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Social Sciences, Economics; economic growth; public expenditure; panel cointegration; sub-Saharan Africa
Online: 8 May 2018 (05:20:33 CEST)
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In this paper, the validity of the Wagner’s law is investigated in tenth selected Sub- Saharan African countries, namely Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania, Nigeria, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, and DR Congo. Five variants of the Wagner’s law were tested for the period 2005-2014, using panel econometric approaches encompassing cointegration and causality. The study found a long run relationship between the public expenditure and the various explanatory variables used as proxies of income. The long-run causality tests indicate that there is bidirectional causality between expenditure and income in all models with the exemption of the Gupta model. It is concluded that for Sub-Saharan Africa, both the Wagner’s law the Keynesian hypothesis tend to be valid under the period of investigation. The explanation is that there has been the tendency for public expenditure to grow relative to national income (Wagner’s law) and that public expenditure is a policy instrument (an exogenous factor) for improving national income (Keynesian hypothesis) during the 10-year period.
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Social Sciences, Economics; industrial policy; stock price volatility; China’s power market
Online: 1 May 2018 (05:37:39 CEST)
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China combines green energy and industrial policy in its power market reform with various policy initiatives, including price support scheme for electricity from renewable sources and subsidies in the push for broader use of greener energy. This study focuses on the impacts of power market reform on the stock price volatility of listed power companies: 1) we use the Iterative Cumulative Sums of Squares (ICSS) algorithm to identify structural break points in stock prices; 2) we analyze the characteristics of stock price volatility based on the GARCH model; 3) we report the impact of power regulation on stock price fluctuations based on the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The result suggests three structural breaks in China’s power stock price volatility were related to the promulgation of power market reform policies. We find that industrial policies promote the reduction of power stock price fluctuations and its impact on power stock price volatility is consistent in the long run. However, our study also indicates the recent policies related to renewable energy do not have a very significant impact on the power stock market.
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Social Sciences, Economics; endogeneity, non-linearity, threshold, FMOLS
Online: 27 April 2018 (15:17:46 CEST)
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It is well established in literature that the public debt and economic growth bear positive and non-linear relationship. However, in recent literature, evidence of no causal relationship is found when accounted for endogeneity in case of advanced economies (Panizza & Presbitero, 2014). Chudik, Mohaddes, Pesaran, & Raissi, (2017) analyse the data on forty countries and find no evidence of universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between debt and growth. These advancements in the debt-growth literature provides the motivation to re-explore the relationship between public debt and economic growth under non-linearity and endogeneity in context of developing economies of South Asia including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka for the period 1980-2014. There exists a significant, positive but nonlinear relationship between the public debt and economic growth for the selected set of developing countries when accounted for endogeneity and non-linearity. The negative association between the public debt and economic growth for SAARC region is found when the debt level is higher than 61% of GDP which is quite lower than developed economies (90% of GDP). Individual threshold levels for debt-to-GDP ratio divulge that Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India need to control their public borrowings as their current debt levels are higher and/or around the respective threshold levels.
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Social Sciences, Economics; deforestation; environmental awareness; media consumption; sustainable development; species extinction
Online: 20 April 2018 (12:01:26 CEST)
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This study inscribes itself in the global discussion about the issue of environmental awareness, beliefs and behaviors. Here we focus on the role that cultural differences and scientific media dieting play in explaining heterogeneities in students' awareness and expectations about the two environmental issues of deforestation and species (plant and animal) extinction in the Middle East and North America. To this end, we use the cross-sectional survey data of the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, along with seemingly unrelated Bi-variate ordered Probit modeling techniques. The results show that compared to their North American Counterparts, students' in the Middle East are 14.2% less aware of, and 14.5% less optimistic about the issue of deforestation, while 38.9% less aware of, and 59.0% less optimistic about the issue of species extinction. In addition, we found that science club attendance and broad science reading in books are the two most effective communication media for raising students awareness about the two environmental issues. In fact, every one level increase in students' awareness is found to raise their optimism by 20.4% for the issue of deforestation, and 15.0% for the issue of plant and animal extinction. Therefore raising young people environmental awareness and optimism through proper communication strategies, could be invaluable for achieving an economic development in line with our need to preserve the natural environment and ecosystem services for generations to come.
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Social Sciences, Economics; bioeconomy; bio-based products; GDP; policy measures; sustainability assessment; sustainable development
Online: 16 April 2018 (04:54:19 CEST)
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Developments in technology have enabled envisioning the derivation of materials and products from renewable biomass, as an alternative to finite fossil-based resource consumption. Therefore, bioeconomy is regarded as an opportunity for sustainable economic growth. Countries are formulating strategies in accordance with their goals to attain from bioeconomy. Proper measurement, monitoring and reporting of the outcomes of these strategies is crucial for long-term success. This study aims to critically evaluate the national methods used for the measurement, monitoring and reporting of bioeconomy contribution to the total economy. For this purpose, research and surveys have been conducted on selected countries (Argentina, Germany, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa and the United States). The results reveal that the bioeconomy targets set up in the strategies often reflect country’s priorities and comparative advantages. However, comprehensive approaches to measure and monitor bioeconomy progress are frequently lacking. Most countries only measure the contribution to gross domestic product (GDP), turnover and employment of the sectors included in their bioeconomy definition, which may provide an incomplete picture. In addition, this study identifies the mismatch between the targets and measurement methods, as the environmental and social impacts of bioeconomy are often foreseen, but not measured. It is concluded that existing global efforts towards a sustainable bioeconomy monitoring can be strengthened and leveraged to measure progress towards sustainable goals.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Diversity; resource curse; economic growth.
Online: 13 April 2018 (14:18:36 CEST)
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This paper contributes to the debate on the impact of economic diversity and the resource curse on economic growth. We use dynamic panel data models on data on Canadian and US sub-national jurisdictions. We find evidence for a positive relationship between diversity and growth. Based on the Krugman Specialization Index, our analysis shows that the required threshold for not having the resource curse is 0.209. Above this threshold, the marginal contribution of natural resources to economic growth is lower for a more diversified regional economy than a less diversified one. We highlight the policy implications of these findings.
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Social Sciences, Economics; rural development; multifunctionality; rural planning; participatory process; social multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE)
Online: 4 April 2018 (14:51:19 CEST)
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The planning of rural land depends to a large extent on the agrarian and forestry development model agreed upon for it. Within the framework of agrarian multifunctionality, to evaluate different development alternatives and their effect on territorial planning, its multiple dimensions must be considered as well as the interests and needs of the stakeholders. This work thus addresses the comprehensive evaluation of development alternatives for the rural area of a municipality of the Basque Country (Spain) through the implementation of a multi-criteria evaluation method with social participation. The results show, firstly, the existence of trade-offs between the functions to be promoted in the various development models evaluated. Secondly, the results indicate the need to reverse recent trends in the sector and the convenience of moving towards an agro-livestock model of greater ecological and local character, independently of the followed forest model. In fact, the evaluation carried out also reveals, thirdly, the existence of more or less latent conflicts, in particular with regards to forest policy.
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Social Sciences, Economics; cooperatives; membership heterogeneity; random forest; collective action
Online: 2 April 2018 (11:01:16 CEST)
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The effects of heterogeneity of cooperative membership on cooperative and collective action sustainability has been previously discussed. However, despite the importance of membership heterogeneity in recent theoretical frameworks, empirical examinations have been limited. We determine the effect of changes to cooperative member heterogeneity on cooperative sustainability and discuss changes to heterogeneity overtime that can advance our understanding to cooperative sustainability long-term. This study uses USDA Agricultural Management Resource Survey data, coupled with USDA-Rural Development cooperative financial data at the state level, to quantify effects of cooperative member heterogeneity to sustainability of U.S. farmer cooperatives. We use random forest regression to interpret the significance of heterogeneity with cooperative sustainability at an aggregate level. The findings of this empirical study narrowly reconciles the theoretical understanding of the emergence of intra-cooperative issues while providing consistent empirical evidence and expectations for the sustainability of cooperatives in the near term.
