What impact do natural disasters have on human mobility and migration? How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services? How do diaspora and ethnicity add value to the study of international relations? These are just a few of the questions tackled by our researchers over the summer — in nine working papers, two journal articles, one report, among many others. Click here for the full list.
Working papers
‘Natural disasters and human mobility’ reviews the effect of natural disasters on human mobility or migration. Although there is an increase of natural disasters and migration recently and more patterns to observe, the relationship remains complex. While some authors find that disasters increase migration, others show that they have only a marginal or no effect or are even negative. The paper provides a discussion of policy implications and potential future research avenues. By Prof. Klaus F. Zimmermann et al.
‘Gini coefficients of education for 146 countries’ seeks to provide five-yearly data of Gini coefficients of education for 146 countries for the years 1950-2010. The main purpose of this paper is to make the Gini data for 1950-2010 publicly available because this format has the greatest overlap with that of widely used World Development Indicators starting in 1960. By Dr. Thomas Ziesemer.
‘Entrepreneurial heterogeneity and the design of entrepreneurship policies for economic growth and inclusive development’ examines the critical factors and entrepreneurial characteristics that can lead to entrepreneurial success and contribute to growth. This discussion serves as a framework against which the authors reflect on the rationales and effectiveness of entrepreneurial policies in developing countries.This paper acknowledges that there is a large heterogeneity across entrepreneurs in their ability to contribute to economic growth and presents insights from macro-economic studies supporting this statement. By PhD fellow Eliza Calza and Dr. Micheline Goedhuys.
‘Diaspora economics: New perspectives’ introduces the new field of diaspora economics as a new strand to political economy. The paper presents a new approach combining ethnicity, migration and international relations into a new thinking. It also provides a typology of diaspora and a thorough evaluation of its role and the roles of the home and host countries. Overall, the paper offers a new understanding of global human relations. By Prof. Klaus F. Zimmermann et al.
‘The chips are down: The influence of family on children’s trust formation’ introduces a new approach to understanding the formation of trust at the individual level, which has been recognised for its impact on economic development. Theoretical work highlights the role of the transmission of values such as trust from parents to their children. In the sample studied in this paper, approximately one fourth of the variability of children’s trust is inherited from their parents while two thirds are attributable to the residual sibling correlation. By Dr. Corrado Giulietti, Prof. Enrico Rettore et al.
‘How do collaboration and investments in knowledge management affect process innovation in services?’ analyses how collaboration with existing and prospective users, and investments in knowledge management (KM) practices can be adapted to maximise the outputs of radical and incremental process innovation in a Knowledge Intensive Business Service (KIBS) industry. The paper finds that collaboration with different types of users, and investments in KM practices affect radical versus incremental process innovation differently. Higher involvement with prospective users requires higher investment in KM practices to promote efficient intra- and inter-firm knowledge flows. By Prof. Rajneesh Narula et al.
‘The impact of household labour-saving technologies along the family life cycle’ confirms the hypothesis that technology is more useful for relaxing time constraint in households with children. According to this paper, the effect is stronger the more labour-saving the technology is. In households with young children (0 to 6 years old), however, labour-saving technologies show no significant effect. Parents in that stage of the family life cycle are in such extreme time constraint that the relatively small amount of time saved with technology is not sufficient to significantly release their burden. By PhD fellow Raquel Tsukada et al.
‘The impact of piped water supply on household welfare’ measures losses of well-being associated with resorting to small-scale private providers instead of piped water from the utility company. The authors measure welfare along three dimensions: health, wealth (income), and time available for education, work, or leisure. An empirical application to Burkina Faso reveals that households’ greatest welfare losses are in terms of time availability, often borne by women. In terms of health and affordability of water, paradoxically, the paper shows that households using alternative sources of water are slightly better off. By PhD fellow Raquel Tsukada et al.
‘The impact of rainwater harvesting on household labour supply’ explores the effects of rainwater harvesting (RWH) on aggregate household labour supply in areas prone to droughts. Using a Brazilian survey on rainwater harvesting, the paper finds that having a RWH infrastructure at the homestead increases household well-being through three channels: a direct time allocation effect, a direct input effect and an indirect consumption effect. By PhD fellow Raquel Tsukada et al.
Journal articles
‘To RAS or not to RAS – What is the difference in outcomes in multi-regional input-output models’ aims to identify the difference between the current solution offered by the global resource accounting model (GRAM) and the solution of a RASed version of GRAM and thereby contributes to the assessment of currently used methodologies in this research field. The short conclusion of this article is that, even though some differences during the calculations are present, the calculated output (production) matrix does not differ substantially. The results show that larger differences are brought about by poor assumptions regarding missing or conflicting data rather than by applying or not applying a RAS procedure to the constructed global matrices. By Dr. Kirsten Wiebe et al.
‘Elements of public procurement reform and their effect on the public sector in Latin America and the Caribbean’ is based on the PhD dissertation of PhD fellow Ana Cristina Calderon Ramirez and won Best Paper Award at the International Public Procurement Conference 7 (IPPC7). The paper calculated the effects on the development of public procurement systems. The results indicated that, of the three main areas of procurement reform evaluated, the creation of a procurement agency had the largest impact. At the same time, evidence was found that backed the hypothesis that creating these agencies had a positive effect on the perception of public sector performance. By PhD fellow Ana Cristina Calderon Ramirez et al.
Report
‘Assessment and Recommendations to Improve the Resilience of the Social Protection System for a Timely and Flexible Response to the Needs of All Vulnerable Children and Families Facing Shocks, Disasters, and Crises in Moldova’ is a report commissioned by UNICEF Moldova. It is part of a project designed to assess how the current social protection system in Moldova, namely social assistance programmes such as ajutorul social and the Republican Fund and Local Funds for Social Aid of the Population can be improved to increase the resilience of households facing idiosyncratic shocks. By Prof. Franziska Gassmann, Dr. Victor Cebotari, Dr. Michaella Vanore and researcher Hanna Röth.
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