The market-based dissemination of energy-access technologies as a business model for rural entrepreneurs: Evidence from Kenya

Improving access to more modern forms of energy requires supply chains that reach further into rural areas. This paper studies a supply-side intervention intended to foster last-mile distribution of energy-access technologies through local small-scale entrepreneurship. We use a staggered-implementation evaluation design to assess the impact on employment and income outcomes of the intervention, which is a large-scale program in Kenya that supports the diffusion of improved cookstoves and small solar products. The results demonstrate how trained entrepreneurs intensify and diversify their income-generating activities, often by shifting away from subsistence farming as a main source of income. For cookstove entrepreneurs, this goes along with improvements in individual and household incomes as well as perceived economic well-being. Our estimates suggest that impacts do not only differ between the two technologies but also across subgroups including gender, age, and baseline occupation. Our findings substantiate that market-based interventions can foster energy access in rural areas by supporting the establishment of local businesses. We highlight several contextual factors that are of relevance when considering the adoption of this approach.     

The social process of internet appropriation: Living in a digitally advanced country benefits less well-educated Europeans

We generalize and extend the sequential model proposed by the resources and appropriation theory to explain the digital divide in the European Union plus the United Kingdom (EU27+UK). We measure the theoretical constructs of the model with data provided by the EU and test the theoretical predictions using a partial least squares structural equation model. We find support for the hypothesized relationships but find that the effects vary depending on the digital development level of countries. While education overall is the primary determinant of the social production of digital inequalities, a country's digital development level is crucial for less well-educated Europeans. These findings have theoretical and practical implications: (1) they call into question the homogeneity of the effect of causal relationships and the assumption that individuals differ only in terms of motivation, access, and digital skills, and (2) they indicate that socially disadvantaged Europeans benefit from living in more digitally developed countries.     

Probabilistic access forecasting for improved offshore operations

Improving access is a priority in the offshore wind sector, driven by the opportunity to increase revenues, reduce costs, and improve safety at operational wind farms. This paper describes a novel method for producing probabilistic forecasts of safety-critical access conditions during crew transfers. Methods of generating density forecasts of significant wave height and peak wave period are developed and evaluated. It is found that boosted semi-parametric models outperform those estimated via maximum likelihood, as well as a non-parametric approach. Scenario forecasts of sea-state variables are generated and used as inputs to a data-driven vessel motion model, based on telemetry recorded during 700 crew transfers. This enables the production of probabilistic access forecasts of vessel motion during crew transfer up to 5 days ahead. The above methodology is implemented on a case study at a wind farm off the east coast of the UK.     

政府随机审计的动态博弈模型及政策启示

本文在一个三阶段动态博弈框架下，对政府随机审计过程中的政府审计机关与政府审计对象以及国家与政府审计对象之间的动态博弈特征进行了分析。分析结果显示：政府审计机关与政府审计对象之间存在一个纯策略纳什均衡，而国家和政府审计对象之间存在一个混合策略纳什均衡。政府审计对象接受国家实质性审计的概率是政府审计对象被政府机关审计发现违规或不作为后的惩罚倍数的单调递减函数，而政府审计对象的违规或不作为的概率分别是政府审计对象被政府机关审计发现违规或不作为后的惩罚倍数和政府审计对象的应尽义务或责任的单调递减函数，却是政府审计机关审计行为成本的单调递增函数。同时，结合研究结论和中国政府审计全覆盖的现实，给出了一些政策建议。     

Assessing cost‐effectiveness when environmental benefits are bundled: agricultural water management in Great Barrier Reef catchments

Using economic analysis to prioritise improvements in environmental conditions is particularly difficult when multiple benefits are involved. This includes ‘bundling’ issues in agricultural pollution management, where a change in management action or farming systems generates multiple improvements, such as reductions in more than one pollutant. In this study, we conceptualise and compare two different approaches to analysing cost‐effectiveness when varying bundles of benefits are generated for a single project investment. Each approach requires data to be transformed in some way to allow the analysis to proceed. The index approach requires the transformation on the benefits side so that the effects of multiple pollutant changes can be combined into a measure for each project which can then be compared to costs. By comparison, the disaggregation approach requires the transformation on the costs side where costs for each project have to be apportioned across the different pollutants involved. The paper provides novel insights with an application to agricultural water quality improvements into the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, demonstrating that while both approaches are effective in prioritising projects by cost‐effectiveness, the disaggregation approach provides more insightful results and values that may be relevant for use as upper value guidelines in future project selection.     

Assessing the Reliability of Self‐reported Income Information in Informal Small Business Lending through a Bogus Pipeline Experiment

Coping with asymmetric information plays a major role in successful small business lending. Our purpose is to determine if small business applicants report their income information correctly when requesting a loan. We use a randomised controlled trial bogus pipeline experiment, established during a typical cash‐flow analysis of a bank for small businesses in the Philippines. The bogus pipeline approach is commonly applied in social science and aims to increase the rate of truth telling by informing participants that answers will be verified by a lie detector. The experimental data, which include 243 observations of credit clients that are mainly from the agricultural and food value chain, served to identify asymmetric information. Additionally, debtors’ repayment behaviour for approved loans was observed by the bank. Our results indicate that loan applicants of the treatment group report lower incomes, an effect which is most pronounced in lower income quantile. Our analyses also reveal higher loan delinquencies in the control group.     

Machine learning for financial transaction classification across companies using character-level word embeddings of text fields

An important initial step in accounting is mapping financial transfers to the corresponding accounts. We devised machine-learning-based systems that automate this process. They use word embeddings with character-level features to process transaction texts. When considering 473 companies independently, our approach achieved an average top-1 accuracy of 80.50%, outperforming baselines that exclude the transaction texts or rely on a lexical bag-of-words text representation. We extended the approach to generalizes across companies and even across different corporate sectors. After standardization of the account structures and careful feature engineering, a single classifier trained on 44 companies from 28 sectors achieved a test accuracy of more than 80%. When trained on 43 companies and tested on the remaining one, the system achieved an average performance of 64.62%. This rate increased to nearly 70% when considering only the largest sector.     

基于效应的随机灰规划模型和应用

为了解决同时含有随机因素和灰色因素的不确定规划问题,通过结合区间灰数所属区间两个端点的随机性,给出随机区间灰数和随机区间灰函数的定义,提出了随机灰规划模型。通过综合效应函数理论用随机变量期望值和方差综合量化表示灰数所属区间的两个端点值。应用该理论对综合量化后的两个端点值继续进行综合量化,从而将随机灰规划转化为确定型规划问题。应用遗传算法进行求解。通过综合效应函数的理念,综合随机变量的期望和方差,同时综合区间灰数的区间因素,将随机灰规划数学模型转化为确定型规划模型即基于效应的随机灰规划模型。通过选取不同的综合效应函数,得到了关于不同决策意识下的随机灰规划的最优解。这个方法可为决策者进行不确定决策提供参考。     

Access to Finance,Financial Development and Firm Ability to Export: Experience from Asia–Pacific Countries

With particular reference to Asia–Pacific countries, the present study examines how access to finance and financial development affects firms’ ability to enter export markets. Using firm‐level data from the World Bank Enterprises Survey, we found that access to finance plays a significant role in improving firms’ ability to export. In addition, development of the financial sector fosters export market entry. Among the financial development indicators, reach of the banking sector variable is most prominent. The present study suggests that improvements in access to finance and financial development (increases in the reach of the banking sector) enable firms operating away from capital or major cities to enter export markets easily. The present study supports policy intervention to strengthen access to the financial sector, which would encourage firms to export, and to facilitate export market entry for remotely located firms.