Download or read book A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Analysis written by Marc Bacchetta and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trade flows and trade policies need to be properly quantified to describe, compare, or follow the evolution of policies between sectors or countries or over time. This is essential to ensure that policy choices are made with an appropriate knowledge of the real conditions. This practical guide introduces the main techniques of trade and trade policy data analysis. It shows how to develop the main indexes used to analyze trade flows, tariff structures, and non-tariff measures. It presents the databases needed to construct these indexes as well as the challenges faced in collecting and processing these data, such as measurement errors or aggregation bias. Written by experts with practical experience in the field, A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Analysis has been developed to contribute to enhance developing countries' capacity to analyze and implement trade policy. It offers a hands-on introduction on how to estimate the distributional effects of trade policies on welfare, in particular on inequality and poverty. The guide is aimed at government experts engaged in trade negotiations, as well as students and researchers involved in trade-related study or research. An accompanying DVD contains data sets and program command files required for the exercises. Copublished by the WTO and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Download or read book Better Cities Better World written by Catherine Farvacque-Vitkovic and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The planet is becoming increasingly urban. In many ways, the urbanization wave and the unprecedented urban growth of the past 20 years have created a sense of urgency and an impetus for change. Some 54 percent of the world population—3.9 billion people—lives in urban areas today; thus, it has become clear that “business as usual†? is no longer possible. This new configuration places great expectations on local governments. While central governments are subject to instability and political changes, local governments are seen as more inclined to stay the course. Because they are closer to the people, the voice of the people is more clearly heard for a truly democratic debate over the choice of neighborhood investments and city-wide policies and programs, as well as the decision process on the use of public funds and taxpayers’ money. In a context of skewed financial resources and complex urban challenges—which range from the provision of basic traditional municipal services to the “newer†? agenda of social inclusion, economic development, city branding, emergency response, smart technologies, and green investment—more cities are searching for more effective and innovative ways to deal with new and old problems. Better Cities, Better World: A Handbook on Local Governments Self-Assessments is at the heart of this debate. It recognizes the complex past, current, and future challenges that cities face and outlines a bottom-line, no-nonsense framework for data-based policy dialogue and action; a common language that, for the first time, helps connect the dots between public investments programming (Urban Audit/Self-Assessment) and financing (Municipal Finances Self-Assessment). It helps address two key questions, too often bypassed when it comes to municipal infrastructure and services financing: Are we doing the right things? Are we doing things right? Better Cities, Better World: A Handbook on Local Governments Self-Assessments offers a bit of everything for everyone. • Central governments will be attracted by the purposefulness and clarity of these tools, their impact on local government capacity and performance building, and how they improve the implementation of transformative actions for policy change. • City leaders and policy makers will find the sections on objectives and content instructive and informative, with each issue placed in its context, and strong connections between data and municipal action. • Municipal staff in charge of day-to-day management will find that the sections on tasks and the detailed step-by-step walk through the process give them the pragmatic knowhow that they need. • Cities’ partners—such as bilateral and multilateral agencies, banks and funds, utility companies, civil society, and private operators—will find the foundations for more effective collaborative partnerships.

Download or read book Food Security in Africa written by Alexander Sarris and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'As they often do, Jamie Morrison and Alexander Sarris have provided researchers, policy-makers, and the interested public with the firm empirical grounding needed for sound agricultural development policies. They have synthesized from a rich and varied set of country studies a unique contribution to one of the key challenges of our times increasing the productivity of smallholder food production in the age of globalization.' Timothy A. Wise, Tufts University, US 'Food security has been a major concern in Africa for decades, and a more pressing problem with recent increases in food prices. The editors and contributors to this volume are experts in the field and should be commended for a timely, informative and in places challenging analysis of food production and markets in eastern and southern Africa. The volume brings a refreshing variety of theoretical, analytical and informed case study approaches to bear on the food security problem; it should be read by anybody seriously interested in African development.' Oliver Morrissey, University of Nottingham, UK Drawing on insights from theoretical applications, empirically based approaches and case study experience, this book contributes to the improved design and use of trade and related policy interventions in staple food markets. Trade policy interventions have a potentially critical role to play in the development of staple food markets in developing countries and, as a source of revenue, in wider processes of rural development. Governments have long defended trade and related policy interventions in staple food markets on the basis of food security concerns. However, the design and implementation of these policies has often resulted in unintended impacts, increasing the risks faced by private sector actors and reducing their incentives for investment in improved market performance. In the context of increasingly volatile staple food markets, this book, commissioned from leading experts in this field, seeks to enhance dialogue between stakeholders involved in, and affected by, the design and use of trade and related policy interventions. This significant book will appeal to policy analysts and decision makers influential in the design and implementation of trade and related market interventions, as well as students of development economics. Researchers contributing to debates on the use and impacts of trade and related market interventions in staple food markets in poor countries will also find this volume of great benefit.

