Does the World Bank have any impact on human development in the poorest countries? Some preliminary evidence from Africa

In an attempt to better understand the impact of the World Bank on human development in poor countries, we use cross-country data on African countries, for the 1990-2002 period, to examine this relationship. The coefficient estimates of our parsimonious fixed-effects models indicate that while loans and grants of the Bank have had a positive impact on some relatively short-term indicators of health and education in an average African country, there is little evidence to suggest that such loans and grants have helped these countries to consolidate on the short-term gains

Is education the panacea for economic deprivation of Muslims? Evidence from wage earners in India, 1987-2005

Few researchers have examined the nature and determinants of earnings differentials among religious groups, and none has been undertaken in the context of conflict-prone multi-religious societies like the one in India. We address this lacuna in the literature by examining the differences in the average (log) earnings of Hindu and Muslim wage earners in India, during the 1987-2005 period. Our results indicate that education differences between Hindu and Muslim wage earners, especially differences in the proportion of wage earners with tertiary education, are largely responsible for the differences in the average (log) earnings of the two religious groups across the years. By contrast, differences in the returns to education do not explain the aforementioned difference in average (log) earnings. In conclusion, we discuss some policy implications

Is education the panacea for economic deprivation of Muslims? Evidence from wage earners in India, 1987-2005

Few researchers have examined the nature and determinants of earnings differentials among religious groups, and none has been undertaken in the context of conflict-prone multi-religious societies like the one in India. We address this lacuna in the literature by examining the differences in the average log earnings of Hindu and Muslim wage earners in India, during the 1987-2005 period. Our results indicate that education differences between Hindu and Muslim wage earners, especially differences in the proportion of wage earners with tertiary education, are largely responsible for the differences in the average log earnings of the two religious groups across the years. By contrast, differences in the returns to education do not explain the aforementioned difference in average log earnings. In conclusion, we discuss some policy implications

How transition paths differ: enterprise performance in Russia and China

We use enterprise data to analyse and contrast the determinants of enterprise performance in China and Russia. We find that in China, enterprise growth and efficiency is associated with rapid increases in factor inputs, but not correlated with ownership or institutional factors. However, in Russia, enterprise growth is not associated with increases in factor quantity (except for labor) or quality. The main determinants of company performance are instead demand and institutional factors at a regional level. We explore possible interpretations of these results, including the impact of institutional and managerial quality

Impact of reforms on plant-level productivity and technical efficiency: Evidence from the Indian manufacturing sector

It is generally believed that the structural reforms that usher in competition and force companies to become more efficient were introduced later in India following the macroeconomic crisis in 1991. However, whether the post-1991 growth is an outcome of more efficient use of resources or greater use of factor inputs, especially capital, remains an open empirical question. In this paper, we use plant-level data from 1989-90 and 2000-01 to address this question. Our results indicate that while there was an increase in the productivity of factor inputs during the 1990s, most of the growth in value added is explained by growth in the use of factor inputs. We also find that median technical efficiency declined in all but one of the industries between the two years, and change in technical efficiency explains a very small proportion in the change in gross value added

How important is ownership in a market with a level playing field: The Indian banking sector revisited

It has long been argued that private ownership of firms leads to better firm performance. However, theory as well as empirical evidence suggest that factors like agency problems may not allow privately owned firms to operate more efficiently or perform better that state owned firms. At the same time, it has been argued that competition and hard budget constraints can induce state owned firms to operate efficiently. In India, banking sector reforms were initiated in 1992-93, leading to entry and other forms of deregulation, and a level playing field for all banks. Data for 1995-96 through 2000-01 suggest that by 1999-00 ownership was no longer a significant determinant of performance; induced by competition, public sector banks were able to eliminate the performance/efficiency gap that existed between them and domestic private sector and foreign banks

Directional mobility of debt ratings

In this paper we describe a method to decompose a well-known measure of debt ratings mobility into it’s directional components. We show, using sovereign debt ratings as an example, that this directional decomposition allows us to better understand the underlying characteristics of debt ratings migration and, for the case of the data set used, that the standard Markov chain model is not homogeneous in either the time or cross-sectional dimensions. We find that the directional decomposition also allows us to sign the change in quality of debt over time and across sub-groups of the population

Ethnic conflict and economic disparity: Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo

We use the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household survey from postconflict Kosovo to examine economic deprivation among Serbs and Albanians. Economic deprivation is measured by per capita household expenditure and by the incidence of poverty as captured by the headcount ratio. We examine the roles played by the stock of attributes and by the impact of these attributes on deprivation using Oaxaca-type decomposition methods. Empirical results for both decomposition analyses show differences in characteristics as well as returns to measured characteristics favor Serbs, even though Serbs have lower expenditures and higher poverty incidence than Albanians

Active flutter suppression of a cantilever plate at supersonic speeds

Modern high-speed aircrafts are flown using the fly-by- wire system. The d y n a m i c s of automatic flight control system interacts with aircraft's structural dynamics and aerodynamics to give rise to aero servo elastic problems. Such problems can be avoided using an active control system. AS a feasibility study, active flutter suppression of a cantilever plate wing was carried out. In this study it was demonstrated that the flutter Mach number of the cantilever wing can be increased by 12.5%

Behaviour and effect of Ti2Ni phase during processing of NiTi shape memory alloy wire from cast ingot

Binary NiTi alloy is one of the commercially successful shape memory alloys (SMAs). Generally, the NiTi alloy composition used for thermal actuator application is slightly Ti-rich. In the present study, vacuum arc melted alloy of 50.2Ti–Ni (at.%) composition was prepared and characterized using optical, scanning and transmission electron microcopy. Formation of second phase particles (SPPs) in the cast alloy and their influence on development of microstructure during processing of the alloy into wire form has been investigated. Results showed that the present alloy contained Ti2Ni type SPPs in the matrix. In the cast alloy, the Ti2Ni particles form in varying sizes (1–10 lm) and shapes. During subsequent thermo- mechanical processing, these SPPs get sheared/fragmented into smaller particles with low aspect ratio. The presence of SPPs plays a significant role in refinement of the microstructure during processing of the alloy. During deformation of the alloy, the matrix phase around the SPPs experiences conditions sim- ilar to that observed in severe plastic deformation of metallic materials, leading to localized amorphisa- tion of the matrix phase