A Data-driven strategy for the development of a smart intercity bus system in Ecuador : a comparative public policy analysis between South Korea and Ecuador

SUNTAXI, Paola Fernanda KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2020 국내석사

Providing convenient and sustainable public transport systems is one of the most fundamental challenges for any local and national government. Massive transport systems represent a primary means of maintaining economic opportunities, reducing inequalities, and ultimately enhancing the quality of life for people. Studies demonstrate that the deterioration of the public transportation system is associated with a continuous increase in the emission of CO2, traffic jams, illegal services, and road fatalities, which have come a public health problem. Therefore, policymakers have been called to act to improve public transportation systems and make sure that they evolve with the needs of society. This study explores the case of the intercity bus service in Ecuador and tries to shed light on recommendations to solve the structural problems behind the obsolesce of the service. Overlapping routes, accidents, robberies, unpunctual and poor service, limited coverage in rural areas, and lack of information for trip planning and online sales tickets are some of the issues why citizens have switched to using illegal door-to-door services. By conducting a comparative public policy analysis with the Korean Bus Reform and using guided interviews with Korean and Ecuadorian officers, it was discovered that 1) the lack of long-term vision, 2) the inconsistent rule of law, 3) the limited technology and human resources, 3) the need of a technical savvy, but above all the little compromise of authorities have hampered the smartization of public transportation in the country. Even though there are have been partial solutions and advances, authorities and experts recognize that it is necessary to rethink holistically how the transportation system is designed and operated, especially in the context of the recent pandemic lockdown. According to experts, it is expected that small and financially unstable bus operators will fill for bankruptcy. Therefore, authorities and critical stakeholders should ground a sincere discussion to build a collaborative transport system that benefits all not only those who have influenced the system for particular gains. The delivery challenges include the tools of the Korean Bus Reform, such as stakeholders’ engagement, quasi-public bus operation/management, adoption of an integrated and technical fare system, and centrally-controlled operations. The application of ICT significantly contributed to the successful implementation. Thus, it is recommended to analyze different scenarios and alternatives for a public-private partnership that optimize and accelerate the modernization of the public bus system.

Strengthening monitoring and evaluation to promote effective policy implementation in education sector of Somalia

JIMALE, Khadija Abdullahi KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2022 국내석사

Implementation of education policies remains a challenge due to the lack of proper utilization of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes in the education. Effective monitoring of education is, therefore, crucial to ensure that education activities meet their aims and objectives in terms of quality and their ability to impact the desired knowledge. The study seeks to establish how strengthening M&E could promote effective policy implementation in the education sector of Somalia. It also evaluates how effective the current M&E system in the education sector in Somalia is for improving the implementation of education policies; identifies key factors, the problems and challenges facing the current M&E system and their causes, and suggests how to enhance the M&E system in education policy implementation. The study adapted a case study design and analytic framework to analyse and compare M&E systems used in education from five different countries. The study deliberately selected a cases of countries that have implemented successful and effective M&E systems. It used both primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected through interview guides which targeted Ministry of Education officials and other experts in the education sector. Secondary data was collected through desk reviews of selected countries that meet the criteria for selection. The study through qualitative comparative analyse (QCA) then examined patterns of similarities and differences across selected cases on M&E in the education. The research established there are no similarities between Somalia and most of the countries of South Africa in terms of M&E Models, however, the National government overs the M&E implementation across the country at different levels, in a country such as Uganda the National and District education offices ensures compliance with the ministry of education and sports norms and guidelines and educational performance that enables the collection of data at different levels of education management. The results amongst others indicated that the guidelines provided by policy documents in a country such as Rwanda are coordinated from the national levels, they also develop district education M&E plans, which are expected to be consistent with the strategic and policy priorities, outcomes, and outputs of the Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP) and M&E is conducted through Joint Annual Review. The data of the study also established that Somalia has also put in place policy guidelines designed to establish a system that puts in place common structures and standards across the education sector for tracking progress in the implementation of all Government education policies and programs which is similar to the case of Kenya. Based on the findings the ministry of education needs to establish a strong independent M&E division that handles all M&E activities, improve the coordination between education stakeholders and allocate an adequate budget it.

