rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Do we need big banks evidence on
            performance, strategy and market discipline
For an international sample of banks,
            the authors construct measures of a bank's absolute
            size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the
            national economy. They examine how a bank's risk and
            return, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the
            extent to which it faces market discipline depend on both
            size measures. Although absolute size presents banks with a
            trade-off between risk and return, systemic size is an
            unmitigated bad, reducing return without a reduction in
            risk. Despite too-big-to-fail subsidies, the analysis finds
            that systemically large banks are subject to greater market
            discipline as evidenced by a higher sensitivity of their
            funding costs to risk proxies, suggesting that they are
            often too big to save. The finding that a bank's
            interest cost tends to rise with its systemic size can also
            in part explain why a bank's rate of return on assets
            tends to decline with systemic size. Overall, the results
            cast doubt on the need to have systemically large banks.
            Bank growth has not been in the interest of bank
            shareholders in small countries, and it is not clear whether
            those in larger countries have benefited. Although market
            discipline through increasing funding costs should keep
            systemic size in check, clearly it has not been effective in
            preventing the emergence of such banks in the first place.
            Inadequate corporate governance structures at banks seem to
            have enabled managers to pursue high-growth strategies at
            the expense of shareholders, providing support for greater
            government regulation.
Sudden stops and financial frictions
            : evidence from industry level data
The nature of the microeconomic
            frictions that transform sudden stops in output collapses is
            not only of academic interest, but also crucial for the
            correct design of policy responses to prevent and address
            these episodes and the lack of evidence on this regard is an
            important shortcoming. This paper uses industry-level data
            in a sample of 45 developed and emerging countries and a
            differences-in-differences methodology to provide evidence
            of the role of financial frictions for the consequences of
            sudden stops. The results show that, consistently with
            financial frictions being important, industries that are
            more dependent on external finance decline significantly
            more during a sudden stop, especially in less financially
            developed countries. The results are robust to controlling
            for other possible mechanisms, including labor market
            frictions. The paper also provides results on the role of
            comparative advantage during sudden stops and on the
            usefulness of various policy responses to attenuate the
            consequences of these shocks.
Financial inclusion in the Middle
            East and North Africa : analysis and roadmap recommendations
The paper provides an assessment of the
            state of financial inclusion in the MENA region, and
            identifies constraints, opportunities, and priorities for
            significantly improving access to finance.  Practical
            recommendations for improving financial inclusion are
            outlined. Firstly, governments could agree a Financial
            Inclusion Strategy that is underpinned by improved data,
            that has both public and private sector commitment, and that
            scales up financial access on a large scale, principally
            through bank accounts. Secondly, the regulators should
            provide a legal and supervisory framework that enables
            access to finance to be expanded primarily through banks,
            but with regulatory space for the use of agents, mobile
            phone technology, and for a finance company model for
            microcredit and leasing. Interest rate caps on microloans
            should be removed, and instead consumer protection and
            supervisory capacity for microfinance should be
            strengthened, while prudent competition between financial
            service providers should be promoted. Thirdly, financial
            infrastructure needs to continue to be a focus area, and in
            particular credit information and secured transactions.
            Finally, barriers to the growth of Islamic financial
            services should be removed so that they can better meet
            market demand.
Reforming government debt markets in MENA
This paper examines the current stage of
            development of government securities markets in the non-GCC
            MENA region focusing in five countries that have government
            bond markets with a minimum size and greater potential for
            market development: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and
            Tunisia. The analysis focuses on the five key building
            blocks that normally sustain deep and liquid public debt
            markets: (i) money markets; (ii) primary market (issuance
            policy and placement mechanisms); (iii) secondary market
            organization; (iv) investor base; and (v) clearing and
            settlement infrastructure. The study shows that despite
            country differences, several common weaknesses in the key
            building blocks explain the underdevelopment of MENA bond
            markets. Most important among these are a symbiotic
            relationship between banks and Governments caused by lack of
            alternative investments that makes banks act as captive
            demand and dominate bond markets, opportunistic primary
            issuance practices, and excess liquidity in the financial
            system. These demand and supply characteristics have led to
            highly concentrated buy-and-hold portfolios by banks and
            State-owned institutions, poor price discovery and lack of
            liquidity in secondary markets. A set of actions to unlock
            market development in MENA is proposed involving measures in
            all key building blocks - from improvements in monetary
            policy implementation and liquidity management to
            enhancements in issuance practices, price transparency, and
            clearing & settlement infrastructure. Measures to
            improve the role of mutual funds and foster foreign investor
            presence are also of utmost importance to increase
            competition and investor diversification in these markets.
