The Demand Side of Social Protection

In fragile states, social protection programmes are often a kaleidoscope of projects financed and implemented by a variety of donors, government agencies and NGOs. Such an environment does not foster a strong sense of ownership by beneficiaries, which weakens the likelihood of sustainability in the absence of donor interest or government commitment. Loosening demand-side constraints may provide incentive to sustain social progress, but it is unclear what political or social structures can effectively facilitate voice in fragile states. Cambodia.s unusual social protection trajectory offers some insight by presenting an example where labour rights has made substantial progress while all other protections lag. We assess whether the changed external environment might facilitate activism in other areas of social protection. Our analysis suggests that using an island of excellence to build institutions that open political space for activism can be a successful strategy in states where governments are unable or unwilling to provide comprehensive social protection systems.fragile states, Asia, social protection, Cambodia, social movements, labour standards

Women and Trade: Gender\u27s Impact on Trade Finance and Fintech

Woman-owned firms engage differently with finance for trade. The barriers they face in starting and running a business are well-known. Yet, this offers little insight into how they finance their business once globalized. Surveys indicate that finance is often the primary barrier to trade. We seek to deepen and modernize this finding by using a unique data set to explore the patterns of financial access exhibited by woman-owned exporting firms. We show that women face two levels of exclusion in access to finance—access to basic finance and access to trade finance. The latter is driven by characteristics common to firms owned by women. Also, in line with existing work, we show that woman-owned firms tend to turn to informal finance as an alternative more than their male counterparts. However, we also show that women are more likely to adopt fintech as a financial solution than men. This suggests that policies aimed at incentivizing banks to lend more to women may not be solving the right problem

Operationalizing Experience: Donor Approaches to Service Delivery in Fragile States

This study explores the different approaches to service delivery in fragile states by surveying donors' own evaluations of their existing fragile states policies. Because there is limited understanding of what works in risky environments, monitoring and evaluation are critical components of effective assistance. By highlighting trends in the strategies that donors have developed to implement acknowledged good practices, we can better understand how these experiences might contribute to future project and evaluation design

The demand side of social protection: Lessons from Cambodia's labour rights experience

In fragile states, social protection programmes are often a kaleidoscope of projects financed and implemented by a variety of donors, government agencies and NGOs. Such an environment does not foster a strong sense of ownership by beneficiaries, which weakens the likelihood of sustainability in the absence of donor interest or government commitment. Loosening demand-side constraints may provide incentive to sustain social progress, but it is unclear what political or social structures can effectively facilitate voice in fragile states. Cambodia's unusual social protection trajectory offers some insight by presenting an example where labour rights has made substantial progress while all other protections lag. We assess whether the changed external environment might facilitate activism in other areas of social protection. Our analysis suggests that using an island of excellence to build institutions that open political space for activism can be a successful strategy in states where governments are unable or unwilling to provide comprehensive social protection systems

Evidence of the internalization of animal calciviruses via the root of growing strawberry plants and dissemination to the fruit

Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (FAES): 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)Human norovirus (NoV) is the leading cause of foodborne disease in the U.S. and epidemiological studies have shown that fresh produce is one of the major vehicles for the transmission of human NoV. However, the mechanisms of norovirus contamination and persistence in fresh produce are poorly understood. The objective of this study is to determine whether human NoV surrogates, murine norovirus (MNV-1) and Tulane virus (TV), can attach and become internalized and disseminated in strawberries grown in soil. MNV-1 and TV were inoculated to the soil of growing strawberry plants at a level of 108 PFU/plant. Leaves and berries were harvested over a 14 day period and the viral titer was determined by plaque assay. Over the course of the study, 31.6% of the strawberries contained internalized MNV-1 with an average titer of 0.81 ± 0.33 log10 PFU/g. In comparison, 37.5% of strawberries were positive for infectious TV with an average titer of 1.83 ± 0.22 log10 PFU/g. A higher percentage (78.7%) of strawberries were positive for TV RNA with an average titer 3.15 ± 0.51 log10 RNA copies/g as determined RT-qPCR. In contrast, no or little virus internalization and dissemination was detected when TV was inoculated into bell peppers grown in soil. Collectively, this data demonstrates; (i) virally contaminated soils can lead to the internalization of virus via plant roots and subsequent dissemination to the leaf and fruit portions of growing strawberry plants; and (ii) the magnitude of internalization is dependent on the type of virus and plant.No embarg

Are least developed countries sidelined in advanced manufacturing production networks?

