Travel Report from the first field trip within the SIDA supported project "Mini-grids supplied by renewable energy - improving technical and social feasibility : Including visits to Ihushi Development Center, Tweyambe Secondary School and Mavuno Project in Tanzania. Conducted in April 2011

This report describes the outcome of the first visit to Tanzania, within the project "Mini-grids supplied by renewable energy - improving technical and social feasibility". The trip included visits to three different organizations; Ihushi Development Center (IDC) near Mwanza, TIDESO near Bukoba, and Mavuno Project in Karagwe. At IDC, a brief evaluation of the current power system was done and measuring equipment for long term measurements were installed. At all three locations investigations regarding the current and future electricity demand were conducted and connections to people relevant to the study were established. The report is including as well some technical specifications as some observations regarding organization and management of the technical systems. The trip was including only short visits and therefore only brief introductions to the different organizations, based on observations done by the author. The report is hence describing the author’s understanding of the technical system and social structures after only short visits to each of the organizations, and may differ from observations done at another point in time, over a different time period, or by some other person.This report describes the outcome of the first visit to Tanzania, within the project "Mini-grids supplied by renewable energy - improving technical and social feasibility". The trip included visits to three different organizations; Ihushi Development Center (IDC) near Mwanza, TIDESO near Bukoba, and Mavuno Project in Karagwe. At IDC, a brief evaluation of the current power system was done and measuring equipment for long term measurements were installed. At all three locations investigations regarding the current and future electricity demand were conducted and connections to people relevant to the study were established. The report is including as well some technical specifications as some observations regarding organization and management of the technical systems. The trip was including only short visits and therefore only brief introductions to the different organizations, based on observations done by the author. The report is hence describing the author’s understanding of the technical system and social structures after only short visits to each of the organizations, and may differ from observations done at another point in time, over a different time period, or by some other person.

Recensionernas retorik : Om könsroller i kulturjournalistiken

At the centre of this study lies the question if normative gender thinking affects the way poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written, this in relation to both the gender of the reviewer and the poet. The study crosses three academic fields; gender studies, poetry and journalism, and is based on the cultural studies theory of media affecting and even creating the world around it. The study is based on two types of analysis. One quantitative analysis based on the thematic criticism theory about detail studies that shows bigger patterns, this analysis focuses on how the poet and his/hers work are being treated in the reviews in areas such as how much space they´re given in the newspapers, how they are named by the reviewer and the tendency to quote the reviewed work.  And one qualitative analysis based on the new criticism method of close reading, that focuses on the reviewers way of writing and how that may be connected with theories of gender differences, this both connected to the gender of the reviewers and the poets. The material chosen for this study are all the reviews that were published in the same newspapers and that reviewed two specific poetry works by two specific poets chosen with great sensibility to age and career so that their difference in gender would be the most significant difference between them. The works were chosen based on year of publishing, they were supposed to be published as newly as possible and as close to each other in time as possible. The works I ended up with were Dimman av allt (2001) and Svart som silver (2008) by Bruno K. Öijer and Silverskåp (2000) and Nu försvinner vi eller ingår (2007) by Birgitta Lillpers. The results of this study show several differences in how poetry is being judged and how poetry reviews are being written are connected with the gender of the poets and the reviewer. Lillpers got 35% less space in the newspapers and Öijers poetry got quoted a lot more which confirms that female poetry often is considered as less important than the male poetry, and that men in general tends to be judged as more professional than woman. The male reviewers tended to express themselves with greater certainty than the female reviewers who held a more professional tone in their reviews and focused more on the technical aspects of the poetry. This confirms the theory of the male words are being looked upon as the truth but contradicts the theory of women writing more based on personal experience and of women being less skilled in language techniques. In conclusion, there are differences in how poetry gets reviewed and how the reviews are written that are connected to the genders of the poet and the reviewer but these differences are complex and does not show a clear normative way of thinking about gender

Modified Fixed Effects Estimation of Technical Inefficiency

We consider method of moment fixed effects (FE) estimation of technical inefficiency. When N, the number of cross sectional observations, is large it ispossible to obtain consistent central moments of the population distribution of the inefficiencies. It is well-known that the traditional FE estimator may be seriously upward biased when N is large and T, the number of time observations, is small. Based on the second central moment and a single parameter distributional assumption on the inefficiencies, we obtain unbiased technical inefficiencies in large N settings. The proposed methodology bridges traditional FE and maximum likelihood estimation – bias is reduced without the random effects assumption.

A finite sample improvement of the fixed effects estimator : applied to technical infficiency

The FE ('fixed effects') estimator of technical inefficiency performs poorly when N ('number of firms') is large and T ('number of time observations') is small. We propose estimators of both the firm effects and the inefficiencies, which have small sample gains compared to the traditional FE estimator. The estimators are based on nonparametric kernel regression of unordered variables, which includes the FE estimator as a special case. In terms of global conditional MSE ('mean square error') criterions, it is proved that there are kernel estimators which are efficient to the FE estimators of firm effects and inefficiencies, in finite samples. Monte Carlo simulations supports our theoretical findings and in an empirical example it is shown how the traditional FE estimator and the proposed kernel FE estimator lead to very different conclusions about inefficiency of Indonesian rice farmers.