Abstract

Six projects from six countries were selected as the cases for detailed analysis in this study. They are from Argentina, Botswana, India, Kenya, Lao PDR and Paraguay, representing a wide range of geographical distribution. Also, the extent of the effect of economic downturn which these countries experienced ranges a wide variety. In an economic downturn, uncertainties increase with many inputs of road projects Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), including fuel prices, levels of demand, investment costs and maintenance availability. Also, important parameters of project evaluation such as discount rate and value of time need to be more carefully scrutinized. Therefore, it is very important for the developing countries to have good understanding about the effects of the variability of these inputs/parameters on project viability and the ranking of road investments. It is a role of the developing agencies to conduct a systematic analysis of these effects and disseminate the findings and knowledge obtained. The objective of the study is to obtain insights regarding the effects of varying inputs and parameters on the viability of road projects through case studies using Highway Development and Management Model (HDM-4), thereby to facilitate the formulation and implementation of road projects that increase the welfare of the society under the environment of increased uncertainty in an economic downturn. The results of the study will be summarized in a transport note as a discrete knowledge product and disseminated among various stakeholders including developing agencies staff, government officials and donor communities. To assess the effects of increased uncertainty with inputs of cost benefit analysis on the economic viability of road projects, this study first investigated the range of variability of the inputs for the six selected projects/countries. It was found that the variability ranges differ by country reflecting the degree of decrease in transport demand and relative change in factor prices due to economic downturn. Document type: Book

Abstract

This study uses Twitter data to provide a more nuanced understanding of the public reaction to the 2011 reform to the propane gas subsidy in El Salvador. By soliciting a small sample of manually tagged tweets, the study identifies the subject matter and sentiment of all tweets during six one-month periods over three years that concern the subsidy reform. The paper shows that such an analysis using Twitter data can provide a useful complement to existing household survey data and even potentially replace survey data if none were available. The finding show that when people tweet about the subsidy, they almost always do so in a negative manner; and there is a decline in discussion of topics about the reform subsidy, which coincides with increase in support for the subsidy as reported elsewhere. Therefore, the study concludes that decreasing discussion of the subsidy reform indicates an increase in support for the reform. In addition, the gas distributor strikes of May 2011 may have contributed to public perception of the reform more than previously acknowledged. This study is used as an opportunity to provide methodological guidance for researchers who wish to undertake similar studies, documenting the steps in the analysis pipeline with detail and noting the challenges inherent in obtaining data, classification, and inference. Document type: Book