Donor fragmentation and bureaucratic quality in aid recipients

This paper analyzes the impact of donor fragmentation on the quality of government bureaucracy in aid-recipient nations. A formal model of a donor's decision to hire government administrators to manage donor-funded projects predicts that the number of administrators hired declines as the donor's share of other projects in the country increases, and as the donor's"altruism"(concern for the success of other donors'projects) increases. These hypotheses are supported by cross-country empirical tests using an index of bureaucratic quality available for aid-recipient nations over the 1982-2001 period. Declines in bureaucratic quality are associated with higher donor fragmentation (reflecting the presence of many donors, each with a small share of aid), and with smaller shares of aid coming from multilateral agencies, a proxy for donor"altruism."Economic Adjustment and Lending,Decentralization,Health Economics&Finance,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Public Health Promotion,Development Economics&Aid Effectiveness,Economic Adjustment and Lending,Health Economics&Finance,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

HepData reloaded: reinventing the HEP data archive

We describe the status of the HepData database system, following a major re-development in time for the advent of LHC data. The new HepData system benefits from use of modern database and programming language technologies, as well as a variety of high-quality tools for interfacing the data sources and their presentation, primarily via the Web. The new back-end provides much more flexible and semantic data representations than before, on which new external applications can be built to respond to the data demands of the LHC experimental era. The HepData re-development was largely motivated by a desire to have a single source of reference data for Monte Carlo validation and tuning tools, whose status and connection to HepData we also briefly review.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, Presented at 13th International Workshop on Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques in Physics Research (ACAT 2010), February 22-27, 2010, Jaipur, Indi

Performance and ownership in the governance of urban water

In this paper the differences in terms of performance between public and the private governance in urban water management are investigated. A statistical ranking is implemented to determine programmatic efficiency differences in DEA, using an incomplete panel data that gathers information on 20 water utilities in Andalusia, in Southern Spain. In the model, labour and operational costs are considered as inputs. The volume of revenue water, the number of connections and the network length are used as outputs. The analysis indicates that private management is more efficient. The efficiency indicators adjusted by a variable related to quality are estimated and demonstrate that privatization of the service does not mean any loss in terms of quality. However, there are no significant differences between both types of management including as a desirable input hydraulic yield as a proxy of the degree of network renovation. A lower hydraulic efficiency in private management would suggest that the need to make significant investments could be an important factor when making the decision to privatize the management of the urban water service: Water supply; Management; Local government;

Industrial district effects and innovation in the Tuscan shipbuilding industry

The aim of the present work is to investigate innovative processes within a geographical cluster, and thus contribute to the debate on the effects of industrial clusters on innovation capacity. In particular, we would like to ascertain whether the advantages of industrial districts in promoting innovation, as already revealed by literature (diffusion of knowledge, social capital and trust, efficient networking), are also keys to success in the Tuscan shipbuilding industry of pleasure and sporting boats. First, we verify the existence of clusters of shipbuilding in Tuscany, using a specific methodology. Next, in the identified clusters, we analyse three innovative networks financed in a policy to support innovation, and examine whether the typical features of a cluster for promoting innovation are at work, using a questionnaire administered to 71 actors. Finally, we develop a performance analysis of the cluster firms and ascertain whether their different behaviours also lead to different performances. The analysis results show that our case records effects of industrial clustering on innovation capacity, such as the important role given to trust and social capital, the significant worth put in interfirm relations and in each partner’s specific competencies, or even the distinctive performance of firms belonging to a cluster.geographical clusters, industrial districts, innovation, technological transfer, shipbuilding industry

HepData and JetWeb: HEP data archiving and model validation

The CEDAR collaboration is extending and combining the JetWeb and HepData systems to provide a single service for tuning and validating models of high-energy physics processes. The centrepiece of this activity is the fitting by JetWeb of observables computed from Monte Carlo event generator events against their experimentally determined distributions, as stored in HepData. Caching the results of the JetWeb simulation and comparison stages provides a single cumulative database of event generator tunings, fitted against a wide range of experimental quantities. An important feature of this integration is a family of XML data formats, called HepML.Comment: 4 pages, 0 figures. To be published in proceedings of CHEP0

The Impact of Vertical Integration and Outsourcing on Firm Efficiency: Evidence from the Italian Machine Tool Industry

In this paper we made use of an econometric approach to efficiency analysis in order to capture the role of vertical integration and outsourcing on firm's efficiency. Vertical integration is considered an indicator of structure, while outsourcing represents the process of its change. We consider inefficiency measures as indicators of organizational heterogeneity, related to the firm's choices regarding the phases of the production process that are under its control. We find support for the hypothesis of a relationship between vertical integration and efficiency. The results on outsourcing activity, and in particular the interaction between outsourcing and vertical structure, indicate that heterogeneous patterns, far from tending to cancel out each other as a consequence of common external changes, are reinforcing. Moreover, the sensitivity of inefficiency variance to the cycle, indicate that different firms may have different dynamic properties

Asylum recognition rates in the EU - Do procedural differences matter?

MasteroppgaveSAMPOL350MASV-SAP

Is There Supply Distortion In The Green Box? An Acreage Response Approach

The shift of the farm subsidies toward programs classified as being decoupled income supports in the WTO’s URAA raises the question of their true impact on production and trade. In this study, we measured the acreage effects of the Canadian whole farm programs under uncertainty. Based on the theoretical discussions regarding the role of the insurance effect in acreage decisions, we extend the theoretical restrictions examined by Chavas and Holt (1990)which enables us to include this effect in our model specification. Hence, we modified the expected utility maximization framework (under the hypothesis that farmers are risk averse) developed by Chavas and Holt (1990) and derived three distinct effects: market effects, the wealth effect, and the insurance effect.WTO, decoupled, green box, area, production, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, International Relations/Trade, Production Economics,