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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Michael Woolcock |
| Abstract: | Understanding the efficacy of development projects requires not only a plausible counterfactual, but an appropriate match between the shape of impact trajectory over time and the deployment of a corresponding array of research tools capable of empirically discerning such a trajectory. At present, however, the development community knows very little, other than by implicit assumption, about the expected shape of the impact trajectory from any given sector or project type, and as such is prone to routinely making attribution errors. Randomisation per se does not solve this problem. The sources and manifestations of these problems are considered, along with some constructive suggestions for responding to them. |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:7309&r=ppm |
| By: | Manuela Gussoni - Andrea Mangani |
| Abstract: | This paper provides a theoretical and empirical framework to explore how public funding affects firms' R&D investments depending on their engagement in horizontal R&D cooperations and different levels of ap- propriability conditions within the economy. It assumes firms' Cournot-Nash behavior in the choice of the optimal R&D investment level and provides empirical evidence in support of the theoretical ¯ndings using data on Spain and Germany from the Third Community Innovation Survey. Theoretical and empirical re- sults suggest that firms' cooperative behaviour and the appropriability conditions affect the relationship between public funding for innova- tion and R&D investments. |
| Keywords: | R&D cooperatives; subsidies;knowledge spillovers; innovation. |
| JEL: | O32 H20 L10 D43 D78 |
| Date: | 2009–10–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pie:dsedps:2009/90&r=ppm |
| By: | Owen Barder |
| Abstract: | The political economy of aid agencies is driven by incomplete information and multiple competing objectives and confounded by principal-agent and collective-action problems. Policies to improve aid rely too much on a planning paradigm that tries to ignore, rather than change, the political economy of aid. A considered combination of market mechanisms, networked collaboration, and collective regulation would be more likely to lead to significant improvements. A “collaborative market” for aid might include unbundling funding from aid management to create more explicit markets; better information gathered from the intended beneficiaries of aid; decentralized decision-making; a sharp increase in transparency and accountability of donor agencies; the publication of more information about results; pricing externalities; and new regulatory arrangements to make markets work. The aid system is in a political equilibrium, determined by deep characteristics of the aid relationship and the political economy of aid institutions. Reformers should seek to change that equilibrium rather than try to move away from it. The priority should be on reforms that put pressure on the aid system to evolve in the right direction rather than on grand designs. |
| Keywords: | aid; aid reform; aid agencies; political economy; market mechanism; networks |
| Date: | 2009–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:wpaper:185&r=ppm |
| By: | Sarah Bracking; Lloyd Sachikonye |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the political economy of development finance in Zimbabwe from the late 1980s to the present day, to see where the current sovereign debt arose from. It disaggregates initial private sector development interventions by type, provider, sector and at the firm level, to see how development finance was extended and spent during the structural adjustment era and after. It notes a number of design flaws and problems in development-financed projects and programmes over the period which undermined their later profitability as productive assets and contributed to debt build-up. The paper also notes the effects of poor domestic governance on the productivity of ventures supported. However, the macroeconomic policies within the structural adjustment programme were also a central trigger to the future unsustainability of debt. Also, in the post-2000 period, the deterioration of the debt position has been exacerbated by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, by means of its extensive foreign exchange denominated loans to parastatal corporations, and by its quasi-fiscal activities. Zimbabwe’s public sovereign debt can be reduced, and future private sector development policy enhanced, if recourse to expensive and unproductive fiscal interventions, either by international financial institutions or by the Reserve Bank, are avoided. |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:8409&r=ppm |
| By: | Jason Junge; David Levinson (Nexus (Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems) Research Group, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota) |
| Abstract: | A significant portion of local transportation funding comes from the property tax. The tax is conventionally assessed on both land and buildings, but transportation increases only the value of the land. A more direct, efficient way to fund transportation projects is to tax land at a higher rate than buildings. The lower tax on buildings would allow owners to retain more of the profits of their investment in construction, and have the expected side effect of increased development intensity. A partial equilibrium simulation is created for three sample cities to determine the magnitude of the intensity increase for both residential and nonresidential development if various levels of split rate property taxes were enacted. |
| Keywords: | tax, land value, locational analysis, transportation finance |
| JEL: | R51 R52 R48 H23 H27 H71 R14 R21 R33 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nex:wpaper:landvaluetax&r=ppm |