Applying for Entitlements: Employers and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit

The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit (TJTC) is probably the most outstanding example of a generous entitlement program with a very low participation rate. Only about 10 percent of eligible youth hired are claimed as a tax credit by their employers. The causes of the low participation rates are analyzed by estimating a Poisson model of the number of TJTC-eligibles hired and certified during 1980, 1981, and 1982. Information costs, both fixed and variable, are found to be key barriers to TJTC participation. The cost- effectiveness of TJTC is low because of the stigma attached and the very high recruitment costs of hiring additional TJTC-eligibles. Because employers find it relatively cheap to certify after the fact eligible new employees who would have been hired anyway, this passive mode of participating in TJTC predominates

Beyond technology and finance: pay-as-you-go sustainable energy access and theories of social change

Two-thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity, a precursor of poverty reduction and development. The international community has ambitious commitments in this regard, e.g. the UN's Sustainable Energy for All by 2030. But scholarship has not kept up with policy ambitions. This paper operationalises a sociotechnical transitions perspective to analyse for the first time the potential of new, mobileenabled, pay-as-you-go approaches to financing sustainable energy access, focussing on a case study of pay-as-you-go approaches to financing solar home systems in Kenya. The analysis calls into question the adequacy of the dominant, two-dimensional treatment of sustainable energy access in the literature as a purely financial/technology, economics/ engineering problem (which ignores sociocultural and political considerations) and demonstrates the value of a new research agenda that explicitly attends to theories of social change – even when, as in this paper, the focus is purely on finance. The paper demonstrates that sociocultural considerations cut across the literature's traditional two-dimensional analytic categories (technology and finance) and are material to the likely success of any technological or financial intervention. It also demonstrates that the alignment of new payas- you-go finance approaches with existing sociocultural practices of paying for energy can explain their early success and likely longevity relative to traditional finance approaches

Financing sustainable energy for all: pay-as-you-go vs. traditional solar finance approaches in Kenya

This paper focuses on finance for Solar Home Systems (SHSs) in Kenya and asks to what extent emerging new finance approaches are likely to address the shortcomings of past approaches. Drawing on the STEPS Pathways Approach we adopt a framing that understands finance within a broader socio-technical context as a necessary but not sufficient component of achieving alternative pathways to sustainable energy access. The paper contributes in four ways. Firstly, it presents a comprehensive overview of past and new emerging approaches to financing SHSs in Kenya and their relative strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, it represents one of the first attempts in the literature to analyse the potential of new, real time monitoring technologies and pay as you go finance models to overcome the barriers faced by conventional consumer finance models for off-grid renewable energy technologies (RETs). Thirdly, by applying for the first time we are aware of a socio-technical approach, via the application of Strategic Niche Management (SNM) theory, to analyse the finance of RETs in developing countries, the analysis considers finance in the context of the social practices poor people seek to fulfil via access to the energy services that off-grid RETs provide, and the ways in which people previously paid for these services (e.g. via kerosene for lighting). This also situates the analysis within the understanding of SHSs as a niche that has to compete with the established regime of energy service provision and its attendant social and political institutional support. The paper therefore also contributes to the small but expanding body of literature that seeks to operationalise socio-technical transitions thinking and SNM within a developing country context

Англійська мова для навчання і роботи Т. 4. Професійне іншомовне письмо

Подано всі види діяльності студентів з вивчення англійської мови, спрямовані на розвиток мовної поведінки, необхідної для ефективного спілкування в академічному та професійному середовищах. Містить завдання і вправи, типові для різноманітних академічних та професійних сфер і ситуацій. Структура організації змісту – модульна, охоплює певні мовленнєві вміння залежно від мовної поведінки. Даний модуль має на меті розвиток у студентів умінь і навичок писемного спілкування, що пов’язане з майбутньою професією студентів, та основ медіації і письмового перекладу, які спрямовані на розвиток умінь писати тексти різних типів і жанрів, такі як резюме, листи, анотації тощо. Ресурси для самостійної роботи (частина ІІ) містять завдання та вправи для розвитку словникового запасу та розширення діапазону функціональних зразків, необхідних для виконання певних функцій, та завдання, які спрямовані на організацію самостійної роботи студентів. За допомогою засобів діагностики (частина ІІІ) студенти можуть самостійно перевірити засвоєння навчального матеріалу та оцінити свої досягнення. Граматичні явища і вправи для їх засвоєння наводяться в томі 5. Призначений для студентів технічних університетів гірничого профілю. Може використовуватися для викладання вибіркових курсів з англійської мови, а також для самостійного вивчення англійської мови викладачами, фахівцями і науковцями різних інженерних галузей

FREE TRADE OR FAIR TRADE? AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF FAILURE IN RECENT TRADE NEGOTIATIONS

Trade policy is at a crossroads. So is trade diplomacy. The failure of the “traditional import substitution” policies of the 1950s–1970s has been followed by the failure of trade liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s by developing countries. In particular, the deadlock in the negotiations during the recent meetings of WTO has demonstrated the severe differences among various groups of member countries. Focusing on frictions between developing countries and industrial economies in the particular area of trade in manufactured goods, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the failure of the negotiations is related to a number of fallacies and contradictions surrounding the concepts and practices of universal trade liberalization and infant industry protection. These main fallacies include: the philosophy behind universal and across-the-board trade liberalization; the contradictions in the design and implementation of GATT/WTO rules to the detrimental interest of developing countries; the theory and practice of infant industry protection; and, in particular, perceptions about the interests of developed countries in universal and across-the-board trade liberalization by developing countries. Emphasizing that free trade should be the ultimate aim of every nation once all economies have reached the same level of development, it is argued that there is a need for revision of international trade rules. In the design of the new rules more attention should be paid to the level of development and industrial capacity of developing countries. Developing countries should have a clear trade and industrial policy as well as negotiating strategy before entering the negotiation. To play such a proactive role, along the lines suggested in the UNCTAD “Positive Agenda”, developing countries should: link their trade policy to their development objective; and follow a dynamic trade policy geared to their level of development, industrial capacity, structural characteristics and changes in the world economy, as suggested by Shafaeddin (1995). Moreover, in their common negotiation strategy, instead of agreeing on a “least common denominator”, they should attempt to cooperate en elaborating a strategy aiming at the trading rules that differentiate countries, in accordance with some agreed criteria. Such criteria may include a number of indicators, such as per capita income, the degree of dependence on primary commodities, the share of manufacturing in GDP, etc. Finally, it is a myth to believe that concessions will always be made to developing countries on “moral grounds”. “Bargaining” is the name of the game. Developing countries should mobilize and make the best use of whatever bargaining chips they possess, however small they may be; and developing countries can have some leverage in trade negotiations if they mobilize Shafaeddin, 1984). Bargaining requires not only bargaining assets, but also knowledge, information about the issues concerned, and training for undertaking trade negotiations. In such a context, at the country level there is a need not only for policy formulation and for strengthening the capacity of commercial diplomacy to enhance bargaining skills, but also for strengthening the capacity for trade and industrial policy formulation.