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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Pierre Azoulay; Wesley H. Greenblatt |
| Abstract: | Scientific projects that carry a high degree of risk may be more likely to lead to breakthroughs yet also face challenges in winning the support necessary to be carried out. We analyze the determinants of renewal for more than 100, 000 R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health between 1980 and 2015. We use four distinct proxies to measure risk taking: extreme tail outcomes, disruptiveness, pivoting from an investigator’s prior work, and standing out from the crowd in one’s field. After carefully controlling for investigator, grant, and institution characteristics, we measure the association between risk taking and grant renewal. Across each of these measures, we find that risky grants are renewed at markedly lower rates than less risky ones. We also provide evidence that the magnitude of the risk penalty is magnified for more novel areas of research and novice investigators, consistent with the academic community’s perception that current scientific institutions do not motivate exploratory research adequately. |
| JEL: | H51 O32 O38 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33495 |
| By: | Philippe Jeanneaux (VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement, Territoires - Territoires - AgroParisTech - VAS - VetAgro Sup - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur et de recherche en alimentation, santé animale, sciences agronomiques et de l'environnement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - UCA - Université Clermont Auvergne); Eliot Wendling; Yann Desjeux (BSE - Bordeaux Sciences Economiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Geoffroy Enjolras; Laure Latruffe (BSE - Bordeaux Sciences Economiques - UB - Université de Bordeaux - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | The experience of young farmers setting up in business has important implications for the rejuvenation of the age profile of the farming profession. The cost of taking over a farm is a key factor governing access to the profession. We focus here on the cost that young farmers must incur in order to take control of a farm business, and the determinants of this cost at the time of transfer. The contribution of this paper is that we investigate the total cost of setting up a farm, which includes not only the purchase price paid by the farmer on taking over the farm, but also the cost of adapting the farm for their projects and needs; that is, the investment costs in the first 4 years following the set up. Our analysis is based on an original database of administrative records for grants to young farmers in the French region of Puy-de-Dôme during the period 2007–2017. The results show that the average purchase price is around 80, 000 Euros, while the investment required during the first 4 years following set-up is an additional cost of almost 200, 000 Euros. The total cost of setting up depends on the young farmer's age and education, the size of the farm, its legal status, the main production on the farm, and the levers used to create value, such as short supply chains, on-farm processing, and using a quality label, however, producing using organic practices and setting up in a family context do not influence the cost. |
| Keywords: | Farm, Young farmer grant, Value, Setting-up costs, Transaction price, Investments |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04969713 |
| By: | Goldemberg, Diana; Jordan, Luke Simon; Kenyon, Thomas |
| Abstract: | This paper applies novel techniques to long-standing questions of aid effectiveness. It first replicates findings that donor finance is discernibly but weakly associated with sector outcomes in recipient countries. It then shows robustly that donors' own ratings of project success provide limited information on the contribution of those projects to development outcomes. By training a machine learning model on World Bank projects, the paper shows instead that the strongest predictor of these projects’ contribution to outcomes is their degree of adaptation to country context, and the largest differences between ratings and actual impact occur in large projects in institutionally weak settings. |
| Date: | 2023–07–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10532 |
| By: | Reyes-Retana, Graciela; Pons, Gonzalo Antonio; Siegmann, Katharina; Afif, Zeina; Gomez-Garcia, Margarita; Soto-Mota, Pablo; Castaneda Farill, Carmen Elena |
| Abstract: | Natural resources management (NRM) helps protect forests and promote sustainable development. Although women are key in strengthening activities in NRM, they are dramatically underrepresented in public funding for forest projects in many countries, such as Mexico, limiting their participation and impact. While structural barriers, such as land tenure and low capacity, cause this problem, this is exacerbated by barriers such as lack of information, complex application processess, gender norms, and rural women’s low aspirations and limited agency and self-efficacy to participate in NRM projects. This paper tests whether additions and modifications to the standard outreach strategies of a call for proposals for NRM grants in Mexico increase the number of applications submitted by localities and the share of women participating. The study uses a randomized controlled trial in 113 rural localities, where the standard outreach approach (control) is complemented with additional information channels and simplified materials (treatment 1), aiming to appeal more directly to inexperienced populations. A second treatment group further modifies the informational materials using insights from behavioral science (loss aversion, norms framing, and others) and adds proactive text message reminders to prompt behavior (treatment 2), hoping to address the barriers to women’s participation. The results suggest that treatment 1 localities had, on average, 2.3 more applications per locality than the control group (increasing the participation of both men and women). Treatment 2 complemented this, having, on average, 6.4 more women per locality participating of these applications than in treatment 1. This shows that women manifested interest in participating in these activities. A representative survey of women in the study localities (1, 485 women in 52 localities) suggests that women in treatment localities were more likely to recognize the name of the project or informational materials. The analysis also suggests that the complementary strategies had no effect on the likelihood of being selected to receive a grant under the project, suggesting that additional support is needed to translate this increased interest into successful applications that would allow participation in NRM. |
| Date: | 2023–04–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10419 |
| By: | Assunção, Juliano; Carlquist Rabelo De Araujo, Rafael; Amorim Braganca, Arthur |
