This paper shows that the recent evidence that disaggregated prices are volatile does not necessarily challenge the hypothesis of price rigidity used in a large class of macroeconomic models. We document the effect of macroeconomic and sectoral disturbances by estimating a factor-augmented vector autoregression using a large set of macroeconomic indicators and disaggregated prices. Our main finding is that disaggregated prices appear sticky in response to macroeconomic and monetary disturbances, but flexible in response to sectorspecific shocks. The observed flexibility of disaggregated prices reflects the fact that sector-specific shocks account on average for 85 percent of their monthly fluctuations. (JEL E13, E31, E32, E52)

In studies of civil strife, the ecological fallacy seems to befall all large-$n$ studies and thus there has been a big push, by several researchers, in recent years to gather disaggregated, spatially explicit data. However, while such efforts are heroic and are likely to lead to better information, we find that the resulting data can not be analysed in conventional ways, if the estimation of causal effects is the goal. The reason is that such data brings about other dangers: the violation of the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA). To be specific, one ``treated'' group's enemy could hardly be its control. We get around this problem by changing the causal effect of interest and by carefully re-aggregating the lower level data so as to preserve its most salient information. Restricting our analysis to groups that are excluded from power, we find some tentative evidence that such groups are less likely to engage in conflict if they are more spatially integrated with other groups.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

Scholars frequently use country-level indicators such as gross domestic product, bureaucratic quality, and military spending to approximate state capacity. These factors capture the aggregate level of state capacity, but do not adequately approximate the actual distribution of capacity within states. This presents a major problem, as intrastate variations in state capacity provide crucial information for understanding the relationship between state capacity and civil war. We offer nighttime light emissions as a measure of state capacity. It allows us to differentiate the influence of local variation on the outbreak of civil wars within the country from the effect of aggregate state capacity at the country level. We articulate pathways linking the distribution of nighttime light with the expansion of state capacity and validate our indicator against other measures at different levels of disaggregation across multiple contexts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that civil wars are more likely to erupt where the state exercises more control. We provide three mechanisms that, we believe, account for this counterintuitive finding: rebel gravitation, elite fragmentation, and expansion reaction. In the first scenario, state presence attracts insurgent activities. In the second, insurgents emerge as a result of the fragmentation of political elites. In the third, antistate groups react violently to the state penetrating into a given territory. Finally, we validate these mechanisms using evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

Large-scale emergencies, like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrate pervasive effects across multiple sectors. There is a continually growing body of evidence demonstrating gender and sex differences in COVID-19 disease, as well as its health, social, and economic impacts. While online resources have worked to compile this evidence, there is a need to evaluate and synthesize the available gender- and sex-disaggregated data related to COVID-19. This literature review will systematically assess and compile current literature and evidence from different disciplines. We will include peer reviewed articles, clinical studies and reports, and relevant working papers using secondary data analyses and primary research methodologies. We will synthesize and describe the evidence on multiple outcomes of interest, including gender and sex differences in mortality, severity, treatment outcomes, exposure to violence, mental health and psychosocial support needs, and economic insecurity with COVID-19. These results can be used to inform policy, identify research gaps, and support recommendations for priority interventions.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

The data consists of interview and focus group transcripts, survey results and desk research. Interviews and focus groups took place in two phases. Phase one (March-November 2017) included senior managers and education developers within universities in South Africa and England and senior managers from private companies and other organisations in South Africa and England. Phase two (February-May 2018) included universities’ academic staff in South Africa and England. Surveys were conducted with 200 students at four South African universities during February and March 2018. Surveys were also conducted with 200 students at four English universities during May and June 2018. Desk research was conducted pertaining to the partnerships between public universities and private companies in the UK and South Africa from December 2017 to March 2018, and updated in August 2018. It involved iterative searches of publicly-available databases using search terms identified through the conception of the project.

The nature of Higher Education is rapidly evolving in South Africa. Educational technologies, public-private partnerships and shifting employer expectations are resulting in rapid and unprecedented 'unbundling' and marketization of Higher Education. For example, over the past few years we have witnessed the appearance of many flexible online courses and qualifications, short courses and MOOCs, often delivered in partnerships between universities and private organisations. Unbundling refers to the process of disaggregating curricula into standalone units often available in flexible online modes, allowing universities to respond to the pressures of widening access, increasing student numbers, competition from alternative providers and technological change, by distributing provision across several individual, more cost-effective components. Marketization refers to the increasing presence of alternative (private) providers offering HE provision alongside universities, often through online means and at lower costs, and the emerging partnerships between universities and private providers to offer accredited learning at a wide range of levels. In particular, the South African higher education context seems poised to benefit from market-based innovations that may assist with the need to increase equality and access across the diverse sectors of South African society. Whilst these changes may offer opportunities for increased numbers of learners to access education and thus contribute to economic prosperity, there is very little empirical research about the process and impact of unbundling, or the marketization of Higher Education in Africa, or developed countries. In practice, we are observing the emergence of unspecified business models based on different flavours of 'unbundling', which in turn are leading to unclear relationships between universities and private partners or providers. For unbundled technology enhanced education or public-private partnerships to impact positively on sustainable economic growth in Africa, there is an urgent need for systematic research in this area, which is the topic of this timely and innovative proposal. Therefore, we ask the following overarching question: How are unbundling and marketization changing the nature of higher education provision in South Africa, and what impact will this have on widening access, educational achievement, employability and thus the potential for economic development? We will explore this research question through a focus on the process of 'educational market making'. We aim to examine marketization and unbundling in HE as the outcomes of negotiations and manoeuvres which have a 'constitutive' function. Our central assumption is that markets do not appear naturally, but are 'made' through increasingly networked interactions that involve individual decision-making, collective discourse, technical expertise and the deployment of key 'objects': educational technologies, data analysis techniques, and innovative business models. Our study will rely on primary evidence collected through interviews with 'experts', and on the analysis of available datasets, documents and other artefacts and, crucially, through systematic engagement with a wide range of stakeholders. The outcomes of this project will directly impact the future development of HE in South Africa, other African countries and in the UK, through providing evidence of the effectiveness of disaggregation of curricula and alternative providers offering HE on educational outcomes, access to HE and employability. The project will have direct impact through critically evaluating the on-going trends of 'unbundling' and marketization on South Africa's economic development. The research will provide evidence of the effectiveness of educational technology to support the emerging HE market, directly impacting the educational technology sector, technology suppliers and alternative HE providers.

