This study examines the poverty focus of Swedish bilateral aid and if a multidimensional poverty measure has an effect on the selection of Swedish strategy countries within Sida’s bilateral aid program. Sweden, while generally seen as an altruistic donor, has been noted to allocate resources to relatively richer countries as a result of its wider aim with ODA such as democratic progress and human rights protection. To analyze the relationship between Swedish bilateral aid and poverty, we use concentration curves and a logistic regression for the year of 2016 for Sweden’s strategy countries. The regressions are performed using two measures of poverty, the Multidimensional Poverty Index and extreme monetary poverty (1.9$/day), controlling for institutional and strategic factors. The results for Sweden’s bilateral aid program show a slight poverty focus in terms of multidimensional poverty, as well as tendencies to focus on consistency, geopolitics and comparative advantages. There is no significant relationship between strategy countries and degree of monetary poverty. The results are largely aligned with Swedish policy objectives.

This thesis investigates the evolutionary foundation of the Innovation System concept and the quantitative techniques that could be used for a systemic evaluation of innovation policies. This topic has been covered through 6 chapters: / Chapter I: The innovation system concept, which is the central concept of this thesis, finds its foundations in the evolutionary theory of economics and the Schumpeterian point of view on the co-evolution of innovation, organizations and institutions. Developed by Nelson and Winter in 1982, this theory is based on the idea that the surviving firms on the markets are not necessarily the ones that maximize their profits. Indeed, their ability to survive is reinforced by the development of internal organizational routines allowing for a fast adaptation to their changing environment. Thus, when assessing performances in terms of innovation in general, the single firm should not by the only centre of attention anymore. The entire environment surrounding its innovation activities should by analysed to understand the conditions underlying its failure or success. The definition of the innovation system (IS) concept finds its roots in this theory: the environment in which innovation activities take place is as important as the decision of the single innovation actor. Defined as all the institutions and organizations involved in the creation and diffusion of new knowledge and technology, the IS includes not only stakeholders of the innovation process, but also all the transversal sectors affecting innovation near or far: labour market, finance, and education… In such a context, the main justification for public intervention shifted from the market failures described by the neo-classical theory, to systemic failures, i.e. the dysfunctions of the IS, on which governments may take actions. And this shift in the policy rationale also leads to specific evaluation techniques of public initiatives. / Chapter II: The IS concept is defined as all the institutions and organizations involved in the creation, diffusion and absorption of new knowledge and technology. An important question is raised by such a point of view: what is a system? What are its components? How does it foster innovation? This theoretical step is necessary to understand all the aspect of the innovation environment that are concerned by innovation policy design. How could a policy-maker integrate the systemic framework of the IS when initiating public action with the aim to improve performances in terms of science, technology and innovation? A large part of the economic literature is dedicated to the description of innovation systems. So the aim of this chapter consists of synthetizing the aspects referenced in the economic theory as the components of the IS in a normative exercise. First, the term “system” involves the articulation of several components and the relationships existing between them. Departing from this definition, three broad aspect of the IS are considered: the actors of the innovation process, the functions of the system and the resulting objectives that should be pursued by the stakeholders, and the instruments used by public authorities to intervene in such a systemic context. The actors involved in the innovation process are not only the recipient of a public policy, they are also policy makers, implementation agents and targets of the policy measures. The functions of the IS mainly concerns the creation, diffusion and absorption of new knowledge and technology. As the role of the State is to improve the performances of such a system, those functions should be considered as the objectives of public action. Finally, the instruments used by the State to reach these goals can also be detailed: innovation policies can be implemented through direct support measures (financial or fiscal tools), the improvement of the infrastructure allowing for the diffusion of innovation, or the general framework conditions affecting performances. The normative exercise ended up with an exhaustive taxonomy that may be used for further analysis / Chapter III: As the aim of this thesis is to develop analytical tools to integrate the IS point of view in public policy evaluation, the most important aspect of the work consisted in building an exhaustive database on innovation policies implemented in the EU28 Member States and its main non-EU competitors (Australia, China, Japan, the US, India, the Russian Federation, Brazil, South Korea and Canada). This database was constructed in the context of the ENIRI study conducted by the European Commission, between 2013 and 2015. This long-lasting work involved the collection of information concerning the innovation policy measures implemented in all the