Public‐private partnerships (PPPs) in development policy: Exploring the concept and practice

Public‐private partnerships (PPPs) have proliferated in development studies over the past decades. However, the partnership notion often remains loosely defined, thus making it difficult to grasp the concept and evaluate practice. This article aims to contribute to conceptual and empirical exploration of the PPP concept. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature, we frame eight characteristics of PPPs in development policy. Turning then to exploration of empirical practice, we present a longitudinal analysis of PPPs in Danish development policy over a 20‐year period. The conceptual and empirical insights are aimed at PPP development researchers and practitioners alike.     

Global inequality recalculated and updated: the effect of new PPP estimates on global inequality and 2005 estimates

The results of new direct price level comparisons across 146 countries in 2005 have led to large revisions of PPP (purchasing power parity) exchanges rates, particularly for China and India. The recalculations of international and global inequalities, using the new PPPs, show that inequalities are substantially higher than previously thought. Inequality between global citizens is estimated at 70 Gini points rather than 65 as before. This high level of inequality is confirmed by the results obtained from the new set of 122 national household surveys from around year 2005.     

Public Private Partnerships,the Levels of Public Investment and the New Member States

Some of the features of public private partnerships (PPPs) are outlined. The arguments that PPPs provide additional investment are critical examined, and the way in which the accounting treatment may influence the use of PPPs examined. The costs of PPPs are compared with ‘conventional’ public investment and it is argued that PPPs are a relatively expensive way of undertaking public investment. The idea that PPPs effectively transfer risk from government to private companies is assessed. Issues relating to the nature of contracts under PPPs, the transactions costs and the implementation of the contracts, are briefly considered. For the New Member States, it is suggested that national accounting rules and perceived constraints on budget deficits may encourage the use of PPPs, even if that use is not warranted in terms of costs of public investment.     

A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues,methodology and initial results

The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the World Bank’s international poverty line. In revising the line, we have sought to minimize changes to the real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs), so as to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Bank’s twin goals – which were set with respect to that line. In particular, the new line was obtained by inflating the same fifteen national poverty lines – originally used by Ravallion et al. (World Bank Econ. Rev. 23(2): 163–184 2009) to construct the $1.25 line – to 2011 prices in local currency units, and then converting them to US dollars using 2011 PPP conversion factors. With a small approximation, this procedure yields a new international poverty line of $1.90 per person per day. In combination with other changes described in the paper, this revision leads to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence for 2011: from 14.5 % using the old method to 14.1 % using the new method. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 % of the world’s population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats and limitations of the approach taken.     

International income poverty measurement: which way now?

We critically review conceptual and empirical issues surrounding the derivation of the international poverty line, expressed in PPP-adjusted dollars and linked to various rounds of the International Comparison Program (ICP). We find that there are some limitations in the current estimation of these lines, but show that statistically superior methods lead to lines that are relatively robust and confirm the $1.25 using 2005 PPPs and suggest $1.67–1.71 using 2011 PPPs (or close to the $1.90 proposed by the World Bank if we follow the World Bank’s approach of adjusting inflation rates in some countries); they also roughly confirm the current shape of the proposed ‘weakly relative’ poverty line. Using the new absolute line based on 2011 PPPs would lead to substantially lower poverty in our estimation. The extent of the decline depends on whether and how one treats China, India, and Indonesia differently from other countries in the 2005 and 2011 PPPs. More seriously, we note that the dependence on successive ICP rounds creates conceptual and empirical problems that have become worse over time so that we suggest that it would be best to consider alternatives to the current reliance on ICP rounds and the resulting PPPs. As a short-term solution we propose to fix the international poverty line in national currencies using either the 2005 or 2011 level; in the medium term, we argue for global poverty measurement based on internationally coordinated national poverty measurement.     

