Blockchain is an exciting new technology that may prove to be a radical innovation - similar to technologies such as the steam engine and the Internet that triggered previous industrial revolutions - with the power to disrupt existing economic and business models.
... See More + It has the potential to deliver productivity gains to multiple industries, from the financial sector to energy markets, supply chains, intellectual property management, virtual firms, the public sector, and beyond. Its ability to provide disintermediation, improve transparency, and increase auditability can significantly reduce transaction costs, introduce efficiency into existing value chains, challenge revenue models, and open new markets. And blockchain may prove particularly valuable in emerging market economies. Yet the technology is in its early stages of development and serious challenges and risks, both technical and regulatory, will need to be addressed before it achieves widespread adoption. Questions remain about blockchain’s scalability, interoperability, security, transition costs, data privacy, and governance. And business leaders and policy makers will need to think long and hard about when and under what conditions a blockchain initiative may be warranted.
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Blockchain is an innovative new technology with the power to disrupt existing economic and business models, as discussed in EMCompass note 40.
... See More + Blockchain also has enormous potential for emerging markets. These nations appear poised for a more rapid adoption of blockchain, though a framework is needed to assess how the technology can be deployed and which applications and use cases are likely to be seen in the near future. While the potential of blockchain is great, the technology is still at an early stage of development and will need to overcome potential setbacks - technical, regulatory, and organizational - before it becomes mainstream. In such a context of uncertainty, companies in emerging markets can neither afford to wait until the outcome is evident nor expose their existing business models to overly risky wholescale blockchain initiatives. Instead, they will need to adopt an experimental approach that allows them to develop options and thereby learn in the process, inform their strategies, and improve their value propositions.
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The development objective of National Quality Infrastructure (NQI) Development Project for Ethiopia is to improve the delivery of quality assurance services to enterprises in the targeted sectors.
... See More + This project is structured around three components. 1) The first component, Strengthening Institutional Capacity for NQI Development, aims to strengthen the NQI institutions’ capacity to deliver effective and efficient quality assurance services to enterprises in the targeted sectors. It has the following subcomponents : (i) Technical Assistance and Training to Industries; and (ii) Strengthening Ministry of Science and Technology's (MoST) NQI Oversight Function. 2) The second component, Enhancing Private Sector Engagement, aims to support more active private sector involvement for the development of NQI systems in terms of creation of the demand for NQI services and increase of the number of private sector NQI service providers, in particular conformity assessment services. It has three subcomponents as follows: (i) Technical Assistance and Training to Industries; (ii) Technical Support to Private Sector NQI Service Providers; and (iii) Strengthening the Feed-back and Dialogue Mechanism. 3) The third component, Project Management and Monitoring and Evaluation, aims to support Project management and monitoring and evaluation through, inter alia, financing of Operating Costs, consultants’ services, goods and technical assistance.
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Collaborations between science and industry are becoming increasingly important for the innovation process, in part because many new inventions are directly rooted in science, such as biotechnology, information technology, and new materials.
... See More + Yet there are several barriers that inhibit collaboration, including financing constraints, information asymmetries which prevent researchers and firms interacting, and transaction costs in negotiating collaboration agreements. Government subsidies may provide incentive to seek out these connections and may foster increased interaction between firms and scientific units. While such policies have been used for some time in the United States (U.S.), Western Europe, and Japan, they are now also becoming common in middle and high income countries that are attempting to close the gap with the most developed countries through innovation. Following a request from NCBiR, the World Bank conducted an impact evaluation of the in-tech program. In-tech funding provides additionality, largely funding projects which will not otherwise receive public funding and which will not otherwise be completed. Research and innovation is a long-term process, and the analysis measures outcomes 2.5 to 3.5 years after funding was received. This captures the time needed for the initial research activities to have occurred, but it can take more time for patents to be granted, publications to be cited, and new innovations to achieve commercial success.
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Despite the importance of trade facilitation as an area of trade and development policy, there have been very few impact evaluations of specific trade facilitation reforms.
... See More + This paper offers an evaluation of in-house clearance, a reform that allows qualified firms in Serbia to clear customs from within their own warehouse rather than at the customs office. The pooled synthetic control method applied here offers a novel solution to many of the empirical challenges that frustrate efforts to evaluate trade facilitation reforms. The method is used to estimate causal impacts on trade outcomes for 21 firms that adopted in-house clearance for import shipments. The program compressed the distribution of clearance times for adopting firms, but the estimated effects on median clearance times, inspection rates, and import value were not statistically significant. Tests for heterogeneous program impact do not indicate that the program affected adopting firms differently. Overall, the results suggest that the most evident benefit of the program for participating firms is reduced uncertainty about clearance times.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7708 JUN 20, 2016
In this benchmarking report, a comprehensive benchmarking analysis of the participating Sub-Saharan African universities is conducted in terms of the key indicators identified and constructed for the purpose of assessing institutional performance and health.
