transformation has not sufficed
            to raise per capita growth to the average for middle-income
            countries. Export projections up to 2025 suggest that future
            developments will follow the trends of the past. Among
            sectors, high growth is likely for phosphate-based
            fertilizer exports. However, like edible oil products, which
            also may grow rapidly, phosphates are hampered by low income
            and diversification potentials. Along with various other
            manufactured products, electronics and the automotive
            industry are promising sectors that may offer more lasting
            positive contributions to Morocco’s future development.
            Beyond goods, Morocco’s policy makers should also consider
            the potential contributions of service exports, which in
            recent years have enjoyed rapid growth.
Which donors, which funds the choice
            of multilateral funds by bilateral donors at the World Bank
The rapid growth of trust funds at
            multilateral development organizations has been widely
            neglected in the academic literature so far. Using a simple
            illustrative model, this paper examines the choice by
            sovereign donors among various trust fund options. The
            authors contend that the choice among the different trust
            funds involves a fundamental trade-off: larger funds provide
            donors with the benefit of burden sharing. Conversely, each
            donor can better assert its individual preferences in a fund
            with fewer other donors. The theoretical considerations
            yield testable implications on a range of factors affecting
            this fundamental tradeoff, most notably the area of
            intervention of the trust fund and competing domestic
            interests of donor countries. Using a sample of World Bank
            trust funds, the paper examines the participation decisions
            of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
            Development/Development Assistance Committee donors over the
            past decade. In line with the theoretical argument,
            preference homogeneity among donors as well as indicators
            for global activities and fragile states assistance are
            robust determinants of participation in (large) multi-donor
            funds. In contrast, donors tend to prefer single-donor trust
            funds in areas in which their national interests dominate.
            Although they could use bilateral aid for the same purpose,
            they often prefer to channel their contributions through
            trust funds at multilateral agencies. Donors thereby reduce
            their own administrative costs, while benefiting from the
            expertise of the multilateral agency. These findings confirm
            prior qualitative case studies and evidence from donor
            reports, suggesting that reduced reliance on single-donor
            trust funds—a costly instrument from the perspective of
            multilateral agencies—can improve the development
            effectiveness of aid.
Social norms theory and development economics
Social norms affect almost every aspect
            of people’s lives, and can be an obstacle to or support
            economic development. This paper outlines what social norms
            are and how they work, providing examples from everyday life
            and from development case studies. Sometimes not much can be
            done about changing undesirable social norms. In those
            cases, development economists need to be aware of how the
            existence of those norms can impact the effects of the
            policies they advocate. But of particular importance to
            development economists is the ways in which social norms can
            be changed, at least under some circumstances. Understanding
            of social norm change is still patchy at best, but the paper
            outlines the theoretical underpinnings of change, with
            empirical evidence from various policies aimed at changing
            social norms. However, some of those policies raise ethical
            concerns that would require attention.
Disaster risk, climate change, and
            poverty : assessing the global exposure of poor people to
            floods and droughts
People living in poverty are
            particularly vulnerable to shocks, including those caused by
            natural disasters such as floods and droughts. Previous
            studies in local contexts have shown that poor people are
            also often overrepresented in hazard-prone areas. However,
            systematic evidence across countries demonstrating this
            finding is lacking. This paper analyzes at the country level
            whether poor people are disproportionally exposed to floods
            and droughts, and how this exposure may change in a future
            climate. To this end, household survey data with spatial
            identifiers from 52 countries are combined with present-day
            and future flood and drought hazard maps. The paper defines
            and calculates a “poverty exposure bias” and finds support
            that poor people are often overexposed to droughts and urban
            floods. For floods, no such signal is found for rural
            households, suggesting that different mechanisms—such as
            land scarcity—are more important drivers in urban areas. The
            poverty exposure bias does not change significantly under
            future climate scenarios, although the absolute number of
            people potentially exposed to floods or droughts can
            increase or decrease significantly, depending on the
            scenario and the region. The study finds some evidence of
            regional patterns: in particular, many countries in Africa
            exhibit a positive poverty exposure bias for floods and
            droughts. For these hot spots, implementing risk-sensitive
            land-use and development policies that protect poor people
            should be a priority.
Mobility, scarring and job quality
            in Indonesia’s labor market
This paper investigates the occupational
            mobility and job quality of young people in Indonesia and
            relates this to the concept of “scarring.” The concept of
            labor market scarring in this paper is the occurrence of low
            or zero returns to certain types of work (for example,
            self-employment). Scarring is expected to occur whenever an
            individual spends periods working in occupations in which
            their human capital is either stagnant or deteriorating.
            Fixed effects estimations using panel data from the
            Indonesian Family Life Survey reveal that a period in
            self-employment is associated with negative returns for
            youth (about 3 to 4 percent per year penalty), but not for
            older adults. In addition, there are clear patterns of
            persistence in self-employment over time with few
            individuals progressing from petty self-employment to
            businesses with permanent workers.
SMEs, age, and jobs : a review of
            the literature, metrics, and evidence
The subject of which firms are the key
            employers—and which of these create or destroy jobs at a
            faster rate—is eminently important for academics and policy
            makers. The relative importance of small versus large firms
            and old versus young firms has in particular been
            extensively debated and studied. Nevertheless, the results
            often hinge on the questions that are asked. Moreover, the
            categorical definitions used to define firm size and age,
            and the nature and coverage of the data used have important
            effects. This paper lays out the relevant definitions and
            metrics that are central to the debate, reviewing the main
            findings to date on the subject (with particular emphasis on
            results in developing economies). The paper adds updated
            results for 117 developing economies using the World Bank’s
            Enterprise Survey Data, finding that (i) small and medium
            enterprises and older establishments are the dominant
            employers in the nonagricultural private sector labor force
            in developing economies, and (ii) net job creation is
            negatively correlated with establishment age and, although
            the effect of size is also negative, its significance is
            sensitive to the definition and methods used.
