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132. Assessing the Impact of Development Cooperation in Northeast Afghanistan: Approaches and Methods
- Author:
- Jan Koehler, Christoph Zürcher, and Jan Böhnke
- Publication Date:
- 02-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700
- Abstract:
- This report is a documentation of the methodological approach for an impact assessment of development intervention in conflict zones. We designed this approach for one specific region, Northeast Afghanistan, but we believe that it can easily be adapted to other regions and other contexts. This report is one result of an eight-year cooperative research project conducted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), evaluation division, and Freie Universität Berlin’s Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 700. The overall objectives of this project are, first, to develop a method for assessing the impact of development cooperation in conflict zones, and second, to apply this method in Northeast Afghanistan. The experiences from the first round of the emerging longitudinal impact assessment were taken into consideration in the present report. The basic question that we seek to address is whether development cooperation positively affects the stabilization of a conflict zone through a positive impact on general attitudes toward foreign intervention, on the legitimacy of the Afghan state, and on perceived security threats.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, International Cooperation, and Intervention
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan and South Asia
133. The Skills They Want: Aspirations of Students in Emerging India
- Author:
- Devesh Kapur, Megha Aggarwal, and Namrata Tognatta
- Publication Date:
- 12-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for the Advanced Study of India
- Abstract:
- This report investigates student awareness, interests and aspirations around general and vocational education. Using a survey administered to class 12 students in one district each in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, and Karnataka, we attempt to gain a better understanding of student aspirations, awareness levels, sources of information, key stakeholders and factors that influence their education and career choices. We then map student interests against sectors that are slated to experience the highest growth in terms of job creation. Our results indicate aspirations of students are largely misaligned with the needs of the Indian economy. It is important to create opportunities, generate awareness about various career options and the respective pathways available to realise career goals. Our findings have implications for policies aiming to improve participation in vocational education and training.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Education, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
134. Pakistan: No End to Humanitarian Crises
- Publication Date:
- 10-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- With three years of devastating floods putting the lives and livelihoods of at least four million citizens at risk, and military operations against militants displacing thousands more in the conflict zones of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Pakistan's humanitarian crises need urgent do-mestic and international attention. Since the democratic transition began in 2008, some progress has been made, but much more is needed to build the federal and provin-cial governments' disaster and early recovery response. Efforts to enhance civilian ownership and control have also had mixed results, particularly in the conflict zones, where the military remains the dominant actor. To effectively confront the challenges, the most urgent tasks remain to strengthen the civilian government's capacity to plan for and cope with humanitarian crises and to prioritise social sector and public infrastructure development. It is equally important that all assistance and support be non-discrimi-natory and accompanied by credible mechanisms for citi-zens to hold public officials accountable.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, Disaster Relief, and Humanitarian Aid
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan and South Asia
135. Building a Biometric National ID: Lessons for Developing Countries from India's Universal ID Program
- Author:
- Alan Gelb and Julia Clark
- Publication Date:
- 10-2012
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development (CGD)
- Abstract:
- India's Universal ID program seeks to provide a unique identity to all 1.2 billion residents. With the challenge of covering a very large population, India is is a unique testing ground for biometric identification technology. Its successes and potential failures will have far-reaching implications for other developing countries looking to create national identity systems. Already, the Indian case offers some important lessons: Using multiple biometrics helps maximize accuracy, inclusion, and security Supporting public-and private-sector applications creates incentives for use Competitive, standards-based procurement lowers costs Cardless design increases security and cuts costs but can be problematic if mobile networks are incomplete Establishing clear jurisdiction is essential Open technology is good, but proprietary systems and foreign providers may still be necessary.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, Emerging Markets, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
136. Stabilizing Pakistan through Police Reform
- Author:
- Hassan Abbas
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Asia Society
- Abstract:
- This report seeks to provide a much-needed framework for police and law enforcement reform in Pakistan in the hope that the country's policy makers and political actors will incorporate police reform into the national agenda. It is encouraging to note that some political parties in Pakistan are now emphasizing the need for police reform in their political manifest.
