Abstract

Women comprise 50 percent of the agricultural labor force in Sub-Saharan Africa, but manage plots that are reportedly on average 20 to 30 percent less productive. As a source of income inequality and aggregate productivity loss, the country-specific magnitude and drivers of this gender gap are of great interest. Using national data from the Uganda National Panel Survey for 2009/10 and 2010/11, the gap before controlling for endowments was estimated to be 17.5 percent. Panel data methods were combined with an Oaxaca decomposition to investigate the gender differences in resource endowment and return to endowment driving this gap. Although men have greater access to inputs, input use is so low and inverse returns to plot size so strong in Uganda that smaller female-managed plots have a net endowment advantage of 12 percent, revealing a larger unexplained gap of 29.5 percent. Two-fifths of this unexplained gap is attributed to differential returns to the child dependency ratio and one-fifth to differential returns to transport access, implying that greater child care responsibilities and difficulty accessing input and output markets from areas without transport are the largest drivers of the gap. Smaller and less robust drivers include differential uptake of cash crops, and differential uptake and return to improved seeds and pesticides. Document type: Book

Abstract

Many empirical studies have demonstrated the close relationship between a country’s economic development and its stock of infrastructure. Decades of deferred maintenance and lack of long-term financing have taken a heavy toll on Zimbabwe’s infrastructure that at one time was ranked at the top in Africa. Only the information and communications technologies (ICT) sector has been performing relatively well but its high tariffs add to the cost of doing business in Zimbabwe. The strategy in the infrastructure sectors is to encourage public private partnerships (PPPs) for the financing and execution of the different sub-projects. This strategy has been emerging in the electric power, road transport, and ICT sectors and is now being extended to water supply and sanitation. This review builds on the findings from an October-November 2013 mission that, upon the request of the Ministry of Finance, assessed the ministerial submissions for the 2014 public sector investment program (PSIP). The review concludes that the perception of the predictable policies is key for attracting responsible private partners for sustainable PPPs. The review recommends less risky options such as: (i) outsourcing operations of existing plants; (ii) lease contracts of existing plants; and (iii) sales of existing thermal plants. The review notes that the analytical multi donor trust fund (AMDTF) is programmed to close on June 30, 2014. It is of the essence to explore the possibilities to locate concessionary funding for a successor to the AMDTF given the high priority of additional studies in the power, water, and ICT sectors to prepare for the reforms suggested.

Abstract

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is the root of Health Economics and is based on the welfare theory. CBA is the broadest economic evaluation (EE) method that assesses all benefits and costs in monetary units; the production of welfare is expressed in terms of net benefit (the difference between benefits and costs). The main goal in the welfarist approach is to maximize welfare according to individuals’ preferences. The application of CBA principles faces multiple obstacles, mainly because valuing health in terms of monetary units is challenging and raises ethical and methodological constraints. In the health sector, CBA has received relevant criticism, leading to the emergence and adoption of other methods of EE, such as cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and cost-utility analysis (CUA). However, attempts to apply welfarist principles to CEA were far of being accepted, and consensus among health economists in this regard still does not exist. The extra-welfarist approach encompassing CEA and CUA has progressed toward maximizing health outcomes and focusing on equity and fairness issues. The most common technique used in CBA to elicit preferences is the contingent valuation (willingness to pay). Despite the challenging task of valuing mental health outcomes, some studies demonstrate the feasibility of this technique in people with mental disorders, though some level of inconsistency and inaccuracy in respondents’ answers was reported. Despite methodological limitations among all EE methods applied to health, there is a growing interest in CBA and, more specifically, in discrete choice experiment, especially for health services and public health policies, and in exploring patients’ treatment preferences. The Mental Health field adds challenges to CBA regarding the complexity of defining and measuring outcomes representing mental health maximization. Document type: Book

Abstract

Contemporary project management rises to the level of various associative groups, going beyond project management (PM) in a specific, defined activity. Processes not directly related to one activity are becoming more important. Planning a process group by cash-flow methods or S-curve defines the given process