All workshops will be held on Sunday 16 August 2009. Cost for attendance is USD 100 per workshop. Reservation can be made on the registration form.
Learning Workshop #1: The AGMEMOD framework "How to link a new country/region to AGMEMOD"
Organiser: Myrna van Leeuwen
Venue: Room 311 A
Time: 8h30 – 18h00
Objectives
Part 1. AGMEMOD as a flexible and transparent tool: an introduction
Part 2. Steps to implement a new country/region in AGMEMOD: a practical example
Format
The learning workshop will be given by members of the AGMEMOD Consortium
The workshop on the developed AGMEMOD framework is based on PowerPoint presentations and on computer interactions with participants. The duration of the course will be half a day/whole day (depending on questions etc).
If possible, participants have to bring a laptop with Microsoft Excel installed. Other necessary software will be installed on their laptops during the course.
The venue needs enough power points and will need a video projector for the (PowerPoint) lectures.
Learning Workshop #2: Designing and implementing integrated household surveys on agriculture: Concepts and applications
Organiser: Calogero Carletto
Venue: Room 311C
Time: 8h30 – 18h00
Background
The rigorous evaluation of development interventions is critical for enhancing our understanding of the effectiveness of specific policies and programs. Our knowledge of development effectiveness, however, is often hampered by the availability and quality of data. The problem is particularly acute in the area of agriculture and rural development, where data often lack the necessary quality and relevance to enable researchers to carry out rigorous evaluation work and effectively inform policy making. High quality household surveys, and particularly reliable data on agriculture fully integrated with information from other sectors and distributional data, are seldom available. This is particularly true in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite innumerable initiatives, the capacity of national statistical offices, line ministries and research institutes in developing countries to design and implement sound and cost-effective data collection systems for the evaluation of policies and programs of strategic importance remains weak.
Objectives
The objective of the proposed learning workshop is to provide participants with an overview of the key phases and aspects of the design and implementation of multi-topic household surveys, with an emphasis to the collection of agricultural data within a multi-topic framework The collection of detailed information on agriculture and livestock within a multi-topic framework, while improving the usefulness of the information, raises a number of technical issues in survey design and implementation. The workshop will draw heavily on over twenty years of experience of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) surveys in the World Bank and a recent initiative emphasizing the collection of agricultural data in Sub-Saharan Africa, the LSMS Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The LSMS is widely considered the gold standard for multi-topic household surveys and the LSMS team has been behind the global drive for better household survey data for the measurement of poverty and the evaluation of policies and programs. Participants will receive a firm grounding in the basics of household survey design and implementation, as well as innovations and emerging issues at the frontier of household surveys for informing development effectiveness. A final session will review several examples of successful analytical uses of household survey data in informing policy making.
Workshop content and format
The workshop will consist of three sessions covering the following topics:
Session 1 (1.5 hours): Assessing data needs, basic principles of sample design and questionnaire design
The first part of this session will address the process of identification of information needs and the kinds of instruments that can be used to gather needed data, focusing on the requirements of the agricultural sector and the need for integration. Specifically, the session will explore the role of multi-topic surveys vis-a-vis other sources of information, their strengths and weaknesses. It will provide an overview of the key features of the LSMS. Based on the identified needs, the session will provide guidance on questionnaire design, both in terms of content and process. Finally, the session will highlight the main tradeoffs in sample design and the steps necessary to implement the sampling correctly. Examples of the problems resulting from poor implementation and documentation of the sampling will be given.
Session 2 (1.5 hours): Fieldwork logistics, data quality control procedures, documentation and dissemination
Good field work is critical to the quality of the data collected. The presentation will describe the key elements of doing field work, emphasizing key aspects deriving from the collection of detailed agricultural statistics. How do you organize your teams? What task does each person do? How do you recruit and train the teams? How do you supervise them? The emphasis will be on how to maintain very high levels of quality control and the logistical, managerial and strategic issues implications. The integration of data entry and field work and the use of extensive data quality checks in the data entry program have been important parts of the LSMS quality control procedures. This session will also explain how this integration can be achieved and its implications for selecting data entry software and for data cleaning. The session will also cover key issues in data processing and dissemination, taking into account the analyst’s perspective. It will also provide information on how much quality can be improved by the use of the recommended measures.