| Abstract: | Investments in transportation infrastructure can impact the environment beyond their immediate surroundings. This paper builds an interregional trade model to estimate the general equilibrium effects of changes in infrastructure on deforestation. Using panel data on the evolution of the transportation network in Brazil and land use data in the Amazon, the paper estimates the model and finds sizable effects of infrastructure on deforestation. Model simulations show that ignoring general equilibrium underestimates the impacts of deforestation by one-quarter. The paper also shows that the model can be used for evaluation of the deforestation induced by individual projects, which is an essential input for public policies. |
| Date: | 2023–04–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10415 |
| By: | Chattopadhyay, Debabrata; Tabassum, Durreh |
| Abstract: | Transmission is a key enabler of clean generation as the lines and substations need to be built first to encourage investments in generation. However, there has been limited attention to readying the grid through upgrades of existing transmission lines/substations and expansion of the grid. As a result, transmission has become a major bottleneck, not only in developing countries, but also in their developed counterparts, including the United States, which has seen accumulation of 930 gigawatts of clean generation “queued up” waiting for transmission to be built. To prioritize upgrading and expansion of the transmission grid, there is a need to adopt a more holistic systemwide view from a long-term perspective and develop a methodology that recognizes transmission as an enabler of clean generation. Such a methodology can be devised around a composite generation-transmission co-optimization model. This paper sets the context within which “green transmission” needs to be viewed and further proposes a modeling framework that brings together the critical elements in generation and transmission planning, including system security constraints as a mixed-integer linear programming problem. The model formulation attempts to strike a reasonable balance between the technical rigor of a network model and computational tractability. There are also important implementation details such as making the planning period sufficiently long to elicit the value of transmission. The shadow prices of key constraints extracted from the model can be useful in prioritizing transmission projects, especially if the duals of transmission capacity and carbon dioxide limits are combined. These issues are discussed around a set of illustrative examples. It is expected that the model and associated discussion would provide a starting point to refine the model further and apply it to practical case studies to develop a holistic definition of green transmission and sustainable generation-transmission plans. |
| Date: | 2023–07–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10517 |
| By: | de Castro, Luciano; Frischtak, Claudio R.; Rodrigues, Arthur |
| Abstract: | Most developing economies rely on foreign capital to finance their infrastructure needs. These projects are usually structured as long-term (25–35 years) franchises that pay in local currency. If investors evaluate their returns in terms of foreign currency, exchange rate volatility introduces risk that may reduce the level of investment below what would be socially optimal. This paper proposes a mechanism with very general features that hedges exchange rate fluctuation by adjusting the concession period. Such mechanism does not imply additional costs to the government and could be offered as a zero-cost option to lenders and investors exposed to currency fluctuations. This general mechanism is illustrated with three alternative specifications and data from a 25-year highway franchise is used to simulate how they would play out in eight different countries that exhibit diverse exchange rate trajectories. |
| Date: | 2023–09–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10568 |
| By: | Pierre Beaucoral |
| Abstract: | Analyzing development projects is crucial for understanding donors aid strategies, recipients priorities, and to assess development finance capacity to adress development issues by on-the-ground actions. In this area, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developments (OECD) Creditor Reporting System (CRS) dataset is a reference data source. This dataset provides a vast collection of project narratives from various sectors (approximately 5 million projects). While the OECD CRS provides a rich source of information on development strategies, it falls short in informing project purposes due to its reporting process based on donors self-declared main objectives and pre-defined industrial sectors. This research employs a novel approach that combines Machine Learning (ML) techniques, specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP), an innovative Python topic modeling technique called BERTopic, to categorise (cluster) and label development projects based on their narrative descriptions. By revealing existing yet hidden topics of development finance, this application of artificial intelligence enables a better understanding of donor priorities and overall development funding and provides methods to analyse public and private projects narratives. |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2502.09495 |
| By: | Ismail Benslimane (ERMOT - Laboratoire "Etudes et recherches en Management des Organisations et des Territoires" [Fez] - USMBA - Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah); Sanae Benjelloun (ERMOT - Laboratoire "Etudes et recherches en Management des Organisations et des Territoires" [Fez] - USMBA - Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah) |
| Abstract: | In a highly competitive market where customers expect greater value, companies cannot rely solely on innovative products to stay ahead; achieving success also depends on competitive pricing. Therefore, it is crucial to carefully manage and optimize the costs associated with new product development. Every innovative product requires the execution of an innovation project, which naturally involves various uncertainties and risks. To address these challenges, companies are increasingly turning to a strategic tool called target costing, which primarily serves as an information generator. In light of the continued interest in this method, this study aims to examine its emergence, conceptual foundations, methodology, and the internal and external factors that facilitated its adoption, as well as its associated technical and managerial tools. Finally, the study will assess how this tool addresses both the cost-value relationship and the concept of value co-creation. |
| Keywords: | Target costing, technical tools, managerial tools, value creation, value co-creation |
| Date: | 2025–01–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04923122 |