Growth trends in the developing world : country forecasts and determinants

The authors present real per capita GDP growth forecasts for all developing countries for the period 2005-14. For 55 of these countries, representing major world regions and accounting for close to 80 percent of the developing world's GDP, they forecast the growth effects of the main forces underpinning growth, assuming that these evolve following past trends. The authors find that for the average developing country the largest growth dividend comes from continued improvement in public infrastructure, followed by the growth contributions of rising secondary school enrollment, trade openness, and financial deepening. The joint contribution of these four growth determinants to average, annual per capita GDP growth in the next decade is estimated to be 1 percentage point. Failure to keep improving public infrastructure alone could reduce this growth dividend by 50 percent. The forecasted growth contributions differ by country qualitatively and quantitatively.Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Governance Indicators,Inequality,Economic Growth

Social transfers and labor supply: Long run rvidence from South Africa

How do large social transfers affect labor supply? This study analyses the South African pension program to answer this question. I exploit a major demand shock - the South African recession that began in 2008 - in a regression discontinuity design to �nd prime aged adult labor supply falls in response to pension arrival in the household only during the recession for sectors and types of workers affected by the recession. Post-recession, these workers witness an increase in demand and respond by increasing supply. Pension payments consequently have small and statistically insignificant effects on labor supply, a result that contrasts starkly with all existing studies. I argue these results stem from the combination of two forces. When labor demand is weak, the opportunity cost of leisure falls and workers demand more leisure. If a household member draws a pension, with leisure being a normal good, leisure demand increases further

Informants in Organizational Marketing Research

Organizational research frequently involves seeking judgmental data from multiple informants within organizations. Researchers are often faced with determining how many informants to survey, who those informants should be and (if more than one) how best to aggregate responses when disagreement exists between those responses. Using both recall and forecasting data from a laboratory study involving the MARKSTRAT simulation, we show that when there are multiple respondents who disagree, responses aggregated using confidence-based or competence-based weights outperform those with data-based weights, which in turn provide significant gains in estimation accuracy over simply averaging respondent reports. We then illustrate how these results can be used to determine the best number of respondents for a market research task as well as to provide an effective screening mechanism when seeking a single, best informant.screening;marketing research;aggregation;organizational research;survey research

The Impact of Channel Function Performance on Buyer-Seller Relationships in Marketing Channels

Distributors, across sectors and countries, are faced by the threat of disintermediation. In many industries, horizontal consolidation and advances in information technology have made it easier for manufacturers to bypass distributors and do business directly with consumers. Distributors have responded to this threat or other destructive acts in a number of different ways that can be represented through Hirschman's (1970) Exit-Voice-Loyalty framework. One additional response that distributors frequently adopt is developing countervailing power through dependence-balancing actions. These actions are designed to strengthen bonds with customers and often manifest themselves in the provision of improved channel services to customers. Does this strategy work? We seek to address this in our paper. Specifically, we examine the nature and magnitude of the direct and interactive effects of (a) the performance of marketing functions and services by a distributor and (b) the dependence structure of its relationship with its customers on different dimensions of relationship quality - satisfaction, trust, commitment and conflict. Of particular interest to us is the effect of functional performance on relationship quality in situations characterized by high relative dependence of the distributor on the customer - this closely approximates the situation that many distributors, faced by the threat of disintermediation, find themselves in. Hypotheses from our model are tested using data collected from the paint industry in the Netherlands and Belgium.buyer-seller relationships;channel management;channel services;relationship marketing;empirical

A city hall for Delhi and New Delhi (India)

Thesis (M.Arch)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1960.Accompanying drawings held by MIT Museum.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 44).by R. N. Kacker.M.Arc

Optimum Replacement of Coarse Aggregate by Steel Slag and Fine Aggregate by Waste Glass Powder

Glass is one of the world's oldest and most commonly used materials. Glass has a fairly short shelf life in its current condition. Reusing this waste in construction materials is one alternative for safe environmental and economic disposal. The waste glass will be used to substitute fine aggregate in the following proportions: 0%, 10%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 40%, and 50%. This study will go over properties such as compressive strength. Another attempt was made to replace coarse aggregate with steel slag because there is a growing interest in using waste materials as alternative aggregate materials and significant research is being conducted on the use of many different materials as aggregate substitutes such as coal ash, blast furnace slag, and steel slag aggregate. By altering the quantity of steel slag, different concrete mixtures were created Steel slag is to be substituted for coarse aggregate in the following proportions: 0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%. Compressive strength of concrete to be reviewed, as well as another attempt at combined replacement by replacing both fine aggregate and coarse aggregate with waste glass powder and steel slag, while maintaining the optimum replacement of glass powder constant and varying the percentage replacement of steel slag with coarse aggregate in proportions of 0%,10%,20% up to 80%, and thus finding the combined optimum replacement of coarse and fine aggregates with steel slag and waste glass powder in terms of compressive strength of concrete

Homogeneous nucleation rate measurements. I. Ethanol, n‐propanol, and i‐propanol

Homogeneous nucleation rate measurements have been made on ethanol, n‐propanol, and i‐propanol vapors over a range of temperatures and supersaturations. The Becker–Doring–Zeldovitch nucleation rate expression has been scaled so as to give good agreement with the measured nucleation rates. The same scaling factors are also used to compare calculated critical supersaturations with experimental data obtained from this investigation and a variety of other sources. The agreement is good in all cases. The nucleation rate measurements and the critical supersaturation data from this investigation reveal anomalous behavior for ethanol near 260 K and for n‐propanol near 275 K

Personality Analysis Through Handwriting

This work discusses about computer aidedGraphology i.e. Personality analysis based on handwritten text,in which instead of a Graphologist, a system will be trained toperform the analysis without much human intervention. A realworld dataset of handwritten text samples will be maintained andbased on few features like Margins, Baseline, Size, Zones etc.depicted in each of the samples and extracted through Imageprocessing techniques and , an approximate analysis of thewriter’s personality trait will be done. These traits will then bemapped to the existing personality theories and finally apersonality type, temperament and a detailed report will be givenfor the handwritten sample, as the result of analysis

Pipe Dreams? The Governance of Urban Water Supply in Informal Settlements, New Delhi

This article explores two trends which exemplify recent research and thinking in service delivery: first, understanding the role of small?scale informal providers and second, understanding the politics and governance of service provision. Drawing on field research on urban water in New Delhi, we show that while informal providers fill a gap left by the public utility, residents are captive consumers with limited ability to influence service quality or price. However, this low service level trap can be shifted; and the very seeds of change seem to lie in the evolving relationships between informal providers, residents of informal settlements, politicians and the water utility. The case highlights two factors that enabled the transition: (1) the nature of the service , particularly piped water systems, are more conducive to triggering collective action; and (2) rising political awareness and competition can enable community groups to break out of clientelistic relationships with local politicians

Greenways for a Greater Good- An Indian Perspective

Cities have developed on the banks of rivers from the dawn of civilizations. The urban fabric of Indian cities is an intricate tapestry composed of settlements that span almost 4000 years of urban history. Cities as old as 2500 B.C co-exist sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict with cities that are still being conceived. The pace of urbanization in India is unprecedented and the country hosts some of the most populous cities in the world. According to the 2011 census, urbanization in India has increased faster than expected reversing the declining trends of the earlier decades. (Census of India, 2011) This boom presents its own set of challenges and opportunities. The role of a Landscape Planner becomes prominent since ensuring the balance of ecological processes and the components of Master Plans are imperative to ensure a sustainable future