The objective of the additional financing for Higher Education Quality Improvement Project (HEQIP) for Yemen is to create the enabling conditions for the enhancement of the quality of university programs and graduate employability.
... See More + The project has four components. (1) Quality improvement for university programs component will be facilitating the establishment of a fully sustainable mechanism that will channel financial resources to higher education institutions in Yemen in order to support program development initiatives leading to significant qualitative improvement in teaching and learning, consonant with the social, economic, and employment priorities of the country. The proposed additional financing will fill the financing gap associated with the procurement of laboratory equipment and tools under this component. (2) Quality Assurance (QA) component supports activities that will institutionalize QA mechanisms and structures in higher education institutions and will foster enabling conditions conducive to the enhancement of the quality of university programs and graduate competencies. (3) Institutional capacity development component will support the planning and monitoring capacity of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and nurture the capacity of Taiz University in terms of its fiduciary management and to enhance accountability. (4) Monitoring and evaluation and project management component will support the project coordination, implementation, management, and monitoring and evaluation.
See Less -
This paper proposes an estimator for the endogenous switching regression models with fixed effects. The estimator allows for endogenous selection and for conditional heteroscedasticity in the outcome equation.
... See More + Applying the estimator to a dataset on the productivity in agriculture substantially changes the conclusions compared to earlier analysis of the same dataset. This paper proposes an estimator for the endogenous switching re-gression models with fixed effects. The estimator allows for endogenous selection and for conditional heteroscedasticity in the outcome equation. Applying the estimator to a dataset on the productivity in agriculture substantially changes the conclusions compared to earlier analysis of the same dataset.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS6658 OCT 01, 2013
This paper introduces a computationally efficient method for estimating structural parameters of dynamic discrete choice models with large choice sets.
... See More + The method is based on Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) regression, which is widely used in the international trade and migration literature to estimate the gravity equation. Unlike most of the existing methods in the literature, it does not require strong parametric assumptions on agents' expectations, thus it can accommodate macroeconomic and policy shocks. The regression requires count data as opposed to choice probabilities; therefore it can handle sparse decision transition matrices caused by small sample sizes. As an example application, the paper estimates sectoral worker mobility in the United States.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS6480 JUN 01, 2013
This report is a comprehensive review of country experience with Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEFs) worldwide. It looks at countries both with and without MTEFs over the period 1990 to 2008 to obtain results about their impact on fiscal performance.
... See More + The report is structured as follows. Chapter two provides background on what constitutes a MTEF and what it aims to achieve. It also describes the Bank's engagement with MTEFs, presents main points of debate over the experience with MTEFs, and provides a rationale for this study. Chapter three describes the key characteristics of MTEFs, explains the approach used to identify and classify them according to their stage of development, and reviews trends in their adoption. Chapter four outlines the methodological approaches used to examine the impact of MTEFs on fiscal performance, formulates the research hypotheses that are tested in the study, and presents empirical findings from the event studies and econometric analysis. It also presents qualitative insights, informed by case studies, on how MTEFs have affected the quality of budgeting. Chapter five draws some lessons about the key institutional determinants of MTEF performance. Chapter six discusses lessons learned from Bank support for MTEF implementation. Finally, chapter seven presents the conclusions of the study and discusses their implications for the Bank. Several appendixes provide supporting material, including a country-by-country tabulation of MTEF status, a full discussion of econometric results, and country case studies.
See Less -
Publication 73514 JAN 01, 2013
Brumby, James; Biletska, Nataliya; Grigoli, Francesco; Hemming, Richard; Kang, Young Kyu; Lee, Jong Wook; Mills, Zachary; Min, Saw Young; Moreno-Dodson, Blanca; Vlaicu, Razvan; Verhoeven, Marinus; Vu, Ha Thanh Thi; Zoratto, Laura De CastroEnglishDisclosed
"The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence," by David Roodman and Jonathan Morduch (2011) is the most recent of a sequence of papers and postings that seeks to refute the findings of the Pitt and Khandker (1998) article "The Impact of Group-Based Credit on Poor Households in Bangladesh: Does the Gender of Participants Matter?"
