Angola's infrastructure : a continental perspective

Infrastructure made a net contribution of around 1 percentage point to Angola's improved per capita growth performance in recent years, despite unreliable power supplies and poor roads, which each holding back growth by 0.2 percentage points. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries (MICs) could boost Angola's annual growth by about 2.9 percentage points. As a resource-rich, postconflict country, Angola has shown an exceptionally strong commitment to financing the reconstruction and expansion of its infrastructure. It has recently expanded its generation capacity, embarked on an ambitious multibillion-dollar road rehabilitation program, begun to make investments aimed at easing congestion at the Port of Luanda, and embarked upon an ambitious rehabilitation program for urban water systems. Numerous challenges remain, however. Angola needs to upgrade its electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure, expand its urban water-supply system, improve efficiency at the Port of Luanda, and make policy and regulatory adjustments across the board. Angola presently spends around $4.3 billion per year on infrastructure, with$1.3 billion lost to inefficiencies. After taking sectoral allocations and inefficiencies into account, a modest funding gap of $115 million per year remains, which could be largely eliminated by focusing on lower-cost water and sanitation options. Angola's infrastructure needs are manageable relative to its fast-growing economy, as long as the country can address inefficiencies.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Infrastructure Economics,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Energy Production and Transportation,Economic Theory&Research

General Purpose Technologies and Productivity Surges: Historical Reflections on the Future of the ICT Revolution

Presented to the International Symposium on ECONOMIC CHALLENGES OF THE 21ST CENTURY IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, Oxford, England, 2nd-4th July, 1999 Celebrating the Scholarly Career of Charles H. Feinstein, FBA. Re- examination of early twentieth century American productivity growth experience sheds light on the general phenomenon of recurring prolonged swings in total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate experienced in the advanced industrial economies. After a “productivity slowdown” lasting more than a quarter of a century (during which TFP for in the manufacturing sector grew at less than 1 percent per annum, industrial TFP surged to average 6 percent per annum during 1919-29. This contributed substantially to the absolute and relative rise of the US domestic economy’s TFP residual, and in many respects it may be seen as the opening of the high-growth era that persisted into the 1970s. The productivity surge marked the culminating phase in the diffusion of “the dynamo” as a general purpose technology (GPT); that saw a shift in the underlying technological regime brought about by the implementation of critical engineering and organizational advances originating in some two decades earlier. Closer analysis reveals the significant concurrence of the factory electrification movement in this period with important structural changes that were taking place in US labor markets; in addition, there were significant complementarities between managerial and organizational innovations and the new dynamo-based factory technology, on the one hand, and, and the reinforcement of both kinds of innovation by the macroeconomic conditions of the 1920s. This more complicated, historical view of the dynamics of GPT diffusion is supported by comparisons of the US experience of factory electrification with the developments taking place in Japanese industry during the 1920’s, and in the UK manufacturing sector during the 1930’s. Concluding sections of the paper reflect on the analogies and contrasts between the historical case of a socio-economic regime transition involving the electric dynamo and the modern experience of the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution. Our formulation the GPT concept in explicitly historical terms contributes to explaining the paradoxical phenomenon of the late twentieth century productivity slowdown in the US. It also points to some contemporary portents of a future phase of more rapid ICT-based growth in total factor productivity.

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.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Infrastructure Economics,Energy Production and Transportation,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Public Sector Economics

Bio-energy production in the sugar industry: an integrated modeling approach

Recent reforms in the Common Agricultural Policy and the sugar regime caused serious concerns for the future of the European sugar industry. At the same time, the European Commission considers transportation bio-fuels as a key factor for reducing reliance on imported fuels, emission levels of greenhouse gases and to meet rural development goals. Matching the sugar sector with bio-ethanol production may create opportunities for sustainable management of the existing sugar industry infrastructure and also serve bio-fuel policy targets. A partial equilibrium economic model is used in order to evaluate the shift from sugar to bio-ethanol production in Thessaly, Greece. In the agricultural feedstock supply and industrial processing sub-models are articulated indicating optimal crop mix for farmers and the best technology configurations for industry. The joint ethanol-biogas option appears to be preferable using sugar beet and wheat, whereas capacity selected amounts at 120 kt of ethanol.Sugar beet, grain, ethanol, mathematical programming, Greece, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Dynamic Energy Management

We present a unified method, based on convex optimization, for managing the power produced and consumed by a network of devices over time. We start with the simple setting of optimizing power flows in a static network, and then proceed to the case of optimizing dynamic power flows, i.e., power flows that change with time over a horizon. We leverage this to develop a real-time control strategy, model predictive control, which at each time step solves a dynamic power flow optimization problem, using forecasts of future quantities such as demands, capacities, or prices, to choose the current power flow values. Finally, we consider a useful extension of model predictive control that explicitly accounts for uncertainty in the forecasts. We mirror our framework with an object-oriented software implementation, an open-source Python library for planning and controlling power flows at any scale. We demonstrate our method with various examples. Appendices give more detail about the package, and describe some basic but very effective methods for constructing forecasts from historical data.Comment: 63 pages, 15 figures, accompanying open source librar

A Review of the Monitoring of Market Power The Possible Roles of TSOs in Monitoring for Market Power Issues in Congested Transmission Systems

