|
on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Leight, Jessica; Clark, Anne Angsten; Reynolds, Katherine |
| Abstract: | Community-driven development (CDD) reliably delivers locally prioritized public infrastructure and services, often at a lower cost and with less leakage than traditional government-managed projects, and it has proven particularly effective in challenging contexts affected by institutional fragility, conflict, and violence. CDD effectively supports communities in prioritizing projects, producing a wide range of positive local outcomes. Yet, the diversity of choices makes generalizing the efficacy of CDD across settings difficult, highlighting the need for more research and better approaches to generating evidence and identifying impact. Emerging evidence suggests that infrastructure built by communities through CDD programs often endures longer than development projects that employ more traditional “top-down” approaches, with positive effects persisting for a decade or more. |
| Keywords: | development aid; community development; infrastructure; public services |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:prnote:182190 |
| By: | Batabyal, Amitrajeet |
| Abstract: | We study pollution cleanup investments, signaling, and the resilience of the Ganges river when investors differ in capability and cleanup projects differ in their ability to enhance resilience. First, we derive the minimal level of signaling necessary to sustain a separating equilibrium in which the government agency can distinguish between more and less capable investors. Larger cleanup efforts require greater signaling, although the marginal increase in signaling declines as the scale of cleanup expands. Second, we analyze the benchmark case in which signaling is impossible. Here, more and less capable investors choose the more resilience enhancing cleanup projects because the expected payment from these projects is larger than the payment from less resilience enhancing projects. Hence, eliminating signaling raises investor welfare and encourages projects that are more beneficial for the resilience of the Ganges. |
| Keywords: | Ganges River, Investment, Pollution Cleanup, Resilience, Signaling |
| JEL: | C72 D82 Q53 |
| Date: | 2026–04–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129356 |
| By: | Jorge S\'anchez Canales; Lion Hirth |
| Abstract: | Investment in renewable electricity generation is highly capital intensive and therefore strongly dependent on financing conditions. In Europe, much of this investment has occurred under public support schemes that resemble long-term public contracts such as feed-in tariffs (FiTs) and contracts-for-differences (CfDs). These contracts not only subsidize renewable generation but also stabilize project cash flows by reducing exposure to electricity price volatility, thereby improving debt capacity and lowering financing costs. At the same time, they may distort operational and investment incentives by weakening exposure to wholesale market price signals. This paper studies how alternative public contract designs reduce revenue risk and how this translates into financing outcomes. Using a novel dataset of hourly turbine-level generation covering 63 German onshore wind parks over the period 2013-2024, we simulate project cash flows under two-sided CfDs, one-sided CfDs, and financial CfDs. We then evaluate their implications for cash-flow volatility, debt capacity, and the levelized cost of electricity using a project finance model based on a conservative debt-service coverage ratio (DSCR) constraint. We find that financial CfDs provide hedging performance comparable to conventional two-sided CfDs. The results suggest that the commonly assumed trade-off between revenue stabilization and efficient market integration is not inherent but depends on contract design. More broadly, public contracts can substitute missing long-term hedging markets. These results have direct policy implications for the design of renewable energy support schemes. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2605.23400 |
| By: | Linehan, Caitlyn; Fitch-Polse, Dillon T. PhD; Nelson, Trisalyn PhD |
| Abstract: | Cities and regions are increasingly investing in walking and bicycling infrastructure, driven by well-documented health, social, and environmental benefits of active transportation. However, most agencies lack practical tools to accurately assess whether these investments are achieving their intended outcomes. Accurately measuring change in walking and bicycling attributable to investments like new bike lanes or sidewalks is difficult and involves resources and expertise that is generally not feasible or financially sustainable for mode agencies. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences |
| Date: | 2026–06–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt3jq2z22s |
| By: | Valsecchi, Chiara (Federal University of Pampa, Brazil) |
| Abstract: | Applied research is essential for translating scientific discoveries into practical industrial solutions. This brief examines how Guangdong’s New Research and Development Institutes (NRDIs) offer lessons for Brazil’s EMBRAPII model. Despite operating in different political economies, both systems face analogous challenges: ensuring research responds to industrial demand, financing mid-TRL development, and creating structures that reward application alongside publication. NRDIs are defined by their market orientation, hybrid funding models, and institutional autonomy. Through “innovation platforms” with local governments, they coordinate research, commercialisation, enterprise incubation, and talent cultivation into an integrated ecosystem. EMBRAPII’s tripartite co-financing model has demonstrated impact—68.2% of supported projects lead to innovations—but structural challenges persist. This brief argues that Guangdong’s experience offers Brazil specific, actionable pathways: more struc?tured industry-driven agenda setting, independent legal entity intermediaries, deeper integration with finance and talent policy, and investment in shared mid-TRL infrastructure. The window of opportunity is open, and the institutional foundations exist. |