... See More + While university benchmarking is a relatively new approach for most Sub-Saharan African universities that are participating for the first time in this process, it has been used as a diagnosis and planning tool by many universities to understand and track their own performance over time and against their local and global peers. For Sub-Saharan African universities, there is a need to take stock of outstanding achievements in the past, catch up with local peers in the near future, and set long-term targets on the road to becoming a top-performing university in the world. It is expected that this benchmarking analysis will serve as the basis for understanding the relative performance of Sub-Saharan African universities as well as a catalyst for these universities to take appropriate quality improvement measures and carry out effective strategic planning. For this phase of the Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) Regional Benchmarking Initiative, 28 out of the 48 Sub-Saharan African universities that signed up have participated and attempted the benchmarking exercise to different extents.
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What are the common characteristics among radicalized individuals, willing to justify attacks targeting civilians? Drawing on information on attitudes toward extreme violence and other characteristics of 30,787 individuals from 27 developing countries around the world, and employing a variety of econometric techniques, this paper identifies the partial correlates of extremism.
... See More + The results suggest that the typical extremist who supports attacks against civilians is more likely to be young, unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, relatively uneducated, and not as religious as others, but more willing to sacrifice own life for his or her beliefs. Gender and marital status are not found to explain significantly the individual-level variation in attitudes toward extremism. Although these results may vary in magnitude and significance across countries and geographic regions, they are robust to various sensitivity analyses.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7691 JUN 01, 2016
The development objective of the Second Karnataka State Highway Improvement Project for India is to accelerate the development of the core road network through leveraging public sector outlays with private sector financing and improving the institutional effectiveness of the road sector agencies to deliver effective and safe roads to users.
... See More + The restructuring includes following changes: (a) extension of the loan closing date to December 28, 2018; (b) reallocation of loan proceeds across expenditure categories; (c) extension of the due date for two loan covenants; and (d) corresponding changes to the results framework and disbursement projections.
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This report summarizes the main findings from the application of performance based incentives linked to progress on a standardized, globally recognized metric - the stepwise laboratory improvement process towards accreditation (SLIPTA) checklist - under the East Africa Public Health Laboratory Networking Project (EAPHLNP) in Rwanda.
... See More + The lab performance-based financing (PBF) pilot was introduced in the context of a well-established national PBF program dating back to the early 2000s. The flexible nature of the EAPHLNP and the favorable context in Rwanda provided an ideal backdrop to introduce PBF incentive payments to accelerate progress of five project supported labs towards accreditation. The evaluation found improved laboratory performance at all project-supported laboratories in Rwanda as measured by the SLIPTA scores. For the first time, laboratories were bringing in PBF revenues, instilling a culture of continuous quality improvements, and focusing management attention on accreditation. PBF appears to have contributed to an accelerated change, with PBF laboratories experiencing an overall greater increase in SLIPTA scores compared to project-supported laboratories in the other countries. No clear patterns were found in terms of improved test volumes or test accuracy, which were not part of the pilot scheme. While it was difficult to disentangle the effects of different interventions, the evaluation found a system-strengthening value to combining investments in modernizing laboratories, and strengthening human resources with PBF. Relationships between laboratory staff and clinicians improved, with laboratory managers having a greater voice in hospital management and lab staff increasingly valued and respected by clinicians. A spirit of teamwork prevailed at participating sites. Other countries considering PBF mechanisms for public health laboratories need to take into account lessons learned and assess the features which may be relevant to their own contexts. PBF schemes for laboratories need to be viewed as an integral part of a package of interventions that contribute to enhanced performance.
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The collection of survey data from war zones or other unstable security situations is vulnerable to error because conflict often limits the implementation options.
... See More + Although there are elevated risks throughout the process, this paper focuses specifically on challenges to frame construction and sample selection. The paper uses simulations based on data from the Mogadishu High Frequency Survey Pilot to examine the implications of the choice of second-stage selection methodology on bias and variance. Among the other findings, the simulations show the bias introduced by a random walk design leads to the underestimation of the poverty headcount by more than 10 percent. The paper also discusses the experience of the authors in the time required and technical complexity of the associated back-office preparation work and weight calculations for each method. Finally, as the simulations assume perfect implementation of the design, the paper also discusses practicality, including the ease of implementation and options for remote verification, and outlines areas for future research and pilot testing.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7617 MAR 29, 2016
Policy makers bemoan the lack of research findings to guide urgent decisions, whereas researchers' professional code puts rigor first. This article argues that provisional assessments, produced early in the research cycle, can bridge the gap.
