SDG #9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure | Economic Analysis and Policy Division

Cost-benefit analysis for identifying institutional capacity building priorities in LDCs: an application to Uganda, by Namsuk Kim and Roland Mollerus (CDP Background Paper No. 30)

Institutional constraints prevent the Least Developed Countries from fully utilizing the trade-related International Support Measures provided by development partners. A cost-benefit analysis has been developed as a methodology to identify institutional constraints and prioritize support measures comparing benefits with costs, based on survey data. Applied in Uganda, it identified critical institutional constraints: limited knowledge on how to access most of the assistance; inadequate institutional arrangements; ineffective communications regarding the use of support measures. International support measures related to sanitary and phytosanitary issues, among others, are expected to increase the trade value in Uganda.

United Nations headquarters in New York seen from the East River

The concept of structural economic vulnerability?and its relevance for the identification of the least developed countries and other purposes: nature, measurement and evolution, by Patrick Guillaumont (CDP Background Paper No. 12)

Structural economic vulnerability is a major obstacle for the development of LDCs. The paper discusses the conceptual, methodological and empirical issues related to the economic vulnerability index (EVI) developed and used by the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) in the identification of LDCs. It also addresses the relation between physical and economic vulnerability to climate change as well as the role of the EVI in allocating official development aid and as tool for development research.