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Social Sciences, Economics; interbank market; contagion risk; multi-agent system; reinforcement learning agents
Online: 2 April 2018 (10:51:49 CEST)
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In this study, we examine the relationship of bank level lending and borrowing decisions and the risk preferences on the dynamics of the interbank lending We develop an agent-based model that incorporates individual bank decisions using the temporal difference reinforcement learning algorithm with empirical data of 6600 S. banks. The model can successfully replicate the key characteristics of interbank lending and borrowing relationships documented in the recent literatur A key finding of this study is that risk preferences at individual bank level can lead to unique interbank market structures which are suggestive of the capacity that the market responds to surprising
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Social Sciences, Economics; sustainable development; SMEs; competitiveness, enterprises development; innovation; emerging economy
Online: 30 March 2018 (06:29:48 CEST)
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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the biggest group of enterprises in the European Union (EU); they are also characteristic for emerging economies. Given this situation, there is a need to provide instruments such as processes, which allows them to realize a model of sustainable development. The ability to classify processes and occurrences happening inside these processes often affects the condition of the enterprises. The implementation of innovations, as identified process, enables the directions of SME development towards sustainable development. The purpose of this article is to find out if the identification of processes such as innovations, have any influence on the competitiveness and sustainable development of SMEs. This study was based on pilot research, which examined small and medium enterprises at the regional level, at the example of Polish emerging economy region. It was researched under the angle of the identification of processes and changes happening inside enterprises in terms of understanding the sustainable development concept. Research composition allows to present an understanding by the SMEs of the problems analyzed. The novelty was in the new questionnaire, the definition of sustainable development, and matching those processes identified by the enterprises analyzed with the particular sustainable development dimensions suggested by the authors. In light of the analysis of the literature and the results of this research the important contributions of this study are as follows. This approach pointed the understanding and practical meaning of the identification of processes to be understood. The most important finding was that there is a need to make entrepreneurs aware of the fact that innovations are also processes in themselves, which often constitutes the sum of other supporting processes occurring in the enterprise. Support in the form of knowledge transfer from experts to SMEs would also be recommended.
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Social Sciences, Economics; technical efficiency; stochastic frontier; trans-log; Meket; Barley
Online: 23 March 2018 (08:54:55 CET)
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This study analyzed the technical efficiency of barley production by smallholder farmers in Meket district, Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia. A cross sectional data from a sample of 123 barley producers during the 2016/17 production season was collected by applying two stage random sampling. To address the objective of the study, both descriptive statistics and econometric models were used to analyze the data. The trans-log functional form of the production function simultaneously with single stage estimation approach was used to estimate the production of barley output and technical inefficiency factors. The estimated stochastic production frontier model indicated that input variables such as fertilizer, human labor and oxen power were the significant variables to increase the quantity of barley output while, barley seed had a negative effect. The estimated mean levels of technical efficiency of the sample farmers were about 70.9% which revealed that, presence of a room to increase their technical efficiency level on average by 29.1% with the existing resources. The discrepancy ratio gamma indicated that 63% of the total variation from the frontier comes due to technical inefficiency while, the remaining 37% comes due to factors outside the control of farmers. Among the hypothesized factors that affect technical inefficiency; education level, extension contact and number of barley plots significantly and negatively affected technical inefficiency score. Besides, practice of crop rotation, distance of residence from the nearest main market, total expenditure and soil fertility was found to have a positive and significant effect. Hence, emphasis should be given to decrease the inefficiency level of those more inefficient farm households via experience sharing among the farmers and usage of improved or certified barley seed. Besides to this, policies and strategies of the government should be directed towards increasing farmers’ education, improve the system of input distributions and institutional facilities.
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Social Sciences, Economics; financial inclusion; unit banking; banking in Bangladesh; banking policy
Online: 21 March 2018 (03:18:47 CET)
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The financial inclusion, including all the people with the finance, is very concerned issue all over the world where Bangladesh is also trying to include all the people with the finance. Bangladesh lies in such a group of countries where only 17.6% - 38.6% adults are presently under the reach of the formal financial services. This is because the present banks and other formal financial modes consider the outcome and profitability in a way that, the rural and non-developed areas are always out of the consideration. But these areas consist of the most population of Bangladesh. And only then financial inclusiveness will be successful in Bangladesh when people from these regions will be under formal financial consideration. The paper seeks for a solution to the issue and presents the Unit Banking System as a probable way towards financial inclusion. For implementing the system in Bangladesh, the system needs a slight modification to cope in Bangladeshi economic condition and address the specific needs without hampering the surroundings. Considering all these, the paper shows the status, problems and key points of financial scenario of inclusion in Bangladesh and shows policy for a Modified Unit banking System.
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Social Sciences, Economics; one-child policy; environment; OLG model; fertility; human capital; child tax
Online: 20 March 2018 (09:09:16 CET)
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In this paper we take China’s one child policy as an example and investigate its environmental impact. We develop a model for an economy using a standard overlapping generation model extended with human capital, endogenous fertility, and changing life expectancy. To model the environmental impact of economic activities, we use a modified IPAT model. We show that China’s one child has a very strong positive impact on the environment, particularly if we consider the whole human legacy.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Burkina Faso, Economic Well-Being, Gender inequality, Literacy status, Sample Selection
Online: 7 March 2018 (09:27:26 CET)
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This paper models the factors explaining households members economic well-being in Burkina Faso, with a focus on the relative influence of gender inequality in literacy status. It does so, using data from the 2014 survey on household living conditions and a semi-parametric bi-variate sample selection modeling approach. This approach compared to the classic Heckman two-step estimator is methodologically innovative because it deals simultaneously with non-random sample selection using conventional systems of two equations, non-linear covariates' effects using spline approach, and the non-normal bivariate distribution using copula functions.
The graphical results from the Lorenz curves combined with the numerical Atkinson and Gini coefficients suggest that inequality in overall per-capita consumption spending among households headed by literates is higher than that of their illiterate counterparts in 2009 and 2014. However, independently of the head of household’s literacy status, the level of inequality in total economic well-being decreased from 2009 to 2014. Using the poverty indices of Watts, Sen, Foster ( alpha= 1)) we found that poverty among households headed by literates is lower than that of their illiterates counterparts for both years, although overall poverty decreased nationally between 2009 and 2014.
The results also show that although the gender inequality in literacy status does not translate into inequalities in non-food wellness, it does however for food-wellness as female headed households have 38.9% less per-capita food consumption spending than their men counterparts. Combining both food and non-food consumption spending, total economic well-being also seems to exhibit gender inequality as female headed households now have relatively 26.7% less combined per-capita consumption spending.
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Social Sciences, Economics; organizational changes; ICT; management tools; work experience; employee outcomes; comparison of public and private sectors; linked employer-employee survey
Online: 6 March 2018 (16:30:15 CET)
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We investigate the human sustainability of ICT and management changes using a French linked employer-employee survey on organizational changes and computerization (COI). We approach the human sustainability of changes through the evolutions of work intensity, skill utilization and the subjective relationship to work. We compare in the private sector and the State civil service the impacts of ICT and management changes on the evolution of these three dimensions of work experience. We find that when ICT and management changes are intense, they are positively associated in the public sector with work intensification and new knowledge. In the private sector ICT and management changes increase the use of skills, but at a rate decreasing with their intensity and without favoring the accumulation of new knowledge. However, their impacts on the subjective relationship to work are much stronger, with public sector employees expressing discouragement as well as the feeling of an increased effort-reward imbalance when private sector employees become more committed. We tested that the self-selection of employees, the specific sources and paths of changes and the implementation of performance pay did not explain this divergence. We identify two partial explanations: one is related with employee turnover in the private sector, the other one with the role of trade unions. These results suggest that the human sustainability of ICT and management changes depends on their intensity and on how their implementation takes into account the institutional context of the organization.
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Social Sciences, Economics; co-operative enterprises; indivisible reserves; common resources; rivalry; non-excludability; capital accumulation; governance
Online: 5 March 2018 (04:45:36 CET)
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Contemporary literature dealing with the governance and exploitation of common-pool natural resources was initiated by Elinor Ostrom in 1990, and has been growing fast ever since. On the contrary, within the same research stream, the study of the presence and economic role of common resources in entrepreneurial organizations is, to date, under-researched. This work endeavors to fill some gaps in this research perspective by: (i) spelling out a new-institutionalist framework for the analysis of the accumulation and governance of common capital resources within organizational boundaries; (ii) considering co-operative enterprises as the organizational form that, on the basis of historical record, and of behavioral and institutional characteristics, demonstrated to be most compatible with a substantial role for common and non-divided asset-ownership and with its governance thereof; (iii) evidencing and explaining the strong connection between cooperative longevity and the presence of non-divided asset ownership. The economic forces influencing the optimal level of self-financed common capital resources in co-operatives are enquired. Conclusions to the paper evidence the main reasons why the new approach can better explain than preceding ones the economic sustainability and longevity of cooperative enterprises.