... See More + Numerous case studies point to the importance of early interaction with policy makers and the delivery of brief, policy-focused papers; but preliminary analyses may be flawed and so increase the chances of a wrong decision. This article demonstrates analytically that a preliminary assessment, supported by the offer of more refined research, provides an option that is superior, on average, to the current practice of submitting a final report at the end of the research cycle. Where practical implementation is concerned, it calls for donor-funded subsidies to promote the use of provisional assessments and for a rapid, independent, professional review process to ensure their quality. While the research-policy exchange in developing countries is a complex, context-specific phenomenon, the proposal offered here holds out some promise of improving decisions in the public sphere under a wide range of circumstances.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7610 MAR 18, 2016
Biases from truncation caused by coresidency restriction have been a challenge for research on intergenerational mobility. Estimates of intergenerational schooling persistence from two data sets show that the intergenerational regression coefficient, the most widely used measure, is severely biased downward in coresident samples.
... See More + But the bias in intergenerational correlation is much smaller, and is less sensitive to the coresidency rate. The paper provides explanations for these results. Comparison of intergenerational mobility based on the intergenerational regression coefficient across countries, gender, and over time can be misleading. Much progress on intergenerational mobility in developing countries can be made with the available data by focusing on intergenerational correlation.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7608 MAR 18, 2016
A recent survey of rigorous impact evaluations of programs to help small and medium-size firms to formalize indicates that the programs do not seem to work for most informal firms.
... See More + One of the few exceptions finds large effects of a tax simplification program in Brazil called SIMPLES on firms' formalization rates and performance indicators. Using the same data set but a different identification strategy, another study concludes that the program had limited effect on formalization rates. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it revisits the two studies to reconcile their conflicting conclusions. Second, it investigates the validity of the identification strategy of both studies. The findings suggest that the conflicting results between the two studies are caused by the dates each used to identify when the program was put into effect. A robustness check indicates that data heaping and seasonality around November cast doubts on the identification strategy used in both studies to estimate the effect of this particular program.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7605 MAR 16, 2016
This paper investigates how land size measurements vary across three common land measurement methods (farmer estimated, Global Positioning System (GPS), and compass and rope), and the effect of land size measurement error on the inverse farm size relationship and input demand functions.
... See More + The analysis utilizes plot-level data from the second wave of the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel, as well as a supplementary land validation survey covering a subsample of General Household Survey Panel plots. Using this data, both GPS and self-reported farmer estimates can be compared with the gold standard compass and rope measurements on the same plots. The findings indicate that GPS measurements are more reliable than farmer estimates, where self-reported measurement bias leads to over-reporting land sizes of small plots and under-reporting of large plots. The error observed across land measurement methods is nonlinear and results in biased estimates of the inverse land size relationship. Input demand functions that rely on self-reported land measures significantly underestimate the effect of land on input utilization, including fertilizer and household labor.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7597 MAR 14, 2016
Using household surveys for 24 countries over a 10-year period, this paper investigates why the elderly are more averse to open immigration policies than their younger peers.
... See More + The analysis finds that the negative correlation between age and pro-immigration attitudes is mostly explained by a cohort or generational change. In fact, once controlling for year of birth, the correlation between age and pro-immigration attitudes is either positive or zero in most of the countries in the sample. Under certain assumptions, the estimates suggest that aging societies will tend to become less averse to open immigration regimes over time.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7554 FEB 02, 2016
This paper looks at how individual preferences for the allocation of government spending change along the life cycle. Using the Life in Transition Survey II for 34 countries in Europe and Central Asia, the study finds that older individuals are less likely to support a rise in government outlays on education and more likely to support increases in spending on pensions.
... See More + These results are very similar across countries, and they do not change when using alternative model specifications, estimation methods, and data sources. Using repeated cross-sections, the analysis controls for cohort effects and confirms the main results. The findings are consistent with a body of literature arguing that conflict across generations over the allocation of public expenditures may intensify in ageing economies.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7555 FEB 02, 2016
de Mello,Luiz; Schotte,Simone Raphaela; Tiongson,Erwin H. R.; Winkler,Hernan JorgeDisclosed
This Discussion Paper presents the approach, findings, and recommendations from a desk review of the qualitative research conducted within Results-Based Financing programmes (RBF) under the Health Results Innovations Trust Fund (HRITF).
... See More + The review included 17 studies conducted in Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The studies reveal a body of high quality work that is consistent with the conceptual framework of RBF schemes, supported by political will, resources, and research capacity. Strengthening the added value of qualitative inquiry in on-going and future qualitative studies may be enabled by small shifts in thinking and practice, in line with a qualitative research paradigm. First, in order to better ground research in an existing country and system specific context, some interrogation of constructs and posited relationships in the existing conceptual framework for intervention/evaluation may be required. Second, to enable more in-depth and richer data that documents working practices and relations under RBF schemes, training of local researchers should place stronger emphasis on entry to the field, gaining trust, building rapport, and sustaining a dialogue with key informants. Third, smaller, more intensive and focused studies targeting fewer sites and smaller samples - but addressing a wider range of methods and informants within the health system - are likely to yield richer data that can support the understanding of how health workers and managers are responding to schemes, and what impact schemes have on service volumes and outputs.
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