... See More + that microcredit for women had significant, favorable effects on poverty reduction. In this paper the authors show that these latest Roodman and Morduch claims are based on seriously flawed econometric methods and theory and a lack of due diligence in formulating models and interpreting output from packaged software. On the basis of Roodman and Morduch's preferred two-stage least squares regression, an alternative calculation of the standard errors would lead one to conclude that the problem with Pitt and Khandker is that they underestimate the positive and statistically significant effect of women's credit on household consumption. As in their previous efforts, the methods of Roodman and Morduch are shown to bias the findings in the direction of rejecting the results of Pitt and Khandker. We also further examine two aspects of our instrumental variable approach that have been attacked by Roodman and Morduch. The first is the validity of the exclusion restrictions underlying the use of interactions between program choice and the set of exogenous variables (including the village fixed effects) as instruments. The second is the application of the "one-half acre" program eligibility rule. The authors show that identification does not require both of these, and present new results dropping each assumption in turn. The results originally reported in the Pitt and Khandker paper hold up extremely well in this new analysis.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS6273 NOV 01, 2012
Scientific progress offers tremendous potential benefits to society but also presents risks. While research focuses on how to manifest the benefits of any new technology, the outside community fears the consequences that technology may inadvertently have on social goods such as the environment, public health and security.
... See More + To balance the benefits of the progress of science against the risks associated with its application is one of the major public policy challenges of the 21st century. In this paper, the author argues that the precautionary principle is an extension of the scientific method in the popperian tradition and has precedent in hypothesis testing. Under this framework, we then explore an approach that captures the essence of the weaker precautionary principle but also accounts for the 'unacceptable' outcome through the use of a social standard or threshold of harm. Under this methodology, a social standard is established and accounted for in the cost-benefit analysis. The existence of the social standard creates an additional cost or benefit to the assessment of a project. The report illustrates the methodology with a discussion of two cases: the 'mad cow' disease and the regulation on carbon emission.
See Less -
In recent years, due to the rapid development of mining industry and intensive minerals exploration, exploitation and processing activities in the country, close to 300 million square meters of earth have been damaged including 1721.9 hectares as result of minerals extractions, 14565.0 hectares because of roads and communications infrastructure, and 1206.4 hectares due to construction works respectively, disfiguring massively the pristine natural landscape, reducing the river water levels due to many dried up rivers and streams, and ultimately causing overwhelming damage to the nature and environment.
... See More + The development and enforcement of the 'methodology to carry out technical and biological rehabilitations in areas damaged by mining operations' is a first integrated methodology in our country to carry out the technical and biological rehabilitation of areas damaged during minerals exploitation and processing activities in conjunction with extraction technology and natural regions. Doing so will create opportunities to calculate realistically the technical and biological rehabilitation work cost and scope of areas damaged due to minerals exploitation and processing activities, carry out quality rehabilitation works in accordance with proper methodology and guideline, increase the size of pastureland and hay preparation areas, revive the vegetation cover, and reduce the desertification process. In addition, estimating the rehabilitation work scope, rehabilitation method and technology, required capital will have great importance to prevent the project implementer from possible loss and harm, and provide support to decision-makers of rehabilitation issues.
See Less -
Many highly-disaggregated cross-country indicators of institutional quality and the business environment have been developed in recent years. The promise of these indicators is that they can be used to identify specific reform priorities that policymakers and aid donors can target in their efforts to improve institutional and regulatory quality outcomes.