Initial findings from Parent Party Patrol: an intervention to reduce adolescent substance use through reduced involvement in unchaperoned parties

This article presents preliminary evaluation findings from Parent Party Patrol (PPP). PPP is a two-hour single-session intervention that provides information to parents about ways to increase monitoring and improve communication and family guidelines regarding substance use, with the goal of reducing adolescent involvement in unsupervised activities and associated substance use. Seventy-three attendees from 15 PPP sessions completed baseline and three- to six-month follow-up information. At follow-up, participants showed significantly increased awareness of adolescent substance use and unchaperoned activities, improved communication and use of family guidelines regarding substance use, and increased monitoring of their children's activities. A significant reduction in adolescent attendance at unchaperoned parties was also reported. Replication of the study with a larger, more representative sample and controlled design is suggested. As adolescent substance use is a multidetermined problem, PPP may be best viewed as one part of a broader comprehensive substance abuse prevention program.     

La construction des inégalités hommes-femmes dans l'entreprise. Une analyse de cas dans la métallurgie

Under the 1983 and 2001 laws on equality at the workplace, firms in France must submit to the works council a report “comparing the situations of men and women”. This report lays the groundwork for collective bargaining and remedial actions. Since this comparison is a snapshot at a year's interval from the previous report, it does not shed light on differences in occupational trajectories and opportunities; and it even risks masking the inequality between men and women. In contrast with the legally required report, a longitudinal analysis of data collected during a case study in a large metal-working firm shows that inequality has a long life and might be thriving. The company abides by the law but in an effort, it is hypothesized, not so much to reduce inequality between the sexes as to avoid lawsuits and prosecution.     

Public–private partnerships for e-government in developing countries: An early stage assessment framework

Although public–private partnerships (PPP) and electronic government (e-government) have proven to be fruitful mechanisms for economic development and emerging economies seem to recognize their importance, consistent methods for analyzing the early planning stages of e-government portfolios are lacking. The present work utilized a comprehensive literature review to understand the evaluation criteria for PPP projects throughout the early-stage planning process. A qualitative meta-synthesis was employed to identify critical factors for PPP and e-government, with a particular focus on developing countries, PPP, and e-government criteria. Our research presents a framework named “PPP4e-Gov” (public–private partnerships for e-government). The framework compares risk and value factors of e-government PPP projects and adopts a weighted scoring model that estimates the risks that should be considered in a project and how much value a given e-government initiative may generate if the PPP option is chosen. As an illustration of how the framework may be used, the paper interviewed ten practitioners in Costa Rica who tried out PPP4e-Gov and showcased how to plan their e-government initiatives.     

Global poverty estimates based on 2011 purchasing power parity: where should the new poverty line be drawn?

This paper aims to present a new global poverty line based on the 2011 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). To calculate a new global poverty threshold based on 2011 PPP, this paper moves away from the World Bank’s method of anchoring a single global poverty line on the national poverty lines of the 15 poorest countries. It instead proposes an alternative method of using equivalent poverty lines. Each country is shown to have a different equivalent poverty line. This paper finds that there is no single international poverty line in 2011 PPP that is equivalent to $1.25 in 2005 PPP. Single poverty lines vary for each region because countries have experienced different inflation rates and have different PPP conversion rates between 2005 and 2011. To calculate a single poverty line in 2011 PPP, this paper measures the weighted average of equivalent poverty lines of 101 countries around the globe with weights proportional to their populations. Based on the new method, the corresponding poverty line is estimated at $1.93 in 2011 PPP. The World Bank has officially adopted the poverty line of $1.90 in 2011 PPP. This paper demonstrates that our proposed poverty line performs better than the World Bank’s in terms of preserving the real purchasing power of the previous line of $1.25 in 2005 PPP. Given the new poverty threshold of $1.93, the number of poor worldwide is reduced by 6.42 million, with the reduction largely occurring in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.     