Download or read book Beyond Structural Adjustment written by Nicolas Van de Walle and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-08-30 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the World Bank famously put it back in 1989, 'underlying the litany of Africa's development problems is a crisis of governance.' This is a collection of authoritative essays bringing together prominent Africanists in political science and public administration to look at the role of governance in African development. The goal of the book is to move beyond the status quo debates about 'structural adjustment' and to look at all the public and civic institutions which are likely to play a critical role if Africa is to overcome its economic crisis.

Download or read book Municipal Finances written by Catherine D. Farvacque-Vitkovic and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-06-27 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells a fascinating story on municipal finances for local government practitioners with rich examples, global practices, and good and bad experiences the authors gained in decades of field work.

Download or read book Studies in the Iconography of Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals written by Benjamin Sass and published by Saint-Paul. This book was released on 1993 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Biological Adhesives written by Andrew M. Smith and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-01-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many creatures use adhesive polymers and structures to attach to inert substrates, to each other, or to other organisms. This is the first major review that brings together research on many of the well-known biological adhesives dealing with bacteria, fungi, algae, and marine and terrestrial animals. As we learn more about their molecular and mechanical properties we begin to understand why they adhere so well and with this comes broad applications in areas such as medicine, dentistry, and biotechnology.

Download or read book Law Public Policies and Complex Systems Networks in Action written by Romain Boulet and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how various scientific communities – e.g. legal scientists, political scientists, sociologists, mathematicians, and computer scientists – study law and public policies, which are portrayed here as complex systems. Today, research on law and public policies is rapidly developing at the international level, relying heavily on modeling that employs innovative methods for concrete implementation. Among the subject matter discussed, law as a network of evolving and interactive norms is now a prominent sphere of study. Similarly, public policies are now a topic in their own right, as policy can no longer be examined as a linear process; rather, its study should reflect the complexity of the networks of actors, norms and resources involved, as well as the uncertainty or weak predictability of their direct or indirect impacts. The book is divided into three maain parts: complexity faced by jurists, complexity in action and public policies, and complexity and networks. The main themes examined concern codification, governance, climate change, normative networks, health, water management, use-related conflicts, legal regime conflicts, and the use of indicators.

Download or read book Petunia written by Tom Gerats and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petunia belongs to the family of the Solanaceae and as such is closely related to important crop species like tomato, potato, eggplant, pepper and tobacco. With around 35 species described it is one of the smaller genera and among those there are two groups of species that make up the majority of them: the purple flowered P.integrifolia group and the white flowered P.axillaris group. It is assumed that interspecific hybrids between members of these two groups have laid the foundation for the huge variation in cultivars as selected from the 1830’s onwards. Petunia thus has been a commercially important ornamental since the early days of horticulture. Despite that, Petunia was in use as a research model only parsimoniously until the late fifties of the last century. By then seed companies started to fund academic research, initially with the main aim to develop new color varieties. Besides a moment of glory around 1980 (being elected a promising model system, just prior to the Arabidopsis boom), Petunia has long been a system in the shadow. Up to the early eighties no more then five groups developed classical and biochemical genetics, almost exclusively on flower color genes. Then from the early eighties onward, interest has slowly been growing and nowadays some 20-25 academic groups around the world are using Petunia as their main model system for a variety of research purposes, while a number of smaller and larger companies are developing further new varieties. At present the system is gaining credibility for a number of reasons, a very important one being that it is now generally realized that only comparative biology will reveal the real roots of evolutionary development of processes like pollination syndromes, floral development, scent emission, seed survival strategies and the like. As a system to work with, Petunia combines advantages from several other model species: it is easy to grow, sets abundant seeds, while self- and cross pollination is easy; its lifecycle is four months from seed to seed; plants can be grown very densely, in 1 cm2 plugs and can be rescued easily upon flowering, which makes even huge selection plots easy to handle. Its flowers (and indeed leaves) are relatively large and thus obtaining biochemical samples is no problem. Moreover, transformation and regeneration from leaf disc or protoplast are long established and easy-to-perform procedures. On top of this easiness in culture, Petunia harbors an endogenous, very active transposable element system, which is being used to great advantage in both forward and reverse genetics screens. The virtues of Petunia as a model system have only partly been highlighted. In a first monograph, edited by K. Sink and published in 1984, the emphasis was mainly on taxonomy, morphology, classical and biochemical genetics, cytogenetics, physiology and a number of topical subjects. At that time, little molecular data was available. Taking into account that that first monograph will be offered electronically as a supplement in this upcoming edition, we would like to put the overall emphasis for the second edition on molecular developments and on comparative issues. To this end we propose the underneath set up, where chapters will be brief and topical. Each chapter will present the historical setting of its subject, the comparison with other systems (if available) and the unique progress as made in Petunia. We expect that the second edition of the Petunia monograph will draw a broad readership both in academia and industry and hope that it will contribute to a further expansion in research on this wonderful Solanaceae.

