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4762. Cross Border Trafficking in South Eastern Europe - Assessing Trafficking Activities in the Southern Adriatic Region
- Publication Date:
- 09-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- South Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons
- Abstract:
- This study was commissioned by the South Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SEESAC). The purpose of the Ammunition Detection Study is to determine if there is evidence to support the SEESAC hypothesis that it may be more productive to specifically target the detection of ammunition for Small Arms and Light Weapons rather than the weapons themselves. SEESAC is a developing organisation, with a responsibility to identify information on the precise level of smuggling activity and also advise on measures to reduce cross border trafficking; clearly current search methodologies used to detect weapons and ammunition within the region are an important component of this advice. Following discussions with the SEESAC Team Leader a set of assumptions, to support the Terms of Reference (TOR), were agreed.Initial desktop research examined weapons and ammunition design and manufacture to determine if and why weapons can be more easily concealed than ammunition and what constituent parts are common or exclusive to one particular commodity. Further analysis was conducted to determine if ammunition and weapons are consistently transported together and examples of occurrences are provided. The investigation has involved visits to specialist organisations and national security agencies that have undertaken to provide data on suitable search and detection methodologies. (PDF, 30 pages, 1.02 MB) Â Â
- Topic:
- Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Bosnia, Moldova, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria, Balkans, Romania, Macedonia, Albania, and Croatia
4763. Final Evaluation: The OTI Program In East Timor
- Author:
- Jeffrey Clark, Lia Juliani, and Ann von Briesen Lewis
- Publication Date:
- 02-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United States Agency for International Development
- Abstract:
- The report which follows constitutes the final evaluation of the three year Office of Transition Initiatives operation in East Timor. It stems from an independent examination and analysis of OTI's program in that country, as it emerged from the violence of September 1999 and faced the multiple challenges inherent in constructing a new government and in defining a new nation. The evaluation, conducted in October and November of 2002, was undertaken through a big picture approach meant to capture the entirety of OTI's experience in East Timor. The evaluators concentrated on two fundamental questions: Is there evidence that OTI's interventions had impact? Did the interventions deliver on the stated objectives?
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Government, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Southeast Asia
4764. Living at the Edge: America's Low-Income Children and Families
- Author:
- Hsien-Hen Lu, Younghwan Song, Mary Clare Lennon, and J. Lawrence Aber
- Publication Date:
- 10-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
- Abstract:
- By analyzing data from the Current Population Survey March Supplements, Living at the Edge explores the following questions about children in low-income families in the United States: What are the overall changes in the low-income and poverty rates for children over the past quarter century? How has the population of children in low-income families changed over the past decade? Which children are more likely to live in low-income families? How have changes in parental employment status affected the likelihood of children living in low-income families? What are the state by state variations in child low-income and poverty rates, and how have these changed in the last decade? How does a more inclusive definition of family income and expenses affect our understanding of the poverty and near-poverty rates of children in low-income families? This report helps document significant improvements in the child lowincome rate as well as the significant decrease in the proportion of children who relied on public assistance during the 1990s. However, Living at the Edge also finds a notable increase in the share of children who lived in near-poor families (those with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of the poverty line) among children in low-income families during the 1990s. Many disadvantaged groups of children, including those with young parents, minority parents, parents with limited education, or unmarried parents, were less likely to live in poor or lowincome families in the late 1990s than such children a decade earlier. The improvement in the child low-income rates of these disadvantaged groups was closely related to an increase in parental employment during the late 1990s. However, the low-income rate worsened for children whose more educated parent had a high-school diploma but no college education. For children of many disadvantaged social groups, parental employment appears to do less to protect them from economic hardship then it did a decade earlier. The groups that suffered the most in reduced economic security given parental employment status were those in the medium risk ranks (children in families with at least one parent between ages 25 to 39, children whose more educated parent had only has a high school diploma, and in father-only families). The report also notes that the official measure of poverty ignores the burden of medical and work related expenses as well as taxes and therefore tends to underestimate the share of children in near-poor and low-income families facing economic insecurity. Finally, we discuss the policy implications for our findings.
