rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
How is the slowdown affecting
            households in Latin America and the Caribbean
This paper shows evidence that suggests
            the economic slowdown in Latin America and the Caribbean has
            already translated into slowing social gains, including
            decelerating poverty reduction, stagnating growth of the
            middle class, and lower income growth. The countries of
            South America outperformed Mexico, Central America, and the
            Caribbean in poverty reduction during the decade up to 2012.
            But since then, a new story has emerged. In recent years,
            poverty reduction has been disappointing across the entire
            region, which seems to be converging toward low growth with
            slow poverty reduction and stagnant inequality. However,
            this apparent convergence in poverty reduction is driven by
            diverging labor market patterns. In a reversal of the trends
            seen during the commodity boom, real wages have been falling
            in South America and rising in Mexico, Central America, and
            the Caribbean. As lower economic growth is likely, the new
            normal will pose challenges for policy makers, in protecting
            the gains achieved and for societies as they face a mismatch
            between expectations and actual social mobility.
Costing household surveys for
            monitoring progress toward ending extreme poverty and
            boosting shared prosperity
On October 15, 2015, World Bank Group
            President Jim Yong Kim announced the World Bank Group’s
            commitment to support the 78 poorest countries to implement
            a multi-topic household survey every three years between
            2016 and 2030, for monitoring progress toward ending extreme
            poverty and boosting shared prosperity. This paper estimates
            the resource requirements to achieve the objectives of
            implementing 390 surveys across 78 International Development
            Association countries from 2016 to 2030, and providing
            direct technical assistance to the national statistical
            offices on all facets of survey design, implementation, and
            dissemination toward timely production of quality household
            survey data. The approach to the costing exercise is unique,
            as it makes use of detailed data on actual survey
            implementation and technical assistance costs from a group
            of countries, unlike previous attempts at costing household
            survey data gaps. The required total budget, in accordance
            with the survey design features recommended by the World
            Bank Household Survey Strategy, is estimated at US$945
            million for the period of 2016-2030. Of this, US$692 million
            is projected to cover the survey implementation costs across
            78 countries, and US$253 million is projected to cover the
            costs of direct technical assistance to be provided to the
            national statistical offices.
Can solar lanterns improve youth
            academic performance experimental evidence from Bangladesh
This study conducted an experimental
            intervention in unelectrified areas of northern Bangladesh
            to investigate the effectiveness of solar products in
            improving children's educational achievement. It found
            that treated households substituted solar lanterns for
            kerosene-based lighting products, helping to decrease total
            household expenditure. Solar lanterns increased the
            children's home-study hours, particularly at night and
            before exams. The solar lanterns initially led to an
            increase in school attendance, but this effect diminished
            over time. However, the increased study hours and initial
            improvement in school attendance did not translate into
            improved academic performance. Varying the number of solar
            products within the treated households did not alter these
            results. Analyses that exploited the school grade treatment
            intensity also provided no evidence suggesting that
            spillover effects explained the "no academic
            performance effects." These findings suggest that
            improving the home-study environment solely through the
            provision of solar products may have a limited impact on
            children's educational achievement.
Estimating poverty using cell phone
            data : evidence from Guatemala
The dramatic expansion of mobile phone
            use in developing countries has given rise to a rich and
            largely untapped source of information about the
            characteristics of communities and regions. Call Detail
            Records (CDRs) obtained from cellular phones provide highly
            granular real-time data that can be used to assess
            socio-economic behavior including consumption, mobility, and
            social patterns. This paper examines the results of a CDR
            analysis focused on five administrative departments in the
            south west region of Guatemala, which used mobile phone data
            to predict observed poverty rates. Its findings indicate
            that CDR-based research methods have the potential to
            replicate the poverty estimates obtained from traditional
            forms of data collection, like household surveys or
            censuses, at a fraction of the cost. In particular, CDRs
            were more helpful in predicting urban and total poverty in
            Guatemala more accurately than rural poverty. Moreover,
            although the poverty estimates produced by CDR analysis do
            not perfectly match those generated by surveys and censuses,
            the results show that more comprehensive data could greatly
            enhance their predictive power. CDR analysis has especially
            promising applications in Guatemala and other developing
            countries, which suffer from high rates of poverty and
            inequality, and where limited fiscal and budgetary resources
            complicate the task of data collection and underscore the
            importance of precisely targeting public expenditures to
            achieve their maximum antipoverty impact.