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Social Sciences, Economics; sustainability reporting award (SRA), financial statements, value relevance, earnings per share (EPS), earnings per share change (CEPS), book value per share (BVPS)
Online: 27 February 2018 (05:26:26 CET)
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This study examines whether information about the winners of the Sustainability Reporting Award (SRA) contributes to the usefulness of the information in the financial statements. This study used a sample consisting of 110 winners of SRA (SRA firms) and 110 companies that did not receive SRA (non-SRA firms) from 2008 to 2016. The study found that earnings per share (EPS), book value per share (BVPS), and earnings per share change (EPSC) are value relevant information. Results of comparison between SRA firms and non-SRA fimrs, this study found that EPS positive association with stock price and with returns for SRA firms is higher than that for non-SRA firms. Findings of this study also show that, value relevance of BVPS for non-SRA firms is higher than that for SRA firms. When mesures of Price and BVPS are transformed into natural logarithm, the value relevance of BVPS for SRA firms is higher than that for non-SRA firms. Thus, the results are sensitive to measures of the variables. The findings of this study indicate that information about the winners of SRA contributes to the usefulness of financial statements.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Corruption; Economic growth; Panel Data
Online: 26 February 2018 (15:38:23 CET)
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This study attempts to assess the impact of corruption on economic growth in the Mediterranean countries, during the period from 1998 to 2007. Econometric analysis using panel regression has been adopted to test this effect. Individual effects models such as random effects model and fixed effects model were applied to the study sample of 160 observations, and to choose the suitable model, we implemented several tests. For our analysis, we used a basic model that includes the dependent variable GDP per capita as a factor of economic growth and the corruption perception index as the independent variable concerned. Then we completed the model with several standardized macroeconomic control variables mentioned above and applied the individual effects models. The outcomes illustrate that corruption has a negative impact on the selected Mediterranean countries’ economic growth.
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Social Sciences, Economics; access to care; Burkina Faso; generic essential drugs; nursing staff; Trivariate Probit
Online: 23 February 2018 (05:26:19 CET)
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This study uses data from the pilot project "Community Monitoring for Better Health and Education Services Delivery Project'' in Burkina Faso, to model the joint impact of generic essential drugs and nursing staff supplies constraints on access to primary health care in the country. The results show that statistical endogeneity of supply side constraints are present in the standard univariate probit specification of access to care. However, when accounted for, the resulting Trivariate Probit model shows that although shortages of generic essential drugs supply do not seem to constitute a significant barrier to access in Burkina Faso, shortages in nursing staff supply do. In fact, the likelihood of primary care access is reduced by 85.5% among those that reported having experienced a shortage in nursing staff, while paradoxically increasing by 60.3% among those that reported having experienced a shortage in generic essential drugs. A potential explanation for these findings is that overall the health care needs in the three surveyed regions in the country were more linked to primary health care services consumption from nurses, although further research would be important to clearly elucidate the position of health goods such as generic essential drugs.
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Social Sciences, Economics; dynamic game; feedback Nash equilibrium; Pareto solution; monetary union; macroeconomics; public debt; coalitions
Online: 22 January 2018 (16:12:48 CET)
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In this paper we present an application of the dynamic tracking games framework to a monetary union. We use a small stylized nonlinear three-country macroeconomic model of a monetary union to analyse the interactions between fiscal (governments) and monetary (common central bank) policy makers, assuming different objective functions of these decision makers. Using the OPTGAME algorithm we calculate solutions for several games: a noncooperative solution where each government and the central bank play against each other (a feedback Nash Equilibrium solution), a fully cooperative solution with all players following a joint course of action (a Pareto optimal solution), and three solutions where various coalitions (subsets of the players) play against coalitions of the other players in a noncooperative way. It turns out that the fully cooperative solution yields the best results, the noncooperative solution fares worst, and the coalition games lie in between, with a broad coalition of the fiscally more responsible countries and the central bank against the less thrifty country coming closest to the Pareto optimum.
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Social Sciences, Economics; data envelopment analysis; olives; efficiency
Online: 8 January 2018 (08:30:08 CET)
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The production of olives and olive oil in the Mediterranean region is one of the most important cultivation. The continuous changes of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) towards strengthening the influence of market forces, has increased the necessity for assessing the efficiency of production protocols or patterns being implemented by the farmers. The case of olive trees cultivation, despite the fact that it is very important for both farmers and consumers, has not been in depth analyzed regarding the efficiency of inputs being used during the production process. This study evaluates the efficiency rates of 100 agricultural holding specialized on olive trees cultivation in Greece, by implementing a DEA input oriented model. The inputs being used are land, fertilizers, agrochemicals, labour, and energy. The output being used is the revenue of each holding. The results quantify the significant differentiation of efficiency scores, providing evidence that there is space for restructuring the production process, in order to improve efficiency and decrease by this way the production cost of inefficient farmers.
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Social Sciences, Economics; demand-led growth; downshifting; Kaleckian-Harrodian; post-Keynesian; ecological economics
Online: 12 December 2017 (08:34:41 CET)
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If the world’s countries seriously tackle the climate targets agreed in Paris, their citizens are likely to experience substantial changes in production, consumption and employment. We present a long-run post-Keynesian model for studying the potential implications of a major transition on macroeconomic stability and employment. It is a demand-led model in which firms have considerable but not absolute freedom to administer prices, while household consumption exhibits inertia. Firms continually seek input-saving technological improvements that, in the aggregate, tie technological progress to firms' cost structure. Together with firm pricing strategies and wage setting, the productivities of different inputs determine the functional income distribution. Saving and investment, and production and purchase of consumption goods, are undertaken by different economic actors, driven by income and capacity utilization, with the possibility that productive capacity exceeds, or falls short of, effective demand. The model produces business cycles and long waves driven by technological change. We present results for a “downshifting” scenario in which households voluntarily withdraw labor and discuss the implications of downshifting for stability, growth, and employment. We contrast the downshifting scenario with ones in which households reduce consumption without withdrawing from the labor pool.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Oil revenue; External debt; Economic growth; ARDL
Online: 4 December 2017 (17:33:46 CET)
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Oil revenues and external debt might have stimulated economic growth in the oil exporting countries via investment in capital projects. The paper estimated economic growth on oil revenues and external debt after controlling public investment and population growth over the period 1970-2015. Following the confirmation of the order of integration, our analysis is based on autoregressive distributed lag bound testing to cointegration approach. The key findings are that oil revenues and public investment contributes to Nigeria’s economic growth. However, our findings also indicate that external debt and population growth retards growth. The study suggests that minimizing fiscal deficits and unnecessarily foreign loans by creating tax avenues through the development of the non-oil sectors would reduce the dependency syndrome on a single commodity (oil) in Nigeria.
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Social Sciences, Economics; proactive policies; land protection; inter-generational solidarity; land sustainability; economic valuation; imputed preferences; imputed expenses; gis; cost-benefit analysis, social discount rate
Online: 31 October 2017 (02:47:04 CET)
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Although floods, as well as other natural disasters, can be considered relevant causes of intra-generational inequalities, the frequent catastrophes and the resulting damages to territory reflect the generalized indifference about inter-generational justice. Societal concerns, such as land protection, typically involve the administrative system performing proactive policies in the perspective of inter-generational solidarity, but subsidiarity has made more and more independent the local communities. As a consequence, the attention toward the long run effects – typically concerning the territorial system, as a whole, at the geographical scale – has been dispersed, and the proactive policies coming from the central government has became more ineffective. Regarding the case of the flood happened in 2009 in the Fiumedinisi-Capo Peloro hydraulic basin, in the northeastern part of Sicily, Italy, we propose an economic valuation – carried out by performing the method of the imputed preferences – in order to compare the expenses incurred by the public authorities responsible for protecting the territory to the costs of the rehabilitation of the damaged areas. Some considerations about the economic significance of the proactive policies for the arrangement of territory are addressed according to the role played by the social discount rate in the inter-temporal economic calculation.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Yam marketing, Ordinary Least squares, Bosso Nigeria.
Online: 13 October 2017 (16:13:15 CEST)
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This current study examines the economics of yam marketing in Bosso local government area of Niger State Nigeria, to this end, statistical tools such as descriptive statistics, marketing margin model, and regression analysis procedures was utilized as estimation techniques. The study relies on random sampling technique of selected 80 yam marketers. The motivation for this study, rest on the dominance of yam marketing operation in the study area as well as the need to chart a better and more efficient system of agricultural marketing for yam marketers in the sampled area. The empirical result reveals that an overwhelming majority (95.1%) of the marketers were 21-50 years of age with 6 years and above of marketing experience dominating (90%). However, most of the yam marketers started the business with capital base of N1,000- N20,000, it was also discovered was that majority (58.8%) of the marketers were female and within their active age with mean age of 35 years which goes to show that female can contribute to the responsibility of the family. The study also seeks to explore marketer’s preference for source of funding either from the formal institutions such as (Banks and Co-operatives) or the informal institutions (from friends or relatives) which is key in the effective and efficient in yam marketing. Finally, the study is set out to find out potential constraints to the attainment of the full gains of yam marketing in the study area and offer workable and visible remedy.
