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The purpose of this paper is to propose a new temporal disaggregation method for time series based on the accumulated and inverse accumulated generating operations in grey modeling and the interpolation method.

This disaggregation method includes three main steps, including accumulation, interpolation, and differentiation (AID). First, a low frequency flow series is transformed to the corresponding stock series through accumulated generating operation. Then, values of the stock series at unobserved time is estimated through appropriate interpolation method. And finally, the disaggregated stock series is transformed back to high frequency flow series through inverse accumulated generating operation.

The AID method is tested with a sales series. Results shows that the disaggregated sales data are satisfactory and reliable compared with the original data and disaggregated data using a time series model. The AID method is applicable to both long time series and grey series with insufficient information.

The AID method can be easily used to disaggregate low frequency flow series.

The AID method is a combination of grey modeling technique and interpolation method. Compared with other disaggregation methods, the AID method is simple, and does not require auxiliary information or plausible minimizing criterion required by other disaggregation methods.

Gender inequality remains very strong in developing countries. Efforts are however made by actors involved in development projects to contribute to reducing these inequalities. Using observations coming from field experiences and a specific case for which some sex-disaggregated data are available, the author offers some lessons learned to practitioners. More specifically, this chapter questions the different phases of the project cycle, in particular the planning, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms regarding their role in considering gender. The chapter focuses on the relevance of initial gender diagnostics which allow identifying what needs to be addressed to reduce gender inequalities and proposing adequate solutions in specific cultural contexts. The author then provides some guidelines concerning operational arrangements necessary for effectively monitoring aspects related to the inclusion of women in development projects. This includes the design and implementation of a gender strategy, the designation of a dedicated focal point, the systematic planning and monitoring of sex-disaggregated data, the provision of staff skilled in gender issues, and the presence of a gender balance in project teams and support staff. The chapter emphasizes that it is essential to analyze the differential impacts that the development project may have on men and women; this is rarely done. Experience has shown that development can increase inequality due in particular to initial gender differences. Finally, the chapter recommends that to compensate for differences in initial opportunities and capacities, support for women in the budget should be strengthened.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of large inflow of foreign workers on the Singapore manufacturing productivity using a panel data at the disaggregated industry level from 1998 to 2008. The results indicate that foreign workers do make productive contribution to manufacturing productivity, but it is much lower as compared to local workers. However, the author observe the declining capital-labour ratio with the increase in the flow of foreign workers. This is expected to have direct impact on the competitiveness of the manufacturing in the export market. Since new technologies are embodied in new capital investment, the declining capital-labour ratio indicates that workers might be producing output with less technology-intensive capital. Conversely, local workers are more productive with high capital investment, indicating that local workers are more skilled and hence there is more complementarity between capital investments and local human capital.

The author implement a panel estimation of disaggregated industry level data of Singapore manufacturing from 1998 to 2008. The author use GMM estimation to control for any endogeneity issues in the estimation.

The results indicate that foreign workers do make productive contribution to manufacturing productivity; but it is much lower as compared to local workers. However; the author observe the declining capital-labour ratio with the increase in the flow of foreign workers.

The data for foreign workers at the disaggregated level is not publically available and this is given for this research purpose. The data for foreign workers is limited as it does not have by educational levels.

This is the first paper to study impact of foreign workers on manufacturing sector at a disaggregated panel data. There are important policy implications for managing foreign workers and achieving sustainable growth for the Singapore economy.

The welfare and social impacts of foreign workers on the Singapore economy is discussed. There is also the issue of policy calibration to balance the flow of foreign workers in the Singapore economy.

This is the first paper to study impact of foreign workers on manufacturing sector at a disaggregated panel data.

The purpose of this article is to examine empirically the impact of aggregation on forecasting accuracy; specifically, whether more accurate forecasts are obtained by forecasting a number of disaggregated tourist flows and summing the forecasts to obtain the aggregate forecast, or by summing the disaggregated tourist flows and forecasting the aggregate series directly. On the one hand, it may be easier to produce accurate forecasts from disaggregated series as the latter allow for differing behavioural patterns which may be more readily recognisable and hence easier to model and extrapolate. On the other hand, more aggregate series may be less susceptible to “noise” and therefore easier to forecast.

There is a growing understanding that gender-blind business support measures do not assist women’s enterprise development to the extent that they assist its male equivalent. Focusing efforts specifically on women’s enterprise development, and measuring the impact of those efforts, is paramount. This paper aims to assess the evolution of two indices that analyze high-impact female entrepreneurship development: the Gender-Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI) and the 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard. Both utilize data from reliable data sources, yet are limited by the quality and availability of sex-disaggregated data. However, they differ in terms of variable choice, methodology and results.

In this paper, the authors assess the evolution of two indices that analyze high-impact female entrepreneurship development. High-impact female entrepreneurship is defined as firms headed by women that are market-expanding, export-oriented and innovative. The assessment is focused on two new indices, the 2013 and 2014 Gender-GEDI and, the newly created measurement tool, the 2015 Global Women Entrepreneur Leaders Scorecard.

Both indices rely on existing data from reliable, internationally recognized data sets, yet are limited by the sex-disaggregated data that are currently available. However, they differ in terms of variable choice, methodology and results.

There is an increasing need by researchers and policy makers alike to consolidate existing data to better understand the existing barriers for women entrepreneurs and to be able to benchmark change. This paper assesses two indices that provide insights into the conditions for high-impact women entrepreneurs in a country comparative way.

