Rules for Recovery: Impact of Indexed Disaster Funds on Shock Coping in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 164-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro del Valle ◽  
Alain de Janvry ◽  
Elisabeth Sadoulet

Government provision of disaster transfers is typically hampered by liquidity constraints and by weak rules and administrative capacity to disburse reconstruction resources. We show that by easing these hurdles, Mexico’s indexed disaster fund (Fonden) considerably accelerates economic recovery after a disaster. To estimate Fonden impact on recovery, as measured by night lights, we exploit the heavy rainfall index that determines program eligibility. We find that for one year after a disaster, eligible municipalities are 6 percent brighter than those ineligible, with gains likely concentrated among less resilient municipalities. We additionally document how Fonden rules shield resources from political abuse. (JEL G22, H12, H84, O13, O18, Q54, R38)

Agriculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim ◽  
Chemere ◽  
Sung

The objective of this study was to detect the historical dry matter yield (DMY) trend and to evaluate the effects of heavy rainfall events on the observed DMY trend of whole crop maize (WCM, Zea mays L.) using time-series analysis in Suwon, Republic of Korea. The climatic variables corresponding to the seeding to harvesting period, including the growing degree days, mean temperature, etc., of WCM along with the DMY data (n = 543) during 1982–2011, were used in the analysis. The DMY trend was detected using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with the explanatory variables (ARIMAX) form of time-series trend analysis. The optimal DMY model was found to be ARIMAX (1, 1, 1), indicating that the DMY trend follows the mean DMY of the preceding one year and the residual of the preceding one year with an integration level of 1. Furthermore, the SHGDD and SHHR were determined to be the main variables responsible for the observed trend in the DMY of WCM. During heavy rainfall events, the DMY was found to be decreasing by 4745.27 kg/ha (p < 0.01). Our analysis also revealed that both the intensity and frequency of heavy rainfall events have been increasing since 2005. The forecasted DMY indicates the potential decrease, which is expected to be 11,607 kg/ha by 2045. This study provided us evidence for the correlation between the DMY and heavy rainfall events that opens the way to provide solutions for challenges that summer forage crops face in the Republic of Korea.


2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 857-871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin M. LeBlanc

About the time of the one-year anniversary of the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a conversation about the politics of nuclear power started up among Japanologists, mostly political scientists, on a listserv I read daily. The original discussion emerged from the question of whether Japanese political leaders would push for restarting a number of the offline nuclear power plants across the country in order to cover expected gaps in Japan's electricity supply. At first the debate's participants took up the countervailing pressures Japanese policymakers face: the need to provide affordable power to Japanese companies in order to spur economic recovery, the inevitable increase in greenhouse gas emissions that would be produced by a shift from nuclear to fossil fuels, the polling data suggesting an overwhelming majority of Japanese citizens are opposed to restarting the plants (Mainichi Shinbun 2012). Then the listserv debate broke away from scholarly assessments of the electoral and policy dilemmas faced by the ruling Democratic Party into thinly veiled arguments between proponents and opponents of nuclear power. Some assertions were made about the nuclear power “phobia” and “emotional” opposition of those who, it was suggested, do not understand the science of it, and a debate commenced over the question of how many people the Chernobyl accident of 1986 had really killed.


2020 ◽  
pp. 40-49
Author(s):  
N. I. Kolyada ◽  
A. Ya. Trotzkovsky

This article deals with theoretical and practical aspects of formulation and implementation of fiscal policy, income and expenses in particular. It also provides a brief analysis uncompensated receipts, regional budget expenditures on national economy, profit tax rise in revenue to regional budgets during the period of undeclared crisis in 2015 and the following period of economic recovery in 2016-2017. The position of the Altai Territory in the research group has been determined. The impact of federal and regional budgets on the dynamics of territories’ revenue trends from profit tax has been studied. Efficiency gains of budget management have been noted. Such indicators as the amount of profit tax revenue counting on per ruble of costs on national economy from a regional budget, the amount of the following year profit tax counting on per ruble of national economy costs from the previous year regional budget (in 2016-2017 in kopecks) were defined as criteria for evaluating the effectiveness. It has been shown, that taking into account the time lag of one year, budget investments into national economy, excluding direct federal transfers are insufficient in 9 out of 10 cases and their efficiency will grow only with the increase of these expenditures. The assertion about the importance of budget investments for economic development of the country and its regions has been confirmed, that underlines the necessity of greater use of public-private partnership system.