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Social Sciences, Economics; environmental inequality; environmental justice; industrial pollution; prefectures; demographic and socioeconomic factors; China
Online: 10 October 2017 (11:47:20 CEST)
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In China, environmental pollution generated via industrialization as well as the profound changes in the social structure and gradual maturation of the social hierarchy have jointly contributed to the Chinese people's increased environmental consciousness and appeals for environmental justice (EJ). Because of the absence of an EJ theory and a lack of empirical research focused on China, this paper proposes a ‘Pyramid Model’ for China’s EJ research that involves the following three factors: basic demographic and socioeconomic factors, U.S.-based EJ principles, and Chinese characteristics. A nationwide pilot analysis of environmental inequity at the prefecture level is conducted by empirically studying the association of demographics and socioeconomic status with sources of industrial pollution in China. The prefecture-based results are shown to be robust and indicate that areas inhabited by ethnic minorities and western regions in China carry disproportionate environmental burdens. However, a different picture for migrants is presented, revealing that Chinese migrants are not currently exposed to greater levels of industrial pollution, and relevant interpretations of these findings are provided. The results also show that environmental inequality associated with income level, which is observed in the U.S., does not occur in China.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Agricultural productivity; Cambodia; Rice production; Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA); Technical Efficiency
Online: 29 September 2017 (18:21:43 CEST)
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Rice is the most important food crop in Cambodia and its production is the most organized food production system in the country. The main objective of this study is to measure technical efficiency (TE) of Cambodian rice production and also trying to identify core influencing factors of rice TE at both national and household level, for explaining the possibilities of increasing productivity and profitability of rice, by using translog production function through Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) model. Four-years dataset (2012-2015) generated from the government documents was utilized for the national analysis, while at household-level, the primary three-years data (2013-2015) collected from 301 rice farmers in three selected districts of Battambang province by structured questionnaires was applied. The results indicate that level of rice output varied according to the different level of capital investment in agricultural machineries, total actual harvested area, and technically fertilizers application within provinces, while level of household rice output varied according to the differences in efficiency of production processes, techniques, total annual harvested land, and technically application of fertilizers and pesticides of farmers. The overall mean TE was estimated at 78.4% (national-level) and 34% (household-level), indicates that rice output has the potential of being increased further by 21.6% (national production) and 66% (household) at the same level of inputs and technology if farmers had been technically efficient. The TE also recorded -7% decreasing rate at the national-level and -14.3% at household-level due to highly affected of natural disasters and various environmental and social factors during the study periods.
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Social Sciences, Economics; state budget; fiscal policy; public expenditure; Islamic economic
Online: 27 June 2017 (07:09:12 CEST)
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This paper discusses the management of public expenditures in Indonesia in State Budget 2017. The data collected from fiscal policy documents, especially about government spending plans in 2017, and then be reviewed by policy analysis, the theory of public expenditures, and the theory of public goods, and compared with the theory of public expenditure in Islamic economics. Public expenditure management in Indonesia has implemented a distribution system that divided public expenditure for central government expenditures, transfers to the regions, and the village fund. In terms of fiscal policy, public expenditure priorities to support the achievement of sustainable economic growth, job creation, poverty reduction, and the reduction of gaps in the welfare of the whole community. In Islamic economics, public expenditure is used to meet the needs of the community based on the principles of general interest derived from the shari'a. Public expenditure on Indonesia's government as an effective tool to divert economic resources and increase the income of society as a whole, and focused on the embodiment of the people's welfare.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Air Quality; Fixed Effects; Instrumental Variables; Panel Data; Teleworking; Traffic
Online: 29 May 2017 (11:11:54 CEST)
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Traffic congestion is one of the foremost problems confronted by the urban and suburban tenants of today. Traffic congestion increases vehicle emissions and degrades air quality. Urban planners and policy makers have consequently been always investigating choices to alleviate traffic congestion and to enhance air quality. Teleworking is one option that has received significant consideration and has been studied in the recent past. The aim of the study is to explore the relationship between teleworking, air quality and traffic in Switzerland. The analysis relies on panel individual and household level data over the period 2002-2013. We examine five main air pollutants; the sulphur dioxide (SO2), the ground-level ozone (O3) the nitrogen dioxide (NO2), the carbon monoxide (CO) and the particulate matter less than 10 microns (PM10). Based on the fixed effects estimates, teleworking reduces traffic volume by 1.9 per cent. Furthermore, the reduction observed on air pollution is higher for NO2, CO and PM10 ranging between 3.3-3.7 per cent, followed by O3 at 2.3 per cent and SO2 at 2.1 per cent. According to instrumental variable (IV) approach and the two stage least squares (2SLS) method, the effect is higher ranging between 2.6-4.1 per cent. The respective reduction on traffic becomes 2.7 per cent. Overall, the main concluding remark of the study is that teleworking can be a promising tool for urban planning and development, focusing at the traffic volume reduction, and the air quality improvement. Additional policy implications of teleworking and its beneficial effects for the society are further discussed.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Monty Hall; Equiprobability Bias; games of incomplete information; Bayes Nash Equilibrium
Online: 25 May 2017 (08:57:06 CEST)
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This paper formulates the classic Monty Hall problem as a Bayesian game. Allowing Monty a small amount of freedom in his decisions facilitates a variety of solutions. The solution concept used is the Bayes Nash Equilibrium (BNE), and the set of BNE relies on Monty's motives and incentives. We endow Monty and the contestant with common prior probabilities (p) about the motives of Monty, and show that under certain conditions on p, the unique equilibrium is one where the contestant is indifferent between switching and not switching. This coincides and agrees with the typical responses and explanations by experimental subjects. Finally, we show that our formulation can explain the experimental results in Page (1998) [12]; that more people gradually choose switch as the number of doors in the problem increases.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Government support; Innovation probability; Innovation destiny; Propensity score matching
Online: 10 May 2017 (18:04:33 CEST)
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Government support plays an important role in Chinese economy. New energy industries, concerning innovation-driven source and environmental protection, are also supported by government. This paper aims to study the effects of the traditional government support at supply side on firms’ innovation and development. In this paper, we propose enterprise behavior model including characteristics of new energy industries, and study the innovation reaction of firms to government support in different situation. We further use propensity score matching to verify the results in theoretical model, and conduct robustness analysis. Our main conclusions include: (1) In the normal years government support can only promote the innovation output of firms which have innovated, however, can not promote the innovation probability of firms which have not innovated. That is to say, government support can only enhance the intensive margin of innovation, but can not enhance the extensive margin of innovation with less competition. (2) In the situation of bad economic environment and intense competition, firms’ innovation probability rises as the government support increase. Therefore, government should provide more R&D special subsidies and implement strict financial supervision to make the effectiveness of support policies especially in the normal years.
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Social Sciences, Economics; cost effective; stochastic frontier; maize; technical efficiency; tobit
Online: 8 May 2017 (17:25:58 CEST)
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This paper aimed to assess the technical efficiency of maize seed production and the major factors contributing on technical efficiency. Maize is the second most important staple crop in Nepal, but the average yield of maize is very low as compared to other countries having similar agro-climatic requirements. Inefficient use of resources had led to low yield in maize crop. The software Raosoft was used to determine the required sample size and total of 182 samples were selected using simple random technique in June, 2016. Stochastic production frontier model and Tobit model were used to derive the results. The average technical efficiency of maize seed production ranged from 0.25-0.92 with an average of 0.71which revealed the scope of increasing technical efficiency by 29 percent. The majority of the farmers (29.1%) were at higher technical efficiency level of 0.8-0.9 followed by 28.6 percent at 0.7-0.8 and 23.1 percent at 0.6-0.7. Age and schooling of household head, experience on maize seed production, area shared by maize crop and dummies variables such as livestock holding, source of seed and access to extension service had found significantly affecting on the technical efficiency level. For the least developed country like Nepal it would be better to use the available resources wisely and improvement of existing technologies would be more cost effective than that of discovering new technologies. The study recommended that the concerned organizations should focus on mixed agricultural farming system, access to better quality seed and provide technical knowledge which would help in improving technical efficiency.
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Social Sciences, Economics; adoption; land degradation; poisson regression; sustainable land management practices
Online: 1 May 2017 (08:33:17 CEST)
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Land degradation is a serious impediment to improving rural livelihoods in Eastern Africa. This paper identifies major land degradation patterns and causes, and analyzes the determinants of sustainable land management (SLM) in three countries (Ethiopia, Malawi and Tanzania). The results show that land degradation hotspots cover about 51%, 41%, 23% and 23% of the terrestrial areas in Tanzania, Malawi and Ethiopia respectively. The analysis of nationally representative household surveys shows that the key drivers of SLM in these countries are biophysical, demographic, regional and socio-economic determinants. Secure land tenure, access to extension services and market access are some of the determinants incentivizing SLM adoption. The implications of this study are that policies and strategies that facilities secure land tenure and access to SLM information are likely to incentivize investments in SLM. Local institutions providing credit services, inputs such as seed and fertilizers, and extension services must also not be ignored in the development policies.
