Suchergebnisse

On May 13th 1969, decades of political and ethnic pressures exploded after a contentious general election, changing Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur from a bustling cityscape into a racialized battleground. Majority Malay and minority Chinese would clash for weeks afterward, leaving behind an estimated two hundred dead and a further five hundred wounded. This paper examines a variety of Malaysian Chinese constructions of the race riots in the decades afterward, piecing together the thoughts and feelings held towards an ethnically traumatic event that still holds sway in the current turbulent sky that is Malaysia's political sphere. Using essays, nonfiction, literature, and surveys from those who had lived through the riots, we see for all the lack of a cohesive narrative and general reticence regarding the riots that while the 'winner' may create history, the 'loser' can develop powerful, flexible lessons for the future.

The issue of the "fungibility" of aid, or the ability to indirectly transfer donor resources to non-targeted expenditures, is as old as foreign aid itself This article presents a summary of the issue & examines the empirical evidence for the existence of fungibility across developing countries, particularly in Africa. It determines that aid is only slightly fungible at the macro level (where funds are diverted to tax relief) but that a greater level of fungibility is observed at the meso level (i.e. funds transferred between sectors), with large variations among sectors & across countries. The number of donors present in a country appears to increase fungibility as well. However, fungibility may not be inherently bad for development. Tables, Figures. Adapted from the source document.

US development assistance represents a significant source of funding for many population programs in poor countries. The Mexico City policy, known derisively as the global gag rule, restricts activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that receive such assistance. The intent of the policy is to reduce the use of abortion in developing countries—a policy that is born entirely of US domestic politics and that turns on and off depending on the political party in power. I examine here whether the policy achieves its aim, and how the policy affects reproductive outcomes for women in Ghana.Employing a woman-by-month panel of pregnancies and woman fixed effects, I estimate whether a given woman is less likely to abort a pregnancy during two policy periods versus two nonpolicy periods. I find no evidence that any demographic group reduces the use of abortion as a result of the policy. On the contrary, rural women significantly increase abortions. This effect seems to arise from their increased rate of conception during these times. The policy-induced budget shortfalls reportedly forced NGOs to cut rural outreach services, reducing the availability of contraceptives in rural areas. The lack of contraceptives likely caused the observed 12 percent increase in rural pregnancies, ultimately resulting in about 200,000 additional abortions and between 500,000 and 750,000 additional unintended births. I find that these additional unwanted children have significantly reduced height and weight for age, relative to their siblings.Rather than reducing abortion, this policy increased pregnancy, abortion, and unintended births, resulting in more than a half-million children of significantly reduced nutritional status. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; GRP23 ; MTID

Evidence is emerging that foodborne illness accounts for a staggering health burden in developing countries. However, standard approaches used by developed country governments to ensure food safety are not appropriate in settings where regulatory enforcement capacity is weak and most firms are small and informal. Using a randomized field experiment, we test the impacts of subsidies and a price premium for safer produce on farmer adoption of technologies that improve food safety. We find that the food safety practices of farmers who produce maize for sale are inferior to those of farmers who produce maize only for household consumption, but that both a price incentive and technology subsidies can partially close this gap. We combine our experimental adoption results with prior evidence on the efficacy of the technologies studied to simulate the public health impacts of alternative policies. Our simulations show that interventions to reduce aflatoxin exposure are likely to be cost-effective based on averted poisoning deaths and cancer cases alone. Potential impacts on stunting, which are not as well established and more difficult to value, would imply additional health benefits. Of the policy options considered, providing training and plastic drying sheets to farmers free of charge is the most cost-effective. ; IFPRI3; ISI; IFPRIOA; CRP4 ; MTID; A4NH ; PR ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)

Evidence continues to mount that foodborne illness imposes a staggering health burden in developing countries. However, standard approaches used by developed country governments to ensure food safety are not appropriate in settings where regulatory enforcement capacity is weak and most firms are small and informal. Thus, interventions to improve food safety in developing countries must take into account the constraints and incentives faced by producers in these countries. In this paper, we test the impact of two such interventions: subsidies for technologies that improve food safety and price premiums for safer produce. We examine the case of on-farm control of aflatoxin, a carcinogenic toxin linked to child stunting that is produced by a fungus commonly found on maize and groundnut. We show that compared to Kenyan farmers who produce maize only for their family's own consumption, Kenyan farmers who produce maize for sale are less likely to undertake post-harvest practices that increase the unobservable quality of aflatoxin safety. Employing randomized discount vouchers, we find that willingness to pay for a new post-harvest technology to prevent aflatoxin contamination is significantly lower among market producers than subsistence farmers. However, we find that take-up of the technology among market producers increases when they have the opportunity to sell aflatoxin-safe maize at a premium a few months after harvest. Using take-up rates from the experiment, we model the impacts of public subsidies and market incentives for aflatoxin control. We find that subsidization of aflatoxin control technologies is a cost-effective strategy for reducing liver cancer and possibly also for reducing stunting in children. The most cost-effective technologies considered are widely adopted by both subsistence and market producers, implying little additional impact of a price premium on food safety. ; Non-PR ; CRP4; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; IFPRI1; Capacity Strengthening ; MTID; A4NH ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH)