rafmacalaba/datause-encoder-data huggingface dataset:
Trade liberalization, firm
            heterogeneity, and wages : new evidence from matched
            employer-employee data
In this paper, the authors use a linked
            employer-employee database from Brazil to examine the impact
            of trade reform on the wages of workers employed at
            heterogeneous firms. The analysis of the data at the
            firm-level confirms earlier findings of a differential
            positive effect of trade liberalization on the average wages
            at exporting firms relative to non-exporting firms. However,
            this analysis of average firm-level wages is incomplete
            along several dimensions. First, it cannot fully account for
            the impact of a change in trade barriers on workforce
            composition especially in terms of unobservable
            (time-invariant) characteristics of workers (innate ability)
            and any additional productivity that obtains in the context
            of employment in the specific firm (match specific ability).
            Furthermore, the firm-level analysis is undertaken under the
            assumption that the assignment of workers to firms is
            random. This ignores the sorting of worker into firms and
            leads to a bias in estimates of the differential impact of
            trade on workers at exporting firms relative to
            non-exporting firms. Using detailed information on worker
            and firm characteristics to control for compositional
            effects and using firm-worker match specific effects to
            account for the endogenous mobility of workers, the authors
            find the differential effect of trade openness on wages in
            exporting firms relative to domestic firms to be
            insignificant. Consistent with the models of Helpman,
            Itskhoki, and Redding (2010) and Davidson, Matusz and
            Schevchenko (2008), they also find that the workforce
            composition improves systematically in exporting firms in
            terms of innate (time invariant) worker ability and in terms
            the quality of the worker-firm matches.
Sierra Leone's infrastructure :
            a continental perspective
Infrastructure development in Sierra
            Leone contributed about half a percentage point to the
            economy's per capita growth rate in 2003-07. But if
            Sierra Leone could upgrade its infrastructure to the level
            of the best performer in Africa, per capita growth rates
            could be boosted by more than three percentage points. After
            nine years of peace, economic activity is flourishing at
            every level in Sierra Leone. But the 11-year civil war
            destroyed the country's infrastructure, and rebuilding
            the road network and ports while improving the electrical,
            water, and telecommunications infrastructure is proving
            difficult. Looking ahead, expanding electrification is a top
            priority because current access levels, at only 1-5 percent
            of the urban population and 0 percent in rural areas, are
            impeding other development. The water and sanitation sector
            faces similar challenges, as only 1 percent of the rural
            population has access to piped water. Sierra Leone has been
            spending about $134 million annually on infrastructure in
            recent years. About $66 million is lost each year to
            inefficiencies. Comparing spending needs against existing
            spending and potential efficiency gains leaves an annual
            funding gap of $59 to $278 million per year. If savings from
            greater efficiency could be fully captured, Sierra Leone
            would not meet its posited infrastructure targets for
            another 30 years. Sierra Leone needs to make difficult
            decisions about the prioritization of infrastructure
            investments and must think strategically about bundling and
            sequencing investments for maximum returns.
The air connectivity index :
            measuring integration in the global air transport network
The authors construct a new measure of
            connectivity in the global air transport network, covering
            211 countries and territories for the year 2007. It is
            grounded in network analysis methods, and is based on a
            gravity-like model that is familiar from the international
            trade and regional science literatures. It is a global
            measure of connectivity, in the sense that it captures the
            full range of interactions among all network nodes, even
            when there is no direct flight connection between them. The
            best connected countries are the United States, Canada, and
            Germany; the United States' score is more than
            two-thirds higher than the next placed country's, and
            connectivity overall follows a power law distribution that
            is fully consistent with the hub-and-spoke nature of the
            global air transport network. The measure of connectivity is
            closely correlated with important economic variables, such
            as the degree of liberalization of air transport markets,
            and the extent of participation in international production
            networks. It provides a strong basis for future research in
            areas such as air and maritime transport, as well as
            international trade.
Trade credit contracts
The authors employ a novel dataset on
            almost 30,000 trade credit contracts to describe the broad
            characteristics of the parties that contract together; the
            key contractual terms, such as the discount for early
            payment; and the days by when payment is due. Whereas prior
            work has typically used information on only one side of the
            buyer-seller transaction, this paper utilizes information on
            both. The authors find that the largest and most
            creditworthy buyers receive contracts with the longest
            maturities from smaller suppliers, with the latter extending
            credit to the former perhaps as a way of certifying product
            quality. Discounts for early payment seem to be offered to
            riskier buyers to limit the potential nonpayment risk when
            credit is extended for non-financial reasons.