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Social Sciences, Economics; agricultural productivity; extension; education; worker effect; allocative effect, Uganda
Online: 25 April 2017 (16:47:11 CEST)
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This study estimates the effects of agricultural extension on agricultural productivity in the rural area of Uganda, i.e. Mbale district. The results show that agricultural extension service in Mbale district has a significantly positive impact on bean and rice production, gross farm revenue, and profit except for maize output. It presents several contributions of agricultural extension in Mbale district. First, both worker and allocative effects on bean and rice significantly contribute to agricultural performance, implying that both effects are crucial in this region. Second, extension service for each product shows positive effects through the allocative effect rather than worker effect. Specifically, the input-selection effect is found to be a more influential contributor than input-allocation effect in this area. Overall, the findings support the hypothesis of this paper that extension increases not only farmers’ direct output, also allocative ability in crop production. The results from the three function approaches lead us to the implication that local government, development project planners or stakeholders who deliver extension in Mbale district should increase investment on public extension system for more effective extension work in order to achieve long-term goals in terms of rural development in this region.
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Social Sciences, Economics; malmquist productivity index; total factor energy efficiency; stochastic input distance function; China’s industry
Online: 13 April 2017 (04:35:55 CEST)
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Based on stochastic frontier analysis and translog input distance function, this paper examines the total factor energy efficiency of China’s industry using input-output data of 30 sub-industries from 2002 to 2014, and decomposes the changes in estimated total factor energy efficiency into the effects of technical change, technical efficiency change, scale efficiency change and input-mix effect. The results show that during this period the total factor energy efficiency in China’s industry grows annually at a rate of 3.63%, technical change, technical efficiency change and input-mix effect contribute positively to the change in total factor energy efficiency, while scale efficiency change contributes negatively to it.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Models; Projects; Modelling; Quality Assurance
Online: 5 April 2017 (18:09:25 CEST)
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Models come in different forms: visual, arithmetic, mental, physical. The most common type of model is arguably the mental model, which people use to view and interpret the world. A model can be described as a representation of a problem or a situation – a simplified representation. The process of building or developing a model is called modeling. A model once developed by the modeller, can be ‘owned’ by a manager or decision maker. The ideal is to make the model an extension of the user’s ability to think about and analyse problems or situations. When used properly – taking into consideration its limitations – an economic model for a project can provide insight for decision makers, when making the crucial decision to approve a project. An economic model for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project is shown as an example.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Boundary effect; Transboundary pollution; Propensity Score Matching
Online: 20 March 2017 (17:33:38 CET)
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Pollution spillover is an important issue to improve the water environment of transboundary rivers, which has been aggravated by the decentralization of China's pollution control and promotion system.This paper analyzes the evolution of the pollution reduction mandates and the possible change of water environment in China which are tested with the water quality data of state key monitoring sections in 2004-2014 .In terms of research methods, this paper mainly uses Propensity Score Matching reference with group difference test and OLS. Empirical findings support the association between decentralization and pollution levels. The pollution levels of the monitoring points located at the boundary are significantly higher than that of interior counties. The pollution of tributary is more serious than trunk stream，which quickly reversed after the system changed. Water pollution levels rapidly changes when we compare the monitoring site in front of jurisdictional boundaries with that after the jurisdictional boundaries. We draw the following conclusions that local goverments may manipulate pollution within their jurisdictions and total pollutant control system will exacerbate border pollution, while water quality inspection can reduce marginal pollution.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Total factor productivity; growth accounting; economic growth; Zambia.
Online: 20 March 2017 (16:03:06 CET)
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Most empirical work on sources of economic growth for different countries lack country-specific empirical evidence to guide policy choices in individual developing countries and previous studies of factor productivity tend to focus on the entire economy or a single sector. In this study, we use the recently developed growth accounting tools to explicitly determine the sources of economic growth at both national and sectoral levels in Zambia between 1970 and 2013. We use data from World Development Indicators and Zambia’s Central Statistical Office. On average, total factor productivity (TFP) contributes about 5.7% to economic growth. Sectoral analysis shows that agriculture contributes the least to GDP and that within each sector; factors that contribute to growth differ. Structural transformation has been slow and contributed to the observed inefficiency. We outline the implications of the observed growth and provide recommendations.
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Social Sciences, Economics; WASH; school; developing countries; costing; financing; cost
Online: 16 March 2017 (09:28:52 CET)
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Despite the success of recent efforts to increase access to improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) globally, approximately one-third of schools around the world still lack adequate WASH services. A lack of WASH in schools can lead to the spread of preventable disease and increase school absences, especially among women. Inadequate financing and budgeting has been named as a key barrier for integrating successful and sustainable WASH programs into school settings. For this reason, the purpose of this review is to describe the current knowledge around the costs of WASH components as well as financing models that could be applied to WASH in schools. Results show a lack of information around WASH costing, particularly around software elements as well as there is a lack of data overall for WASH in school settings as compared to community WASH. This review also identifies several key considerations when designing WASH budgets or selecting financing mechanisms. Findings may be used to advise future WASH in school programs.
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Social Sciences, Economics; information theory; transfer entropy; game theory; logic gates; multilayer perceptrons; strategic behaviour; decision theory
Online: 1 March 2017 (09:26:28 CET)
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Iterated games, in which the same economic interaction is repeatedly played between the same agents, are an important framework for understanding the effectiveness of strategic choices over time. To date very little work has applied information theory to the information sets used by agents in order to decide what action to take next in such strategic situations. This article looks at the mutual information between previous game states and an agent's next action by introducing two new classes of games: ’invertible games’ and ‘cyclical games'. By explicitly expanding out the mutual information between past states and the next action we show under what circumstances these expressions can be simplified. These information measures are then applied to the Traveler's Dilemma game and the Prisoner's Dilemma game, the Prisoner's Dilemma being invertible, to illustrate their use. In the Prisoner's Dilemma a novel connection is made between the computational principles of logic gates and both the structure of games and the agents' decision strategies. This approach is applied to the cyclical game Matching Pennies to analyse the foundations of a behavioural ambiguity between two well studied strategies: ‘Tit-for-Tat' and ’Win-Stay, Lose-Switch'.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Rebound Effect; Intervention; monetary policy rate; panel data
Online: 10 February 2017 (17:39:25 CET)
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This study examines the exchange rate rebound effects of the Central Bank intervention in the selected ECOWAS economies. An empirical understanding of these effects is very important to trade adjustment as well as the macroeconomic stability in these countries. Using the panel data modelling framework, the study finds that the impact of the Central Bank intervention on exchange rate is insignificant and it does not lead to the exchange rate rebound. In addition, money supply as well as monetary policy rate implemented by the monetary authorities significantly influences the level of exchange rate in a positive direction.
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Social Sciences, Economics; individual travel cost method; zero truncated poisson regression model; endogenous stratification; consumer surplus
Online: 10 February 2017 (11:10:04 CET)
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To estimate the recreational value provided by the Foy’s Lake annually using the most applicable model for on-site data is the main objective of this study. Adhere to the objective of this study; Individual Travel Cost Method (ITCM) has been applied and Zero Truncated Poisson Regression Model has been found plausible among other models to estimate consumer surplus. Based on the findings of the study, an estimate of the consumer surplus or recreational benefits per trip per visitor can be recommended as BDT 5,875 or US $ 73.44 and counting the consumer surplus per trip per visitor, the annual recreational value (total consumer surplus) provided by the lake is found to be BDT 321 million or US $ 40.2 million.
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Social Sciences, Economics; textile industry; water footprint; economic growth; decoupling; decomposition
Online: 26 January 2017 (17:07:20 CET)
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The rapid development of China’s textile industry leads to consumption and pollution of large volumes of water. Therefore, the textile industry has been the focus of water conservation and waste reduction in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). The premise of sustainable development is to achieve decoupling of economic growth from water consumption and wastewater discharge. In this work, changes in blue water (water consumption), grey water (water pollutants), and water footprints of the textile industry from 2001 to 2014 were calculated. The relationship between water footprint and economic growth was then examined using the Tapio decoupling model. Furthermore, factors influencing water footprint were determined through logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method. Results show that the water footprint of China’s textile industry has strongly decoupled for five years (2002, 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2013) and weakly decoupled for four years (2002, 2007, 2009, and 2010). A decoupling trend occurred during 2001–2014, but a steady stage of decoupling has not been achieved yet. Based on the decomposition analysis, the total water footprint is mainly increased by production scale and inhibited by the technology. In addition, the effect of industrial structure adjustment is relatively weak.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Gender Roles; Household Production; Telecommuting; Teleworking; Well-Being
Online: 4 January 2017 (10:43:32 CET)
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This study examines the relationship between teleworking, gender roles and happiness of couples using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the Understanding Society Survey (USS) during the period 1991-2012. Various approaches are followed, including Probit-adapted fixed effects, multinomial Logit and Instrumental variables (IV). The results support that both men and women who are teleworkers spend more time on housework, while teleworking increases the probability that the household chores examined in this study, such as cooking, cleaning ironing and childcare, will be shared relatively to those who are non-teleworkers. In addition, women are happier when they or their spouse is teleworker, as well as, both men and women are happier when they state that the specific household chores are shared. Thus, women teleworkers may be happier because they can face the family demands and share the household chores with their spouse, increasing their fairness belief about the household division allocation and improving their well-being, expressed by happiness.