ABSTRACT Using data of selected economies of Latin America for the period 1990-2017, this paper aims to provide empirical evidence regarding the effect of disaggregate government spending in the exchange rate. Our results indicate that government investment depreciates the exchange rate whereas government consumption, on the other hand, appreciates it. Both effects are, however, rather small. Our findings support recent literature showing that the relationship among government spending and the exchange rate is ambiguous, challenging the general accepted idea that government spending inevitably appreciates the exchange rate, having thus negative effects on the tradable sector and on growth. Overall, our results allow us to suggest that growth can be stimulated particularly via government investment without detrimental effects on the exchange rate.

The Kazakhstan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) was conducted in 2015 by the Statistics Committee of the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan (herein MNE RK). This is the third MICS Survey in Kazakhstan. The findings from these surveys were used in development and implementation of state programmes in the areas of mother and child health, as well as country programmes of the United Nation Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Kazakhstan, highlighting the need to improve the statistical data management system with regard to children. Such surveys are crucially important in terms of assessing the state of children and women in Kazakhstan as they provide unique information for development of the national child-centred policy and for international positioning of Kazakhstan. The survey provides statistically sound and internationally comparable data essential for development of evidence base and programmes, and for monitoring country progress towards national goals and global (international) commitments. Among these global commitments are those emanating from international agreements the World Fit for Children Declaration and its Plan of Action, the goals of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, the Education for All Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In addition, the 2015 Kazakhstan MICS results will contribute to establishing a baseline for monitoring the state of women and children in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). OBJECTIVES To provide up-to-date information for assessing the situation of children and women in the Republic of Kazakhstan; To collect information that will help to improve national policies in the area of childhood and motherhood protection; To generate data for the critical assessment of the progress made in various areas, and to put additional efforts in areas that require more attention; To collect disaggregated data for the identification of disparities, to allow for evidence based policy-making aimed at social inclusion of the most vulnerable; To validate data from other sources and the results of focused interventions; To contribute to the generation of baseline data for the post-2015 agenda; To contribute to the improvement of data and monitoring systems in the Republic of Kazakhstan and to strengthen technical expertise in the design and implementation of such systems as well as in a better analysis of available data.

Understanding gender is essential to understanding the risk factors of poor health, early death and health inequities. The COVID-19 outbreak is no different. At this point in the pandemic, we are unable to provide a clear answer to the question of the extent to which sex and gender are influencing the health outcomes of people diagnosed with COVID-19. However, experience and evidence thus far tell us that both sex and gender are important drivers of risk and response to infection and disease.

In order to understand the role gender is playing in the COVID-19 outbreak, countries urgently need to begin both collecting and publicly reporting sex-disaggregated data. At a minimum, this should include the number of cases and deaths in men and women.

In collaboration with CNN, Global Health 50/50 began compiling publicly available sex-disaggregated data reported by national governments to date and is exploring how gender may be driving the higher proportion of reported deaths in men among confirmed cases so far.

For more, please visit: http://globalhealth5050.org/covid19

This project examines a key assumption which underlies one of the main approaches to poverty reduction currently advocated and practised by many international development agencies. Enormous energies and resources are devoted to institutional reform in order to improve the investment climate and thus promote economic growth. The assumption is that institutional reform comes first and investment follows. The project investigates whether this widely assumed sequence applies in the real world or whether, in fact, investment and growth provide the impetus for institutional reform. The project suggests a new way of examining this issue by drawing on comparative intra-country evidence and by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Vietnam has data on growth, investment and the quality of governance, disaggregated by province and component of governance reform, for five consecutive years. The availability of such panel data makes it possible to examine the sequencing and dynamics of reform. Complementary qualitative research methods will be used to check the quantitative results and explore political dynamics at work. The project was designed and will be executed jointly by a team of IDS Fellows and Vietnamese collaborators.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria for reviewed studies.

This dataset was compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides the Humanitarian Country Team’s shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance, and represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.

Today´s connected world allows people to gather information in shorter intervals than ever before, widely monitored by massive online data sources. As a dramatic economic event, recent financial crisis increased public interest for large companies considerably. In this paper, we exploit this change in information gathering behavior by utilizing Google query volumes as a "bad news" indicator for each corporation listed in the Standard and Poor´s 100 index. Our results provide not only an investment strategy that gains particularly in times of financial turmoil and extensive losses by other market participants, but reveal new sectoral patterns between mass online behavior and (bearish) stock market movements. Based on collective attention shifts in search queries for individual companies, hence, these findings can help to identify early warning signs of financial systemic risk. However, our disaggregated data also illustrate the need for further efforts to understand the influence of collective attention shifts on financial behavior in times of regular market activities with less tremendous changes in search volumes.

This data was consolidated by OCHA on behalf of the Humanitarian Country Team and partners. It provides a shared understanding of the crisis, including the most pressing humanitarian need and the estimated number of people who need assistance. It represents a consolidated evidence base and helps inform joint strategic response planning.