Foreign direct investment - income growth for all?

The United Nations declared halving the number of poor people by 2015 as the first of their eight Millennium Development Goals. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is often seen as one instrument towards this goal because of its ability to stimulate economic growth trickling down to the poor. Whereas many studies deal with those growth effects, little attention is paid to possible direct poverty reducing effects. Therefore, we first examine different theoretical direct and indirect ways through which FDI can affect the income of the poor. Wage effects and possible job-creating effects are considered. We find that they depend on the existing human capital and its distribution in society. Following Dollar and Kraay [2000] and Jalilian and Weiss [2001] this hypothesis is confirmed empirically with the use of cross-country regressions for a set of developing countries. In summary, this paper indicates that in developing countries with existing and equally distributed human capital FDI can help fighting poverty whereas in countries with little or very unequally distributed human capital FDI can raise poverty

Foreign Direct Investment: Income Growth for All?

The United Nations declared halving the number of poor people by 2015 as the first of their eight Millennium Development Goals. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is often seen as one instrument towards this goal because of its ability to stimulate economic growth trickling down to the poor. Whereas many studies deal with those growth effects, little attention is paid to possible direct poverty reducing effects. Therefore, we first examine different theoretical direct and indirect ways through which FDI can affect the income of the poor. Wage effects and possible job-creating effects are considered. We find that they depend on the existing human capital and its distribution in society. Following Dollar and Kraay [2000] and Jalilian and Weiss [2001] this hypothesis is confirmed empirically with the use of cross-country regressions for a set of developing countries. In summary, this paper indicates that in developing countries with existing and equally distributed human capital FDI can help fighting poverty whereas in countries with little or very unequally distributed human capital FDI can raise poverty. --

Moving from Jobs to Careers: Engaging Low-Wage Workers in Career Advancement

The Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration offers a new approach to helping low-wage and dislocated workers advance by increasing their wages or work hours, upgrading their skills, or finding better jobs. At the same time, these workers are encouraged to augment and stabilize their income by making the most of available work supports, such as food stamps, public health insurance, subsidized child care, and tax credits. This report presents preliminary information on the effectiveness of strategies that were used to attract people to the WASC program and engage them in services

Toward Growth and Equality: A Framework for Monitoring Outcomes for Residents and Housing Markets in Camden and the South Jersey Region

This paper offers a framework for tracking the extent to which demographic, labor, and housing market conditions are moving in or out of alignment with a range of goals for redevelopment in Camden, New Jersey

Welfare Time Limits: An Update on State Policies, Implementation, and Effects on Families

One of the most controversial features of the 1990s welfare reforms was the imposition of time limits on benefit receipt. This comprehensive review, written by The Lewin Group and MDRC, includes analyses of administrative data reported by states to the federal government, visits to several states, and a literature review

From Getting By to Getting Ahead: Navigating Career Advancement for Low-Wage Workers

From just getting by at the end of each month to getting ahead is a hard climb for many low-wage workers. This report, from MDRC's Work Advancement and Support Center (WASC) demonstration, explores how WASC career coaches help low-wage workers understand the complex interactions between earnings and eligibility for work support programs and guide them to make the best advancement decisions possible

The Double Bind of Redevelopment: Camden During Receivership

This working paper finds that successful redevelopment efforts in Camden, New Jersey, under state receivership were able to build on groups' existing capacities and their past work in neighborhoods, were marked by more effective participatory dynamics and the limited use of eminent domain, and benefited from good relationships with the State of New Jersey and with private-sector partners. It concludes that attempts to build public capacity to revitalize cities may need to be complemented by efforts to build civic capacity, or the ability to solve problems in coordination with major partners

Foreign Direct Investment and Income Inequality revisited

? This paper discusses the impact of FDI on income inequality. ? The theoretical ways in which FDI might influence income inequality between countries as well as within a given country are discussed, with special attention also given to employment generation effects. ? Revisiting previous research we show that significant effects of FDI are hard to find in more recent work, with older studies showing mixed results. ? Re-estimating the prominent study of Tsai (1995) with newer data we augment it by allowing for FDI-influences on inequality by region, income level, and export focus. ? We find no overall impact of FDI on inequality. Also region and income differentiated estimations show no country group-specific impacts of FDI. Only in the export focusdifferentiated estimations we find some evidence of an inequality increasing impact of FDI in countries primarily exporting primary goods (without fuel). ? FDI thus do not have significant implications for income distribution in general. --

Analysis of economics of a TV broadcasting satellite for additional nationwide TV programs

The influence of a TV broadcasting satellite, transmitting four additional TV networks was analyzed. It is assumed that the cost of the satellite systems will be financed by the cable TV system operators. The additional TV programs increase income by attracting additional subscribers. Two economic models were established: (1) each local network is regarded as an independent economic unit with individual fees (cost price model) and (2) all networks are part of one public cable TV company with uniform fees (uniform price model). Assumptions are made for penetration as a function of subscription rates. Main results of the study are: the installation of a TV broadcasting satellite improves the economics of CTV-networks in both models; the overall coverage achievable by the uniform price model is significantly higher than that achievable by the cost price model

A global analysis approach for investigating structural resilience in urban drainage systems

Copyright © 2015 Elsevier. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Water Research. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Water Research (2015), DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2015.05.030Building resilience in urban drainage systems requires consideration of a wide range of threats that contribute to urban flooding. Existing hydraulic reliability based approaches have focused on quantifying functional failure caused by extreme rainfall or increase in dry weather flows that lead to hydraulic overloading of the system. Such approaches however, do not fully explore the full system failure scenario space due to exclusion of crucial threats such as equipment malfunction, pipe collapse and blockage that can also lead to urban flooding. In this research, a new analytical approach based on global resilience analysis is investigated and applied to systematically evaluate the performance of an urban drainage system when subjected to a wide range of structural failure scenarios resulting from random cumulative link failure. Link failure envelopes, which represent the resulting loss of system functionality (impacts) are determined by computing the upper and lower limits of the simulation results for total flood volume (failure magnitude) and average flood duration (failure duration) at each link failure level. A new resilience index that combines the failure magnitude and duration into a single metric is applied to quantify system residual functionality at each considered link failure level. With this approach, resilience has been tested and characterized for an existing urban drainage system in Kampala city, Uganda. In addition, the effectiveness of potential adaptation strategies in enhancing its resilience to cumulative link failure has been tested.UK Commonwealth PhD scholarshipEngineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC) - Safe & SuRe research fellowshi