208 research outputs found
Urbanization and productivity : evidence from Turkish provinces over the period 1980 - 2000
No full textSouleymane Coulibaly; Uwe Deichmann; Somik Lal
Urbanization and productivity : evidence from Turkish provinces over the period 1980 - 2000 / Souleymane Coulibaly; Uwe Deichmann; Somik Lall
No full textDensity and disasters: economics of urban hazard risk
No full textToday, 370 million people live in cities in earthquake prone areas and 310 million in cities with high probability of tropical cyclones. By 2050, these numbers are likely to more than double. Mortality risk therefore is highly concentrated in many of the world’s cities and economic risk even more so. This paper discusses what sets hazard risk in urban areas apart, provides estimates of valuation of hazard risk, and discusses implications for individual mitigation and public policy. The main conclusions are that urban agglomeration economies change the cost-benefit calculation of hazard mitigation, that good hazard management is first and foremost good general urban management, and that the public sector must perform better in generating and disseminating credible information on hazard risk in cities.Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Hazard Risk Management,Urban Housing,Labor Policies
The relationship between energy intensity and economic growth: New evidence from a multi-country multi-sectorial dataset
No full textAre you satisfied? citizen feedback and delivery of urban services
No full textCitizen feedback is considered an effective means for improving the performance of public utilities. But how well does such information reflect the actual quality of service delivery? Do so-called scorecards or report cards measure public service delivery accurately, or do personal and community characteristics have a significant impact on residents'assessment of service quality? Deichmann and Lall investigate these questions using newly available household survey data on access to and satisfaction with selected public services in two Indian cities-Bangalore and Jaipur. They develop a framework where actual levels of services received, as well as expectations about service performance, influence a household's satisfaction with service delivery. The authors find that satisfaction increases with improvements in the household's own service status, a finding that supports the use of scorecard initiatives. But the results also suggest that a household's satisfaction is influenced by how service quality compares with that of its neighbors or peers and by household level characteristics such as welfare and tenure status. This implies that responses in satisfaction surveys are at least in part determined by factors that are unrelated to the service performance experienced by the household.Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Enterprise Development&Reform,Decentralization,Water and Industry,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Environmental Economics&Policies,Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Governance Indicators,Health Economics&Finance
International growth spillovers, geography and infrastructure
No full textThere is significant academic evidence that growth in one country tends to have a positive impact on growth in neighboring countries. This paper contributes to this literature by assessing whether growth spillovers tend to vary significantly across world regions and by investigating the contribution of transport and communication infrastructure in promoting neighborhood effects. The study is global, but the main interest is on Sub-Saharan Africa. The authors define neighborhoods both in geographic terms and by membership in the same regional trade association. The analysis finds significant evidence for heterogeneity in growth spillovers, which are strong between OECD countries and essentially absent in Sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis further finds strong interaction between infrastructure and being a landlocked country. This suggests that growth spillovers from regional"success stories"in Sub-Saharan Africa and other lagging world regions will depend on first strengthening the channels through which such spillovers can spread -- most importantly infrastructure endowments.Achieving Shared Growth,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,Economic Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Country Strategy&Performance
Are You Satisfied? Citizen Feedback and Delivery of Urban Services
No full textCitizen feedback is considered an
effective means for improving the performance of public
utilities. But how well does such information reflect the
actual quality of service delivery? Do so-called scorecards
or report cards measure public service delivery accurately,
or do personal and community characteristics have a
significant impact on residents' assessment of service
quality? Deichmann and Lall investigate these questions
using newly available household survey data on access to and
satisfaction with selected public services in two Indian
cities-Bangalore and Jaipur. They develop a framework where
actual levels of services received, as well as expectations
about service performance, influence a household's
satisfaction with service delivery. The authors find that
satisfaction increases with improvements in the
household's own service status, a finding that supports
the use of scorecard initiatives. But the results also
suggest that a household's satisfaction is influenced
by how service quality compares with that of its neighbors
or peers and by household level characteristics such as
welfare and tenure status. This implies that responses in
satisfaction surveys are at least in part determined by
factors that are unrelated to the service performance
experienced by the household
Urban environments, Beijing case study
No full textVarious remote sensing methods and demographic datasets are used in the Beijing case study to illustrate their capability to observed physical and demographic characteristics of the urban environment. NL data serve well to identify the outer limit of not only large urban areas but also small settlements. For each large urban contour limit from NL, DSM scatterometer data can detect urban extent and typology. Within each urban type classified by DSM data, Landsat spectral signatures can provide highresolution details of the urban land cover. It is found that DSM s0 has the highest correlation with ambient population of Beijing. To monitor urban change, data can be partitioned into different timescales. The combination of multiple remote sensing methods together with demographic measures is necessary to effectively observe urban environments, rather than each dataset standing alone - both by adding shape and contour to urban population estimates as well as to describe patterns of association between population models and those detecting the rapidly changing built environment. Although Beijing may have local characteristics in detail, it shares many issues of a megacity common to other megacities across the world, where methods and results in this Beijing study can be applicable.</p
A preliminary continental risk map for malaria mortality among African children.
No full textApproaches to global public health are increasingly driven by an understanding of regional patterns of disease-specific mortality and disability. Current estimates of disease risks associated with Plasmodium falciparum in sub-Saharan Africa remain poorly defined. Through the integration of high-resolution population and climate probability models of P. falciparum transmission, geographical information systems have been used to define the spatial limits of populations exposed to the risk of infection in Africa. These estimates were combined with a range of annual malaria-specific mortality rates, derived from a variety of epidemiological approaches, among children aged 0-4 years. The best estimates of malaria-attributable mortality using this approach ranged between 0. 43 million and 0.68 million deaths per annum among an exposed population of approximately 66 million children in 1990. Despite the limitations of modelled transmission and population distributions, these empirical approaches to probabilities of infection risk and epidemiological data on mortality provide a novel approach to present and projected burdens of malaria mortality, as discussed here by Bob Snow, Marlies Craig, Uwe Deichmann and Dave le Sueur
Fiscal and distributional implications of property tax reforms in Indian cities.
No full textThe property tax is an important local revenue source in many countries, but it is often underused as a source for financing local expenditures. In India, many local governments have initiated administrative and valuation reforms to increase the yield from property taxes. In this paper, we examine the fiscal and distributional implication of the ongoing and potential assessment reforms in two Indian cities - Bangalore and Pune. While our findings are specific to these two cases, the reform efforts and underlying problems are epresentative of most urban local governments. Our main finding is that reform efforts that bring assessment of the property tax base closer to market values have significant positive impacts on revenue generation, and do not have adverse consequences in terms of the tax burden faced by the poor. Further, regulations such as rent control significantly impinge on the growth of revenues from the property tax and in fact do not serve the interests of the poor. While current assessment reforms are a good first step towards increasing the performance of the property tax, structural issues such as improved valuation, increasing buoyancy of the tax, and building taxpayer confidence need to be addressed to make these reforms sustainable.Property tax
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