Public investment as a solution to low growth : infrastructural efficiency in developing countries

박은영 KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2016 국내석사

There are well-known obstacles of linkage between public investment and growth: infrastructure gap and efficiency gap. And the difference of efficiency between groups of countries by economic development level. Further, the most efficient group is twice as efficient as the least efficient group. IMF, the most authoritative institution in analyzing public investment, insisted that PIM (public investment management) is the key issue to enhance efficiency in public investment. The hypothesis of this thesis, “strengthening of PIM effects on efficiency of public investment” is proven by regression analysis but under income quartile control. The income group under the lowest 50% quartile showed that it has a lower inefficiency (i.e., higher efficiency) if its PIMI (public investment management index) is higher. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to verify the relationship between PIM and efficiency. Moreover, it tries to find other variables that affect the efficiency of public investment. For the analysis, the dependent variable is efficiency (inefficiency score), which is assessed by the PIE-X index and the independent variable is public investment management, which is assessed by the PIMI index. To prevent some biases, this analysis corrects the methodology to assess input data constructed by the IMF. To differentiate the adjusted index from the original PIE-X, it is named as “Neo PIE-X” For analyzing other variables, the result of CPIA (an index similar to PIMI) was not different that of PIMI, but CPI was statistically insignificant. This suggests that the effect of corruption on public investment is not certain. The effect of strengthening PIM is stronger in low income countries than in middle income countries. This is recommendable for MDBs(Multilateral Developing Banks) to put a higher priority on strengthening PIM, when they consider public investment especially in low income countries. Neo PIE-X, is very accessible to efficiency related data. I hope that this study would be a catalyst for other studies to focus on enhancing the efficiency of public investment, following IMF’s study.

Effect of multi-regional waterworks on the operation efficiency of local waterworks

