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52. An Analysis of Firm Characteristics as Earnings Determinants: The Urban Bolivia Case
- Author:
- Beatriz Muriel Hernández
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
- Abstract:
- This article analyzes the importance of firm characteristics to explain earnings in urban Bolivia. Initially I propose a new simple theoretical model of segmented labor market where, in equilibrium, individual and firm variables jointly determine earnings at the worker level. The key for achieving this equilibrium is that workers have both specific preferences and heterogonous skills provided by years of schooling, which are in turn associated to certain firms. Given the household surveys information, I estimate two alternative earnings functions from this model, one for unsalaried workers, for which there is detailed firm data and one for salaried workers, in which sector, size and formality are used as firm proxies. I find not only that firm characteristics are fundamental determinants of earnings but that regressions that include only individual characteristics present highly overestimated coefficients.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Labor Issues, Urban, Microeconomics, and Private Sector
- Political Geography:
- Latin America and Bolivia
53. Building Capacity for Domestic Resource Mobilization: Role of the Private Sector
- Publication Date:
- 12-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF)
- Abstract:
- Success in implementing Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals depends largely on the availability and adequacy of resources. Africa realizes that industrialization is the way to go, as outlined in the two continental development plans, but it is inevitable that resources to fund these programs must be mobilized domestically. Domestic resource mobilization (DRM)1 was recognized as one of the six leading sources of finance for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but many African countries did not fully achieve the MDGs due to overreliance on donor funding. One part of DRM is generating taxes and savings, which implies that governments and the private sector have key roles in this process. Specifically, the private sector should mobilize private savings, expand its productive investments, conduct responsible business by not engaging in tax avoidance and illicit financial flows, and ensuring corporate social responsibility. The 2015 Africa Capacity Report (ACR 2015) identifies the private sector as very important in partnering and cooperating with governments and other key stakeholders to maximize tax revenues and promote savings and investment. This policy brief puts forward possible interventions for the private sector to enhance domestic resource mobilization in Africa
- Topic:
- Development, Natural Resources, Capacity, Private Sector, and Human Resources
- Political Geography:
- Africa
54. Creating Value Through the Chain: SABMiller & the Tenderos
- Author:
- Shashank Aeri and Trevor N. May
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University
- Abstract:
- Launched in 2013, the “4e Camino al Progreso” program is an Inter-American Development Bank/Multilateral Investment Fund-sponsored social investment project led by SABMiller and implemented by the executing agency FUNDES in six Latin American countries. Capitalizing on the opportunities inherent in the brewer’s value chain, the initiative provides business and leadership consulting to small retailers, known as tenderos, in impoverished neighbourhoods. The project aims to improve the profitability and sustainability of the stores, or tiendas, allowing their proprietors to achieve a better quality of life and contribute more time and resources to improving their communities. Empowering these retailers to become better business operators ultimately strengthens SABMiller and other companies’ distribution network, creating benefits for the local and regional economy. The case presents a promising model for similar corporate-social partnerships and contains innovative examples of how the private sector can contribute to substantive development initiatives. Given the partnership’s variegated players and contacts, the case highlights stakeholder relations strategies and challenges. The project’s design also demonstrates scalability and sustainability potential, although the ultimate success of these ambitions will depend on strategic decision-making and managing SABMiller’s evolution as it merges with Anheuser Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer. 1 While its ultimate results remain to be seen, this project raises three main lessons given its progress to date: first, sometimes even the most obvious solutions, such as using technology, do not come with an equally straightforward technique for adoption and implementation; second, reconceptualising the bottom of the pyramid as an engine of growth in the value chain, rather than simply a group of undervalued consumers; and third, understanding how productivity and efficiency contribute to sustainability, which may be undermined if this relationship is not recognized.