Government guarantees, transparency,
            and bank risk-taking
This paper presents a model of bank risk
            taking and government guarantees. Levered banks take
            excessive risk, as their actions are not fully priced at the
            margin by debt holders. The impact of government guarantees
            on bank risk taking depends critically on the portion of
            bank investors that can observe bank behavior and hence
            price debt at the margin. Greater guarantees increase risk
            taking (moral hazard) when informed investors hold a
            sufficiently large fraction of liabilities. Otherwise,
            greater guarantees reduce risk taking by increasing the
            profits of the bank (franchise value effect). The results
            extend to the case in which information disclosure, and thus
            the portion of informed investors, is endogenous but costly.
            The model also shows that when bank capital is endogenous,
            public guarantees lead unequivocally to an increase in bank
            leverage and an associated increase in risk taking. The
            analysis points to a complex relationship between prudential
            policy and the institutional framework governing bank
            resolution and bailouts.
Stocktaking of global forced
            displacement data
Conflict-induced forced displacement is
            receiving increased interest within the international
            community. However, establishing an accurate picture of its
            scale and dynamics is extremely challenging. Large amounts
            of data on forced displacement are collected and
            disseminated each year and used to inform policy and
            programming by humanitarian and development actors. However,
            not all of these data are credible or complete, and there
            are significant gaps in the data required for longer-term
            development planning. This paper reviews the various sources
            of data on forced displacement and assesses how these can be
            improved to enable more effective analysis and assistance by
            development actors. At an aggregate level, the headline
            figure of 65 million forcibly displaced persons is an
            estimate, and the data on internally displaced persons are
            the least robust. There are also several significant gaps in
            data collection for those populations that are of concern to
            development actors, especially returnees, as well the
            substantial number of people living in displacement-affected
            host communities. In addition, there is little comprehensive
            data available on the socioeconomic vulnerabilities and
            needs of displaced populations, or on the social and
            economic impacts of displacement on host countries and
            communities. Significant efforts are needed to enhance the
            reliability, comparability, quality, and scope of data on
            forced displacement in general, and address the gaps in the
            data required for long-term development planning.
Design of a multi-stage stratified
            sample for poverty and welfare monitoring with multiple
            objectives : a Bangladesh case study
This paper describes the design of a
            multi-stage stratified sample for the Bangladesh Household
            Income and Expenditure Survey 2016/17. This survey
            instrument will be used by the Government of Bangladesh to
            estimate reliable poverty and welfare statistics at three
            different levels: (i) annual estimates at the district
            level, (ii) quarterly estimates at the national level, and
            (iii) annual estimates at the division level for urban and
            rural areas. The sample for this survey was designed to
            achieve these three objectives. The paper explains how the
            three objectives are prioritized and how inconsistencies in
            achieving more than one objective can be reconciled.
            Further, the paper modifies the standard formulas to
            estimate the optimal sample size and the allocation of the
            sample across strata by explicitly taking into consideration
            the effect of clustering in the sample.