Unthinking Modernity: Historical‐Sociological,Epistemological and Logical Pathways

Modernity remains the privileged theoretical frame and narrative for long term processes at the global scale, notwithstanding the heterogeneously contested definition of its spatiotemporal coordinates, the irreconcilability of contradictions inherent to its alleged emancipatory power and the accusations of complicity with Eurocentrism. This article explores some logical, epistemological and historical‐sociological contradictions inherent in the effort to produce non‐euorcentric categories of social and historical analysis, and explains why such an effort is doomed to failure if modernity keeps on being accepted as the epistemic territory within which such an effort is located. Eurocentrism is thus defined as palingenetic, to the extent it constantly shifts its contextual meaning while reformulating European centrality in different and ever‐changing modalities; such properties of Eurocentrism as a paradigm are conceptualized in terms of its ability to operate by means of consequential isomorphism. Evidences from recent debates in history of scientific modernity are considered, in order to articulate analytical tensions between connected histories and dialogical civilizational narratives of East and West relation at the global scale. The impossibility to explain the ‘why’ of modernity according to a coherent ‘how’ of modernity without falling into Eurocentric structures of thinking is assessed. Finally, theoretical project of “unthinking modernity” is introduced as a possible way to reframe the problem of Eurocentric limits in historical and social sciences.     

President Nixon sees a ‘cover up’: Public relations in federal agencies

Early in his first term. President Nixon initiated an effort to make major cuts in the number of personnel of federal agencies engaged in public relations as well as in the agencies' public relations budgets. He described those public relations employees as “covered up pretty properly.” His goal was to “get the public relations complement in each Department reduced by 50 per cent regardless of what they are officially called.” This article reports on the origin, implementation and denouement of President Nixon's war on public relations in public administration at the federal level of government.     

Wage Inequality and Performance in Nonprofit and For‐Profit Organizations

This article examines the effects of several forms of wage inequality on service quality and employee effort. We suggest that two popular theories, tournament and fair wage/equity, are not necessarily competing. Each theory accurately describes aspects of employee behavior, but because of sectoral differences in organizational objectives and employee attitudes, tournament theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the for‐profit sector, while fair wage/equity theory's predictions are relatively stronger in the nonprofit sector. Using an employer–employee matched data set of nursing homes linked to a federal regulatory database and a resident survey, we found that ownership moderates the relationship between wage inequality and service quality. Although wage inequality positively affects service quality in the for‐profit sector, the reverse is true among nonprofit organizations. We also found that overall wage inequality in the workplace has a more pronounced influence on employee discretionary effort than does the employee's place in the distribution of wages.     

Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds

The World Bank’s international poverty line (IPL) of $1.90/day at 2011 PPPs is based on a collection of national poverty lines provided in Ravallion et al. (World Bank Econ. Rev. 23(2), 163–184, 2009), originally used to set the IPL of $1.25/day at 2005 PPPs. This paper proposes an approach for estimating a more recent, complete and comparable collection of national poverty thresholds from reported national poverty rates, and then presents a set of IPLs based on this new database of national poverty lines. In contrast to the lines used to estimate the $1.90 IPL, this approach produces national poverty lines that are (1) consistent with national poverty rates, (2) expressed in common units, and (3) provide greater support to the estimated IPL. These national poverty lines are used to estimate an extreme IPL, and three higher IPLs that are more relevant to higher-income countries. We provide evidence of the robustness and relevance of the $1.90 IPL as a measure of extreme poverty for low-income countries.     

Factors influencing the success of PPP at feasibility stage – A tripartite comparison study in Hong Kong

Public Private Partnerships (PPP) have been used extensively in both developing and developed countries in delivering various types of projects, ranging from road construction, railway transport systems to health care facilities and schools. Critical success factors of PPP schemes at the implementation stage were identified. It is however more important for decision-makers to identify the factors for feasibility evaluation of adopting the PPP at the outset. This study aims to explore the key successful ingredients to be assessed at the initial stage of PPP projects as perceived public sector, private consortium and general community so as to attain a “triple win” scenario, via a questionnaire survey and a series of expert interviews conducted in Hong Kong. Survey results indicate that the most critical factor for evaluating the feasibility of PPP projects, especially to the general community, is an acceptable level of tariff. Cost effectiveness and financial attractiveness are the most important evaluation factors as ranked by the public sector and private consortium respectively. In addition, the existence of a long-term demand for the proposed services, availability of strong private consortium, alignment with government’s strategic objectives, as well as reliable service delivery are also rated as highly important to the success of PPP schemes. Addressing the tripartite expectations is indispensable to ensure the feasibility and successful delivery of public services and infrastructure projects via PPP schemes.     