- Topic:
- Development, Business, Investment, and Private Sector
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
55. Economics and the Near-Death Experience of Democratic Governance
- Author:
- June Sekera
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- Non-market public production makes up a quarter to a half or more of all economic activity in advanced democratic nation-states. Yet here in the United States the public economy’s ability to function productively on behalf of the citizenry is seriously imperiled. In this paper I trace the connection between mainstream, market-centric economics and what James Galbraith has called “the collapse of the public governing capacity.” Marketization and its confederate, privatization, have led, sometimes intentionally, to the evisceration of governmental capacity, the downsizing of democracy and the dismantling of traditions of responsible public administration that are grounded in law and the Constitution. Over the last decades, apostles of the market have intruded upon government a pseudo-market with outcomes ranging from the unfortunate to the disastrous. So-called “New Public Management” –“a child of neoclassical economics,” – has colonized and weakened every level of public administration. Hollowed out through the cathartic of a “competition prescription,” the public sector time and again seems to fail us, so systems of performance measurement transplanted from profit-driven business models are being imposed across government, ostensibly to improve results and better supply what the populace wants and needs, but instead often leaving harm in their wake. We find our most basic public services and rights in jeopardy: from clean air and water to unencumbered judicial due process. While government “reinventors” boast about shrinking government, in reality a “submerged state” mushrooms through an explosion of private profit- making contractors and behind the hidden hand of tax expenditures. Yet, as I argue in this paper, there is no viable explanatory theory of the public non-market economy or of production within it, nor any consensus about how to measure public purpose or assess results in the public domain. Instead, a market-centric economics prevails in textbooks, university teaching and public policy, while private, market-mimicking motivations and values displace public purpose in measurement schemes.
- Topic:
- Governance, Democracy, Public Sector, Private Sector, and Non-Market Economy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
56. Financing Water in Africa
- Author:
- Kate Bayliss
- Publication Date:
- 08-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- Despite repeated policy initiatives from donors and governments, the human and economic cost of continued lack of access to safe water and sanitation in sub‐Saharan Africa remains high. This paper shows that a radical reorientation of policy is needed to achieve a significant increase in investment finance in order to raise access levels. Rather than continuing to pursue policies that have failed for the past two decades, such as bringing in the private sector and raising prices to cost recovery levels, attention needs to shift to wider aspects of domestic revenue mobilization to support public investment.
- Topic:
- Privatization, Water, Inequality, Investment, and Private Sector
- Political Geography:
- Africa
57. Factors Underlying Communal Beef Cattle Marketing Decisions in Botswana: The Role of Public and Private Transfers
- Author:
- Tebogo Seleka and David Mmopelwa
- Publication Date:
- 08-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis
- Abstract:
- This article examines factors underlying communal beef cattle marketing at a household level in Botswana, with emphasis placed on the role of public and private transfers. Results show that public and private transfers (pensions, remittances, government food rations, and food supplies from friends and relatives) discourage cattle marketing. Thus, while they are important sources of household food security, cash and food transfers may adversely impact on beef export performance in Botswana. It is therefore fundamental that public transfer programmes are well targeted to needy and poor households, in order to minimize their adverse effects on the cattle industry. On the positive side, the paper argues that public transfer programmes may assist poor farmers rebuild their cattle and other livestock inventory, contributing to transition out of inter-generational poverty.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Public Policy, Economic Development, Private Sector, and Cattle
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Botswana
58. An Exploration of Factors Shaping Technology-Upgrading Efforts in Mozambican Manufacturing Firms
- Author:
- Alex Warren-Rodriguez
- Publication Date:
- 05-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
- Abstract:
- This paper presents an analysis of factors shaping technology-upgrading efforts in the Mozambican manufacturing sector. It uses firm-level data to examine these issues for the metalworking and light chemicals sectors, using Logit regression analysis to identify factors associated with firms’ decisions to engage in technology-upgrading efforts in three areas: (i) product development; (ii) production technology development aimed at upgrading existing equipment or purchasing entirely new manufacturing technologies; (iii) and process engineering. In line with much of the literature on industrial organization and the microeconomics of technology change, this paper finds that existing production and technological conditions in manufacturing firms do play an important role in shaping their technological efforts. However, this association is not always linear, cumulative or uniform across the various relevant spheres of manufacturing, underscoring the multifaceted nature of technology change at this level. Moreover, factors identified in the literature as being instrumental in shaping technology development efforts, such as skills or foreign ownership, play no role in dynamics of this kind in Mozambique. At the same time, other factors that have received less attention, such as the ability of firms to engage in technology cooperation arrangements or the role played by demand and market conditions appear as important factors shaping these technology-upgrading efforts. Altogether, these findings serve to underscore the importance of defining policy interventions for private sector development that go beyond investment climate concerns and take into account issues such as the promotion of linkages, technology cooperation and demand/market management considerations.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Demand, Manufacturing, and Private Sector
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Mozambique, and Sub-Saharan Africa
59. Public-Private Partnerships for Development: A Handbook for Business
- Author:
- Suezan C. Lee
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- The Conference Board
- Abstract:
- CED partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on this handbook, published in 2006, which is designed to help businesses operating in developing countries understand how to build public-private partnerships that will benefit their host country populations and the participating firms.
- Topic:
- International Trade and Finance, Partnerships, Business, Public Sector, Economic Development, and Private Sector
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America