considered countries, both at the national and regional levels. This information was related to the IS dimensions highlighted in previous chapter. The main sources for data collection were the RIO (former Erawatch) and OECD STIP databases, the RIM Plus Monitor and national sources (Ministry websites), as well as national experts. The budgets was also included or estimated for the 2007-2013 period. Once the data were collected, the policy measures were classified according to the theoretical canvas developed through the taxonomy of chapter II. Functional matrices combining different aspects of the IS allowed for detailed information on the distribution of policy measures among the different dimensions of the system. For example, it is possible to estimate the percentage of policy measures implemented in one country that are dedicated to the fundamental research activities in SMEs. This distribution has been computed both in absolute and budget terms. This difference provided information on the contrast existing between governmental claims and intentions in terms of innovation policies and the effective use of money dedicated to the announced target. Indeed, it is not because a substantial number of policies are dedicated to a specific sector of beneficiary that the allocated budget will be more important. Thus, this policy database should shed a light on the way innovation policies are articulated at a national level, and how they are effectively implemented through their budgets / Chapter IV: The evolutionary foundations of the IS concept imply that there is no general equilibrium describing an ideal situation to which a specific case can be compared. In other words, there is no optimal innovation system, and no ideal configuration that should be imitated by the others. This absence of equilibrium and the systemic point of view adopted in this context lead to the use of alternative techniques to evaluate performances and policies. As suggested by Edquist (2006), this has to be done through a diagnosis of the IS, consisting in the identification of the systemic failures, and the elaboration of strategy to fix the problem. This demarche will be investigated in this chapter of the thesis and the following. In this section, a diagnosis of the IS of 37 countries (28 EU and their 9 non-EU competitors) will be realized through a typology based on innovation performances indicators. The aim of such an analysis is to see whether the different IS can be gathered in groups sharing the same characteristics, relative strengths and weaknesses. The expected results should reveal groups of countries sharing the same configurations in terms of innovation process, and facing the same type of weaknesses, dysfunctions or systemic failures. By doing so, one should be able to identify the needs of each IS, i.e. the components that may need improvement and eventually public intervention. To do so, a principal component analysis and a hierarchical ascendant clustering technique have been implemented on the 37 IS, revealing 4 clusters of countries, depending on their NIS characteristics and advancement: 1) The Asian economies, 2) The lagging-behind and catching-up NIS, 3) The small opened systems, 4) The technological leaders. This analysis has been realized for the 2003-2005 and 2013-2015 periods, revealing that, if the general features of the clusters do not tend to change over time, some countries faced a change a modification of their status: Korea left the Asian group to join the leaders, Cyprus and Ireland opened their boarders to a larger extent in a decade. / Chapter V: Innovation policy typologyThis chapter is focused on the construction of an innovation policy typology based on the distributions of policies obtained in the database presented in chapter III. The results of this typology will be compared with the diagnosis realized in previous section to see if the weaknesses and needs of the NIS are effectively targeted by public action in innovation. Also, the aspects that could enhance or weaken such action, and their combination with other component of the NIS could be better understood. To this purpose, a multiple factor analysis has been implemented on the distributions of policy measures in terms of NIS components, followed by a hierarchical ascendant clustering, revealing groups of countries sharing the same characteristics in terms of policy design and implementation. 34 NIS have been examined (India, Brazil and Russia have been removed from the sample due to the bad quality of the information), using both the budget-weighted and non-budget-weighted distributions of measures on the 2007-2013 period. However, the results of this typology cannot be interpreted separately from the general innovation framework in which the public action is implemented. Indeed, countries having the same features in terms of beneficiaries and/or objectives in terms of policy do not necessarily share the same kind of IS. These implementation characteristics should rather be interpreted in light of the results obtained in the NIS diagnosis typology, in order to examiner if the public money effectively go where it is needed. In general, the different examined countries seem to effectively tackle their weaknesses, but countries facing the same types of problems do not implement the same type of policy mix, reinforcing the hypothesis that the innovation process is embedded in a large institutional framework that my orient public action in a direction rather than another. Two specific cases hold the attention in those results: South Korea, whose leader status came along with an improvement of the in force regulatory framework and a focus on private research, and Japan, dealing with research in the pharmaceutical research and ageing-population issues. / Chapter VI: The impact of macroeconomic and IS factors on the efficiency of public