This paper seeks to examine the extent to which technological advances can enhance inter-organizational information sharing in disaster relief. Our case is the Virtual OSOCC (On-Site Operations Coordination Centre) which is a part of the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) under the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). The online platform, which has been developing for more than a decade, provides a unique insight into coordination behaviour among disaster management agencies and individual actors. We build our study on the analysis of a complete database of user interaction including more than 20,000 users and 11,000 comments spread across approximately 300 disaster events. Controlling for types and severities of the events, location-specific vulnerabilities, and the overall trends, we find that the introduction of new features have led to increases in user activity. We supplement the data-driven approach with evidence from semi-structured interviews with administrators and key users, as well as a survey among all users specifically designed to capture and assess the elements highlighted by both interviews and data analysis.

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In many developing countries the skill base of the local workforce is a cause for concern as it impacts how internationally competitive a country can be. Firm-provided training is generally seen as an important tool for bridging the skills gap between the labour force and what the private sector demands. Little is known about how successful such training can be in closing the gender wage gap. We use a matched employeremployee panel dataset to assess why firms train and whether formal training affects wage outcomes in Vietnamese SMEs. Training is generally found to be firm-sponsored and specific in nature. We find that training is associated with higher wages for trained women as compared to both untrained women and men. However, we do not find a statistically significant wage difference between trained women and men. Furthermore, the wage increase is only associated with on-the-job training. Our findings indicate that, at least in Vietnam, firm-sponsored on-the-job training could help increase women's labour productivity and thus contribute to closing the gender wage gap.

provides economic analysis and policy advice with the aim of promoting sustainable and equitable development. The Institute began operations in 1985 in Helsinki, Finland, as the first research and training centre of the United Nations University. Today it is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency-providing a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research.

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