Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Government of El Salvador signed a five-year, $461 million Compact to reduce poverty in El Salvador in the Northern Zone of the country. In this compact, El Salvador I Connectivity Project was implemented between September 2007 and September 2012 to rehabilitate roads and bridges in the Northern Zone of El Salvador to improve road systems, enable economic opportunities as well as lower transportation costs and decrease travel time to markets. MCC signed a second compact on September 2014 to promote economic growth and private investment. In this compact, the El Salvador II Logistical Infrastructure Project (LIP) was designed to reduce logistical and transportation costs to increase investment and productivity in the trade of goods and services by relieving bottlenecks at critical sections of the logistical corridors in the country.
Purpose:
The Transport Economist will lead the evaluation of El Salvador’s transportation market structure (Research Area 4) and study the likelihood that vehicle operating cost (VOC) savings from the MCC investments will be passed on to consumers of transportation services (Research Area 5). The Transport Economist will examine whether the El Salvador II LIP impacted the volume and price of goods crossing the border.
Specific Tasks:
The Transport Economist will be responsible for the following specific tasks:
• Refine the research questions of the evaluation and draft the Evaluability Assessment Report examining the scope and the relevance of the research questions.
• Develop methodologies to study El Salvador’s transportation market structure and trade benefits from El Salvador II LIP and draft the Evaluation Design Report.
• Draft evaluation materials for data collection including evaluation instrument, protocol, and manuals.
• Supervise the El Salvadorian government’s baseline data collection efforts for the El Salvador II LIP as relevant.
• Advise the data collection firms to collect data for relevant research questions, upholding data quality and assurance.
• Oversee data collection for relevant research questions and conduct quality checks to ensure data integrity.
• Lead the data cleaning process and analyze data to answer the relevant research questions.
• Provide written inputs to the Baseline Report for El Salvador II LIP and the Evaluation Report addressing the research questions for both El Salvador I Connectivity Project and the El Salvador II LIP.
List of Qualifications:
• Master’s degree in a field relevant to transportation economics
• Minimum of 10-19 years of relevant experience in transportation economics
• Proven experience in assessing economics of road, highway, cross border corridors, trade and discrepancies between policy and actual implementation
• Experience conducting traffic surveys including O-D, VOC, and traffic counts
• Fluency in English required and Proficiency in Spanish preferred
IDG Description:
International Development Group LLC (IDG) is an international development consulting firm that assists donors, governments, and the private sector to achieve sustainable, broad-based economic development and poverty reduction.