R&DAnother point of view can be adopted in an attempt to integrate the IS representations in policy evaluation techniques: the analysis of their impact on the efficiency of public R&D in leveraging private investments. In this chapter, a combination of two types of analysis is used to examine the problematic: the study of the efficiency of public R&D expenditure and its determinants on one hand, and the investigation of a possible crowding out effect of public R&D on the private one on another hand. The crowding out effect is translated into efficiency analysis, considering the BERD funded by government as an input, and the BERD funded by business as an output. And if an increase in the output leads to a decrease in the output, public intervention is considered to crowd out private initiative, as the firm may decide to replace its own investment with public money, instead of using it as an extra resource to increase its R&D activities. In this context, the IS as environment of R&D activities can be seen as a determinant of this efficiency, as it can strengthen or weaken this crowding out effect. The question asked in this section is the following: how to quantify and model the interdependencies existing between the different components of a NIS in order to integrate them in a quantitative analysis. This has been done in this study by implementing factorial analysis (Buesa, 2010) on a set of indicators collected in the Global Competitiveness Index database, and considered as descriptors of the different aspects of the innovation system. Those IS factors are: 1) the general STI environment, 2) the accessibility of the financial markets, 3) the internationalization of the system, 4) barriers to entrepreneurship and 5) the flexibility of labour regulation. Afterwards, these variables have been added as efficiency determinants in a stochastic frontier model assessing a possible crowding out effect between public and private initiatives. The main results showed that there is an additional effect of public R&d expenditure on private R&D investments (no crowding out). Moreover, the general STI environment and accessibility of financial markets have a positive impact on this efficiency, contrary to the presence of foreign stakeholders in the system. The two last factors remain insignificant. Those results suggest that, if public intervention should have an effect on the performances of the NIS, this relationship is also reciprocal: a well-functioning NIS may have a positive effect on the results of a policy measure. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p>While Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved phenomenal success in diverse fields in recent years, the statistical properties of the underlying algorithms are still not fully understood. One key aspect in this regard is the evaluation of the value associated with the RL agent. In this dissertation, we propose two statistically sound methods for policy evaluation and inference, and study their theoretical properties within the RL setting. </p> <p><br></p> <p>In the first work, we propose an online bootstrap method for statistical inference in policy evaluation. The bootstrap is a flexible and efficient approach for inference in online learning, but its efficacy in the RL setting has yet to be explored. Existing methods for online inference are restricted to settings involving independently sampled observations. In contrast, our method is shown to be distributionally consistent for statistical inference in policy evaluation under Markovian noise, which is a standard assumption in the RL setting. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in practical applications, we include several numerical simulations involving the temporal difference (TD) learning and Gradient TD (GTD) learning algorithms across a range of real RL environments. </p> <p><br></p> <p>In the second work, we propose a tensor Markov Decision Process framework for modeling the evolution of a sequential decision-making process when the state-action features are tensors. Under this framework, we develop a low-rank tensor estimation method for off-policy evaluation in batch RL. The proposed estimator approximates the Q-function using a tensor parameter embedded with low-rank structure. To overcome the challenge of nonconvexity, we introduce an efficient block coordinate descent approach with closed-form solutions to the alternating updates. Under standard assumptions from the tensor and RL literature, we establish an upper bound on the statistical error which guarantees a sub-linear rate of computational error. We provide numerical simulations to demonstrate that our method significantly outperforms standard batch off-policy evaluation algorithms when the true parameter has a low-rank tensor structure.</p>

A comprehensive survey of more than 1,500 former participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) along with more than 300 semi-structured interviews with former WIC participants were designed and conducted in order to identify the barriers influencing eligible program participants to leave the program prematurely. Results from the two phases of data collection were used to determine why eligible families are leaving the WIC program, to better understand the program participation barriers cited by former program participants in order to facilitate the development of a typology of program "leavers," and to identify the policy and organizational components that provide context for premature WIC program departure by participants. A narrative approach to organizational understanding and Symbolic Interactionism are utilized to provide a theoretical framework for highlighting program areas which may contribute to the participation barriers discovered in this research. Implications for public administration and policy evaluation are provided. / Ph. D.