Download or read book Coffee Growing Processing Sustainable Production written by Jean Nicolas Wintgens and published by Wiley-VCH. This book was released on 2004-10-08 with total page 1034 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quick pick-me-up or a subtle beverage with an aroma that conjures up images of special moments shared with special people? There′s more to coffee than that. Apart from being a beautiful tree with fragrant flowers, coffee is also a culture, practically a religion to a certain elite and certainly a source of income to millions of people, rich and poor alike. Coffee professionals around the world will find the specific information they need in this lavishly illustrated and practical work designed to answer all their questions about the coffee plant and how it is grown, harvested, processed and refined. Specialists and experienced professionals were consulted and some 40 renowned international experts have contributed their specific knowledge and expertise to this comprehensive handbook, covering such topics as: ∗ Growing ∗ Pests, diseases, and their control ∗ Harvesting and processing ∗ Storage, shipment, quality ∗ The latest economical and technological aspects. In addition, special indexes demystify such confusing data as information sources, conversion tables and other technicalities. With its 40 chapters, over 1000 pages and 900 superb illustrations, this is a universally reliable manual, providing basic guidelines and recommendations applicable everywhere, and not geared to any specific country.

Download or read book Product Lifecycle Management for Digital Transformation of Industries written by Ramy Harik and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th IFIP WG 5.1 International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, PLM 2016, held in Columbia, SC, USA, in July 2016. The 57 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: knowledge sharing, re-use and preservation; collaborative development architectures; interoperability and systems integration; lean product development and the role of PLM; PLM and innovation; PLM tools; cloud computing and PLM tools; traceability and performance; building information modeling; big data analytics and business intelligence; information lifecycle management; industry 4.0; metrics, standards and regulation; and product, service and systems.

Download or read book Project Management for Engineering Business and Technology written by John M. Nicholas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-02 with total page 755 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Project Management for Engineering, Business and Technology is a highly regarded textbook that addresses project management across all industries. First covering the essential background, from origins and philosophy to methodology, the bulk of the book is dedicated to concepts and techniques for practical application. Coverage includes project initiation and proposals, scope and task definition, scheduling, budgeting, risk analysis, control, project selection and portfolio management, program management, project organization, and all-important "people" aspects—project leadership, team building, conflict resolution, and stress management. The systems development cycle is used as a framework to discuss project management in a variety of situations, making this the go-to book for managing virtually any kind of project, program, or task force. The authors focus on the ultimate purpose of project management—to unify and integrate the interests, resources and work efforts of many stakeholders, as well as the planning, scheduling, and budgeting needed to accomplish overall project goals. This sixth edition features: updates throughout to cover the latest developments in project management methodologies; a new chapter on project procurement management and contracts; an expansion of case study coverage throughout, including those on the topic of sustainability and climate change, as well as cases and examples from across the globe, including India, Africa, Asia, and Australia; and extensive instructor support materials, including an instructor’s manual, PowerPoint slides, answers to chapter review questions and a test bank of questions. Taking a technical yet accessible approach, this book is an ideal resource and reference for all advanced undergraduate and graduate students in project management courses, as well as for practicing project managers across all industry sectors.