방지훈 KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2018 국내석사

There have been several studies for developing policies that can promote the efficiency of the underdeveloped local waterworks in Korea. The studies can be divided into two parts. First, there are some studies of economies of scale through the integration of waterworks by each municipality(Choi, 2005). The others are several studies that compared the improvement of operation management index when the operation management work of each municipal waterworks was entrusted to water specialist institution(Won, 2010). According to each study, it has been suggested that commissioning of waterworks management to specialized agencies is more effective in some indicators than direct management. The Korea Water Resources Corporation, a specialized water agency, has been operating 22 local governments since 2004. However, local consignment commissioning projects are limited by the local government's decision-making and cost burdens as a policy to improve the overall conditions of domestic waterworks. As it reflects this, the deployment of domestic local waterworks consignment projects has been stopped since 2013. Second, the integration plan of local waterworks confirms that economies of scale occur according to characteristics of network industry of local waterworks through various studies. However, according to the domestic laws, it is practically impossible for local governments to jointly operate and manage the local waterworks by integrating a part of the water supply facilities between the respective localities as management bodies. Therefore, it is not reasonable to establish a policy for improving the efficiency of domestic waterworks operation on the basis of it Therefore, this study was carried out to establish a feasible policy direction for improving the poor water supply in Korea. For this purpose, this study analyzed the effect of multi-regional waterworks on the operation efficiency of local waterworks in each municipality. The reason for the analysis based on the multi-regional waterworks is as follows. First, the multi-regional water means the water supply to more than two municipalities. Therefore, it is possible to indirectly analyze the influence of the integrated water supply assumed in the previous studies. Second, it is possible to establish a viable policy because the role of the regional waterworks is the largest in order to improve the operation efficiency of domestic local waterworks. In other words, if the municipality receiving the multi-regional water is more efficient than the municipality that does not receive it, then it indirectly proves the integrated effect of the waterworks. In addition, it is expected that the present domestic water system which is physically divided into multiregional waterworks by the goverment and the local waterworks that is operated and managed by the local government, is able to be evaluated efficiently and indirectly. The results of the regression analysis are as follows, First, the regression analysis between the ratio of the multi-regional waterworks and the operation costs per total water supply of the local governments showed that there was a negative relationship at the 95% statistical significance level. In other words, the higher the ratio of the multi-regional water supply, the lower the cost per total supply which is quantitatively that the expenditure per water supply will decrease by 72won /m3 as the ratio of multi-regional water increases by 10%. This is different from the common sense that each municipality purchasing a lot of the multi-regional water will cost more than other municipalities that do not. The reason that the municipalities that have their own water intake and purification facilities cost more than the municipalities that receive the multi-regional water are that the cost of their own water resource is low but the other expensive costs are incurred because of facility investments and maintenance costs for water treatments. Second, as a result of analysis of the regression between the supply of the multi-regional water and the rate of revenue water, it was found that the local governments with a high ratio of the multi-regional water efficiently manage the revenue water at the 95% statistical significance level. This is because the municipalities that receive the multi-regional waterworks can concentrate on the relatively easy water supply work without the water treatment and management work that requires expertise. Lastly, the result of analysis of the regression between the supply of wide area water supply and the municipal operating workforce showed that the operational workforce decreased as the multi-regional water was supplied due to the integration effect. Quantitatively, as the multi-regional water ratio increased by 10%, the number of operators decreased by one. Based on the results of this analysis, the following policy directions can be established. It is considered that it is not efficient in terms of workforce management to entrust all the water supply facilities and customer business of each local government collectively to a specialized agency like K-water. In other words, even though a specialized institution is entrusted with the management and administration of waterworks of various municipalities, it is difficult to expect economies of scale in terms of workforce management as the workforce is mainly determined according to the total water supply. Instead, it is considered more efficient to adjust the scope of responsibility for the multi-regional and local water supply, which is divided into geographical boundaries between local governments. In detail, there may be an integrated management plan by expanding the business scope to the water treatment business of the municipality by the multi-regional water service provider. In this case, each municipality can concentrate only on supplying the tap water to each customer, which will lead to efficient operation of the whole local waterworks.

Improving the public-private-partnership system in Mongolia : a comparative study of the Republic of Korea and Mongolia

BANZRAGCH, Undrakh KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2018 국내석사

The concept of a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) is an attractive, yet ambiguous one. It is a mechanism that has been widely welcomed and used to address huge infrastructure gaps and to reduce excessive government roles in public infrastructure development and provision in Mongolia. However, issues related to qualities of PPPs, fiscal problems, corruption, social disapprovals, manipulation - i.e. unknown risks - that are harmful to the society, have started to come up after 7 years of experience of actively promoting the PPP system. This paper based on empirical and comparative analyses, discusses that, the main causes of failures of PPPs have been that: 1) the flexibility and ambiguity of the PPP concept is not balanced against its accountability and efficiency; 2) that there is a lack of political will to nurture genuine partnership and a lack in the capability of the public sector; and 3) an uncompetitive private sector and immature environment. These factors have together created the maneuvering space for the manipulation of the PPP concept, its types, applicable infrastructures, institution as well as combined to promote fake procurement, management, economic analysis of PPPs, tendering, in general artificially legitimizing distorted partnerships in Mongolia. These distortions have enabled PPPs to be used in a socio-economically unbalanced way and have influenced the promotion of PPPs in an inefficiently allocative way at the expense of public interest. To eliminate confusions, instabilities and opportunisms within the PPP system, the paper proposes several must-implement policy recommendations by comparing the failure factors of Mongolian PPPs with success factors of the Republic of Korean PPPs. These are: to clarify all the existing confusions, to promote the check and balance mechanisms along with a fiscal safeguarding measures of various budget ceilings approaches, to enhance the accountability mechanism that is based on performance indicators for both public and private sectors as well as to shift from the ‘artificial’ PPPs procurement practice to the ‘proper’ and competitive procurement practice by taking various state-led deliberate measures. The paper concludes that if Mongolia could not take at least these must-implement measures, the PPP system might more harm the public interest than benefit it, due to the nature of infrastructure PPPs that are prone to rents.