Session 3 (1 hour): Innovative uses of LSMS data
LSMS data can be used for many different purposes, including incidence analysis, targeting and the evaluation of policy and programs. Presentations will be given on how household survey data, and LSMS surveys in particular, have been used in innovative ways in many developing countries. The presenter(s) will review examples of evaluation work done using LSMS and other household survey data and, whenever relevant, highlight the impact of the findings in policy dialogue.
All presentations will be highly interactive, entailing participants' involvement and allowing for questions at any point during the session.
Presenters
The learning workshop with be given by Calogero Carletto, Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank and a member of the LSMS team. A second presenter from the LSMS team to be determined will also contribute to the workshop. The LSMS team is composed by Kinnon Scott, Kathleen Beegle, Diane Steele, Kristen Himelein, Carlo Azzarri and Talip Kilic.
Learning Workshop #3: Real options: What and why but mostly how?
Organiser: Greg Hertzler
Venue: Room 305A
Time: 9h00 - 17h00
The objectives of this workshop are to introduce real options as a method for managing natural systems under risk, explain how real options relate to other methods for making decisions under risk and give participants the ability to formulate and solve real options problems. The workshop will have mini-lectures interspersed with pencil and paper exercises and computer exercises. Topics to be discussed include:
The workshop will be as interactive as possible so numbers may be limited. Participants will receive a workbook with lecture notes, readings and software and are asked to bring a laptop with Microsoft Excel installed. If participants wish, they may share laptops among groups of people.
The workshop organizer is Greg Hertzler, Principal Research Fellow, The University of Sydney.
Introduction
Many people have heard of a method called real options. Others are applying real options in their work. The method called real options does two things. First, it re-interprets stochastic dynamic programming by drawing upon the insights of modern finance. Every decision creates new options for the future and forecloses other options. Viewing the world as a sequence of options gives a new way to organize our thinking about decisions over time and under risk. Second, the real option method solves problems using techniques developed in engineering and finance. Some of the difficulties in making decisions over time and under risk have been overcome.
This workshop will introduce real options, explain how it relates to other methods of making decisions under risk and provide exercises for modelling and solving simple but realistic problems. The overall approach of the workshop is to teach and learn by examples, rather than show and tell about finished applications. Difficult mathematical topics will be explained with simple graphs and diagrams. Participants will then develop their skills using guided exercises. They will receive a workbook with all the lecture notes, readings and software to help them solve problems in their research.
Workshop objectives
Intended audience
The intended audience is research economists who are interested in agricultural and natural systems. Given that many people have heard of "real options" but have not investigated the topic, there may be some in the audience who are more curious than experienced. The workshop will cater for different types of expertise. An audience of 30 to 40 participants is anticipated.
Workshop format
The workshop will have mini-lectures interspersed with pencil and paper exercises and computer exercises. A proposed outline is:
Resource requirements
Participants are asked to bring a laptop computer with Microsoft Excel. Therefore, the venue will need tables and enough power points to accommodate possibly one laptop for every two participants. If this is not possible, participants need not bring laptops and the computer exercises will be done by the instructor as participants watch. The venue will also need a video projector for the mini-lectures.
Background information
A previous version of this workshop was presented at the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society National Conference in February, 2008. About 25 participants filled the workshop venue and gave the workshop a good review. Subsequently the workshop was expanded and trialed on PhD candidates at the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy at the University of Pretoria. Prof Herzler is continuing to develop the workbook and software for solving real options problems. The workbook contains detailed explanations, particularly for deriving option pricing equations and for solution methods. The software for the workshop is written in Visual Basic which can be used with Microsoft Excel. Participants don't need special software compilers to use the source code.