The fragmentation of production has expanded the geographic reach of even the most high-technology value chains into non-traditional suppliers. It has been suggested that the production of parts for high-technology final products can play an important role in advancing economic development. This is a particularly attractive outcome for poor countries. But due to data constraints, existing analysis is based largely on middle-income economies. In this paper, we seek to address this oversight by using proxy data to explore the position of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) located in Asia's vibrant regional production hub for electronics and automotive production. Have they also been able to benefit from the fragmentation of the production process? Our examination shows that there has been a surprising amount of LDC trade activity in these sectors over the past decade. In addition, a selected group of LDCs has succeeded in what appears to be successful engagement with these production networks. We discuss the forms of participation we observe and ask whether they might enable countries to attain development outcomes that might otherwise be out of their reach

Drivers of trade finance gaps

Banks are a critical facilitator of trade. Without bank-intermediated trade finance, global exports and imports would come to a halt. This has been apparent during the episodes of credit rationing that accompany financial shocks. But we have little insight into the drivers of rejection pooling by banks in normal times. Using augmented data from a global survey of financial institutions, we test the relative explanatory power of country- and bank-level characteristics as drivers of trade finance rejections in emerging markets and among small and medium-sized enterprises. The analysis suggests that rejections are driven by three broad factors: those inherent to the trade finance transaction including risk and income, those which indicate a redirection of bank's business lines, such as termination of correspondent relationships, and implementation of improved client screening mechanisms. Together, these suggest that solutions to trade finance gaps are most likely to be found outside of the traditional toolbox

Why Do Trade Finance Gaps Persist: Does it Matter for Trade and Development?

Trade finance shortfalls now appear regularly. Does this matter for trade expansion and economic development in developing countries? Global trade finance has resumed following the 2009 global financial crisis. However, the pattern of recovery has been uneven across countries and categories of firms. The recovery has been robust for the main routes of trade and for large trading companies. By contrast, access to trade finance remains costly and scarce in countries which have the strongest potential for trade expansion. The policy response to this problem depends on whether this represents a market failure, or a new global equilibrium. We introduce new data from a global survey of firms to argue that real shortfalls are exacerbated by perception gaps in a way that has enabled market failures to persist. This has troubling implications most directly through its effect on the ability for small firms to benefit from the reallocation of production and investment within global supply chains

Measuring and Modeling Viscoelastic Relaxation of the Lithosphere with Application to the Northern Volcanic Zone, Iceland

Viscoelastic relaxation of the stress perturbation caused by an earthquake or diking event can produce measurable ground deformation over 100 km away from the source. We consider the role of viscoelastic relaxation in two different contexts. First, we explore the role that post-seismic relaxation may play in loading a fault over the entire seismic cycle. Viscous relaxation recycles the stress that is shed by the co-seismic fault, acting to reload the fault with stresses in a non-linear fashion. Under conditions of rapid post-seismic relaxation and slow tectonic loading, stress recycling via viscoelastic relaxation can lead to clustering of earthquakes in time. The second context in which we consider viscoelastic relaxation involves the lithospheric response to a mid-ocean ridge rifting episode in Northern Iceland. The diking and subsequent relaxation act as a natural rock mechanics experiment, and in measuring and modeling the post-rifting response we aim to constrain the rheological properties of the Icelandic lithosphere. In order to use post-seismic or post-rifting relaxation to probe properties of the lithosphere, we must be able to precisely measure surface deformation. To that end, we have developed a couple of new interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) processing approaches: (1) Automatically producing multiple interferograms in a common coordinate system and (2) removing displacements caused by ocean tidal loading from InSAR observations. Both of these developments are essential as we begin to consider the systematic use of tens to hundreds of interferograms

Why trade finance gaps persist: Does it matter for trade and development?

Trade finance shortfalls now appear regularly. Does this matter for trade expansion and economic development in developing countries? Global trade finance has resumed following the 2009 global financial crisis. However, the pattern of recovery has been uneven across countries and categories of firms. The recovery has been robust for the main routes of trade and for large trading companies. By contrast, access to trade finance remains costly and scarce in countries which have the strongest potential for trade expansion. The policy response to this problem depends on whether this represents a market failure, or a new global equilibrium. We introduce new data from a global survey of firms to argue that real shortfalls are exacerbated by perception gaps in a way that has enabled market failures to persist. This has troubling implications most directly through its effect on the ability for small firms to benefit from the reallocation of production and investment within global supply chains