Matière à spéculer : les produits laitiers saisis par l’écrit

This article seeks to describe the work of dairy products speculators. It reveals the effort, cognitive and material, that enables these actors to handle the widening of their range of action, but also the contraction in the timescale of that action, two dynamics characteristic of the financialization process currently underway in certain international agricultural markets. In contrast with certain works critical of finance, which report a decoupling of the “financial sphere” from the “real economy”, it reveals – through close attention to the graphic media employed – agents who are aware of the materiality of the products they manipulate, despite their growing distanciation, both cognitive and geographical, from the target of their activity.     

Enclosure: Palestinian Landscape in a “Not‐Too‐Distant Mirror”

This article develops an explanation for the fractured and partitioned landscape in Palestine by comparing it to the early modern enclosures in England, and framing this comparison within a theory of “territoriality.” Territoriality is a practice of power and refers to the efforts of individuals or groups to reorganize the economic life, politics, and culture of a place by reshaping landscape. The argument is that the Palestinian landscape is part of a long‐standing narrative in which groups with power seek to transform the economy, demography, and culture of territorial space through the time‐honored territorial practice of enclosing land. Enclosure consists of two basic instruments: a legal element that redefines rights of property by reorganizing systems of use, access, and socio‐economic relations on the land; and architectural elements that reshape the landscape itself. English estate owners and Israeli Zionists are parallel actor groups using law and the built environment to remake life on the landscape. Mobilizing the institutional power of property law and the material power of the built environment, these groups reorder land ownership, use, and circulation on the landscape in an effort to consolidate systems of control over subalterns and reorganize socio‐economic life and demography in a place. By exploring the contours of this pattern, this article seeks to uncover a more general meaning in the enclosure landscape of Palestine today.     

INTERMEDIATE INFORMATION,LOSS AVERSION,AND EFFORT: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

The present article empirically explores the impact of intermediate information on contestants' effort. Data involving substituted soccer players of the German Bundesliga indicate only weak evidence of a negative effect of ex ante heterogeneity on effort; in contrast, intermediate information, measured by goal difference at the time of substitution, significantly affects effort. Players exert the greatest effort when their team is leading by one goal and reduce their effort when it is trailing. When intermediate information suggests the contest is already decided, players from both teams reduce effort. This behavior is in line with loss aversion, such that players weight potential losses more than potential gains and adjust their effort accordingly. (JEL Z22, J41, M54)     

Family‐of‐Origin Issues and the Generation of Childhood Illness

Unresolved family‐of‐origin issues can play a powerful but covert role in here‐and‐now family interactions, and can contribute to the generation and maintenance of childhood psychopathology and illness behaviour. This article describes an intervention with a family where the children frequently presented to local health services with a baffling array of psychological and somatic symptoms. The therapist was unable to pinpoint where the problem lay. In a final effort to understand family functioning she used the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) in order to better understand parental state of mind and how parental anxieties and behaviours contributed to current family functioning. This information was used to plan a treatment intervention.     

A preliminary profile of unapprehended undocumented aliens in northern New Jersey: a research note

This article sheds light on a number of questions regarding the sociodemographic structure, economic behavior, and the process of economic insertion of unapprehended undocumented aliens in the Northern New Jersey area. The data, taken from questionnaires of the clientele of the Migration Offices of the Catholic Community Services of the Archdiocese of Newark, allows an in-depth look at the goals and motivations of the family unit and the individual while permitting a glimpse of the structural causes and consequences of international migration. Respondents hold basically secondary labor market service and light industry jobs in which they work diligently without being a burden to the community. Their diligence and effort are rewarded by a respectable showing in household income figures. They also have high participation rates both in paying income taxes and filing income tax returns. Although much of the new undocumented immigration is of relatively recent origin, the respondents plan on a long-term stay. The educational and demographic profiles indicate respondents bring with them substantial amounts of human capital which is a necessary 1st step in assessing whether their overall net contribution to the US is positive or negative.