A review of credit guarantee schemes
            in the Middle East and North Africa Region
Many countries in the MENA region have
            established partial credit guarantee schemes to facilitate
            SME access to finance. These schemes can play an important
            role, especially in a period where MENA governments are
            making efforts to improve the effectiveness of credit
            registries and bureaus and strengthen creditor rights. This
            paper reviews the design of partial credit guarantee schemes
            in MENA, and assesses their preliminary outcomes. The paper
            is based on a survey conducted in 10 MENA countries in early
            2010. The authors find that the average size of guarantee
            schemes in MENA (measured by the total value of outstanding
            guarantees) is in line with the international average,
            although there are wide differences across countries, and
            some schemes seem too small to make any significant impact.
            Most importantly, the number of guarantees looks generally
            small while their average value looks large. This suggests
            that guarantee schemes are not yet reaching the smaller
            firms. Guarantee schemes in MENA look financially sound and
            most schemes have room to grow. However, this growth should
            be accompanied by an improvement of some key design and
            management features, as well as the introduction of
            systematic impact evaluation reviews.
Estimating the short-run poverty
            impacts of the 2010-11 surge in food prices
Global food prices have increased
            substantially since mid-2010, as have prices in many
            developing countries. In this study we assess the poverty
            impact of the price changes between June and December 2010
            in twenty-eight low and middle income countries. This is
            done by gathering detailed information on individual
            households' food production and consumption levels for
            thirty-eight agricultural and food commodities to assess the
            impacts on household welfare. This study estimates that this
            sudden food price surge increased the number of poor people
            globally, but with considerably different impacts in
            different countries. The heterogeneity of these impacts is
            partly related to the wide variation in the transmission of
            global prices to local prices and partly to differences in
            households' patterns of production and consumption. On
            balance, the adverse welfare impact on net buyers outweighs
            the benefits to net sellers resulting in an increase in the
            number of poor and in the depth of poverty. We estimate that
            the average poverty change was 1.1 percentage points in low
            income countries and 0.7 percentage points in middle income
            countries with a net increase of 44 million people falling
            below the $1.25 per day extreme poverty line.
How did the great recession affect
            different types of workers evidence from 17 middle-income countries
This paper examines how different types
            of workers in 17 middle-income countries were affected by
            labor market retrenchment during the great recession.
            Impacts on different types of workers varied by country and
            were only weakly related to the severity of the shock. Among
            active workers, youth experienced by far the largest adverse
            impacts on employment, unemployment, and wage employment,
            particularly relative to older adults. The percentage
            employment reductions, for example, were greatest for youth
            in each sector of the economy, as firms reacted to the shock
            by substituting away from inexperienced workers. Employment
            rates, as a share of the population, also plummeted for men.
            Larger drops in male employment were primarily attributable
            to men's higher initial rate of employment, although
            men's concentration in the hard-hit industrial sector
            also played an important role. Within each sector,
            percentage employment declines were similar for men and
            women. Added worker effects among women were mild, even
            among less-educated workers. Differences in labor market
            outcomes across education groups and urban or rural
            residence tended to be smaller. These findings bolster the
            case for targeted support to displaced youth and wage
            employees. Programs targeted to female and unskilled workers
            should be undertaken with appropriate caution or empirical
            support from timely data, as they may not benefit the
            majority of affected workers.
Methodology for the assessment of
            data quality : application to HIV and AIDS programs in Latin America
Evidence is crucial in strategic
            planning for HIV response as well as the monitoring of
            results. This paper presents a simple tool that can be used
            to analyze the methodological quality of HIV data, its scope
            and limitations, and whether it can be accurately compared
            with other evidence. The tool, utilized as a questionnaire
            or checklist, first identifies the type of document
            containing the data; the status and means of its
            publication; the epidemiological design used; and the
            priority population. Next, the document is analyzed against
            a verification list based on eight methodological criteria:
            1) objective; 2) inclusion and exclusion criteria; 3) sample
            size; 4) sampling technique; 5) error-reduction strategies;
            6) data analysis technique; 7) limitations; and 8)
            confidence intervals and/or statistical significance. The
            paper also presents the results of implementing the tool in
            three Latin American countries.
Political economy studies: are they
            actionable some lessons from Zambia
In recent years, the number of studies
            looking at the effect of politics on economic outcomes has
            flourished. For developing economies, these studies are
            useful to better understand why long overdue reforms are not
            implemented. The studies analyze the overall context within
            which reforms are being implemented and the underlying
            incentive framework. However, it seems difficult to make
            such studies actionable, especially in sectors where donors
            have a heavy presence that can sometimes distort incentives
            in addition to the reluctance from some governments to amend
            the existing systems in place. This paper focuses on some
            conclusions emerging from the political economy diagnostics
            carried out in Zambia in various sectors in recent years.
            Based on interviews of World Bank task managers, the paper
            attempts to assess the relevance of these studies for the
            implementation of projects and the policy dialogue and draws
            lessons on how they have influenced the implementation of
            the World Bank's support to programs in various sectors
            in Zambia as well as the main challenges for this type of exercise.
Deep trade policy options for
            Armenia : the importance of services, trade facilitation and
            standards liberalization
This paper develops an innovative 21
            sector computable general equilibrium model of Armenia to
            assess the impact on Armenia of a Deep and Comprehensive
            Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, as well as
            further regional or multilateral trade policy commitments.