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Social Sciences, Economics; financial performance; flexible employment; labour productivity; teleworking; workplace employment relations survey
Online: 4 January 2017 (10:00:05 CET)
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There is an increasing concern on the quality of jobs and productivity witnessed in the flexible employment arrangements. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between various employment arrangements and the workplace performance. Home-based working-teleworking, flexible timing and compressed hours are the main employment types examined using the Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS) in years 2004 and 2011. The workplace performance is measured by two outcomes- the financial performance and labour productivity. First, the determinants of those flexible employment types are explored. Second, the ordinary least squares (OLS) method is followed. Third, an instrumental variable (IV) approach is applied to account for plausible endogeneity and to estimate the causal effects. The findings reveal a significant and positive relationship between these types of flexible employment arrangements and the workplace performance. Education, age, wage, quality of relations between managers-employees, years of experience, the area of the market the workplace is operated and the competition are significant factors and are positively associated with the propensity of the flexible employment arrangements implementation. This can have various profound policy implications for employees, employers and the society overall, including family-work balance, coping with family demands, improving the firm performance, reducing traffic congestion and stress among others. It is the first study that explores the relationship between flexible employment types and workplace performance using an IV approach. This allows us to estimate the causal effects of flexible employment types and the possible associated social implications.
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Social Sciences, Economics; employee satisfaction; mine; OHSAS18001; FAHP; 2-tuple linguistic information
Online: 9 December 2016 (10:22:28 CET)
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In order to comprehensively evaluate the employee satisfaction of mine occupational health and safety management system, an analytic method based on fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and 2- tuple linguistic model was established. Firstly, based on the establishment of 5 first- grade indicators and 20 second- grade ones, the weight of each indicator is calculated and validated by method of FAHP and root mean square model. Secondly, a path based on the time-ordered Weighted Averaging Operator (T-OWA) model is constructed. Finally, the model is validated by empirical analysis. The results demonstrate that the employee satisfaction of the mine occupational health and safety management system is of the “general” rank. The method including the comprehensive evaluation of employee satisfaction and the quantitative analysis of language evaluation information ensures the authenticity of the language evaluation information.
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Social Sciences, Economics; inflation risk; investment returns; life annuity; longevity risk; post-retirement benefits
Online: 7 December 2016 (10:27:23 CET)
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Building a social security system to ensure Singapore residents have peace of mind in funding for retirement has been at the top of Singapore Government’s policy agenda over the last decade. Implementation of the Lifelong Income For the Elderly (LIFE) scheme in 2009 clearly shows that the government spares no effort in improving its pension scheme to boost its residents’ income after retirement. Despite the recent modifications to the LIFE scheme, Singapore residents must still choose between two plans: the Standard and Basic plans. To enhance the flexibility of the LIFE scheme while maintaining its simplicity, we propose some plan modifications such that scheme members do not face a dichotomy of plan choices. Instead, they select two age parameters: the Payout Age and the Life-annuity Age. This paper provides an actuarial framework for determining members’ payouts and bequests based on the proposed age parameters. We analyze the net cash receipts and internal rate of return (IRR) for various plan-parameter configurations. This information helps members make their plan choices. To address cost-of-living increases we propose to extend the plan to accommodate an annual step-up of monthly payouts. By deferring the Payout Age from 65 to 68, members can enjoy an annual increase of about 2% of the payouts for the same first-year monthly benefits.
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Social Sciences, Economics; land use preference; ecosystem service; natural conservation
Online: 23 November 2016 (18:08:51 CET)
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This paper aims to build up a preference function to evaluate the public benefits of the type of agricultural farming, biodiversity, water provisions, land use type, ecotourism modes, and a monetary attribute (environmental trust fund and willingness to contribute) associated with an ecosystem service and land use program in a forest park. This study used the choice experiments to build a random utility model, analyze the average preference for the above land use attributes based on the conditional logit and used a latent class model to test the resident’s heterogeneous preferences for land use planning in the forest park. We also estimated the welfare derived from various land use programs. The empirical result had shown that: (1) increasing organic farming area, maintaining the status quo of species biodiversity, increasing the surface water provision, increasing the area of custom flora, increasing the wetland area, and setting up an integrated framework for ecotourism increase the public’s preference for the land use program; (2) we found that farmer and non-farmer haven’t the same land use preferences; (3) the ecotourism development program incorporating biodiversity, organic farming, ethnobotany, and wetland area with integrated ecotourism are more preferred than other land use program scenarios.
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Social Sciences, Economics; forest industry and ecology; environmental capacity; interaction mechanism; SEM; PSIR
Online: 18 November 2016 (10:01:42 CET)
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By introducing environmental mediator, for avoiding randomness in selecting indicators and subjectivity in deciding interaction path coefficients to reveal interaction mechanism among forest industry, ecology and environmental capacity, structural Pressure–State–Impact–Response (PSIR) and quantitative Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) are utilized with data on thirty–one provinces of China. We can find that: (i) forest industry has a negative influence on ecology, whereas ecology has a positive influence on industry; (ii) the destructive influence that industry has on ecology is much greater than the positive effect ecology has on industry; and (iii) environmental capacity plays a partial mediating role between industry and ecology. According to these results we can conclude that: (i) forest industry and ecology are not in a symbiotic relationship and have not reached a level of ecological security; (ii) the interaction between industry and ecology is in a period of transition from antagonistic to beneficial; and (iii) industry dominates ecology. However, we prospect the following advice: (i) methods of forest industry should be changed; (ii) new modes of industrial integration and circular economy should be developed; and (iii) the ability of the environment to sustain itself should be enhanced. The level of forest ecological security to discuss the symbiotic mechanism of industry and ecology will propose to be measured in future.
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Social Sciences, Economics; agricultural productivity; Battambang; Cambodia; rice production; stochastic frontier production function (SFA model); technical efficiency
Online: 8 November 2016 (08:51:50 CET)
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The aims of this study are to measure the technical efficiency (TE) of Cambodian household’s rice production and trying to determine its main influencing factors using the stochastic frontier production function. The study utilized primary data collected from 301 rice farmers in three selected districts of Battambang by structured questionnaires. The empirical results indicated the level of household rice output varied according to differences in the efficiency of production processes. The mean TE is 0.34 which means that famers produce 34% of rice at best practice at the current level of production inputs and technology, indicates that rice output has the potential of being increased further by 66% at the same level of inputs if farmers had been technically efficient. Furthermore, between 2013-2015 TE of household’s rice production recorded -14.3% decline rate due to highly affected of drought during dry season of 2015. Moreover, evidence reveals that land, fertilizer, and pesticide are the major influencing input factors of household’s rice production, while disaster, education of household head, family size and other crops’ cultivated area are core influencing factors decreasing TE. Conversely, the main influencing factors increasing TE are irrigated area, number of plot area and sex of household head.
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Social Sciences, Economics; food security, rural livelihoods
Online: 31 October 2016 (07:59:32 CET)
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Food is one of the basic necessities for all living things in this globe to grow, maintain life and develop. It is a source of energy for almost all bodily functions and it directly affects our health status and how we feel each day and the future. Yet, there are millions of people around the globe who do not have the sumptuousness to provide enough food to themselves and their beloved ones. Ethiopia is one of the highly food insecure countries in the world, it's name has been illustrious for famine and drought for decades. The study's main aim is to assess the livelihood resources and strategies of the smallholding farmers in their strive to achieve food security at household level. For this particular study, from Tigray region, Kilte Awelalo was taken as a study area and three Tabias were selected; Ayenalem, Genfel and Tahetay Adikesanded. The total sample number of households from these three Tabias was 370 and a formal interview schedule was employed to collect relevant primary inputs for the study. The study found that farmland holding size and its fertility as major impacting factors behind the livelihood strategies and food security condition of the smallholding farmers. It was also found that about one third of the total sample population were chronically food insecure, whereas about half of the population were transitory food insecure and rest very little number of households were food secure.
