Conservation tenders in low-income countries: Opportunities and challenges

The number of payments for environmental service schemes (PES) in low-income countries has grown more rapidly than in high-income countries. Yet, scarce funding among potential service buyers in low-income countries arguably makes it even more important to design PES cost-effectively. Tendering conservation contracts is one possible way to improve the cost-effectiveness of PES schemes. There is reason to believe that they are particularly well-suited to overcome some typical constraints in low-income environments. However, experience with conservation tenders in low-income countries remains limited to a handful of scientifically motivated experimental trials. Larger roll-outs can so far only be found in high-income countries, mainly the US and Australia. How different would rolled-out PES tenders perform in low-income countries, and would they require distinct design features? Here, we identify specific opportunities and challenges for implementing conservation tenders in low-income countries. Conceptually, we examine each implementation step of a tendered PES for typical low-income country characteristics. Some may affect the design requirements for successful implementation, in either positive or negative ways, compared with the typical high-income country case. Imperfect markets and information about production systems, high subsistence incomes, high variability in prices and yields, and risk-averse behavior all constitute characteristics which conservation tenders may be particularly suited to address. Conversely, lack of expertise and infrastructure can hamper tender design and the dissemination of information to potential participants. Some of these challenges can be dealt with, but solutions unavoidably increase transaction costs which, in turn, may affect scalability. While tenders reduce poverty alleviation effects when informational rents of service providers are being squeezed, tendered PES programs do not reduce rents to zero under normal circumstances, and can therefore still deliver income transfers and contribute to poverty alleviation.     

The rise of IT services clusters in India: A case of growth by replication

The Indian IT services sector has grown from small beginnings at the bottom of value creation to a major player in the global information and communications technology (ICT) industry. It commands a 55% share in the global market for IT services. India's IT sector value proposition in terms of low cost with large supply of high quality talent is compelling. As a result, India has become the premier choice not only for outsourcing IT services by the developed-world's multinational corporations (MNCs) but also for locating their own Global In-house Centers (GICs), which simultaneously compete and partner with local firms. This gave rise to six additional clusters beyond the earliest, largest and robust cluster, Bangalore. The paper provides a review of relevant literature; develops a conceptual framework for evaluation of clusters; and presents data and analysis with respect to relative size, growth, specialization, MNC presence and connectivity to local firms through expatriates and returning Indians, ,innovation; and discusses adequacy of ICT infrastructure for future growth. Although there are clear signs that the Indian IT sector has been moving towards a regime of providing high-end value added services, the sector's value proposition – lower cost combined with a large supply of high quality talent – remains the single most compelling reason for the rise and growth of multiple export clusters. Thus the sector's growth appears to be a case of growth by replication rather than innovation. The paper concludes that the Indian IT sector's value proposition in terms of lower cost combined with large supply of high quality talent remains the single most compelling reason for the rise and growth of multiple IT services export clusters. While the old adage, “people follow jobs” still holds for large part of the labor force, there is little doubt that the sprawling IT services clusters in India - with more to come from Tier II and Tier III cities – indicate, in fact, that “jobs follow talent." Both local firms and the MNCs, through their GICs, are pushing the boundaries of location farther and farther to continue to leverage cost advantage and available pools of talent.     

西部现代服务业主导产业选择——基于技术进步的视角

一个地区在其现代服务业的发展过程中,如何因地制宜地选择和培育现代服务业主导产业是其在经济发展过程中需要认真思考的问题。文章从技术进步的视角出发,在对我国西部地区服务业各细分行业进行资本存量估算的基础上,分析和测度服务业各细分行业的全要素生产率(TFP)和技术进步率,并建立现代服务业主导产业的选择指标体系,采用因子分析法对各指标体系进行实证分析,最终确定批发零售贸易和餐饮业、房地产业、信息传输及计算机服务和软件业、租赁和商务服务业、交通运输及仓储和邮政业、卫生及体育和社会福利业为我国西部地区现代服务业主导产业。     

Measuring Labour Services: Quality‐Adjusting the Entry and Exit of Workers

Many statistical agencies use the sum of hours worked when measuring labour services. This implies that all workers provide work of equal quality. Various indices for adjusting for labour quality have been employed in a large body of literature. However, this literature has not yet addressed the issue of how to quality‐adjust the impact of workers entering and exiting the labour market. We outline a theoretical framework for dealing with quality adjustment of labour services caused by workers entering and exiting employment. To illustrate the theoretical framework, we use the case of Norway in the period 1997–2013. The impact on labour services due to our quality adjustment of net entry is found to be cyclical. While the adjustment for the quality of net entry amounts to about −0.3 percentage points annually during expansions, it is offset by about the same magnitude during contractions.     