The Central bank roles to drive sustainable banking in Thailand : focus on green loan policy

PRUKPRAKARN, Tanaracht KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2021 국내석사

The world environment has been damaged by human activities and natural disasters. This is further exacerbated by climate change. The concept of sustainable banking is one instrument to deal with climate change in the banking sector. Governments and private companies are applying these goals in their policy and business strategies. Because Financial Institutions are critical players to support and provide sufficient funding for the project. The linkage between climate change, the banking system, and central banks has become closer. Central banks are gaining a critical role in driving their sustainability in the financial system. However, the scope of sustainable banking and bank’s businesses is enormous. This study focuses on banks’ green loan policies. The study will analyze the factors which affect the green loan policies and enhance the resilience and sustainability of the environment and the banking sector. From the research question “What determines the green loan policy from a bank perspective”, increasing business opportunities, better risk management, and enhancing their reputation among stakeholders are 3 factors that will incentivize banks to integrate green loan policy. The data are divided into 4 parts - bank performance analysis, stock price response, consumer survey, and bank employee survey. It looks at the effect of green policy on business opportunities and risk management as well as the effect between financial performance and sustainability performance. The bank’s reputation from the investors’ point of view is measured through the effect of environmental events/news and environment disclosure score on the bank’s stock price. Customers’ attitudes on the reputation of green loan granting banks and linkage between obstacles and effective policy in employees’ view are examined. To examine the linkage between green loan and business opportunities, the financial data, sustainability score, environment events/news, and stock prices of 5 significant banks in Thailand from 2015 – 2019 was used. The data is then loaded into the SPSS software for analysis and hypothesis testing. This study aims to explore how are green loans increase the financial performance of Thai banks, and but does not confirm that green loans lead to better credit risk management. Environmental factors also have an impact on banks’ reputations. Environmental disclosure score affects the stock price which represents investors' perception. The customers’ attitude influences the reputation of green loan-granting banks. And the right obstacle defining leads the effectiveness of the central bank policy support. The Central bank should launch the policy to enhance interest in green lending. The green loan policies should have an impact on the bank’s financial performance, risk management, and/or reputation directly or indirectly to motivate banks to grant green loans. The voluntary policy will be boosted through non-financial incentives and financial incentive policies. However, the central bank should define the root cause of obstacles in designing practical policies. Regulation is not the only key to drive green lending. The banks’ reputation from the perspectives of both customers and investors confirms the concept that they are interested in green banking concept. The Central bank’s event or reward system on environmental concerns such as green banking reward will put pressure on the sector and increase awareness of green banking. It will also signal that the central bank is focusing on a new target. As green banking is a new concept in Thailand, the number of studies and data on the green loan is remarkably limited. The conclusion of the impact of the green loan on those motivating factors may early to decide the conclusion. Recommendations for improving the research are provided in the last part of this research.

Korean social service job policy and its alternative : a comparison with the European social economy