Author(s):  
BESNİK A. KRASNIQI ◽  
LİRİDON KRYEZIU ◽  
MEHMET BAĞIŞ ◽  
MEHMET NURULLAH KURUTKAN ◽  
SARA IDRIZI

The enforced lockdown and closure of businesses in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in economic crises across the globe, bringing the attention to entrepreneurship and its importance to economic recovery. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on SME’s and the entrepreneurs’ policy preferences based on firm size and industry type. To achieve this, evidence from a Business Support Centre Kosovo’s (BSCK) survey involving 236 SME owners interviewed online is reported. Findings from SME survey suggest the problems with cash flow and reduction of customer demand, among others, are major problems faced by SME’s across all firm size groups and industry types. Findings from factor analysis clustered SME policy preferences into three groups: policy preferences related to financing and liquidity constraints, market related and tax preferences. This study discusses some policy and managerial implications urging the need for more nuanced and variegated understanding of the effect of coronavirus pandemic on SMEs.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-415
Author(s):  
Zening Wu ◽  
Yanxia Shen ◽  
Huiliang Wang ◽  
Meimei Wu

Abstract Planning to evaluate flood disaster vulnerability is a crucial step towards risk mitigation and adaptation. In this study, the vulnerability curve model was established with one highly popular area of research in mind: big data. Web crawler technology was used to extract text information related to floods from Internet and social media platforms. Based on the three indicators of rainfall intensity, duration and coverage area, the heavy rainfall index was calculated, while the comprehensive disaster index was calculated based on the affected population, area and direct economic loss. Taking the heavy rainfall index as an independent variable and comprehensive disaster index as a dependent variable, the vulnerability curve of flood disasters was established, and the performance of this model was validated by comparing it with real-life situations. The results show that the relationship between rainfall and disaster is significant, and there is exponential correlation between the heavy rainfall index and comprehensive disaster index. This model is more than 65% accurate, which demonstrates the discriminative power of the established curve model. The results provide some basis for flood control and management in cities.


Itinerario ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Leroy Oberg

In August of 1587 Manteo, an Indian from Croatoan Island, joined a group of English settlers in an attack on the native village of Dasemunkepeuc, located on the coast of present-day North Carolina. These colonists, amongst whom Manteo lived, had landed on Roanoke Island less than a month before, dumped there by a pilot more interested in hunting Spanish prize ships than in carrying colonists to their intended place of settlement along the Chesapeake Bay. The colonists had hoped to re-establish peaceful relations with area natives, and for that reason they relied upon Manteo to act as an interpreter, broker, and intercultural diplomat. The legacy of Anglo-Indian bitterness remaining from Ralph Lane's military settlement, however, which had hastily abandoned the island one year before, was too great for Manteo to overcome. The settlers found themselves that summer in the midst of hostile Indians.


Author(s):  
Hans Ris

The High Voltage Electron Microscope Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin has been in operation a little over one year. I would like to give a progress report about our experience with this new technique. The achievement of good resolution with thick specimens has been mainly exploited so far. A cold stage which will allow us to look at frozen specimens and a hydration stage are now being installed in our microscope. This will soon make it possible to study undehydrated specimens, a particularly exciting application of the high voltage microscope.Some of the problems studied at the Madison facility are: Structure of kinetoplast and flagella in trypanosomes (J. Paulin, U. of Georgia); growth cones of nerve fibers (R. Hannah, U. of Georgia Medical School); spiny dendrites in cerebellum of mouse (Scott and Guillery, Anatomy, U. of Wis.); spindle of baker's yeast (Joan Peterson, Madison) spindle of Haemanthus (A. Bajer, U. of Oregon, Eugene) chromosome structure (Hans Ris, U. of Wisconsin, Madison). Dr. Paulin and Dr. Hanna are reporting their work separately at this meeting and I shall therefore not discuss it here.


Author(s):  
K.E. Krizan ◽  
J.E. Laffoon ◽  
M.J. Buckley

With increase use of tissue-integrated prostheses in recent years it is a goal to understand what is happening at the interface between haversion bone and bulk metal. This study uses electron microscopy (EM) techniques to establish parameters for osseointegration (structure and function between bone and nonload-carrying implants) in an animal model. In the past the interface has been evaluated extensively with light microscopy methods. Today researchers are using the EM for ultrastructural studies of the bone tissue and implant responses to an in vivo environment. Under general anesthesia nine adult mongrel dogs received three Brånemark (Nobelpharma) 3.75 × 7 mm titanium implants surgical placed in their left zygomatic arch. After a one year healing period the animals were injected with a routine bone marker (oxytetracycline), euthanized and perfused via aortic cannulation with 3% glutaraldehyde in 0.1M cacodylate buffer pH 7.2. Implants were retrieved en bloc, harvest radiographs made (Fig. 1), and routinely embedded in plastic. Tissue and implants were cut into 300 micron thick wafers, longitudinally to the implant with an Isomet saw and diamond wafering blade [Beuhler] until the center of the implant was reached.


2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-346
Author(s):  
SANTANU CHATTERJEE

The choice between private and government provision of a productive public good like infrastructure (public capital) is examined in the context of an endogenously growing open economy. The accumulation of public capital need not require government provision, in contrast to the standard assumption in the literature. Even with an efficient government, the relative costs and benefits of government and private provision depend crucially on the economy's underlying structural conditions and borrowing constraints in international capital markets. Countries with limited substitution possibilities and large production externalities may benefit from governments encouraging private provision of public capital through targeted investment subsidies. By contrast, countries with flexible substitution possibilities and relatively smaller externalities may benefit either from governments directly providing public capital or from regulation of private providers. The transitional dynamics also are shown to depend on the underlying elasticity of substitution and the size of the production externality.


Addiction ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-31
Author(s):  
Robyn L. Richmond ◽  
Linda Kehoe ◽  
Abilio Cesar De Almeida Neto

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