Do institutions matter for FDI
            spillovers the implications of China's "special characteristics"
The authors investigate how institutions
            affect productivity spillovers from foreign direct
            investment (FDI) to China's domestic industrial
            enterprises during 1998-2007. They examine three
            institutional features that comprise aspects of China's
            "special characteristics": (1) the different
            sources of FDI, where FDI is nearly evenly divided between
            mostly Organization for Economic Co-operation and
            Development (OECD) countries and Hong Kong (SAR of China),
            Taiwan (China), and Macau (SAR of China); (2) China's
            heterogeneous ownership structure, involving state- (SOEs)
            and non-state owned (non-SOEs) enterprises, firms with
            foreign equity participation, and non-SOE, domestic firms;
            and (3) industrial promotion via tariffs or through tax
            holidays to foreign direct investment. The authors also
            explore how productivity spillovers from FDI changed with
            China's entry into the WTO in late 2001. They find
            robust positive and significant spillovers to domestic firms
            via backward linkages (the contacts between foreign buyers
            and local suppliers). The results suggest varied success
            with industrial promotion policies. Final goods tariffs as
            well as input tariffs are negatively associated with
            firm-level productivity. However, they find that
            productivity spillovers were higher from foreign firms that
            paid less than the statutory corporate tax rate.
Education and conflict recovery :
            the case of Timor Leste
The Timor Leste secession conflict
            lasted for 25 years. Its last wave of violence in 1999,
            following the withdrawal of Indonesian troops, generated
            massive displacement and destruction with widespread
            consequences for the economic and social development of the
            country. This paper analyzes the impact of the conflict on
            the level and access to education of boys and girls in Timor
            Leste. The authors examine the short-term impact of the 1999
            violence on school attendance and grade deficit rates in
            2001, and the longer-term impact of the conflict on primary
            school completion of cohorts of children observed in 2007.
            They compare the educational impact of the 1999 wave of
            violence with the impact of other periods of high-intensity
            violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The
            short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer
            term, the analysis finds a strong negative impact of the
            conflict on primary school completion among boys of school
            age exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long
            conflict. The effect is stronger for boys attending the last
            three grades of primary school. This result shows a
            substantial loss of human capital among young males in Timor
            Leste since the early 1970s, resulting from household
            investment trade-offs between education and economic survival.
Upgrading investment regulations in
            second pillar pension systems : a proposal for Colombia
The passivity of the demand for pension
            products is one of the striking features of mandatory
            pension systems. Consequently, the provision of multiple
            investment alternatives to households (multifund schemes)
            does not ensure that contributions are invested efficiently.
            In addition, despite the theoretical findings that short
            term return maximization is not conductive to long-term
            return maximization, the regulatory framework of pension
            fund management companies puts excessive emphasis on
            short-term maximization. Therefore, it is not obvious that
            typical regulatory framework of pension funds is conductive
            to optimal pensions. By establishing a set of default
            options on investment portfolios, this paper proposes a
            mechanism to align the incentives of the pension fund
            management companies with the long-term objectives of the
            contributors. The paper provides a methodology, which is
            subsequently applied to Colombia.
Applying the growth identification
            and facilitation framework : the case of Nigeria
This paper applies the Growth
            Identification and Facilitation Framework developed by Lin
            and Monga (2010) to Nigeria. It identifies as appropriate
            comparator countries China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam,
            and selects a wide range of industries in which these
            comparator countries may be losing their comparative
            advantage and which may therefore lend themselves to
            targeted interventions of the government to fast-track
            growth. These industries include food processing, light
            manufacturing, suitcases, shoes, car parts, and
            petrochemicals. The paper also discusses binding constraints
            to growth in each of these value chains as well as
            mechanisms through which governance-related issues in the
            implementation of industrial policy could be addressed.
Engendering trade
The authors analyze the interaction
            between a country's world market integration and its
            attitude towards gender roles. They discuss both
            theoretically and empirically how female empowerment is a
            source of comparative advantage that shapes a country's
            response to trade opening. Reciprocally, the authors show
            that as countries integrate into the world economy, the
            costs and benefits of gender discrimination shift. Their
            theory goes beyond a potential aggregate wealth effect
            associated with trade opening, and emphasizes the
            heterogeneity of impacts. On the one hand, countries in
            which women are empowered -- measured by fertility rates,
            female labor force participation or female schooling --
            experience an expansion of industries that use female labor
            relatively more intensively. On the other hand, the gender
            gap is smaller in countries that export more in relatively
            female-labor intensive sectors. In an increasingly
            globalized economy, the road to gender equality is
            paradoxically very specific to each countrys productive
            structure and exposure to world markets.
Consensus, institutions, and supply
            response : the political economy of agricultural reforms in
            Sub-Saharan Africa
During the late 1980s and the 1990s,
            most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa implemented
            agricultural policy reforms, along with national political
            and economic reforms. The agricultural reforms focused on
            opening up processing and marketing activities to increased
            competition and eliminating export taxes and restrictions to
            improve producer incentives. In eight of nine
            country/commodity case studies analyzed in this paper,
            output responded positively in the short run to the reforms.
            In many cases, however, the initial supply response was not
            sustained in the face of subsequent shocks. The studies
            suggest that stakeholder consensus on the distribution of
            sector-specific rents is a key variable affecting the
            sustainability of supply responses. Agricultural sector
            reforms lead to large changes in income distribution. The
            greater the acceptance of the distribution of rents
            following the reforms, the better sectors are able to
            accommodate subsequent shocks. In cases where the initial
            consensus on the distribution of rents is weak, shocks lead
            to reform reversals in some cases or an inability to design
            necessary support institutions in others. The diversity in
            outcomes across similar products and countries suggests it
            is possible to achieve sector and local level results that
            differ from national ones.