The paper surveys the literature and publicly available information on market power monitoring in electricity wholesale markets. After briefly reviewing definitions, strategies and methods of mitigating market power we examine the various methods of detecting market power that have been employed by academics and market monitors/regulators. These techniques include structural and behavioural indices and analysis as well as various simulation approaches. The applications of these tools range from spot market mitigation and congestion management through to long-term market design assessment and merger decisions. Various market-power monitoring units already track market behaviour and produce indices. Our survey shows that these units collect a large amount of data from various market participants and we identify the crucial role of the transmission system operators with their access to dispatch and system information. Easily accessible and comprehensive data supports effective market power monitoring and facilitates market design evaluation. The discretion required for effective market monitoring is facilitated by institutional independence.Electricity, liberalisation, market power, regulation

The issues of enterprise growth in transition and post-transition period: the case of Polish 'Elektrim'

Case study of Polish company Elektrim illustrates the changing basis of growth of enterprises between the transition and post-transition periods. Elektrim grew primarily through conglomeration in the transition period. After the exhaustion of this mode of growth Elektrim has started to focus on a few core areas (telecoms, cables, energy). The strategic shift to telecommunications has been based on partnerships with foreign firms and it is likely that this will be the pattern in other areas. In this respect, the case of Elektrim shows the importance of internationalisation for the growth of enterprises in CEE. Based on the case study the paper draws several analytical issues: First, Elektrim's shift from conglomeration to focusing suggests that the institutional context, which drives firm strategy in post-socialist economies like Poland, is, perhaps, also changing. Second, in order to grow Elektrim is forced to enter into equity relationships and partnerships like with French Vivendi. This suggests that the possibilities for firm growth in post-socialist economies, like Poland, through generic expansion are still fewer when compared to growth based on mergers & acquisitions or different forms of alliances. Third, Elektrim's relationship with government is complex and refutes the simplified dichotomy of markets vs. governments. This raises the issue of to what extent post-socialist governments operate as a 'compensatory mechanism' on which firms like Elektrim can rely to grow. Fourth, the opening of the CEECs has led to relocations of EU and other MNCs into this region with the result that they are also transferring the oligopolistic competition from EU into new markets. The case of Elektrim shows how CEE companies and goverment regulations become factors in the oligopolistic competition between big EU companies. CEE companies and governments may use this competition to their advantage but also their limited bargaining powers may lead to outcomes unfavourable to them

Innovation and Economic Development

Innovation is often seen as carried out by highly educated labour in R&D intensive companies with strong ties to leading centers of excellence in the scientific world. Seen from this angle innovation is a typical “first world” activity. There is, however, another way to look at innovation that goes significantly beyond this high-tech picture. In this, broader, perspective, innovation – the attempt to try out new or improved products, processes or ways to do things – is an aspect of most if not all economic activities. In this sense, it is argued (section one), innovation may be as relevant in the developing part of the world as elsewhere. Section two discusses the existing theoretical and empirical literature on the subject. An important conclusion is that to be able to exploit technology to their own advantage, developing countries need to develop the necessary capabilities for doing so. But what are these capabilities and how can they be measured? The third section of the paper surveys attempts to identify and measure capabilities as the national level. However, the development of such capabilities, it is shown, depends in important ways on what firms do. Section four, therefore, focuses on recent attempt to survey innovation activity in firms in developing countries and what can be learnt from that. Section five discusses the role of domestic versus foreign sources in fostering innovation in the developing part of the world. The final section summarizes the main lessons.Development, innovation, measurement, innovation surveys, openness

The Central African Republic's infrastructure : a continental perspective

Between 2000 and 2005, infrastructure contributed less than 1 percentage point to the Central African Republic's annual per capita GDP growth, despite substantial spending in the road sector. Raising the country's infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by about 3.5 percentage points. The CAR has made significant progress in the transport, water, power, and information and communications technology (ICT) sectors. But the high cost of fuel, which raises transportation and energy costs, has been a vexing issue across all infrastructure sectors. The CAR's most pressing infrastructural challenge lies in the transport sector, which relies heavily on neighboring countries and could benefit from improved road conditions and enhanced performance at the port of Douala in Cameroon. In the power sector, the country suffers from a deteriorating infrastructure stock that it can no longer afford to maintain, and an inefficient and unreliable power supply. Additional challenges include a need for improved infrastructure in the water and sanitation and ICT sectors. Addressing the CAR's infrastructure challenges will require sustained expenditure of $346 million per year over the next decade. The nation already spends around$134 million per year on infrastructure, with $37 million a year lost to inefficiencies of various kinds. If those inefficiencies were fully eliminated, the country's annual infrastructure funding gap would be$183 million per year. Improvements in funding, coupled with the prospect of an economic rebound and prudent policies, could lift the country from its fragile state back to and beyond the prosperity standards it once enjoyed.Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Energy Production and Transportation,Infrastructure Economics,E-Business

Innovation and Economic Development

Is innovation important for development? And if so, how? One popular perception of innovation, that one meets in media every day, is that has to do with developing brand new, advanced solutions for sophisticated, well-off customers, through exploitation of the most recent advances in knowledge. Such innovation is normally seen as carried out by highly educated labour in R&D intensive companies, being large or small, with strong ties to leading centers of excellence in the scientific world. Hence innovation in this sense is a typical “first world” activity. There is, however, another way to look at innovation that goes significantly beyond the high-tech picture just described. In this broader perspective, innovation (the attempt to try out new or improved products, processes or ways to do things) is an aspect of most if not all economic activities. It includes not only technologically new products and processes but also improvements in areas such as logistics, distribution and marketing. The term may also be used for changes that are new to the local context, even if the contribution to the global knowledge frontier is negligible. In this broader sense, it is argued, innovation may be as relevant in the developing part of the world as elsewhere. The paper surveys the existing literature on the subject with a strong emphasis on recent evidence on the macro and, in particular, micro level.innovation and development, innovation capabilities, technology transfer