김선미 KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2007 국내석사

In Korea, after the economic crisis in 1997, a ‘social job policy’ was initiated to solve the chronic unemployment and insufficient welfare services by the Kim Dae Jung administration. Since its beginning the initiative has been extended to a ‘social service job policy’ which doesn’t mean humble job only for the poor but for the middle class peoples in Noh Mu Hyun administration. The budget and amount of social service job has been increased by almost 4 times from the first stage. But nowadays, the social service job policy is being criticized severely by both the left and right wing. Even, the left wing which is interested in welfare expansion is blaming that social service job policy no longer encompasses the meaning of ‘social’ because of the government’s attempts to make it a more market oriented strategy- low wage, low job security, introducing a profit making & competition system and preferential treatment for large participant groups linked to large corporations. The left critics charges that social service job policy is a neoliberal tool to mobilize the civil organization’s resource for welfare cheaply. On the other hands, the right wing is criticizes that the efficiency of social service jobs is so low as to cause wasteful government expenditures. Therefore, the social service job policy is confronting a major crisis 10 years after its introduction. This thesis argues that in Korea, the social service job policy has failed to provide stable jobs and good quality welfare services to people, and to generate sufficient positive to defend against the criticisms from the right wing. What is responsible for this failing? To achieve the goals of the social service job policymanely, employment & good welfare & social integration - how should the current policy be changed? And what’s the suitable policy direction for it? These are main research questions of this thesis. To answer these questions, this thesis compares European social economy policy with Korean the social service job policy, to find the commonalities and differences between them. Because European social economy policy provided the inspiration and model when Kim administration considered and designed the social job policy, we need to find which differences, and similarities exist between them and what explains these. This thesis uses four category levels to study the social job policy: 1) theoretical & philosophical, 2) historical, 3) the state’s role and level of welfare base, and 4) social expenditure. And it characterizes the social economy of Europe into 3 categories based on Anheiers and Salamon’s (1999) analysis which divided the social economy into liberal, social democratic, cooperative models and a statistic model according to the scale of social economy and coverage of government’s expenditure for social welfare. This thesis selects UK as a liberal model, Sweden as a social democratic model, and Germany as a cooperative model. The thesis verifies that Korea could be categorized into a statistic model with Japan through analysis. According to the comparative analysis between European social economy and Korean social service policy in terms of four categories, this thesis finds that there are decisive differences between them, even though the social service job policy was introduced in Korea through the investigation of European policy. In Europe, the social economy has developed as an alternative economic movement from the beginning capitalism based on different economical and philosophical basis. Therefore, the social economy has been acknowledged as an alternative actor at the community level. And due to that history, the social economy could maintain its characteristics such as selfgovernance, democracy and non-profit principles. Also, a well developed social welfare system and a high percentage of social expenditure became a basic condition to guarantee success of the social economy. Overall, we can conclude that the European social economy has acknowledged and developed its unique area and characteristics with support from the state including the EU. However, in the Korean context, these characteristics of European social conomy were blocked. In Korea, the state initiated the creation of the social economy through its social job policy when social economy didn’t grow up from the grass root level. The Korean social economy didn’t take root in the regional base and wasn’t acknowledged as important by most of the population. Therefore, social economic organizations could not effectively oppose the government’s policy on the social economy uch as the introduction of competition, the preferential treatment of profit & large scale organizations, low wage and so on. The most important principles of European social economy such as self-governance, democratic management and nonprofit principles have been mostly ignored in Korean context. Moreover, the low social expenditure levels in the welfare field have been an obstacle to the development of social economy. This is so because low investment for social expenditure makes people’s demand for social economic service fixed at the low rate. All things considered, we can say that Korean social economy follows the statistic model which is characterized by the state’s strong control of the social economy and a restricted scale of the social economy. These characteristics prevent the full development and maturation of the social economy in Korea Based on the results of the above comparative analysis, this thesis presents alternative approaches. This thesis suggests that the ‘Sangbusangjo economy (mutual help economy)’ concept is an alternative philosophical approach for social service job policy on the basis of plural economic theory of Laville (2003). ‘Sang-Bu-Sang-Jo’ is the cultural inheritance from traditional Korean society which means the mutual help in the context of everyday life. The objective of ‘Sang-Bu-Sang-Jo’ economy is not profit making but rather ‘provisioning’ and ‘redistribution’. The concept of efficiency is changed into ‘allocation efficiency’ ‘dynamic efficiency’ which evaluates how much redistribution is achieved and the extent to which the principles of democratic control and reciprocity are satisfied. This alternative philosophical approach is necessary to ensure the success of the social service job policy. If the logic of the market economy & economics is applied to the social service job policy (non-market economy), the policy will fail to achieve its objectives of providing social services and job creation at the community level. At present, the Korean social service job policy stands at the crossroads facing either further growth or gradual decline. This thesis strongly supports that the only way to assure benefits from the social service job policy is by introducing a different philosophy from market oriented economics, namely Sangbusangjo economics.