Weakness in investment growth :
            causes, implications and policy responses
Investment growth in emerging market and
            developing economies has slowed sharply since 2010. This
            paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the causes and
            implications of this slowdown and presents a menu of policy
            responses to improve investment growth. It reports four main
            results. First, the slowdown has been broad-based and most
            pronounced in the largest emerging markets and in commodity
            exporters. Second, it reflects a range of obstacles: weak
            activity, negative terms-of-trade shocks, declining foreign
            direct investment inflows, elevated private debt burdens,
            heightened political risk, and adverse spillovers from major
            economies. Third, by slowing capital accumulation and
            technological progress embedded in investment, weak
            post-crisis investment growth has contributed to sluggish
            growth of potential output in recent years. Finally,
            although specific policy priorities depend on country
            circumstances, policymakers can boost investment both
            directly, through public investment, and indirectly, by
            encouraging private investment, including foreign direct
            investment, and by undertaking measures to improve overall
            growth prospects and the business climate.
Antidiscrimination law and shared
            prosperity : an analysis of the legal framework of six
            economies and their impact on the equality of opportunities
            of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities
This paper looks at the structural
            marginalization of eth-nic, religious, and sexual minorities
            in six pilot economies (Bulgaria, Mexico, Morocco, the
            Netherlands, Tanzania, and Vietnam) and proposes a new
            methodology for collecting cross-country comparable data on
            antidiscrimination legal frameworks. The data cover six
            areas of law, ad-dressed by six indicators: (a) access to
            institutions, (b) access to education, (c) access to the
            labor market, (d) access to property, (e) access to public
            services and social protection, and (f) protection from hate
            crimes and hate speech. The laws, policies, and regulations
            presented fall under one of these indicators. For each, the
            paper attempts to identify the minority gap, the difference
            between the legal treatment of the ruling majority and that
            of the minority. Data were collected through two sources:
            first, standardized surveys submitted to ombudsman
            institutions, lawyers, academics, and civil society
            organizations; second, public government records on laws and
            regulations and data from international legal databases and
            human rights organizations. The idea driving the study is
            that institutional measures that hamper the access of
            ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities to the labor market
            and financial systems directly affect their economic
            performance and, as a consequence, represent a cost for the
            economy. Among the findings of the study is that
            antidiscrimination labor legislation is well developed in
            all six pilot economies, but many gaps still exist in access
            to property and in access to public goods and social
            services. The study also found that, of the three groups
            covered by the study, the least protected under the law are
            the sexual minorities. Although data from six economies
            cannot provide statistical evidence, findings suggest the
            need for further research. The authors hope to encourage a
            wider debate on the consequences of systematic
            discrimination against minorities and to help governments
            critically review their legal frameworks to ensure equal
            opportunities for all citizens, regardless of religion,
            ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Antidiscrimination law and shared
            prosperity : an analysis of the legal framework of six
            economies and their impact on the equality of opportunities
            of ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities
WPS7992 Policy Research Working Paper 7992 Antidiscrimination Law and Shared Prosperity An Analysis of the Legal Framework of Six Economies and Their Impact on the Equality of Opportunities of Ethnic, Religious, and Sexual Minorities _Elaine Panter Tanya Primiani Tazeen Hasan Eduardo Calderon Pontaza_ Development Economics Global Indicators Group March 2017
Growing markets through business
            training for female entrepreneurs : a market-level
            randomized experiment in Kenya
A common concern with efforts to
            directly help some small businesses to grow is that their
            growth comes at the expense of their unassisted competitors.
            This study tests this possibility using a two-stage
            randomized experiment in Kenya. The experiment randomizes
            business training at the market level, and then within
            markets to selected businesses. Three years after training,
            the treated businesses are selling more, earn higher
            profits, and their owners have higher well-being. There is
            no evidence of negative spillovers on the competing
            businesses, and the markets as a whole appear to have grown
            in terms of number of customers and sales volumes. This
            market growth appears to come from enhanced customer service
            and new product introduction, generating more customers and
            more sales from existing customers. As a result, business
            growth in underdeveloped markets is possible without taking
            sales away from nontreated businesses.