- Topic:
- Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- United States
4765. Active Patients' in Rural African Health Care: Implications for Welfare, Policy and Privatization
- Author:
- Kenneth L. Leonard
- Publication Date:
- 03-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
- Abstract:
- The 'active patient' is introduced in this paper. She is the same person as the rational peasant that we have known for at least three decades. She is a rational agent seeking health care in an environment characterized by market failures (particularly agency in the supply of medical quality) and imperfect institutional responses to these failures. We show evidence that patients significantly increase their welfare by choosing between various different providers and matching their illnesses to the resources that are available at these different providers. This paper suggests that continuing to view patients as passive participants in the health care market gives way to misleading policy suggestions and may in fact reduce the welfare of patients.
- Topic:
- Economics, Human Welfare, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa
4766. The Plasticity of Participation: Evidence from a Participatory Governance Experiment
- Author:
- Subham Chaudhuri and Patrick Heller
- Publication Date:
- 01-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Under the “People's Campaign for Decentralised Planning,” initiated by the government of the Indian state of Kerala in 1996, significant planning and budgetary functions that had previously been controlled by state-level ministries, were devolved to the lowest tier of government—municipalities in urban areas, and gram panchayats (village councils) in ural areas. A key element of the campaign was the requirement that every gram panchayat organize open village assemblies—called Gram Sabhas—twice a year through which citizens could participate in formulating planning priorities, goals and projects. Using data from the first two years of the campaign, on the levels and composition of participation in the Gram Sabhas in all of Kerala's 990 gram panchayats we empirically assess the explanatory power of the dominant existing paradigms of participation—social capital, rational choice, and social-historical. The basic patterns we document, as well as our more detailed analyses of the impact that a range of spatial, socioeconomic and political factors had on the levels and social depth of participation, provide broad support for a dynamic and contingent view of participation, a perspective that recognizes the “plasticity of participation.”
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Human Welfare, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Asia
4767. The Response of Hours to a Technology Shock: Evidence Based on Direct Measures of Technology
- Author:
- Robert J. Vigfusson, Lawrence J. Christiano, and Martin Eichenbaum
- Publication Date:
- 12-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- We investigate what happens to hours worked after a positive shock to technology, using the aggregate technology series computed in Basu, Fernald and Kimball (1999). We conclude that hours worked rise after such a shock.
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States
4768. China and Emerging Asia: Comrades or Competitors?
- Author:
- John W. Schindler, John G. Fernald, Prakash Loungani, and Alan J. Ahearne
- Publication Date:
- 12-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- Do increases in China's exports reduce exports of other emerging Asian economies? We find that correlations between Chinese export growth and that of other emerging Asian economies are actually positive (though usually not significant), even after controlling for trading-partner income growth and real effective exchange rates. We also present results from a VAR estimation of aggregate trade equations on the relative importance of foreign income and exchange rates in determining Asian export growth. Although exchange rates do matter for export performance, the income growth of trading partners matters even more. In addition, we examine specific products and find evidence that a considerable shifting of trade patterns is taking place, consistent with a 'flying geese' pattern in which China and ASEAN-4 move into the product space vacated by the NIEs. Our results suggest that China and emerging Asia are both comrades (overall) and competitors (in specific products).
- Topic:
- Economics and Emerging Markets
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
4769. How Does the Border Affect Productivity? Evidence from American and Canadian Manufacturing Industries
- Author:
- Robert J. Vigfusson
- Publication Date:
- 12-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- This paper studies how much of productivity fluctuations are industry specific versus how much are country specific. Using data on manufacturing industries in Canada and the United States, the paper shows that the correlation between cross-border pairings of the same industry are more often highly correlated than previously thought. In addition, the paper confirms earlier findings that the similarity of input use can help describe the co-movement of productivity fluctuations across industries.
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States, Canada, and North America
4770. Breaks in the Variability and Co-Movement of G-7 Economic Growth
- Author:
- Jon Faust and Brian M. Doyle
- Publication Date:
- 12-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
- Abstract:
- This paper investigates breaks in the variability and co-movement of output, consumption, and investment in the G-7 economies. In contrast with most other papers on co-movement, we test for changes in co-movement allowing for breaks in mean and variance. Despite claims that rising integration among these economies has increased output correlations among them, we find no clear evidence of an increase in correlation of growth rates of output, consumption, or investment. This finding is true even for the United States and Canada, which have seen a tremendous increase in bilateral trade shares, and for the members of the euro area in the G-7.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, Canada, and North America