Women’s police stations and domestic
            violence : evidence from Brazil
Although women’s police centers have
            been gaining popularity as a measure to address domestic
            violence, to date no quantitative evaluations of their
            impacts on the incidence of domestic violence or any other
            manifestations of gender equality have been done. This paper
            estimates the effects of women’s police stations in Brazil
            on female homicides, as a measure of the most severe form of
            domestic violence. Given that a high fraction of female
            deaths among women ages 15 to 49 years can be attributed to
            aggression by an intimate partner, female homicides appear
            the best available proxy for severe domestic violence
            considering the scarcity of data on domestic violence. The
            paper uses a panel of 2,074 municipalities and takes
            advantage of the gradual rollout of women’s police stations
            from 2004 to 2009, to estimate the effect of establishing a
            women’s police station on the municipal female homicide
            rate. Although the analysis does not find an association on
            average, women’s police stations appear to be highly
            effective among some groups of women: women living in
            metropolitan areas and younger women. Establishing a women’s
            police station in a metropolitan municipality is associated
            with a reduction in the homicide rate by 1.23 deaths per
            100,000 women (which roughly amounts to a 17 percent
            reduction in the average homicide rate in metropolitan
            municipalities). The reduction in the homicide rate of women
            ages 15 to 24 is even higher: 5.57 deaths per 100,000 women.
            Qualitative work suggests that better economic opportunities
            and less traditional social norms in metropolitan areas may
            explain the heterogeneous impacts of women’s police stations
            in metropolitan areas and outside them.
Hub-periphery development pattern
            and inclusive growth : case study of Guangdong province
The hub-periphery development pattern of
            the Guangdong economy, to some extent, is a miniature of
            that of the Chinese economy. The Pearl River Delta, drawing
            from its first-nature comparative advantages in factor
            endowments and proximity to Hong Kong SAR, China, and Macau
            SAR, China, and the second-nature advantages as first-movers
            in the reforms in attracting and retaining domestic and
            foreign resources, has developed into a regional economic
            center. This paper examines the pattern of inter- and
            intra-provincial migration and that of the concentration of
            production, to explore the challenges and opportunities for
            the success of “double transfer.” The paper suggests a
            four-prong approach, to improve the business environment,
            support the realization of latent comparative advantages,
            increase the skill level of the labor force to support the
            upgrade of the production structure, and protect the
            vulnerable, to support the inclusive growth of the economy
            in Guangdong in a sustainable manner.
Duration dependence and
            change-points in the likelihood of credit booms ending
Whether the likelihood of a credit boom
            ending is dependent on its age or not, or whether the
            respective behavior is smooth or bumpy are important issues
            to which the economic literature has not given attention
            yet. This paper tries to fill that gap, exploring those
            issues with a proper duration analysis. Credit booms are
            identified considering two criteria well established in the
            literature: (i) the Mendoza-Terrones criteria and (ii) and
            the Gourinchas-Valdes-Landarretche criteria. A
            continuous-time Weibull duration model is employed over a
            group of 71 countries for the period 1975q1-2010q4 to
            investigate whether credit booms are duration dependent or
            not. The findings show that the likelihood of credit booms
            ending increases over their duration and that these events
            have become longer over the past decades. In addition, the
            paper extends the baseline Weibull duration model in order
            to allow for change-points in the duration dependence
            parameter. The empirical findings support the presence of a
            change-point: increasing positive duration dependence is
            observed in booms that last less than eight to ten quarters,
            but it becomes decreasing or even irrelevant for longer
            events. Analogous results are found for those credit boom
            episodes that are followed by systemic banking crisis (bad
            credit booms). The findings also show that credit booms are,
            on average, longer in industrial than in developing countries.
Collateral registries for movable
            assets : does their introduction spur firms' access to
            bank finance
Using firm-level surveys for up to 73
            countries, this paper explores the impact of introducing
            collateral registries for movable assets on firms'
            access to bank finance. It compares firms' access to
            bank finance in seven countries that introduced collateral
            registries for movable assets against three control groups:
            firms in all countries that did not introduce a registry,
            firms in a sample of countries matched by location and
            income per capita to the countries that introduced
            registries for movable assets, and firms in countries that
            undertook other types of collateral reforms but did not set
            up registries for movable assets. Overall, the analysis
            finds that introducing collateral registries for movable
            assets increases firms' access to bank finance. There
            is also some evidence that this effect is larger among
            smaller firms.
Technological learning, energy
            efficiency, and CO2 emissions in China's energy
            intensive industries
Since the onset of economic reforms in
            1978, China has been remarkably successful in reducing the
            carbon dioxide intensities of gross domestic product and
            industrial production. Most analysts correctly attribute the
            rapid decline in the carbon dioxide intensity of industrial
            production to rising energy prices, increased openness to
            trade and investment, increased competition, and
            technological change. China's industrial and technology
            policies also have contributed to lower carbon dioxide
            intensities, by transforming industrial structure and
            improving enterprise level technological capabilities. Case
            studies of four energy intensive industries -- aluminum,
            cement, iron and steel, and paper -- show how the changes
            have put these industries on substantially lower carbon
            dioxide emissions trajectories. Although the changes have
            not led to absolute declines in carbon dioxide emissions,
            they have substantially weakened the link between industry
            growth and carbon dioxide emissions.