| Date: | 2026–05–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:y7rpg_v1 |
| By: | Saakstra, Sake |
| Abstract: | Pre-financial-investment-decision (pre-FID) offtake commitments in clean-hydrogen projects reduce the cumulative cancellation probability by 11.3 to 13.2 percentage points across five convergent matching estimators (IPWRA, OLS-adjusted, regression-adjusted matching, doubly-robust IPTW, naive IPW), using a project-level panel of 1, 354 announced developments from the S&P Global Hydrogen Project Database (2010-2026). The estimate is exceptionally robust to unobserved-confounder bias: the Oster delta_null = 20.23 implies that for unobservables to explain the effect, they would need to be twenty times more influential than the maximally-included set of observable controls. This is the largest and most identification-secure treatment effect in the related dissertation work. The substantive interpretation invokes the sigma-channel of the real-options framework: offtake commitments reduce revenue volatility and counterparty risk simultaneously. The sigma-channel comparative statics predict that revenue-volatility-reducing instruments should produce larger effects in high-volatility sectors than in low-volatility sectors. We test this prediction directly via cross-sectoral heterogeneity: the offtake-commitment ATT is concentrated in power and heat (-0.30 pp) and transport (-0.27 pp), and substantially smaller or null in chemical (-0.04 pp) and refinery (-0.02 pp). The pattern matches the sigma-channel prediction in sign and approximate magnitude, providing direct mechanism-identifying empirical evidence that complements the average-treatment-effect identification. The methodological contribution is a cross-sectoral heterogeneity test as a direct mechanism-identifying strategy, supplementing the conventional partial-identification sensitivity analysis (Oster bounds). The policy implication is that capex-grant programmes such as the EU Innovation Fund should incorporate demonstrable pre-FID offtake-commitment eligibility requirements, jointly addressing the financing-constraint friction (the Innovation Fund's current target) and the counterparty-risk friction (the Innovation Fund currently leaves unaddressed). |
| Keywords: | offtake commitment, counterparty risk, revenue volatility, real options, sectoral heterogeneity, matching estimators, Oster sensitivity, clean hydrogen |
| JEL: | D81 G31 Q42 Q48 |
| Date: | 2026–05–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:129304 |
| By: | Shiwakoti, Avyash |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Nepal Compact as a case study in infrastructure-led rural development. It tracks the project from the author's original 2021 arguments through contested ratification in February 2022 to active deployment as of May 2026. Drawing on MCA-Nepal project data, parliamentary records, and field reports, the study assesses whether the predicted rural development multipliers—rural hydro evacuation, land compensation capital injection, local employment, and improved market connectivity—have materialised. The evidence substantially validates the core 2021 thesis, while counterpart funding escalation and right-of-way disputes remain the main implementation challenges. The paper offers targeted policy recommendations to maximise rural spillover effects before the August 2028 completion deadline. |
| Date: | 2026–05–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:vc28y_v1 |
| By: | Cullen S. Hendrix (Peterson Institute for International Economics) |
| Abstract: | The United States depends heavily on imported critical minerals, including rare earth elements, needed for semiconductors, renewable energy, AI expansion, and defense systems. Because supply disruptions could seriously harm the economy and national security, the US government has launched Project Vault, a $12 billion public-private program to stockpile emergency supplies of critical minerals. Funded by a $10 billion EXIM Bank loan and $2 billion in private capital, the project is aimed at reducing reliance on foreign suppliers, particularly China, and protecting American--and eventually allied-country--manufacturers from shortages. Project Vault's design, however, raises important questions about its durability and day-to-day operations. Key Takeaways - Unlike the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Project Vault is designed as insurance against systemwide supply shocks, relying on private firms that pay subscription fees for access to reserves during disruptions, which makes it a hybrid of a futures market and a strategic reserve. - Voluntary participation would exclude both large self-insuring firms and small enterprises unaware of their exposure, hollowing out the risk pool in ways that could cause the program to fail when it is needed most. - Storing 60 highly differentiated minerals and processed derivatives is far more complex than stockpiling oil because supplies can degrade over time and often need to be processed to be usable during a crisis. - To be effective, Project Vault should require mandatory participation with fees scaled to firm size, fund against worst-case collective supply shocks, and prioritize processed materials over raw ore. - In the near term, building reserves of processed materials would likely depend on Chinese suppliers, making long-term investment in US and allied processing capacity critical. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:pbrief:pb26-8 |
| By: | María Florencia Gabrielli (Universidad del Desarrollo); Marcos Vergara (Universidad del Desarrollo) |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of risk aversion and cash flow risk on the allocation of equity shares between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in a setting characterized by double-sided moral hazard. Cash flows are simultaneously influenced by both price risk and background risk. We evaluate the main results of the model through simulation exercises that highlight the parameters that influence the dynamics of optimal equity share in project cash ows, such as the entrepreneur's risk aversion relative to the VC's and other partner attributes like the productivity and efficiency of their respective efforts. We carried out the analysis under different risk and effort complementarity scenarios. We find that the productivity and efficiency of partners' efforts are dominated by their risk aversion, and that the slope of the effect of these traits on the optimal equity share trajectory is modi ed by risk parameters and effort complementarity. |