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Social Sciences, Economics; technical efficiency; stochastic frontier production function (SFA model); rice production; Battambang; Cambodia; agricultural productivity
Online: 31 October 2016 (03:31:11 CET)
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The aims of this study are to measure the technical efficiency (TE) of Cambodian household’s rice production and trying to determine its main influencing factors using the stochastic frontier production function. The study utilized primary data collected from 301 rice farmers in three selected districts of Battambang by structured questionnaires. The empirical results indicated the level of household rice output varied according to differences in the efficiency of the production processes. The mean TE is 0.34 which means that famers produce 34% of rice at best practice at the current level of production inputs and technology, indicates that rice output has the potential of being increased further by 66% at the same level of inputs if farmers had been technically efficient. Furthermore, between 2013-2015, TE of household’s rice production recorded -14.3% decline rate due to highly affected of drought during dry season of 2015. Moreover, evidence reveals that land, fertilizer, and pesticide are the major influencing input factors of household’s rice production, while disaster, education of household head, family size and other crops’ cultivated area are core influencing factors decreasing TE. Conversely, the main influencing factors increasing TE are irrigated area, number of plot area and sex of household head.
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Social Sciences, Economics; terrorism; exchange rate; ARDL; error correction
Online: 14 October 2016 (10:30:30 CEST)
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In this study the impact of terrorist attacks on exchange rate is estimated. Particularly, the study focuses on Turkish terrorist attacks and its implication on Turkish lira versus pound sterling exchange rate. In order, to find the causal effect the study employed Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bound testing approach as an estimation technique. Accordingly, the analysis reveals that terrorist attack has a negative impact on the exchange rate in both short and long-run. However, the negative effect of terrorism tends to be small in both the short-run and long-run. More precisely, terrorist attack depreciates the exchange rate between Turkish lira and pound sterling by approximately 0.00072 in the next trading day. The long-term effect also shows that terrorist attack depreciates the exchange rate on average by 0.00212.
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Social Sciences, Economics; labor migration; migration policy; Russia; Post-Soviet space; governmentality; labor legalization
Online: 18 September 2016 (09:45:52 CEST)
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The authors argue that despite significant numbers of foreign workers present in the Russian labor market Russia remains unattractive for highly skilled foreign workers. The economic crisis the country has faced since 2014 has resulted in a further outflow of foreign nationals from OECD countries. So Russia has to look for employees among newcomers from the former Soviet states, the majority of whom come from Central Asia. Russian politics with regard to immigration is characterized by the collision between “geopolitical” and domestic policy rationales. On one hand, seeking to maximize its influence in the post-Soviet space Russia provides preferential conditions of employment for citizens of partner countries in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. On the other hand, the Kremlin is afraid to liberalize its approach to immigration and the integration of immigrants through fear of losing popularity among the electorate. The second substantial feature of Russian immigration politics is an extreme level of securitization of migration issues. The government considers these issues primarily through a policing lens. One cannot claim that the Russian state does not take any steps to liberalize “migratory regulation”; however, the effect of these measures is being vastly reduced by new restrictions. In addition, liberally designed laws do not bring the expected results due to the corrupt practices that pervade the whole of migration regulation.
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Social Sciences, Economics; technical efficiency; SFA; rice production; Cambodia; agriculture; productivity
Online: 13 September 2016 (10:20:53 CEST)
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The present study aims to measure the technical efficiency and establish core factors effecting rice production in Cambodia. Four-years dataset generated from the central government document “Profile on Economics and Social” of entire 25 provinces between 2012-2015 and the stochastic production frontier model (SFA) was applied. The results indicated that the level of output (quantity) of Cambodian rice production varied according to the different level of capital investment in agricultural machineries, total rice actual harvested area, and technically fertilizers application within provinces. Furthermore, evidence revealed the overall mean efficiency of rice production is 78.4% implies that there is still room to further improve technical efficiency by given the same level of inputs and technology. More importantly, the findings revealed that irrigation, production technique and amount of agricultural supporting staffs are being as the most important influencing factors of rice production’s technical efficiency in Cambodia. In conclusion, present study strongly recommends the development of irrigation systems and good water management practices to be considered and bring into more effective actions by the central government as well as related agencies for improving rice production in Cambodia in addition to capital investment and improving technical skills of supporting staffs and rural farmers.
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Social Sciences, Economics; inflation; economic growth; threshold effects
Online: 30 August 2016 (08:54:34 CEST)
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Achieving high economic growth rate while maintaining low inflation rate, has become the main objective of monetary authorities all over the world. Indeed, empirical literature reflects that high inflation rates are detrimental to long run growth and entail welfare costs. To achieve this objective, central banks have availed different options from time to time which include inflation targeting. Monetary authorities in Tanzania have been targeting an inflation level of around 5 percent per annum for economic policy purposes. However, when high inflation is to be controlled, tight monetary policy is put in place which might in turn affect the economic activity. Also, the Tobin effect suggests that inflation causes individuals to substitute out of money and into interest earning assets, which leads to greater capital intensity which in turn promotes economic growth. Against these major points, this paper examines a non linear relationship between inflation and economic growth using both a quadratic and threshold endogenous models and attempts to identify the existence of threshold effects between these variables. The paper uses a data set spanning from 1967 to 2015. The most interesting finding of the estimations is that the estimated coefficient of the linear term of inflation is negative while the estimated coefficient of the square term of inflation is positive, suggesting a U-shaped effect as opposed to inverse or inverted U-shaped relationship found in other countries by previous studies. These results suggest that the Tobin effect may be valid for high inflation, in which people strongly realize the importance of substituting money for interest-bearing assets. This leads to an increase in capital investment, and in turn, an increase in economic growth even with high inflation rate. However, this U-shaped relationship between inflation and economic growth suggests that, the economy is better off at extremely low inflation episodes. The optimal inflation rate that ranges between 3.25 percent and 3.75 percent is obtained by minimizing the residual sum of squares and/or maximizing adjusted R-squared. These findings have some policy implications for the policymakers and development partners. The paper is consistent with policy suggestions by international agencies. Efforts to minimize inflation to a very low level are likely to have a positive effect on economic growth.
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Social Sciences, Economics; public investment; domestic private investment; FDI; crowding out effect; economic growth
Online: 30 August 2016 (04:03:38 CEST)
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This paper analyzes the causal effect between domestic private investment, public investment, foreign direct investment and economic growth in Tanzania during the 1970-2014 period. The modified neo-classical growth model is used to estimate the ieffect of investment on economic growth. Also, the economic growth models based on Phetsavong and Ichihashi (2012) [1], and Le and Suruga (2005) [2]are used to estimate the crowding out effect of public investment on domestic private investment on one hand and foreign direct investment on the other hand. In the same way, the crowding out effect of foreign direct investment on domestic private investment is estimated. A correlation test is applied to check the correlation among independent variables, and the results show that there is very low correlation suggesting that multicollinearity is not a serious problem. Moreover, the diagnostic tests including RESET regression errors specification test, Breusch-Godfrey serial correlation LM test, Jacque-Bera-normality test and white heteroskedasticity test reveal that the model has no signs of misspecification and that, the residuals are serially uncorrelated, normally distributed and homoskedastic. Broadly, the empirical results show that the domestic private investment and foreign direct investment play an important role in economic growth in Tanzania. Besides, a revealed negative, albeit weak, association between public and private investment suggests that the positive effect of domestic private investment on economic growth becomes smaller when public investment-to-GDP ratio exceeds 8-10 percent. Similarly, foreign direct investment tends to marginally reduce the impact of domestic private investment on growth. These results suggest that public investment and foreign direct investment need to be considered carefully in order to avoid a reduced positive impact of domestic private investment on growth. Domestic saving may be promoted to encourage domestic investment for economic growth.
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Social Sciences, Economics; pollution; cost-effectiveness analysis; Cocody; environmental policies; environmental constraints
Online: 27 August 2016 (11:01:22 CEST)
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The pollution of the bays in Abidjan is a major concern for the Ivorian policy makers. In fact, the pollution of the bays induce high costs to the society while impacting population health dramatically. As a result, pollution reduction management of production activities has been undertaken in the Cocody Bay area. To our knowledge, no study has yet proposed a model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of these pollution management strategies. A cost-effectiveness model, based on Monte Carlo simulation, was developed to assess the economic and environmental impacts of various scenarios characterized by a set of production practices, both in the short term and in the long term. The authors discuss the steps and input parameters of the model presented. The proposed model may serve as the basis for identifying an optimal production scenario defined as the scenario with the best incremental cost-effectiveness ratio considering a willingness to pay (WTP) threshold. The WTP, to be estimated based on the gross domestic product of Côte d’Ivoire, represents the opportunity costs associated with selecting the optimal scenario. The current framework can also be applied to other settings facing similar challenge.
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Social Sciences, Economics; FDI; GARCH; real exchange rate and price volatility; Latin America and the Caribbean
Online: 26 August 2016 (09:59:32 CEST)
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This paper investigates the impact of price and real exchange rate volatility on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in a panel of 10 Latin American and Caribbean countries, observed between 1990 and 2012. Both price and exchange rate volatility series are estimated through the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity model (GARCH). Our results, obtained employing the Fixed Effects estimator, confirm the theory of hysteresis and option value, in so far it is found a statistically significant negative effect of exchange rate volatility on FDI. Price volatility, instead, turns out to be positive but insignificant. Moreover, we show that human capital and trade openness are key for attracting foreign capital. From the policy perspective, our analysis suggests the importance of stabilization policies as well as the one of government credibility in promoting trade openness and human capital formation.