Integrated water management strategies centered on local governments according to the unification of water management

류세환 KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2021 국내석사

This report presents ways to achieve water management and solve water problems within basin through organic water management integration between local and local governments. In the short term, the 'K-water Water Management Integrated Implementation Promotion Team' is formed to produce short-term results of policies and prepare for integrated materials management. In the long term, 'The water management integration implementation council' involving committees, local governments, institutions and research institutes that can serve as an implementation platform for integrated water management by the National Water Management Committee will be formed to supplement water management policies and coordinate roles with local governments. This will enable the unification of water management policies, from small-scale water management controlled by local governments to large-scale basin management managed by the state, to be successfully implemented.

ransitional labour market policy : logistic regression analysis on the determinants of successful transition from school to work in Cambodia

CHOEURNG , Theany KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2016 국내석사

Individual faces many problems within the labour market. School-to-work transition is an obvious social phenomenon to be witnessed that young people encounter many difficulties from education to the world of work. These difficulties are unemployment, difficulties in job searching due to the inadequate employment centers, occupational mismatch, working poor, occupational instability, and wage. Some of them are successful in getting a job while others could not get any job. The purpose of this paper is to find out key factors that contribute to successful transition from school to work in Cambodia. Based on the finding, the policy implication will be made to provide a smooth transition for the graduates or those who are leaving school. The purpose of the study will respond to two main questions: 1. What are the key determinants of successful transition from school to work? 2. What needs to be done to promote smooth transition from school to work? The data used in this study is taken from Cambodian school-to-work transition survey. 2353 of respondents who leave school are the unit of analyses. Using logistic regression analysis, we are going to see relationship between variables. The interest independent variables are using employment center, working and studying combination, gender, region, age, individual level of education, field of education, mother’s education and father’s education. The dependent variable in this study is employment status after the transition. The results are reported in odds ratio and marginal effect and discrete change of logistic regression. For the odds ratio interpretation, gender and working and studying combination have positive relationship with employment status while the rest of independent variables show no relationship. For the marginal effect for predicted probability, gender (being male), and working and studying combination have strong effects on employment status. Based on the result, at least three policy areas should be taken into consideration. Firstly, women employment program should be further focused to promote women job attainment. Secondly, a well-designed employment center should be given priority so that more employment center are build and available for job seekers to use. Last but not least, the working while studying program should be widely provided to help student get hand-on experiences.

Analysis of Korean and global indicators and policy proposal for sustainable development goals : focusing on the water sector

민정은 KDI School of Public Policy and Management 2022 국내석사

Climate change has emerged as a serious challenge for South Korea in terms of sustainable water management and is demanding changes in the water management policies. Since the severe drought that occurred in Chungcheongnam-do and Gangwon-do in 2016, I learned that Korea is no longer immune to drought. Furthermore, I recognized the need for a sustainable water management policy to achieve the UN SDG, which aims to ensure access to safe water for everyone. In this context, this study analyzes the results of recent studies on sustainable development goals and the Goal 6 Target established by the UN. In addition, it compares and analyzes SDGs global indicators and Korea's K-SDGs indicators in the water sector. Each indicator reviews the level of implementation in South Korea and presents complementary indicators suitable for the current situation. In conclusion, in order to improve areas with low SDGs performance, this study proposes a policy direction focusing on water infrastructure public projects in South Korea.