高职院校老年服务与管理专业晨练模式改革探析——以老年福祉学院为例

晨练作为高职院校体育工作的重要内容,是学生日常行为规范养成、良好道德品质与纪律规范形成的重要措施之一。本文通过对现有晨练项目的问卷调查,分析老年服务与管理专业学生对晨练项目的态度,试图探索符合专业发展、灵活多样的晨练形式,以满足学生发展需求。     

Hospital Marketing and Communications Via Social Media

Social media usage by health care organizations has increased dramatically. Findings from this research show that 95% of the top ranked hospitals use social media. The purpose of this study is to examine whether social media usage varies according to size of hospital and types of services provided. Since social media platforms appeal to different groups of people, this prompts the question of whether certain platforms are more appealing to people who partake in different health services. Findings reveal differences in social media usage depending on the services provided by a hospital.     

Payments for agrobiodiversity conservation services: An overview of Latin American experiences,lessons learned and upscaling challenges

Many developing countries face a major challenge today: how to safeguard the biodiversity maintained in the fields of the rural poor - which constitute a national and global public good - whilst meeting those same people's development needs and rights? A solution to this dilemma has thus been sought in adapting the design and implementation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) concepts to the conservation of agrobiodiversity.Here we review the application of nine such Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation (PACS) schemes that have been applied to date in four Latin American countries over the period 2010–2018. These covered 130 threatened varieties across a number of major food crops, and involved over 100 farming communities and 1,100 farmers (45 % of which were women). Conservation service offers were received through a competitive tender mechanism. Average bid offers revealed high heterogeneity, varying between US$675/ha. to ten times as much.In relation to issues identified as key to PES, such as spatial targeting, differentiated payments and conditionality, the underlying design of the PACS schemes may be considered solid. PACS-related prioritisation processes allow for the a priori identification of sites with high ecosystem service densities and high threat levels. The use of competitive tenders permits accounting for cost heterogeneity in the provision of conservation services and for payments to be differentiated. Conditionality is strong.In terms of implementation, a “back of the envelope” calculation based on the results of the competitive tenders suggests that conservation costs are modest. For a priority conservation portfolio of 100 varieties (which may be from different crops) each with a target area of five hectares, costs would amount to just under US$860,000 over twenty years or US$70,000 p.a. at a 5 % discount rate. The small-scale and one-off nature of the interventions realised to date, along with threatened crop variety seed availability constraints, have however meant that environmental effectiveness has been incomplete in the short-term (area cultivated with specific threatened varieties increased, but still below the “not at risk” threshold). The establishment of systematic monitoring systems is required to determine longer-term impacts and inform more regular PACS interventions within a dynamically evolving systems context.     

Small system dynamics model for alleviating the general practitioners rural care gap in Ontario,Canada

The disproportionate concentration of healthcare professionals in urban areas is a concern in many countries, including Canada. A need to address this rural care gap has driven a large number of government led initiatives worldwide over the years. This paper presents a model that can be used as a tool to examine the efficacy of such policies on the workforce distribution in the long term. A small system dynamics model is employed to simulate the current and future distribution of general physicians at a jurisdictional level. The model represents the transition of general practitioners to provide insight into the dynamics of care provision over time. The movement, and competition, between rural and urban areas is modeled to enable detailed exploration of the ability for proposed measures to alleviate the care gap in the future. Among the tested policies are such commonly used initiatives as financial incentives to rural professionals, promotion of medical education in rural areas, expansion of rural education programs and the engagement of international medical graduates etc. We demonstrate how the model can be used as a tool to determine an efficient and well-chosen combination of policies which can help alleviate the rural care gap in the future, given that some policies are more effective than others alone but also combined with other initiatives. The presented small system dynamics model is tested on Canada's reality, but its simple nature lends itself to easy application to other countries that experience a similar problem.