The value-added tax reform puzzle
This explores the impact of a tax reform
            in some provinces of China which eliminated the value-added
            tax on some investment goods. While the goal of the
            experiment was to encourage upgrading of technology, the
            results suggest that there was no evident increase overall
            in fixed investment, and employment fell significantly in
            the treated provinces and sectors. The reform reduced the
            total number of employees for all types of firms. For
            domestic firms, it reduced employment by almost 8 percent.
            The results are robust to a variety of approaches, and
            suggest that the primary impact of the policy has been to
            induce labor-saving growth. This experiment has since been
            extended to the rest of China.
Foreign direct investment under weak
            rule of law : theory and evidence from China
This paper develops a self-enforcing
            contract model to show that better economic fundamentals can
            help when there is weak rule of law -- but with order -- to
            attract foreign direct investment, whereas lowering taxes
            does not necessarily help. Using a cross-region Chinese
            dataset, the analysis finds evidence consistent with the
            theoretical analysis. Regional variations in tax rates and
            the perceived quality of formal contracting institutions are
            not correlated with regional inflows of foreign direct
            investment, but leadership characteristics are. Most
            conventional economic factors have the predicted effects on
            foreign direct investment. The finding that foreign direct
            investment is lower in locations where domestic private
            firms have better access to finance and where the air
            quality is poor is new to the literature.
Fewer jobs or smaller paychecks
            aggregate crisis impacts in selected middle-income countries
This paper reviews evidence from 44
            middle-income countries on how the recent financial crisis
            affected jobs and workers' incomes. In addition to
            providing a rare assessment of the magnitude of the impact
            across several middle-income countries, the paper describes
            how labor markets adjusted and how the adjustments varied
            for different types of countries. The main finding is that
            the crisis affected the quality of employment more than the
            number of jobs. Overall, the slow-down in earning growth was
            considerably higher than that in employment, and the decline
            in gross domestic product was associated with a sharp
            decline in output per worker, particularly in the industrial
            sector. In several counties, hours per worker declined and
            hourly wages changed little. But both the magnitude and
            nature of the adjustments varied considerably across
            countries. For a given drop in gross domestic product,
            earnings declined more in countries with larger
            manufacturing sectors, smaller export sectors, and more
            stringent labor market regulations. In addition, overall
            employment became more sensitive to growth in gross domestic
            product. These findings have implications that go beyond the
            recent financial crisis as they highlight (i) the
            limitations of focusing policy responses on maintaining jobs
            and providing alterative employment or replacement income
            for the unemployed, and (ii) the critical role of fast-track
            data systems that are capable of monitoring ongoing labor
            market adjustment during economic downturns, in supporting
            the design of effective policy responses.
Improving educational quality
            through enhancing community participation : results from a
            randomized field experiment in Indonesia
This study evaluates the effect of four
            randomized interventions aimed at strengthening school
            committees, and subsequently improving learning outcomes, in
            public primary schools in Indonesia. All study schools were
            randomly allocated to either a control group receiving no
            intervention, or to treatment groups receiving a grant plus
            one or a combination of three interventions: training for
            school committee members, a democratic election of school
            committee members, or facilitated collaboration between the
            school committee and the village council, also called
            linkage. Nearly two years after implementation, the study
            finds that measures to reinforce existing school committee
            structures, the grant and training interventions,
            demonstrate limited or no effects; while measures that
            foster outside ties between the school committee and other
            parties, linkage and election, lead to greater engagement by
            education stakeholders and in turn to learning. Test scores
            improve in Indonesian by 0.17 standard deviations for
            linkage and 0.22 standard deviations for linkage+election.
            The election intervention alone leads to changes in time
            household members accompany children studying per week, but
            this does not lead to learning. Linkage is the most cost
            effective intervention, causing a 0.13 change in standard
            deviation in Indonesian test scores for each 100 dollars
            (US) spent.
Marshallian externality, industrial
            upgrading, and industrial policies
A growth model with multiple industries
            is developed to study how industries evolve as capital
            accumulates endogenously when each industry exhibits
            Marshallian externality (increasing returns to scale) and to
            explain why industrial policies sometimes succeed but
            sometimes fail. The authors show that, in the long run, the
            laissez-faire market equilibrium is Pareto optimal when the
            time discount rate is sufficiently small or sufficiently
            large. When the time discount rate is moderate, there exist
            multiple dynamic market equilibria with diverse patterns of
            industrial development. To achieve Pareto efficiency, it
            would require the government to identify the industry target
            consistent with the comparative advantage and to coordinate
            in a timely manner, possibly for multiple times. However,
            industrial policies may make people worse off than in the
            market equilibrium if the government picks an industry that
            deviates from the comparative advantage of the economy.