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Social Sciences, Economics; logistics industry; sustainability; data envelopment analysis (DEA); grey forecasting
Online: 25 August 2016 (10:12:27 CEST)
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Logistics plays an important role in globalized companies and contributes to the development of foreign trade. A large number of external conditions, such as recession and inflation, affect logistics. Therefore, managers should find ways to improve operational performance, enabling them to increase efficiency while considering environmental sustainability due to the industry’s large scale of energy consumption. Based on data collected from the financial reports of top global logistics companies, this study uses a DEA model to calculate corporate efficiency by implementing a Grey forecasting approach to forecast future sustainability values. Consequently, the study addresses the problem of how to enhance operational performance while accounting for the impact of external conditions. This research can help logistics companies develop operation strategies in the future that will enhance their competitiveness vis-à-vis rivals in a time of global economic volatility.
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Social Sciences, Economics; mental accounting; agricultural water fee; behavioral economics; decision making; information processing; representativeness; negative psychological externalities
Online: 25 August 2016 (10:12:08 CEST)
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To better understand farmers’ refusal and corresponding negative emotions to pay agricultural water fee under current policy in rural China, this paper applies mental accounting, a behavioral economics framework, to explore how the governmental policies of reform of rural taxes and fees, direct agricultural subsidy programs and agricultural water fee individually influence farmers’ decisions in paying agricultural water fee. Using fieldwork data from 577 farmers and 20 water managers in Sichuan, we explore farmers’ information processing regarding paying agricultural water fee via three sequential mental accounting processes, with the associated underlying principles and measures behind each process. We find that the information processing in three mental accounting scenarios related to the agricultural water fee elucidates farmers’ observed behaviors in rural China. Generally, in the three mental accounting scenarios, two conditional intuitive expectations and nine conditional intuitive preferences are formed, however, the conditions of those expectations or preferences cannot be matched with the facts due to the reform of rural taxes and fees, the direct agricultural subsidy programs and the internal attributes of agricultural water fee, which interpret those negative behaviors in rural China. Additionally, this paper offers a view into how previous policies create negative psychological externalities (such as farmers’ psychological dependence on the government) through mental accounting to negatively influence agents’ subsequent decision making; it highlights the significance of underlying mental factors and information processing of negative behaviors in policymaking for managing or conserving common pool resources.
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Social Sciences, Economics; natural capital; human capital; economic growth; small economies; Vector Auto regression; natural resource curse
Online: 18 August 2016 (05:13:21 CEST)
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The question of the relevance of human and natural capital, as well as the potential adverse effect of natural capital on economic growth, has gained increased attention in development economics. The aim of this paper is to theoretically and empirically assess the relevance of several forms of capital on economic growth in small economies that are dependent upon tourism or natural resources. The empirical framework is based on Impulse Response Functions obtained from Vector Autoregressive models in which we focus on the model where economic growth is the dependent variable for ten small economies that are dependent upon either tourism or natural resources. We find that there is evidence of the ‘’natural resource curse’’, especially in the economies that have a strong dependence on resources that are easily substitutable and whose prices constantly fluctuate. We further find that in the majority of observed cases the type of capital these small economies are most dependent on for their economic growth causes negative impulses in the majority of the observed periods. The main policy recommendation should be to assure that even these small economies should strive towards further diversification and avoid dependence on only one segment of their economy.
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Social Sciences, Economics; lagged consumption; dynamic function; water management; average price; marginal price
Online: 12 August 2016 (09:29:43 CEST)
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The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence to water policy-makers and the evaluation of the application of economic instruments such as price and other factors affecting demand, they contribute to improved decision-making around water management in the Biosphere Reserve El Vizcaino, Mexico. It was estimated a dynamic function with average price specification and other price perception specification. The findings show that consumers react to average price perceived and not the marginal price; long-run price elasticity is higher than short-run and both elasticities are inelastic. Elasticities inelastic with rising prices generate high incomes to improve water planning, supply quality and expand service coverage. The results suggest that the level of knowledge of users on the price is key to take into account restructuring rates in a scenario where the consumer has asymmetric information and themselves achieve goals of economic efficiency, social equity and environmental sustainability.
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Social Sciences, Economics; sustainability; farmers’ markets; choice experiment; consumers; willingness to pay
Online: 6 August 2016 (08:12:57 CEST)
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Sustainable food consumption has attracted a widespread attention during last decades by scholars, policy makers and consumers. In line with this, farmers’ markets (FMs) have the potential to encourage sustainable agricultural production and consumption. By reducing the number of actors and distances along the food chain, these alternative food systems foster the reconnection between farmers and consumers and contribute to different social, economic and environmental sustainable goals. This paper provides insights on the role of consumers' sustainability concerns related to their motivation for shopping at FMs. By means of a choice experiment, we analyze the determinants of consumers’ WTP for buying apples at FMs. We are particularly interested in understanding how attitudes towards the three sustainability dimensions are related to consumer preferences in this context. We find that consumer attitudes towards direct contact with producers, contributing to farmers’ income, and environmental benefits can be directly related to product characteristics that are specific to FMs.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Economic growth; Foreign aid; Natural resources; Rent-seeking; Volatility
Online: 29 July 2016 (07:48:51 CEST)
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An abundance of natural resources is both an opportunity and a challenge for developing countries. Several resource-rich, low-income countries receive amounts of foreign aid that are similar to or larger than their actual or potential revenues from natural resources. In such countries, the donors may have an opportunity to help a government to use its resource revenues productively and minimize the magnitude of risks created by resource rents. Development of aid instruments tailored for such purposes might be helped by model-based analysis of the effects of foreign aid on resource-rich, low-income economies and its interactions with the flows of natural resource revenues. This paper develops a growth model à la Barro in which the government receives windfalls (from natural resources and foreign aid) and rent-seeking agents contest for public funds. The key conclusion is that making aid countercyclical helps to achieve higher economic growth, and so does conditioning disbursements on enhancement of public capital. Introducing elements of insurance in the design of both aid products financing investments in infrastructure and social services and supporting policy and institutional reforms may help to achieve both of these objectives.
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Social Sciences, Economics; Fishermen; Lake Ziway; Small scale irrigation users; Socioeconomic benefit; Wetland ecosystem service
Online: 22 July 2016 (16:02:46 CEST)
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ABSTRACT
This study focused for socio-economic benefit of Western shoreline of Lake Ziway ecosystem. The data collected from two woredas they are Adami Tulu Jidu Kombolch (ATJK) and Dugda woreda of fishermen and small scale irrigation users. Lake Ziway great importance food and water for both groups of respondents and additionally sources of raw material, energy, cultivation, organic fertilizers, genetic and medicinal plants. Lake Ziway also has a major economic benefit for both groups of respondents. The sampled fishermen cached mean amount of 2,524Kg per year with minimum and maximum amount of fish 504Kg and 16,800Kg per year respectively and with this fish catching they got average income of 51,398 Birr ($2,570) per year with range of 7,200 Birr ($360) and 288,000 Birr ($14,400) per year. As like of fishermen small scale irrigation also got economic benefit with their production of cereal crops, fruits and vegetables. They produce in average 13.47Quintal of cereal crop and 69.56Quintal of fruits and vegetables per year and they got average income of 7,727 Birr ($386) and with range of 13,714 Birr ($686) per year respectively. this incurred that wetland ecosystem has a lot of socio-economic benefit for the people live near by specially for developing countries like Ethiopia they are more dependent on natural ecosystem like of Lake Ziway. Because of its high importance, we have to protect and conserve and use sustainably of Lake Ziway and similar wetland ecosystems.
Key Words: Wetland ecosystem service; Lake Ziway; Socioeconomic benefit; Fishermen; Small scale irrigation users
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Social Sciences, Economics; Remittances; Economic Growth; Bangladesh; Remittances Utilisation
Online: 20 July 2016 (10:27:13 CEST)
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The paper examines the impact of inward remittances flows on per capita GDP growth in Bangladesh during 1976-2012. We find that the growth effect of remittances is negative at first but becomes positive at a later stage, an evidence of a non-linear. Unproductive use of remittances was rampant in the beginning when they were received by migrant families but better social and economic investments led to more productive utilisation of remittances receipts at later periods. This was the possible mechanism behind the U-shaped relationship. Unlike what is suggested in the literature that the effect of remittances is more pronounced in a less financially developed economy, our evidence do not show that the effect of remittances on per capita GDP growth in Bangladesh is conditional on the level of financial development.