Policymakers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining caseloads or in some other economic form - a practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than the evaluation of economic outcomes; it requires knowing about the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we have to strive for greater understanding about the socio-cultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole person, aspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth (Erikson, 1993). This is how we come to understand one;s quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model called quality of life, and illustrates the model using data from a follow-up study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities premised on a quality of life model will assist policy actors in understanding policy impacts and how to strategically manage public institutions within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform. / Ph. D.

This dissertation provides program evaluation and policy analysis evidence from USA and Iran. The first chapter studies the impact of paid leave legislation on women employment. We employ California’s first-in-the-nation Paid Family Leave program to draw inference using difference-in-differences and triple differences methods. The change in the employment outcomes for women before and after this program is compared to the change in similar outcomes for a set of control groups. We find that women’s employment increased in the intensive margin but not extensive margin. We also find that wages increased for married prime-age and decreased for highly educated young women. The second chapter provides evidence on the impact of a nation-wide unconditional cash transfer program in Iran on labor supply. As compensation for the removal of bread and energy subsidies in 2011, the government of Iran started monthly deposits of cash into individual family accounts amounting to 29% of the median household income. A popular outcry against the subsidy reform program has focused on the negative labor supply effects of the cash transfers on the poor. We use panel data to study the impact of these transfers on the labor supply of poor households and individuals during the first two years of the program, before inflation reduced their value. We use the exogenous variation in the value of the cash transfers relative to household income to estimate the impact of the transfers on labor supply of individuals using fixed effects method. We also use a difference-in-differences methodology using the variation in the time households first started receiving transfers. Although everyone was eligible to receive cash transfers starting January 2011, about 20 percent of the households who for one reason or another did not submit their application in time, started receiving it three months later. Neither set of results support the hypothesis that cash transfers reduced labor supply as measured by hours of work or probability of employment. The third chapter analyses what happens to the welfare of households and the budget of the government if it implements further price reforms in Iran. Five years into the reform, energy prices in Iran were still well below international levels. The impacts of a gradualist approach to price increase versus a one-off approach are simulated in this chapter. Under the gradualist approach government savings (reduction in foregone earnings) from selling subsidized items will increase by 20.2 trillion Rials or 0.18 percent of GDP in 2014. Half of these savings is needed as transfers to households to keep the poverty rate constant by paying each person 17,059 Rials per month. A one-off price increase would have a large effect on poverty and would require transfers equivalent to 203,775 Rials per person per month. Government savings after transfers would equal 96.4 trillion Rials or 0.87 percent of GDP. / Ph. D. / This dissertation evaluates what happened to employment after the implementation of two programs; California Family Paid Leave program and Cash transfer program in Iran. It also predicts what would happen to the well-being of households if prices of energy carriers increase in Iran. The first chapter studies the impact of paid leave legislation in California on women employment. The change in the employment outcomes like hours of work per week and wages for California’s women before and after this program is compared to the change in similar outcomes for other states. We find that women’s employment increased after this program. We also find that wages increased for married prime-age and decreased for highly educated young women. The second chapter provides evidence on the impact of a nation-wide cash transfer program in Iran on employment outcomes. As compensation for the removal of bread and energy subsidies in 2011, the government of Iran started a sizable monthly deposit of cash into individual family accounts. A popular outcry against the subsidy reform program has focused on the lower incentive to work especially on the poor. Neither set of results support the hypothesis that cash transfers reduced labor supply as measured by hours of work or probability of employment. The third chapter analyses what happens to the welfare of households and the budget of the government if it implements further price reforms in Iran. Five years into the reform, energy prices in Iran were still well below international levels. The impacts of two approaches to price increase are simulated in this chapter. In the gradualist approach, prices increased 10% each year. In this approach government savings will increase by 20.2 trillion Rials in 2014. Half of these savings is needed as transfers to households to keep the poverty rate constant. A one-off price increase would have a large effect on poverty and would require transfers equivalent to 203,775 Rials per person per month. Government savings after transfers would equal 96.4 trillion Rials.