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Hunger and malnutrition are the plight of millions of people,
especially in developing countries. This study argues that the lack
of a comprehensive measure for nutrition and food security has
impeded progress towards eradicating hunger and undernutrition. The
author seeks to fill this gap by designing an international
Nutrition Index (NI). Using this NI, the study ranks 106 countries
and analyses patterns and trends in their nutrition situation. The
correlations between the NI and other international indicators show
its ability to reflect micronutrient deficiencies as well as its
sensitivity to poverty and inequality. Multivariate regressions
reveal that the NI tends to improve with economic development and
the amelioration of health services, whereas warfare has
detrimental effects.
North-South Free Trade Agreements are supposed to improve African
countries' access to competitive inputs and consumer goods, to
assist in creating an enabling trading environment and to help to
improve the competitiveness of domestic companies by involving them
in international networks. Negative effects such as revenue losses
and trade diversion are meant to be offset by safeguard measures,
technical assistance, and economic growth. The effects of a free
trade agreement between the EU and the Southern African Customs
Union (SACU) countries, especially relating to export performance,
diversification efforts, industrialisation options and efforts for
deeper regional integration, are the major questions the study
addresses. In studying sector examples in the SACU countries for
successful industrial policy, an investigation is undertaken of how
a free trade agreement between the EU and the SACU countries
affects domestic policies, economic performance and the position of
sectors in the global value chain. The conclusion drawn is that
free trade agreements concluded between the EU and southern African
countries failed to be development-oriented. Subsequently, policy
recommendations are made as to how EU policies towards southern
Africa can take industrial development, export diversification and
a move towards deeper regional integration better into account.
Evaluation pro-poor growth enhancing investments in infrastructure
and rural development requires comprehensive appraisal tools.
Traditional methods have taken a project or sector perspective that
did not capture economy-wide effects. However, in addition to
inter-sectoral effects, large-scale investments can also have
long-term impacts on national capital formation, the government
budget and the foreign trade balance. This study builds a
computable general equilibrium model and links it to a
micro-accounting module for poverty analysis in Vietnam. The
spatial dimension is captured by incorporating two regions into the
model: the lagging mountainous province of Son La is compared to
the rest of Vietnam. This model is applied to several
infrastructure investments and identifies economic growth rates
that would be needed to achieve the first Millennium Development
Goal.
The author presents a promising tool to increase the coverage rate
of community-based health insurance schemes (CBHI) and access to
medical care for poor population groups in developing countries. He
addresses a key problem of CBHI: Authorities cannot sanction
non-members and membership cannot be enforced. Therefore, it is
proposed to award membership by offering incentives such as raffle
participation for joining a CBHI. This approach attracts new
members and can be a motivation to continue membership payments of
healthy insurance members. The results of an ex-ante demand
analysis conducted in the Philippines are promising. More than 80%
of the respondents would like to participate in the raffle and
would even agree to higher premium payments covering additional
costs of the raffle.
The growing recognition of the potential of local institutions to
assure the sustainability of natural resources has motivated the
devolution of the management and responsibility over local commons
from the state to local user groups. In Ghana, farmer management of
irrigation systems has become an important component of policies
for irrigation development and reform. While numerous examples of
successful local irrigation management exist in different parts of
the world, there are several cases of failure that sometimes lead
to a complete system breakdown. Using a dataset from community
managed irrigation schemes in northern Ghana, this study examines
the reasons why communities differ in terms of economic,
distributional and environmental outcomes of the devolution
program. Among others, the study finds the resistance of landlords
to a land redistribution policy to have a detrimental effect on the
success of collective action for local management of the irrigation
schemes. The ability of the user groups to tackle local asymmetries
for promoting equity and forming appropriate institutions to
motivate cooperative behavior is essential for achieving
sustainable local management of the irrigation schemes.
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