Suchergebnisse

Which characteristics of NGOs are associated with the adoption of modern management practices and to what extent have those practices become standardized? Based on a national sample of 135 international and local NGOs operating in Cambodia, we address these questions by analyzing the dynamics of "monitoring and evaluation" (M&E), a term used to describe a broad range of activities that NGOs undertake to track, understand, and assess their work. We provide an overview of monitoring and evaluation in a developing country setting, investigate the factors associated with more extensive (or sophisticated) M&E using multivariate analysis, and look at how M&E practices vary between local and international NGOs. Findings demonstrate that professionalization, resource dependence, and social embeddedness all play important roles in explaining the activities of NGOs operating in Cambodia. The analysis also suggests that the flow of management practices in the NGO sector differs for local and international actors.

AbstractWe propose a new model to estimate the term structure of interest rates using observed on‐the‐run Treasury yields. The new model is an improvement over models that require a priori knowledge of the shape of the yield curve to estimate the term structure. The general form of the model is an exponential function that depends on the estimation of four parameters fit by nonlinear least squares and has straightforward interpretations. In comparing the proposed model with current yield‐curve‐smoothing models, we find that, for the data used, the proposed model does best overall in terms of pricing accuracy both in sample and out of sample.JEL classification: E43, G12

Honduras has recorded impressive gains in expanding educational access in the 1990s, with the result that primary education is available to almost all children. With improved access, the focus has shifted to quality and efficiency issues. Previous research suggests that academic achievement is still quite low, while repetition and school desertion rates continue to remain high. An important cause of these outcomes appears to lie in patterns of school attendance. Low levels of school attendance may be responsible for low academic achievement, which, in turn, is linked to high repetition and desertion rates. Recognizing this probable chain of events, this paper focuses on the school attendance decision. (DSE/DÜI)