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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Pangotra Prem; Sharma Somesh |
| Abstract: | Increasing urbanization, population growth and rising incomes have led to rapid growth of travel demand in Indian cities. The paper provides a modeling approach for forecasting urban travel demand and assessing public transport options for large metropolitan cities. A travel characteristics model is used to forecast the pattern of travel demand in Bangalore city up to the year 2014. The paper examines the scope of a public bus transport service and a mass rapid transit system for meeting the projected travel demand and thereby curtailing the growth of personal vehicles in the city. |
| Date: | 2006–03–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:2006-03-06&r=cwa |
| By: | Ramani K V; Mavalankar Dileep; Patel Amit; Mahandiratta Sweta; Bhardwaj Rohini; Joshi Diptesh |
| Abstract: | Urbanization is an important demographic shift worldwide. India’s urban population of 300 million represents 30 % of its total population; with the slum population in urban cities registering a 5 % growth in the last few years. Responding to the healthcare needs of urban poor is therefore very essential. Government of India focus has been mainly on rural health till the late 90s. Recognizing the urgency to manage urban health for the vulnerable sections of our population, the 9th and 10th Five Year Plans of the Government of India have laid special emphasis on developing a well structured network of urban primary care institutions. Ahmedabad city (also known as Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, AMC) is the sixth largest city in India with a population of 3.5 million spread over 192 square kilometers, across 43 wards. AMC has nearly 2500 slums and chawls housing approximately 1.5 million people. Out of 43 wards in AMC, 9 wards which house more than 20 % of AMC population, have no government health facility at all. With more than 3500 private health facilities in AMC, it is therefore worthwhile to explore Public Private Participation (PPP) to improve the delivery of healthcare services. In this working paper, we outline our approach to developing a PPP model for a decentralized and integrated primary healthcare center for each ward of AMC. Our model is built on a clear understanding of the socio-economic profile, status of public health, and the healthcare seeking habits of Ahmedabad population. Our GIS (Geographic Information System) methodology guides the AMC authorities to identify good locations for urban health center (UHC) so as to ensure availability, affordability, accessibility, and equity to primary healthcare facilities to the slum populations. We illustrate our methodology for Vasna and Naroda wards in AMC. |
| Keywords: | Urban poor, availability, affordability, access, equity, GIS, PPP |
| Date: | 2006–03–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:2006-03-05&r=cwa |
| By: | Shandre M. Thangavelu (Department of Economics National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link); Sanja Samirana Pattnayak (Department of Economics National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link) |
| Abstract: | The paper examines the spillover and linkage effects from the presence of foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. A comprehensive panel data consisting of nearly 200 firms from 1989 to 2000 was used in the current study. The recent semi-parametric estimation methods as suggested by Olley and Pakes (1996) and Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) were adopted to account for the endogeneity in the input demand. Our results suggest the existence of positive and significant spillover from the foreign equity ownership in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. However, we also found negative and significant spillovers from the backward linkages with foreign firms. The negative spillovers from the backward linkages suggest the possibility of large technology and efficiency gap between local and foreign firms. The results also suggest that institutional arrangements that protect intellectual property rights such as product patents as opposed to process patents will be important for establishing positive linkages and spillovers between local and foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. |
| Keywords: | FDI, Backward and Horizontal Linkages, Olley-Pakes, Levinsohn-Petrin |
| JEL: | F23 C23 O3 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sca:scaewp:0605&r=cwa |
| By: | Bazlul Khondker; Mustafa Mujeri; Selim Raihan |
| Abstract: | This paper examined welfare and poverty impacts of trade liberalization in Bangladesh. By using a computable general equilibrium model based on a social accounting matrix, an empirical investigation of the transmission channels linking trade liberalisation to the rest of the economy was carried out by conducting three simulations. In the first two simulations full tariff removal was accompanied by respective increase in production tax rates and income tax rate to ensure revenue neutrality. Third simulation resembles the actual tariff reforms undertaken in the country. This entailed the decline in both the spread and effective average duty rates, thereby reducing the mean rates and variance. The patterns of welfare losses are progressive for rural households but regressive for urban households in the first two simulations. In the third simulation, a clear regressive pattern is observed amont the urban households but it is ambiguous for the rural households. Rural poverty declined due to tariff-income tax reforms and tariff rationalization but worsened in the case of tariff-production tax reforms. Except for the second simulation, the urban poverty headcount, gap and severity all worsen in other two simulations. This confirms that the benefits of tariff rationalization accrue more to the urban rich households compared to their poored counterparts. |
| Keywords: | Trade liberalization, Poverty, Bangladesh, Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model |
| JEL: | D33 D58 E27 F13 F14 I32 O15 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:mpiacr:2006-05&r=cwa |
| By: | Botticini, Maristella; Eckstein, Zvi |
| Abstract: | From the end of the second century C.E., Judaism enforced a religious norm requiring any Jewish father to educate his children. We present evidence supporting our thesis that this exogenous change in the religious and social norm had a major influence on Jewish economic and demographic history. First, the high individual and community cost of educating children in subsistence farming economies (2nd to 7th centuries) prompted voluntary conversions, which account for a large share of the reduction in the size of the Jewish population from about 4.5 million to 1.2 million. Second, the Jewish farmers who invested in education, gained the comparative advantage and incentive to enter skilled occupations during the vast urbanization in the newly developed Muslim Empire (7th and 8th centuries) and they actually did select themselves into these occupations. Third, as merchants the Jews invested even more in education - a pre-condition for the extensive mailing network and common court system that endowed them with trading skills demanded all over the world. Fourth, the Jews generated a voluntary diaspora by migrating within the Muslim Empire, and later to western Europe where they were invited to settle as high skill intermediaries by local rulers. By 1200, the Jews were living in hundreds of towns from England and Spain in the West to China and India in the East. Fifth, the majority of world Jewry (about one million) lived in the Near East when the Mongol invasions in the 1250s brought this region back to a subsistence farming economy in which many Jews found it difficult to enforce the religious norm regarding education, and hence, voluntarily converted, exactly as it had happened centuries earlier. |
| Keywords: | human capital; Jewish economic and demographic history; migration; occupational choice; religion; social norms |
| JEL: | J1 J2 O1 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5571&r=cwa |
| By: | Koolwal, Gayatri B.; Bakht, Zaid; Khandker, Shahidur R. |
| Abstract: | The rationale for public investment in rural roads is that households can better exploit agricultural and nonagricultural opportunities to use labor and capital more efficiently. But significant knowledge gaps remain as to how opportunities provided by roads actually filter back into household outcomes and their distributional consequences. This paper examines the impacts of rural road projects using household-level panel data from Bangladesh. Rural road investments are found to reduce poverty significantly through higher agricultural production, higher wages, lower input and transportation costs, and higher output prices. Rural roads also lead to higher girls ' and boys ' schooling. Road investments are pro-poor, meaning the gains are proportionately higher for the poor than for the non-poor. |
| Keywords: | Transport Economics Policy & Planning,Rural Roads & Transport,Economic Theory & Research,Rural Transport,Rural Poverty Reduction |
| Date: | 2006–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3875&r=cwa |