Who should be at the top of
            bottom-up development a case study of the national rural
            livelihoods mission in Rajasthan, India
It is widely acknowledged that top-down
            support is essential for bottom-up participatory projects to
            be effectively implemented at scale. However, which level of
            government, national or sub-national, should be given the
            responsibility to implement such projects is an open
            question, with wide variations in practice. This paper
            analyzes qualitative and quantitative data from a natural
            experiment in the state of Rajasthan in India, where a large
            national flagship project that mobilized women into
            self-help groups for micro-credit and created a women's
            network for other development activities was implemented in
            two different ways. Some sub-regions were given to the state
            government of Rajasthan to manage, while the Government of
            India centrally managed other sub-regions. The study finds
            that the nature of top-down management had a large bearing
            on the nature and quality of local-level facilitation.
            Centrally and locally managed facilitators formed several
            groups with similar financial performance. But centrally
            managed facilitators formed groups that were less likely to
            engage in collective action, be politically active, and
            engage with other civil society organizations. These results
            raise important questions on how responsibilities for
            participatory development projects should be devolved, and
            how the nature of management affects the sustainability of
            bottom-up interventions.
Economic upgrading through global
            value chain participation : which policies increase the
            value added gains
The emergence of global value chains has
            opened up new ways to achieve development and
            industrialization. However, new evidence shows that not all
            countries have gained from participating in global value
            chains, and that country-specific characteristics matter for
            economic upgrading in global value chains. This paper uses
            two panel data sets of developing and industrialized
            countries at the sectoral level to relate global value chain
            participation as a buyer and seller to domestic value added.
            These are combined with a wide range of policy measures at
            the country level that can play a role in economic upgrading
            through global value chains, by targeting global value chain
            integration or the quality and conditions of input and
            output factors. First, the study finds that global value
            chain integration increases domestic value added, especially
            on the selling side, which holds across all income levels.
            Second, the results highlight the importance of policy for
            economic upgrading through global value chain integration.
            Although the study cannot claim causal evidence, all the
            assessed policy areas are consistently shown to mediate the
            effects of global value chains and magnify the gains for
            domestic value added. Third, a detailed analysis shows that
            several policy areas mediate the gains from global value
            chains more through integration as a seller. Finally, the
            study observes that many of the results are driven by high-
            and upper-middle-income countries.
Entry and exit, multi-product firms,
            and allocative distortions
This paper proposes a multi-product
            model of firm dynamics to understand the implications of
            allocative distortions for the decisions of firms to enter,
            exit, and supply products to the market. These margins of
            adjustment have been largely neglected in the literature yet
            have direct contributions to welfare and productivity. The
            paper finds that when the analysis accounts for these
            channels, the traditional focus on long-run gains in Total
            Factor Productivity from reversing misallocation strongly
            underestimates the welfare gains that accrue when accounting
            for transitional dynamics. Calibrating the distortions to
            China in 1998, the analysis finds a welfare gain of 32
            percent and a steady-state gain of 10 percent.
They got mad skills : the effects of
            training on youth employability and resilience to the Ebola shock
This paper discusses a randomized
            control trial to measure the short-term impacts of a skills
            intervention among urban youth in Sierra Leone at the onset
            of the Ebola crisis. The intervention provided (i) technical
            skills training, plus on-the-job training; (ii) business
            skills training; and (iii) a mix of (i) and (ii). All groups
            received stipends and literacy and numeracy training. The
            findings support evidence that combining cash injections and
            skills training can stimulate employment and
            entrepreneurship. The program boosted household consumption
            and investments in housing and assets, thereby building
            resilience to the Ebola shock. The effects on cognitive and
            noncognitive skills were positive and heterogeneous. Youth
            with greater initial ability experienced more positive labor
            market and entrepreneurship investment impacts. Youth with
            less initial ability upgraded skills more extensively,
            although they channeled benefits into more consumption.
            These findings emphasize the role of basic safety nets and
            show that noncognitive tests may improve the targeting of
            skills interventions in fragile contexts. The results also
            confirm the age-malleability of noncognitive ability and
            suggest that, in low-ability contexts, the sensitive years
            for skill investments may reach into early adulthood.