Countries across the world have committed to the attainment of Agenda 2030 by implementing policies to achieve all the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Development experience during the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) suggests that ensuring equity is one of the basic pillars required to achieve SDGs. Unfortunately, gender is a major fault line across which development gets unequally distributed. While SDG 5 enshrines the need for achieving gender equality, its global progress has been staggered and saw a further decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gender equality is poorly integrated with all the SDGs as only 104 out of 246 SDG indicators identify gender-based issues. There continues to remain a widespread data gap even for the goals which have gender-related indicators as merely 35 out of the 104 gender-related indicators (9 of the 17 SDGs) had robust data systems and methodologies in place until recently. Consequently, countries with entrenched patriarchal and unequal societies have consistently lagged in the attainment of gender related SDGs and have struggled to mainstream gender.

This chapter argues that gender data is the foundation for ensuring gender equality and promoting evidence-based policymaking. It therefore makes a case for mainstreaming gender-related indicators in SDGs 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15, and 17 along with expanding the gendered understanding of people-related goals in the areas of education, health, and employment. Moreover, it reiterates the need for gender data collection to move beyond the binary construct of male and female to integrate an intersectional lens.

Despite decades of research, the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and foreign direct investment (FDI) remains ambiguous. Using a recently developed patent enforcement index (along with a broader IPR index) and a large sectoral country-to-country FDI dataset, the authors revisit the FDI-IPR relationship by testing the impact of IPRs on UK and US outward FDI (OFDI) flows as well as earnings from outward FDI (EOFDI).

The authors use disaggregated data for up to 9 distinct sectors of economic activity from both the US and UK for OFDI flows and EOFDI, for a panel of up to 42 developed and developing countries over sample periods from 1998 to 2015. The authors employ a panel fixed effects (FE) approach that allows exploiting the longitudinal properties of the data using Driscoll and Kraay's (1998) nonparametric covariance matrix estimator.

The authors do not find any consistent evidence in support of the hypothesis that countries' strength of IPR protection or enforcement affects inward FDI, or that sector of investment matters. The results prove robust to sensitivity checks that include an alternative broader measure of IPR strength, analyses across sub-samples disaggregated according to the strength of countries' IPRs as well as developing vs developed economies and an extended specification accounting for dynamic effects of the response of FDI to both previous investment levels and IPR (patent) protection.

The authors make use of the largest most granular sectoral country-to-country FDI dataset employed to date in the analysis of the FDI-IPR nexus with disaggregated data for OFDI and EOFDI across up to 9 distinct sectors of economic activity from both the US and UK The authors employ a more sophisticated measure of IPR strength, the patent index proposed by Papageorgiadis et al. (2014), which places emphasis on the effectiveness of enforcement practices as perceived by managers, together with the overall administrative effectiveness and efficiency of the national patent system.

This study aims to spot wheat data and disaggregated commitment of trader data for CME traded wheat futures to examine the effect of exogenous shocks for hedging positions of Producers and Swap Dealers on cash-futures basis and excess futures returns.

A Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) methodology is used to capture volatility transfer effects.

Evidence is presented that institutional short hedging positions play a major role in the pricing of asymmetric information held by Swap Dealers into the basis. The results also indicate that producer hedging contains information when conditions in the supply chain create a shift in long vs short hedging demand. Finally, the results demonstrate that that Swap Dealer short hedging has the greatest effect on risk premium size and historical volatility.

Various proxies for spot prices are used in the literature, although actual spot price data is not common. In addition, stationarity for basis and open interest data is induced using the Baxter-King filter which allows us to work with levels, rather than percentage changes, in the time series data. This provides the ability to directly observe the effect of outright open interest positions for hedgers on contemporaneous innovations in basis and in excess returns. The use of a BVAR methodology represents an improvement over other structural VAR models by capturing contemporaneous systemic effects within an endogeneity based structural framework.

People in prison are at a higher risk of preventable mortality from infectious disease such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV) and tuberculosis (TB) than those in the community. The extent of infectious disease-related mortality within the prison setting remains unclear. The purpose of this paper was to collate available information on infectious disease-related mortality, including the number of deaths and calculate the person-time death rate.

The authors searched databases between 1 January 2000 and 18 November 2020 for studies reporting HIV, HBV, HCV, TB and/or HIV/TB-related deaths among people in prison.

The authors identified 78 publications drawn from seven Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS’ regions encompassing 33 countries and reporting on 6,568 deaths in prison over a 20-year period. HIV/AIDS (n = 3,305) was associated with the highest number of deaths, followed by TB (n = 2,892), HCV (n = 189), HIV/TB (n = 173) and HBV (n = 9). Due to the limitations of the available published data, it was not possible to meta-analyse or in any other way synthesise the available evidence.

To inform targeted efforts to reduce mortality, there is a need for more, better quality data to understand infectious disease-related mortality in custodial settings. Increased investment in the prevention and management of infectious diseases in custodial settings, and in documenting infectious disease-related deaths in prison, is warranted and will yield public health benefits.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first scoping review focussed on deaths due to these infections among people in prison internationally. The gaps identified form recommendations to improve the future collection and reporting of prison mortality data.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on microcredit impacts by quantifying the gender disaggregated effects of long-term borrowing on capital accumulation in order to address the existing gap. Separate models are estimated for male-headed and female-headed households to determine if the effects of microcredit differ between these gender types.

The paper adopts the method proposed by Deaton (1990) in which he specifies a model without borrowing restrictions whereby the household maximizes an inter-temporal utility function. To account for self-selection and endogeneity of micro credit, the fixed effects instrumental variable approach is used. Data are disaggregated by gender and analyzed separately.

The paper finds that micro credit indeed increases productive assets and human capital but has no significant effect on non-productive assets. One striking result is that after disaggregating the data by gender, the authors find no effect of micro credit on women-headed households.

The paper provides an empirical evidence for the need to address gender issues in finance and lending. Furthermore, targeted lending particularly to women makes a great difference in the fight against poverty.

This paper fills the gap on gender and micro credit impacts on capital accumulation in a developing country context.