'Red flags of corruption'in world bank projects : an analysis of infrastructure contracts

"Red flags"are indicators of potential issues regarding governance failure, collusion or corruption in projects. While some specific red flags can be powerful indicators of issues to be addressed, the hypothesis of this paper is that many proposed red flags are potentially too ubiquitous and randomly distributed to be useful as indicators of significant governance failure. The paper examines project documentation from a small sample of World Bank water and sanitation projects in an attempt to collect data on the presence or absence of 13 commonly accepted red flags. This paper finds that: (i) almost every contract reviewed raised at least one of 13 red flags analyzed; (ii) potentially tainted contracts did not exhibit notably more red flags than control contracts; and (iii) the occurrence of multiple red flags in the same contract was rare enough to suggest that joint occurrence was largely by chance, not as a result of a strongly causal inter-relationship between flags. The ubiquity and apparent randomness of these red flags suggests that their roll-out as a monitoring tool requires additional thought as to interpretation, context and use. The paper examines an alternate tool for uncovering potential problem projects -- supplier concentration. Across a very small sample, there does appear to be a relationship between such concentration and potential problem projects.Post Conflict Reconstruction,Debt Markets,Government Procurement,Investment and Investment Climate,Literature&Folklore

Industrial production and capacity utilization: the 2006 annual revision

On December 11, 2006, the Federal Reserve published revisions to its index of industrial production and the related measures of capacity and capacity utilization. The revision affected the data from 1972 through October 2006, but the largest changes were for the period beginning in 2003. From the fourth quarter of 2002 to the third quarter of 2006, industrial production, as revised, increased about 13/4 percentage points less than previously reported. By year, the change in output was revised down a little for 2003, down substantially for 2004, up a little for 2005, and down a touch for 2006. Revisions for previous years were small.Industrial capacity ; Industrial productivity

Polymer Nanocomposites Using Zinc Aluminum and Magnesium Aluminum Oleate Layered Double Hydroxides: Effects of LDH Divalent Metals on Dispersion, Thermal, Mechanical and Fire Performance in Various Polymers

Oleate-containing layered double hydroxides of zinc aluminum (ZnAl) and magnesium aluminum (MgAl) were used to prepare nanocomposites of polyethylene, poly(ethylene-co-butyl acrylate) and poly(methyl methacrylate). The additives and/or their polymer composites were characterized by X-ray diffraction, FTIR, elemental analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, mechanical testing, and cone calorimetry. The unusual packing of the monounsaturated oleate anions in the gallery of these LDHs facilitates the dispersion of these nanomaterials. The inorganic LDH protects the polymer from thermal oxidation, shown by enhancement of the thermal and fire properties of the corresponding polymer nanocomposites. There is a qualitative difference in the morphology of the two LDHs in PE and PMMA. ZnAl is better dispersed in PE while MgAl is better dispersed in PMMA. The zinc-containing material led to a large reduction in the peak heat release rate in polyethylene, while the magnesium-containing material led to enhancement of the fire properties of the more polar poly(methyl methacrylate). These fire properties are consistent with the morphological differences. Neither of these LDHs shows efficacy with poly(ethylene-co-butyl acrylate), which indicates a selective interaction between the LDH and the various polymers

ESTIMATION OF THE CYCLICAL COMPONENT OF ECONOMIC TIME SERIES

The objective of this paper is to show an alternative technique to smooth time series from Monte Carlo Simulations. The technique considers that time series can contain more than one structural break, coming from movements in coefficients of trend or from intercept. The Hodrick-Prescott Filter (HP) does not provide identification of such possible breaks in order to smooth trend from the series to analyze its cyclical component. If the series are relatively stable, this problem may not have relevant implications. Otherwise, for economies relatively unstable, trend movements may interfere in the specification of the cyclical component, and Hodrick-Prescott smoothing could lead empiricists to achieve simplistic forms to economic cycles. In the context, we present an empirical methodology that allows structural breaks in any point of time, from coefficients or from intercepts. We apply this recursive technique to different models with variations in trend, from coefficients and from intercepts, using series simulated by Monte Carlo. Moreover, we compare the results of both techniques to the Brazilian GDP.

Growth and Containment of a Hierarchical Criminal Network

We model the hierarchical evolution of an organized criminal network via antagonistic recruitment and pursuit processes. Within the recruitment phase, a criminal kingpin enlists new members into the network, who in turn seek out other affiliates. New recruits are linked to established criminals according to a probability distribution that depends on the current network structure. At the same time, law enforcement agents attempt to dismantle the growing organization using pursuit strategies that initiate on the lower level nodes and that unfold as self-avoiding random walks. The global details of the organization are unknown to law enforcement, who must explore the hierarchy node by node. We halt the pursuit when certain local criteria of the network are uncovered, encoding if and when an arrest is made; the criminal network is assumed to be eradicated if the kingpin is arrested. We first analyze recruitment and study the large scale properties of the growing network; later we add pursuit and use numerical simulations to study the eradication probability in the case of three pursuit strategies, the time to first eradication and related costs. Within the context of this model, we find that eradication becomes increasingly costly as the network increases in size and that the optimal way of arresting the kingpin is to intervene at the early stages of network formation. We discuss our results in the context of dark network disruption and their implications on possible law enforcement strategies.Comment: 16 pages, 11 Figures; New title; Updated figures with color scheme better suited for colorblind readers and for gray scale printin

Scalable quantum computation in systems with Bose-Hubbard dynamics

Several proposals for quantum computation utilize a lattice type architecture with qubits trapped by a periodic potential. For systems undergoing many body interactions described by the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, the ground state of the system carries number fluctuations that scale with the number of qubits. This process degrades the initialization of the quantum computer register and can introduce errors during error correction. In an earlier manuscript we proposed a solution to this problem tailored to the loading of cold atoms into an optical lattice via the Mott Insulator phase transition. It was shown that by adding an inhomogeneity to the lattice and performing a continuous measurement, the unit filled state suitable for a quantum computer register can be maintained. Here, we give a more rigorous derivation of the register fidelity in homogeneous and inhomogeneous lattices and provide evidence that the protocol is effective in the finite temperature regime.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Expanded version of manuscript submitted to the Journal of Modern Optics. v2 corrects typesetting error in Fig.