Five steps to smarter multi-bi aid: a new way forward for earmarked finance

Multi-bi aid – donor contributions to multilateral organisations earmarked for specific purposes – is an important channel for financing development, and is expected to grow. Yet multi-bi aid poses significant challenges for both multilateral and bilateral actors, including lack of alignment with recipient-country priorities, aid fragmentation, and increased transaction costs. This report explores the potential for smart reforms of multi-bi aid. A five-step plan to improve multi-bi aid requires: better data-access and management; recovering the full economic cost of earmarking; fee structures for improving impact; stronger internal rules to curb fragmentation; and better country ownership and participation. These reforms can make multi-bi aid more effective and efficient while enhancing its legitimacy in the eyes of recipients

The Impact of Social Capital on Agricultural Income Among Corporate Farms in the Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic, agricultural production is still dominated by corporate farms. However, not all of them had been equally successful, economically. In general, a varying adoption of production factors is identified as being of influence. Whether their ability to collaborate with other farms is an additional factor which has been discussed under the concept of social capital since quite some time will be analysed in this paper. Based on the findings of a survey among a sample of 166 corporate farms by adopting factor and multiple regression analysis it can be deduced that social capital is indeed a significant factor determining the level of agricultural income.corporate farms, social capital, cross sectional models, Czech Republic, Agribusiness, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, C31, P32, Q12, Z13,

Organizational reform and the rise of trust funds: lessons from the World Bank

Over the past two decades, earmarked funding to international development organizations through special-purpose trust funds has increased greatly. This paper studies the incentives for trust funds from the perspective of multilateral agencies, notably the World Bank. A theoretically intriguing type of funds are so-called “pass-on funds,” in which one unit hosts the fund, then passes on its resources to another type of unit for implementation. Each unit has different preferences for the specific types of activities to be supported by the fund. Interviews with World Bank staff and complementary documents demonstrate the rationale for pass-on funds and the associated division of labor between fundraising network units and implementing regional units. While pass-on funds reflect an efficient division of labor between functionally specialized units, they increase the misalignment between sector-specific global priorities and country-specific needs. Organizational reform drove the sudden explosion of pass-on funds around the millennium turn, facilitated by growing availability of donor monies for specific sectors and by lenient internal regulation. Organizational reform undermined budget autonomy of sector units, causing those units to seek new funds in their areas of expertise. A number of reform features also reduced administrative budgets of country units, increasing their demand for pass-on funding grants. The results contribute to the emerging literature on earmarked funding and highlight the need to consider international organizations as heterogeneous actors

Fully-automated liberalism? Blockchain technology and international cooperation in an anarchic world

A recent wave of scholarship attests that the liberal world order is under threat. Although there is disagreement about the underlying reasons for this diagnosis, there are few attempts to further our understanding of how the liberal order can be reinvigorated. This paper probes the potential of blockchain technology to promote international cooperation. Blockchain technology is a data structure that enables global governance stakeholders to establish decentralized governance systems which provide high-powered incentives for enhanced cooperation. By outlining the contours of a blockchain-based global governance system for climate policy, the paper illustrates that blockchain technology holds theoretical promise to foster cooperation in three ways: leveraging new sources of information through blockchain-based prediction markets; allaying coordinating problems through reducing the cost of transactions for side payments; and allowing states and other global governance actors to make more credible commitments given guaranteed execution of blockchain-enabled smart contracts. By empowering local knowledge holders and non-state actors that traditionally lacked the means to coordinate efforts to influence global politics, blockchain technology also promises to advance an international order based on liberal values. In actuality, however, emerging blockchain-based global governance systems will fall short of the libertarian ideal of ‘fully-automated liberalism’ as their design and operation will remain under the shadow of power

The Impact of Social Capital on Farm and Household Income: Results of a Survey among Individual Farmers in Poland

Private farming is the dominant mode of agricultural production in most European countries. Not all farmers are equally successful, economically. In this paper it is analysed whether social capital is an important factor contributing to higher agricultural incomes. Based on the findings of a farm survey in Poland among 410 farmers by adopting factor and multiple regression analysis it can be deduced that social capital is indeed a significant factor determining the level of agricultural income. However, its impact not that clear-cut as anticipated. More in-depth analysis will be needed in the future.cross sectional models, empirical research, farm income, individual (private) farms, social capital, Poland, Farm Management,

the decisive role of domestic veto players

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs), government-owned investment funds, are of growing importance in international finance. They are a vehicle to manage foreign exchange reserves and wealth which have been accumulating in the emerging world, particularly in the BRICs. However, while China and Russia set up SWFs over the last decade, India and Brazil still lack such funds. In analysing thoroughly the Indian case, this paper seeks to contribute to recent literature on the determinants of SWFs with two main findings: First, it confirms conventional economic theory which shows the requirement of excessive foreign reserves for the set-up of SWFs. Second, it suggests that political systems matter, as demonstrated by the lively debate in India on whether that country should have such a fund. In this way, influential societal actors, in particular the central bank and regulating agencies as well as business associations, have dominated the public discourse and successfully lobbied the government to waive initial plans in support of an alternative wealth management scheme