- Topic:
- Security, Crime, Development, Counterinsurgency, and Law Enforcement
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan and South Asia
137. Dynamics of Inflation "Herding": Decoding India's Inflationary Process
- Author:
- Urjit R. Patel and Gangadhar Darbha
- Publication Date:
- 01-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Brookings Institution
- Abstract:
- Compared to immediately preceding years, that is, its own recent history, India's inflation became unhinged (thereby reversing creditable performance) from as far back as 2006. The paper puts forward an empirical framework to analyze the time series and cross-sectional dynamics of inflation in India using a large panel of disaggregated sector prices for the time period, 1994/95 to 2010/11. This allows us to rigorously explore issues that have been, at best, loosely posed in policy debates such as diffusion or comovement of inflation across sectors, role of common and idiosyncratic factors in explaining variation, persistence, importance of food and energy price changes to the overall inflation process, and contrast the recent experience with the past. We find, interalia, that the current period of high inflation is more cross-sectionally diffused, and driven by increasingly persistent common factors in non-food and non-energy sectors compared to that in the 1990s; this is likely to make it more difficult for anti-inflationary policy to gain traction this time round compared to the past. The paper has also introduced a novel measure of inflation, viz., Pure Inflation Gauges (PIGs) in the Indian context by decomposing price movements into those on account of: (1) aggregate shocks that have equiproportional effects on all sector prices; (2) aggregated relative price effects; and (3) sector-specific and idiosyncratic shocks. If PIGs, in conjunction with our other findings, for example, on persistence had been used as a measure of underlying (pure) inflationary pressures, the monetary authorities may not have been sanguine regarding the timeliness of initiating anti-inflationary policies.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Monetary Policy
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
138. Remittances and Rashomon
- Author:
- Devesh Kapur and Randall Akee
- Publication Date:
- 01-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development (CGD)
- Abstract:
- Utilizing a novel data set on remittance data for India that matches household surveys to administrative bank data, we investigate the differences in self-reported and actual deposits to Non-Resident Indian (NRI) accounts. There is a striking difference between the perceived and actual frequency, as well as the amount of deposits, to NRI accounts. Our results indicate the presence of non-classical measurement error in the reporting of remittances in the form of deposits to NRI accounts. As a consequence, regression analyses using remittances as an explanatory variable may contain large upward biases instead of the usual attenuation of results under classical measurement error. Instrumental variables estimates are no better; the estimated coefficients from these regressions are more than three times the size of the OLS regression results. The results point to the need to more carefully check the accuracy of the international remittance flows. The wide discrepancies in the Indian case could be both because of inaccuracies in the household survey as well as mis-classification of the Balance of Payment data with some fraction of reported remittances being disguised capital flows (and hence likely to be less stable) rather than current account flows for family maintenance.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- South Asia
139. The Negative Consequences of Overambitious Curricula in Developing Countries
- Author:
- Lant Pritchett and Amanda Beatty
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development (CGD)
- Abstract:
- Learning profiles that track changes in student skills per year of schooling often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. We argue shallow learning profiles are in part the result of curricular paces moving much faster than the pace of learning. To demonstrate the consequences of a gap between the curriculum and student mastery, we construct a simple, formal model, which portrays learning as the result of a match between student skill and instructional levels, rather than the standard (if implicit) assumption that all children learn the same from the same instruction. A simulation shows that two countries with exactly the same potential learning could have massively divergent learning outcomes, just because of a gap between curricular and actual pace—and the country which goes faster has much lower cumulative learning. We also show that our simple simulation model of curricular gaps can replicate existing experimental findings, many of which are otherwise puzzling. Paradoxically, learning could go faster if curricula and teachers were to slow down.
- Topic:
- Development, Education, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa and South Asia
140. Nonalignment Redux: The Perils of Old Wine in New Skins
- Author:
- Ashley J. Tellis
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Since the Cold War ended, India has been persistently criticized for lacking a grand strategy. Like many other complaints about India, this one, too, is curious because the country has been nothing if not the exemplar of excessive planning for much of its modern history. In fact, ever since India was incarnated as an independent state in 1947, it has always had a clear and arguably defensible grand strategy—even if it lacked a summary document that articulated its national aims.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Cold War, Development, and Post Colonialism
- Political Geography:
- South Asia