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Motivation: Corruption is often cited as a central reason why development projects fail. The article tests this claim by assessing whether World Bank projects perform worse in implementation environments with a higher corruption level. The article focuses specifically on bribery between public officials and firms during the procurement of needed goods and services. Approach and Methods: I use data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys to avoid the often-criticized corruption perception indices and to allow for an assessment of effects at the subnational level. The analysis builds on an assessment of the performance ratings of 1,228 World Bank projects and covers 87 different countries. Finding: Overall, the article finds a small but statistically significant correlation between the corruption level and project performance. This result indicates that the corruption level of recipient countries should be considered during the design and implementation of projects. Policy Implications: Nonetheless, the relatively small correlation and the low pseudo R-squareds advise not overestimating the relevance of corruption for project performance. At least for the project level, the article finds no indication that corruption is a primary obstacle to aid effectiveness.
Better land stewardship is needed to achieve the Paris Agreement's temperature goal, particularly in the tropics, where greenhouse gas emissions from the destruction of ecosystems are largest, and where the potential for additional land carbon storage is greatest. As countries enhance their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, confusion persists about the potential contribution of better land stewardship to meeting the Agreement's goal to hold global warming below 2 degrees C. We assess cost-effective tropical country-level potential of natural climate solutions (NCS)-protection, improved management and restoration of ecosystems-to deliver climate mitigation linked with sustainable development goals (SDGs). We identify groups of countries with distinctive NCS portfolios, and we explore factors (governance, financial capacity) influencing the feasibility of unlocking national NCS potential. Cost-effective tropical NCS offers globally significant climate mitigation in the coming decades (6.56 Pg CO(2)e yr(-1) at less than 100 US$ per Mg CO(2)e). In half of the tropical countries, cost-effective NCS could mitigate over half of national emissions. In more than a quarter of tropical countries, cost-effective NCS potential is greater than national emissions. We identify countries where, with international financing and political will, NCS can cost-effectively deliver the majority of enhanced NDCs while transforming national economies and contributing to SDGs. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.
Value research has a long and extensive history of theoretical definitions and empirical investigations using large scale quantitative surveys. However, the way the general population understands, defines, and relates to the concept of values, and how these views vary across individuals is seldom addressed. The present study examined subjective interpretations of the term through focus group interviews, and reports on the development of a Value Conceptualisation Scale (VCS) that distinguishes six dimensions of different views on values: normativity, relevance, validity, stability, consistency, and awareness. Focus group interviews (n = 38) as well as several surveys (n = 100, n = 1519, n = 903, n = 94) were used to develop, refine, and test the scale in terms of response variety, temporal stability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. These systematic results show that views on values do indeed vary significantly between participants. Correlations with dogmatism, preference for consistency, and metacognition were found for corresponding dimensions. The VCS provides an original measure, which enables future research to explore this variation on the conceptualisation of values.