Blockchain technology and the governance of foreign aid

Blockchain technology has been considered a vehicle to foster development in poor countries by promoting applications such as secure delivery of humanitarian aid, digital identity services, and proof of provenance. This article examines whether (and if so, how) blockchain technology can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of foreign aid governance, thereby moving beyond completely anonymous contexts. Foreign aid governance is plagued by lack of credible commitments among states, which are further exacerbated by information asymmetries and which often undermine aid effectiveness. In this context, blockchain technology holds two promises. First, through the guaranteed execution of smart contracts, it can strengthen the credibility of state commitments, for example collective burden-sharing rules among a group of donors or recipient country compliance with policy conditionality in return for aid. Second, through leveraging prediction markets, blockchain technology can allay information problems related to the verification of real-world events along the entire aid delivery chain

Five steps to smarter multi-bi aid: a new way forward for earmarked finance

Multi-bi aid – donor contributions to multilateral organisations earmarked for specific purposes – is an important channel for financing development, and is expected to grow. Yet multi-bi aid poses significant challenges for both multilateral and bilateral actors, including lack of alignment with recipient-country priorities, aid fragmentation, and increased transaction costs. This report explores the potential for smart reforms of multi-bi aid. A five-step plan to improve multi-bi aid requires: better data-access and management; recovering the full economic cost of earmarking; fee structures for improving impact; stronger internal rules to curb fragmentation; and better country ownership and participation. These reforms can make multi-bi aid more effective and efficient while enhancing its legitimacy in the eyes of recipients

NMR studies of fluoropolymers and of polyaniline

This thesis presents a study of two polymers, poly(trifluoroethylene) (PTrFE) and polyaniline (PANi), by means of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR).The first part of the thesis focusses on investigations in connection with the fluoro polymer. Using known assignments of the fluorine solution-state spectrum the defect level could be determined as well as a high degree if atacticity confirmed. Solid-state NMR concentrated, on the one hand, on the detection of heterogeneities in the polymer and, on the other hand, on the investigation of cross-polarisation dynamics of abundant spin systems, namely (^1)→(^13)C CP. To account for the two different kinds of fluorine in PTrFE a three-spin-bath model based on the usual spin- temperature approach has been developed, numerically investigated and applied to PTrFE. The success, however, was limited by the influence of coherent polarisation transfer in the early stage of the CP. The transient oscillations in (^1)→(^13)C CP curves have been used in order to determine bond distances and, subsequently, to detect motion of the polymer chain. The onset of motion has been confirmed by comparing the measured axially symmetric fluorine shielding anisotropy tensor with the asymmetric tensor obtained from ab initio calculations carried out on the rigid molecule. The second part is concerned with NMR of polyaniline with emphasis on proton wideline NMR of leucoemeraldine. Spin-lattice relaxation data inferred heterogeneity in the powder polymer with a fast relaxing component of about 5% intensity. Impurities as a source of this heterogeneity as well as partial crystallinity have been excluded on the basis of solution-state NMR results and X-ray results, respectively. Furthermore, proton spin-diffusion experiments suggest that the domains having different relaxation characteristics are in close contact, although no definite particle size has been determined. Experiments at elevated temperatures show an increase of the intensity of the fast relaxing component. A reversible transformation of regions with inherent motional heterogeneity has been inferred

Trust funds as a lever of influence at international development organizations

Trust funds – broadly defined as financial vehicles to channel development funding earmarked for specific purposes through international development organizations – have grown substantially over the past two decades. Reflecting the variety of trust fund purposes and related governance arrangements, an emergent literature emphasizes a diversity of reasons underlying this growth. This paper proposes a simple – yet encompassing – explanation applicable to all kinds of funds: donors use trust funds to wield ‘influence’ – leveraging financial resources to alter the policies of multilateral organizations. Based on interviews at the World Bank, the study shows that influence is a dominant motive behind trust funds, though the capacity and willingness to wield influence varies across donors. Influence is a salient motive especially for medium‐sized donors and emerging donors but surprisingly less so for large donors. In addition, attempts of influence are most effective when donors promote new thematic issues that did not previously feature Bank assistance and outside established programs. Concerns among stakeholders about undue donor influence are highest with respect to the global knowledge work of the World Bank but are virtually absent when involving donors in the operational activities at the country level