... See More + Doing so however requires evidence on the partial effects of these many very detailed variables on outcomes of interest, for example, investor perceptions of corruption or the quality of the regulatory environment. In this paper we use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to systematically document the partial correlations between disaggregated indicators and several closely-related outcome variables of interest using two leading datasets: the Global Integrity Index and the Doing Business indicators. We find major instability across outcomes and across levels of disaggregation in the set of indicators identified by BMA as important determinants of outcomes. Disaggregated indicators that are important determinants of one outcome are on average not important determinants of other very similar outcomes. And for a given outcome variable, indicators that are important at one level of disaggregation are on average not important at other levels of disaggregation. These findings illustrate the difficulties in using highly-disaggregated indicators to identify reform priorities.
See Less -
Policy Research Working Paper WPS5254 MAR 01, 2010
The objective of the First Programmatic Fiscal Sustainability Development Policy Loan (DPL) Program for Iraq is to mitigate the impact of the current fiscal crisis on Iraq's economy and to support its medium-term economic reform program, thereby helping the country improve fiscal sustainability and reducing its fiscal and socio-economic vulnerability to sudden drops in oil revenues.
... See More + This DPL will add value to the portfolio of existing Bank operations in Iraq and help achieve the objectives laid out in the Bank's strategy to support Iraq. In particular, it brings together for the first time different elements of Bank assistance under a consolidated, coherent reform package; lays out prior actions and future reforms in areas not directly addressed in previous operations, such as the links between the Iraq's poverty reduction strategy and the State Budget as well as the rationalization of the public distribution system; and helps accelerate policy decisions in a number of reform areas, thereby energizing the reform agenda and providing synergy with the implementation of the investment project portfolio.
See Less -
Pakistan has faced a seismic shift in its global and domestic economic landscape which until recently limited policy options to address investment climate concerns.
... See More + External shocks, internal policy inaction and political turmoil placed the country in a precarious economic condition, calling on the authorities to take a hard look at the policy choices ahead. Macroeconomic instability resulting in inflation, exchange rate depreciation, and a rapid depletion in foreign reserves became acute in 2007-08, with the adjustment accompanied by a reduction in investment, export and output growth. The recent slowdown in global demand for world trade along with supply shocks from the domestic economy has exacerbated an already monumental challenge for Pakistani firms to prosper and policy makers to respond. As external market conditions and Pakistan's own stabilization program temper economic expectations, opportunities abound to lay the foundation for expansion. Given Pakistan's geopolitical positioning, growing labor participation rates, and improvements in the standard of living, significant poverty outcomes can be achieved through sustained economic growth. Even, in the short run, during periods of slower growth, banking system weakness, and corporate distress, Pakistan can take the opportunity to position itself for the inevitable global rebound. Concerted efforts now can improve firm level productivity, fluidity of markets for labor, capital and land, as well as goods, and therefore, better resource use and global competitiveness.
See Less -
Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) 46435 DEC 01, 2009
The objective of the Henan Yellow River Ecological Livestock Demonstration Project for China is to improve the local environment and develop modern and clean animal husbandry industry with the introduction of advanced technology and management Negative measures include: inappropriate drainage could lead to pollution of surface and groundwater; pollution; dust; noise; construction trash, soil and domestic waste; and waste water pump, grounder, and fan.
... See More + Mitigation measures include: 1) they should stay away from water source areas, they should not be located in areas with shallow water table that is drained to surface water bodies (rivers, lakes, wetlands; 2) excavated soil, construction waste, and unused construction materials (sand and concrete) should be covered during transportation. Construction site should be kept clean. Area should be sprayed during dry months to reduce dust; 3) domestic waste water should be treated in septic tank. After treatment, waste water can be discharged or applied to crop land. Use erosion prevention measure such as silt fence or hay bale to minimize water pollution due to sediment loading; 4) use low noise equipments and machinery, high noise construction should be stopped at night or use silencers to reduce noise pollution; 5) except for soil materials used for backfill, all other excavated soil and construction waste should be moved to appropriate dumping sites; and 6) use of low noise equipments should be encouraged, use of submersible wastewater pump should be promoted. Measures should be adopted to reduce noise and vibration.
See Less -
