Do Dropouts Benefit from Training Programs? Korean Evidence Employing Methods for Continuous Treatments

Failure of participants to complete training programs is pervasive in existing active labor market programs both in developed and developing countries. The proportion of dropouts in prototypical programs ranges from 10 to 50 percent of all participants. From a policy perspective, it is of interest to know if dropouts benefit from the time they spend in training since these programs require considerable resources. We shed light on this issue by estimating the average employment effects of different lengths of exposure to a program by dropouts in a Korean job training program. To do this, we employ parametric and semiparametric methods to estimate effects from continuous treatments using the generalized propensity score, under the assumption that selection into different lengths of exposure is based on a rich set of observed covariates. We find that participants who drop out later – thereby having longer exposures – exhibit higher employment probabilities one year after receiving training, and that marginal effects of additional exposure to training are initially fairly small, but increase sharply past a certain threshold of exposure. One implication of these results is that this and similar programs could benefit from providing incentives for participants to stay longer in the program.training programs, dropouts, developing countries, continuous treatments, generalized propensity score, dose-response function

Algorithms for purchasing AIDS vaccines

The authors delineate two different algorithms for the purchase of AIDS vaccines, to show how differences in policy objectives can greatly affect projections of the number of courses of vaccine that will be needed. They consider a hypothetical vaccine costing ten dollars to produce, and offering sixty percent, seventy five percent, and ninety percent reductions in the risk of HIV for ten years. For each of the world's ten major geographic divisions, they sue published estimates of the risk of AIDS, the value of medical costs averted, and the value of potential productivity losses. Under the"health sector"algorithm - in which purchases are made to minimize the impact of AIDS/HIV on government health spending - 766 million courses of vaccine would be purchased. Under the"societal"algorithm - in which purchases are made to minimize the impact of AIDS/HIV on health spending and GDP - more than 3.7 billion courses of vaccine would be purchased. Under an"equity"model - allocating vaccines to everyone in the world at high risk, as if they had the financial resources of Western Europeans - vaccine would be offered to 4.7 billion people. For a Western European man, reducing the risk of AIDS/HIV would be a $789 concern; in Africa,the comparable risk would be a$48,577 crisis. The authors conclude that financing AIDS vaccines solely on the fixed budget of a ministry of health, means large vulnerable populations wouldn't receive the vaccine. Allocating the vaccine based on society's ability to pay would still exclude many poor infants who would probably be immunized if they were born in more developed regions. Policymakers concerned about equity in health care must redouble efforts to making the financing of development, and distribution of AIDS vaccines, a global, not a regional concern.Disease Control&Prevention,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Early Child and Children's Health,HIV AIDS,HIV AIDS,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance,Adolescent Health,Environmental Economics&Policies

Capital Market Integration and Wages

For three years after the typical developing country opens its stock market to inflows of foreign capital, the average annual growth rate of the real wage in the manufacturing sector increases by a factor of seven. No such increase occurs in a control group of developing countries. The temporary increase in the growth rate of the real wage drives up the level of average annual compensation for each worker in the sample by 609 US dollars—an increase equal to 25 percent of their annual pre-liberalization salary. The increase in the growth rate of labor productivity in the aftermath of liberalization exceeds the increase in the growth rate of the real wage so that the increase in workers’ incomes actually coincides with a rise in manufacturing sector profitability. Overall, the results suggest that trade in capital may have a larger impact on wages than trade in goods.Developing countries, Wages, Labor Productivity, Captial Market

The Long-Run Relationship between Outward FDI and Total Factor Productivity: Evidence for Developing Countries

This paper examines the long-run relationship between outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and total factor productivity for a sample of 33 developing countries over the period 1980-2005. Using panel cointegration techniques, we find that: (i) outward FDI has, on average, a positive long-run effect on total factor productivity in developing countries, (ii) increased factor productivity is both consequence and a cause of increased outward FDI, and (iii) there are large differences in the long-run effects of outward FDI on total factor productivity across countries. Cross-sectional regressions indicate that these cross-country differences in the productivity effects of outward FDI are significantly negatively related to cross-country differences in labor market regulation, whereas there is no statistically significant association between the productivity effects of outward FDI and the level of human capital, the level of financial development, or the degree of trade openness in the home country. --outward FDI,total factor productivity,developing countries,panel cointegration

The Cost of Food Self-Sufficiency and Agricultural Protection in South Korea

As part of its food security policy, South Korea has been pursuing food self-sufficiency using high tariffs and high administrative prices in key agricultural and food markets. Using a dual approach to trade and trade restrictiveness indices, we analyze the impact of these market distortions on welfare and trade volume. Then, we compute optimum distortions, which minimize the welfare cost of observed self-sufficiency and production objectives. We rationalize these optimum distortions to what could be claimed as legitimate protection under a "food security" (FS) box in World Trade Organization negotiations. FS-box protection is sensitive to changes in the definition and the extent of the FS objectives. We show that FS via production targets and reliance on imports would be more palatable to consumers and trade partners, while preserving rents to the farm sector.agricultural distortions, food security, Korea, protection, targeting, WTO negotiations, Food Security and Poverty,

Estimating effects of price-distorting policies using alternative distortions databases

This paper addresses three questions relating to the very extensive use of the GTAP global trade protection database: Are there additional price-distorting policy instruments worthy of inclusion in the base year? What is the appropriate counterfactual set of price distortions in the year of concern (such as when a proposed reform is expected to be fully implemented, as distinct from the base year)? And how are the price distortions (e.g. tariff rates) on individual products aggregated to the GTAP product groups? We show the estimated welfare effects of policies can change substantially when more-appropriate measures of distortions are used

Environmentalising Economic Development: a South East Asian Perspective

South Asia's pursuit of economic development has entailed considerable damage to and exposed the fragility of the physical environment of the region like elsewhere in the developing world. South Asia is beset with a number of environmental problems. This paper provides an analytical overview of the of the environmental problems that manifest themselves in South Asia in a comparative perspective with East and Southeast Asian countries as well as selected developed market economies. It is argued that to-date, South Asian development process has been environment-intensive and that environmental problems may set serious constraints to sustain growth in production to feed its growing population. The paper underscores the need for environmentalesque-type process innovation to reverse the trend of high environment-intensity in South Asian development.

Evaluating indoor positioning systems in a shopping mall : the lessons learned from the IPIN 2018 competition

The Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) conference holds an annual competition in which indoor localization systems from different research groups worldwide are evaluated empirically. The objective of this competition is to establish a systematic evaluation methodology with rigorous metrics both for real-time (on-site) and post-processing (off-site) situations, in a realistic environment unfamiliar to the prototype developers. For the IPIN 2018 conference, this competition was held on September 22nd, 2018, in Atlantis, a large shopping mall in Nantes (France). Four competition tracks (two on-site and two off-site) were designed. They consisted of several 1 km routes traversing several floors of the mall. Along these paths, 180 points were topographically surveyed with a 10 cm accuracy, to serve as ground truth landmarks, combining theodolite measurements, differential global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and 3D scanner systems. 34 teams effectively competed. The accuracy score corresponds to the third quartile (75th percentile) of an error metric that combines the horizontal positioning error and the floor detection. The best results for the on-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 11.70 m (Track 1) and 5.50 m (Track 2), while the best results for the off-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 0.90 m (Track 3) and 1.30 m (Track 4). These results showed that it is possible to obtain high accuracy indoor positioning solutions in large, realistic environments using wearable light-weight sensors without deploying any beacon. This paper describes the organization work of the tracks, analyzes the methodology used to quantify the results, reviews the lessons learned from the competition and discusses its future