| Keywords: | Risk aversion, risk, equity share, financial contracting |
| JEL: | D81 D86 L26 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aoz:wpaper:398 |
| By: | Hendrik Theine (Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; Socio-Ecological Transformation Lab, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Germany); Steffen S. Bettin (Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria) |
| Abstract: | Generative AI presents a puzzle for political economy. Leading firms accumulate structural advantages, lock in users, and shape technical standards at unprecedented speed, while unit economics remain negative and no clear path to profitability has emerged. This puzzle, we argue, can only be made sense of through an explicit analysis of corporate power, for which mainstream frameworks centred on market concentration alone are ill-equipped. Drawing on heterodox economics and cultural political economy (Boyer, 2022; Galbraith, 1984; Rothschild, 2002; Sum and Jessop, 2013), we develop a multi-dimensional heuristic distinguishing market power, as strategic control within markets, from the power to shape the wider cultural political economy. The rules of the game and the relationship to the state. We map market concentration across three layers of the genAI stack (GPU infrastructure, hyperscalers, foundation models), examine its distinctive cost structure, and analyse the emerging state–capital configuration. High costs and negative unit economics generate strong concentration, pointing toward an AI oligopoly. Politically and culturally, firms deploy the familiar Big Tech playbook (lobbying, academic capture, hegemony production), recruited around two narratives: AI nationalism and the AGI imaginary. Yet we identify a structural break from the platform era. Where platform firms sought to bypass the state, frontier AI firms actively court state procurement and patronage. What is emerging, we argue, is a state project in the making: a configuration in which states adopt the survival and dominance of specific AI firms as their own objectives. |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:set:wpaper:6 |
| By: | Khadilkar, Pramod Ratnakar |
| Abstract: | Design for the resource-constrained population aims to address the negative effects of its defining attribute: poverty. A designer must be able to answer fundamental questions, such as how to decide who is poor, why poverty in one context differs from others, which types of projects could affect which aspects of poverty, etc. Poverty studies and developmental economics have a scientific understanding of poverty, which is inaccessible to designers due to differences in the nomenclature. This paper addresses this gap by interlinking the five levels of poverty that deal with the conception of unfairness in poverty and related ethical arguments, its causes, its measures, and the possible remedies by linking it with the three design elements, namely, the designer, the design problem, and the design process, resulting in five extensions about the scope, execution, and evaluation of the projects, and the fundamental skills and abilities of the designer. |
| Date: | 2026–06–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:eyw4z_v1 |
| By: | Ingram, Will; Vincent, Katharine; Lalika, Christossy; Barry, Djibril; Gungalund, Vitus Tondelo; Gannon, Kate; Mikolajczak, Katarzyna; Kanyumba, Gloria; Truelove, Julie |
| Abstract: | Attempts to strengthen adaptive capacity and water security across sub-Saharan Africa include widespread use of a local volunteer champion mode of delivery by NGOs and governments. Problems with sustained engagement of volunteer champions exist but have received limited attention. We employ a behavioural lens, rarely applied in this context, to examine factors shaping champion sustained engagement. Qualitative data were gathered from 158 champions across seven active champion-based water security and climate adaptation projects in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Malawi, South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia, and analysed using the COM-B behavioural model. The sample showed convergence of behavioural determinants across diverse case studies. Champions’ physical and psychological capability to stay engaged was typically evident, and reflective and automatic motivation was high, driven by prosocial commitment, interest, and satisfaction and reinforced by emotional responses including joy from helping and pride. Conversely, physical and social opportunity are frequently constrained, particularly by inadequate tools, materials, transport, or ongoing support from external project implementers. Contrary to assumptions that low sustained engagement stems from insufficient champion motivation, this instead shows that external support and structural factors are critical to leverage otherwise high motivation. The findings offer practical guidance for organisations seeking to enhance adaptation and water security through champion-based programme design, orienting focus towards reducing structural barriers to support sustained engagement. Such strategies avoid relinquishing responsibility and overburdening champions with unfair motivational appeals, with important climate justice implications. The study demonstrates the value of a behavioural lens for investigating the delivery of community-based adaptation and water security. |
| Keywords: | climate change adaptation; volunteer; behaviour change; motivation; COM-B; champtions; Tanzania; Malawi; Burkina Faso; Zambia; Mozambique; South Africa |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–06–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138704 |