Download or read book Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering written by Patrick Chedmail and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the selected papers of the first I.D.M.M.E. conference on 'Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering', held in Nantes from 15-17 April 1996. Its objective was to discuss the questions related to the definition of the optimal design and manufacturing processes and to their integration through coherent methodologies in adapted environments. The initiative of the Conference and the organization thereof, is mainly due to the efforts of the french PRIMECA group (Pool of Computer Resources for Mechanics) started eight years ago. We were able to attract the internationru community with the support of the International Institution for Production Engineering Research (C.I.R.P.). The conference brought together two hundred and fifty specialists from around the world. About ninety papers and twenty posters were presented covering three main topics : optimization and evaluation of the product design process, optimization and evaluation of the manufacturing systems and methodological aspects.

Download or read book Decentralisation School Based Management and Quality written by Joseph Zajda and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-08-21 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, which is the eighth volume in the 12-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, presents scholarly research on major discourses in decentralisation, school-based management (SBM) and quality in education globally. This book, which focuses on decentralisation and SBM as a governance strategy in education, presents theoretical aspects of the phenomenon of decentralisation/privatisation and contextualises them within the education research literature. It provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information concerning the dynamics of decentralisation and SBM that normally take place when reforms are instituted to decentralize authority and power. Above all, the authors offering the latest findings regarding major discourses in dec- tralisation, SBM and quality in educational systems in the global culture emphasise aspects of that dynamic interactive process (see also Geo-JaJa 2006a; Gamage and Sooksomchitra 2006, Zajda 2009). This dynamic interaction in the process that is implicit in the title of the book is reified by calls for restructuring of schools f- lowing the idea that schools are not promoting human rights, social cohesion and sustainable development. The chapters as a source book of ideas for researchers, practitioners and policy makers in decentralisation and SBM in education contr- ute to the educational literature while enhancing the understanding of the larger dynamics involved in educational reform. It offers a timely overview of current issues affecting decentralisation in education in the global culture.

Download or read book Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management written by Dimitris Karagiannis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Pr- tical Aspects of Knowledge Management organized by the Department of Knowledge Management, Institute of Computer Science and Business Informatics, University of Vienna. The event took place on December 02–03, 2004 in Vienna. The PAKM conference series offers a communication forum and meeting ground for practitioners and researchers engaged in developing and deploying advanced bu- ness solutions for the management of knowledge and intellectual capital. Contributions pursuing integrated approaches which consider organizational, technological and c- tural issues of knowledge management have been elected for presentation. PAKM is a forum for people to share their views, to exchange ideas, to develop new insights, and to envision completely new kinds of solutions for knowledge management problems. The accepted papers are of high quality and are not too specialized so that the main issues can be understood by someone outside the respective ?eld. This is crucial for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. Like its predecessors, PAKM 2004 featured two invited talks. It is a real joy seeing the visibility of the conferenceincrease and noting that kno- edge management researchers and practitioners from all over the world submitted - pers. This year, 163 papers and case studies were submitted, from which 48 were - cepted.

Download or read book Spliceosomal Pre mRNA Splicing written by Klemens J. Hertel and published by Humana. This book was released on 2014-02-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a guide to classical experimental approaches to decipher splicing mechanisms and experimental strategies that rely on novel multi-disciplinary approaches, Spliceosomal Pre-mRNA Splicing: Methods and Protocols describes the theory of alternative pre-mRNA splicing in seven introductory chapters and then introduces protocols and their theoretical background relevant for a variety of experimental research. These protocol chapters cover basic methods to detect splicing events, analyses of alternative pre-mRNA splicing in vitro and in vivo manipulation of splicing events and high-throughput and bioinformatic analyses of alternative splicing. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible protocols and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Comprehensive and practical, Spliceosomal Pre-mRNA Splicing: Methods and Protocols will aid newcomers and seasoned molecular biologists in understanding the fascinating world of alternative splicing with the ultimate goal of paving the way for many new discoveries to come.

Download or read book Industrial Project Management written by Stefano Tonchia and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This rigorously academic book describes - in a precise but practical way - the most recent principles and techniques of project management, at the highest international standards, with a fully company-wide, process-based, multi-project approach.