Open thread and Call for Papers and Contributions

This is a Call for Papers on the many topics pertinent to the execution of the goals of Jobs for Afghans. The academic community in economics, public administration, and other disciplines is invited to participate, by contributing to topics and suggesting new topics which will inevitably arise in an undertaking of this size, the equivalent of a Marshall Plan or the WPA works program. Also welcomed are posts on recommended reading for topics presented here or other topics suggested by the scholarly/business expert community. The repository of knowledge presented here will provide the raw material for the expert staff of legislators to formulate and draft legislation governing the spending of taxpayer dollars to Afghanistan.


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Topic: Donor Aide and Work Generation Efficiency, a Possible Model
(please refer to title in contributions thread, papers will be compiled and all contributors will be acknowledged)

Contributor: Ralph Lopez

Question: What methodology should be adopted to maximize the employment of Afghans per donor dollar? I will attempt in this space to offer the beginnings of an analysis and simple equations which describe factors in the generation of FTEs (full-time equivalents) at $10 USD per day for unskilled labor, utilizing different technology assumptions and contractor rules.

There are thousands of individual infrastructure projects now underway in Afghanistan, run by hundreds of contractors and subcontractors. The challenge is to arrive at a simple methodology which can be applied by donor governments to measure the efficacy of each project at creating minimum wage jobs. As 90% of Afghan investment consists of donor government dollars, the efficiency of the economy at generating employment at a particular project can be described as:

FTE/D = e

where FTE is one Full-Time Equivalent position, D is the donor dollar amount, and e is the work generation efficiency factor. Thus pojects with a high e,

eD =FTE

are projects and contractors which get the most "bang per buck" per donor dollar at generating adequate wage, widespread employment.

The task then becomes for business experts and technicians to identify possible labor-for-machinery substitutions. This could be as simple as recommending that a road be maintained by using men with sweeping brooms rather than mechanical streetsweepers. Whether the project is a waterworks, a new school, or a ditch for waterpipe or telephone/communications line, an audit of outside experts will identify and certify opportunities to accomplish the same engineering operation with greater manpower. Alternately, for contracts bid upon competitively, contracts could be awarded based on criteria incorporating "e" values as well as cost and other factors.

The question will naturally be raised that this is not in keeping with the profit motive if using machines is cheaper, and that business forces will frustrate compliance with these efforts. Here the answer is simple: pay the difference between what a project manager would save by, for example, renting a bulldozer for a month to dig ditch, at a cost of only rental-plus-fuel and operator cost, and what it might cost additionally to hire 300 men at $10 USD per day. It is by no means proven at this point that the cost factor runs against human labor at all times. A contractor being able to rent machinery from itself or a partially owned subcontractor is easily imaginable as one of the mechanisms by which 40% of donor dollars presently is recycled out of the country without much trouble. The main point is that even paying the difference, the total cost of subsidies to projects is still likely to fit within the overall financial parameters of the Ten Percent of Present Cost Solution.

contributors please reference "Donor Aide and Work Generation Efficiency, a Possible Model"


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Other suggested topics


Possible topic: Audit/inspection Regimen

What audit/headcount inspection regimen would give a fair statistical result for efficiency measures actually being implemented? What example of nation-sized inspection challenges have we to draw on, in terms of methodology and organizational structure? The weapons inspection program in Iraq? What disciplinary regime will suffice to discourage rampant corruption? Inspector arrives at worksite receiving X donor dollars, no one in sight building a road, where did the money go, Mr. Y? A write-up system, three write-ups and no more money? What countries are successful at maintaining a high level of results per donor dollar? What administrative apparatus do they use?


Possible topic: Large-scale multi-project management using Excel.

Please post your contributions in the comments space provided in the blog along with your name and academic/business affiliation.

 

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