            The analysis finds that such an agreement with the European
            Union will likely result in substantial gains to Armenia,
            but shows that the gains derive from the deep aspects of the
            agreement. In order of importance, the sources of the gains
            are: (i) trade facilitation and reduction in border costs;
            (ii) services liberalization; and (iii) standards
            harmonization. A shallow agreement with the European Union
            that focuses only on preferential tariff liberalization in
            goods will likely lead to small losses to Armenia primarily
            due to a loss of productivity from lost varieties of
            technologies from the rest of the world region in
            manufactured products. Additional gains can be expected in
            the long run from an improvement in the investment climate.
            The authors estimate only small gains from a services
            agreement with countries of the Commonwealth of Independent
            States, but significant gains from expanding services
            liberalization multilaterally.
Does cash for school influence young
            women's behavior in the longer term evidence from Pakistan
The Punjab Female School Stipend
            Program, a female-targeted conditional cash transfer program
            in Pakistan, was implemented in response to gender gaps in
            education. An early evaluation of the program shows that the
            enrollment of eligible girls in middle school increased in
            the short term by nearly 9 percentage points. This paper
            uses regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference
            analyses to show that five years into the program
            implementation positive impacts do persist. Beneficiary
            adolescent girls are more likely to progress through and
            complete middle school and work less. There is suggestive
            evidence that participating girls delay their marriage and
            have fewer births by the time they are 19 years old. Girls
            who are exposed to the program later, and who are eligible
            for the benefits given in high school, increase their rates
            of matriculating into and completing high school. The
            persistence of impacts can potentially translate into gains
            in future productivity, consumption, inter-generational
            human capital accumulation and desired fertility. Lastly,
            there is no evidence that the program has negative spillover
            effects on educational outcomes of male siblings.
International harmonization of
            product standards and firm heterogeneity in international trade
As free trade areas have proliferated
            and statutory tariffs have been dramatically reduced in
            recent decades, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to international
            trade have risen in importance. Destination-specific product
            standards are one of the major types of NTBs as they impose
            additional costs on exporters and increase the time required
            to bring a product to market. This paper examines the
            response of U.S. manufacturing firms to a reduction of this
            NTB by looking at the harmonization of European product
            standards to international norms in the electronics sector.
            Using a highly detailed dataset that links U.S.
            international trade transactions to U.S. firms and a new
            industry-level database of EU product standards, the author
            finds that harmonization increases U.S. exports to the EU
            and that this increase is due to more U.S. firms entering
            the EU market the extensive margin of trade. New entrants
            to the EU region are drawn mainly from the most productive
            set of firms already exporting to developing markets before
            harmonization -the extensive margin of trade composition.
            These firms are characterized by being smaller and less
            productive than the firms that were already exporting to the
            EU before harmonization. Furthermore, harmonization
            decreases export sales at existing exporters -the intensive
            margin of trade. These findings are consistent with a model
            featuring the role of product standards heterogeneity across
            market destinations and productivity heterogeneity across
            firms. These results suggest that working toward a
            harmonization of product rules across markets could be a
            supportive policy to encourage small and medium size
            firms' ability to enter new export markets.
Schooling and youth mortality :
            learning from a mass military exemption
This paper examines the relationship
            between education and mortality in a young population of
            Italian males. In 1981 several cohorts of young men from
            specific southern towns were unexpectedly exempted from
            compulsory military service after a major quake hit the
            region. Comparisons of exempt cohorts from the least damaged
            towns on the border of the quake region with similar ones
            from neighbouring non-exempt towns just outside the region
            show that, by 1991, the cohorts exempted while still in high
            school display significantly higher graduation rates. The
            probability of dying over the decade 1991-2001 was also
            significantly lower. Several robustness checks confirm that
            the findings do not reflect omitted quake-related
            confounding factors, such as the ensuing compensatory
            interventions. Moreover, cohorts exempted soon after high
            school age do not display higher schooling or lower
            mortality rates, thus excluding that the main findings
            reflect direct effects of military service on subsequent
            mortality rather than a causal effect of schooling. The
            authors conclude that increasing the proportion of high
            school graduates by 1 percentage point leads to 0.1-0.2
            percentage points lower mortality rates between the ages of
            25 and 35.
A cluster-based industrial
            development policy for low-income countries
The need to construct an effective
            strategy for industrial development in low-income countries
            has been largely ignored by development economists because
            industrial policies have failed in many developing
            countries. This does not imply, however, that industrial
            development cannot be promoted. This paper attempts to
            synthesize the conventional wisdom in development economics
            with recent advancements in various fields of economics
            (such as theories of endogenous growth and agglomeration
            economies) to provide a useful framework to design a
            strategy for industrial development, which consists of
            investments in managerial human capital followed by the
            provision of credit and the construction of industrial zones.