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Overweight and obesity in Mexican children substantiates the need to identify effective strategies and policies to address this problem. Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica (INSP) designed and implemented a randomized control trial (RCT) to assess an ecologically-based intervention program to modify the school environment to promote healthy lifestyle behaviours in children. The objectives of this thesis are to describe the design and impact of this RCT, to examine the program content through an ecological approach, and to examine policy activities that have been informed by the RCT findings. Four manuscripts address these objectives. Manuscript one is Promoting a Healthful Diet and Physical Activity in the Mexican School System for the Prevention of Obesity in Children: Rationale, Design and Methods. It describes the rationale, design, and methods of the two-year INSP-Secretaria de Educacion Publica (Secretary of Public Education, SEP) RCT. Manuscript two is Impact of a School-based Intervention Program on Obesity Risk Factors in Mexican Children. It reports on the environmental impact of the INSP-SEP intervention by comparing 16 intervention schools with 11 non-intervention schools. Results showed increased availability and food intake of healthy foods with a concomitant decrease in unhealthy food availability in intervention schools/children. Manuscript three is An Ecological and Theoretical Deconstruction of a School-based Obesity Prevention Program in Mexico. It reports on an assessment of the integration of ecological principles and theoretical constructs in the school-based behavioural change/obesity prevention intervention carried out by the INSP-SEP. Results showed that 32 intervention strategies were implemented in the school setting to engage target-groups; the most used SCT construct was Reciprocal Determinism. Manuscript four is titled Quality and Implementation of the Nutrition and Physical Activity School Policy Guidelines in Mexico City. It assesses the quality and implementation conditions of a policy and reports on the implementation and the uptake of the national school policy to prevent obesity in Mexico city through a policy analysis, WHO School Policy Framework (SPF) and indicators informed by the national policy. Findings showed that not all of the 10 implementation pre-conditions were met; School Guidelines mostly complied with SPF but were not fully implemented within our sample. / Thesis (Ph.D, Kinesiology & Health Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-30 17:05:33.787

<b>Background</b>: In order to protect the poor from health shocks, the Government of India launched Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) in 2008. The objectives of this study are: a) to assess the changes in the financial burden of health care on the poor population; b) to estimate the effects of RSBY in reducing the financial burden on the poor; and c) to examine the impact of RSBY on the labour supply of the poor. <b>Methods</b>: The study is based on data from the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). The sample size is between 100-125 thousand households at the all-India level. The study uses pooled cross-section regression analysis to assess the changing pattern of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments on healthcare. The impact of RSBY on financial risk protection and labour force participation rate in India were estimated using the difference-in-differences (DID) method. <b>Findings</b>: My thesis consists of three papers. The findings in the first paper, changing pattern of out-of-pocket payments, reflect that the poorest 20% of households, compared to the richest 20%, realised a slower increase in out-of-pocket as a share of the household’s total expenditure (-0.5%) and catastrophic payments (-2%) during the period of 2000-2012. However, during the same period, Scheduled caste/tribe and Muslim households reported an increased burden of out-of-pocket. The second paper finds reduction in the probability of incurring ‘any inpatient expenditure’ and ‘catastrophic inpatient expenditure’ after RSBY intervention but marginal increase in the ‘per person monthly inpatient expenditure’ and insignificant change in ‘inpatient expenditure as a share of households’ total expenditure’. The effects of the scheme on the total out-of-pocket payment are negligible and non-drug expenditure reflected significant increase. The third paper finds that women’s labour supply increased (3% per annum) but the elderly labour supply declined (1.5%). Further, men switched from self-employment to casual work while women moved to wage-paid regular and casual jobs at the cost of being self-employed. <b>Discussion and conclusion</b>: The poor and other less advantaged population groups realised an increasing OOP burden mainly on account of two factors: i) outpatient care is not covered under RSBY; and ii) the benefit package under the scheme is very modest. Women’s labour supply increased and the elderly labour supply declined in favour of leisure because of possible improvements in health. However, the overall labour supply did not change. The Indian government needs to consider broadening the benefit package and including outpatient coverage under RSBY.