Economic Research Institute Research Articles

The drivers of women farmers’ participation in cash crop production: the case of women smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana

ABSTRACTPurpose: Participation in labour markets and high-value crops among men and women smallholder farmers has always been an important strategy for poverty alleviation and attainment of food and income security. In contributing to the generation of gender-disaggregated empirical literature, this paper examined determinants of women smallholder farmers’ participation in their households’ decision-making regarding cash crop production.Methodology: Data for the paper were sourced from a baseline survey conducted by Monitory and Evaluation Technical Support Services, Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research and Ghana Statistical Service for the USAID Feed the Future Programme in their Northern Ghana Zone of Influence. The data were analysed using probit regression analysis to identify factors which significantly influence women farmers’ participation in cash crop production.Findings: The probit analysis identified intra-household power relations such as women participation in household decision-making, control over household productive resources and control over household income as significant determinants of smallholder women farmers’ participation in cash crop production.Theoretical Implication: Improving women smallholder farmers’ power to participate in household decision-making, access to and control over household productive resources and income are therefore imperative in boosting women farmers’ participation in cash crop production.Practical Implications: It is therefore recommended that any gender-targeted policy and programme with the aim of women’s economic empowerment must critically examine the sociocultural barriers impeding women’s participation in their household decision-making and control over household productive resources. Women farmers’ participation in their households’ decision-making regarding cash crop production and the use of income generated from it should be encouraged through gender mainstreaming in agricultural service delivery.

IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL POLICY ON RELATIVE PRICE VARIABILITY OF FOOD CROPS AND INFLATION IN NIGERIA

<p>Prices of food crops in Nigeria tend to exhibit similar trend with inflation. The study therefore established quantitatively relationships among agricultural policy, relative price variability (RPV) of food crops and inflation in Nigeria. Data for the study includes annual producer prices (nominal) and output of food crops and annual inflation rate obtained from the publications of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian Bureau of Statistics, Food and Agricultural Organisation and Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research covering the period of 1970-2009. Analytical tools used were RPV index and Error Correction Method (ECM). The results showed that the variables are stationary at their levels. As inflation increases, RPV of food crops also increases both in short run (0.0002) and the long run (0.0310). Civilian Post-Structural Adjustment Period Policies (CPSAP) caused a significant reduction in inflation and consequently reduced the RPV of food crops in the long run. There is a need for policies that will buffer the food crop sub-sector from the effects of inflation. Policies that reduce the rate of inflation and minimise RPV among food crops are needed. Effective management of inefficiencies and misallocation of resources in the sub-sector should be explored.</p>

The challenges of enhancing collaboration in life science clusters: Lessons from Chicago, Copenhagen and Singapore: Table 1.

Cluster policy is widely discussed due to the vagueness of the cluster concept and the disagreement among innovation stakeholders and policy-makers on how to address networking dynamics. This paper looks at the increasing number of cluster policies targeting collaboration and the different framing of it as a policy issue by government and stakeholders. Based on interviews in the life science clusters of Chicago, Copenhagen and Singapore, the research finds that network members frame low collaboration levels as an issue that needs to be addressed by adjusting the larger institutional setting while policy-makers focus on the dynamics of the network. The research further shows that different motives drive the demand of certain policy measures: government is concerned with overall economic performance, while companies and research institutes focus on their own success in the network. Both groups find common ground in support for cluster organizations and their ability to connect various stakeholders.

Europeana as a Resource for Social Scientists in Agriculture and Food: A Europeana Cloud Case Study

In this paper, we explore how we may give researchers from different disciplines new tools to enrich and use the data that are made discoverable and accessible through Europeana, the digital cultural aggregator of Europe. This paper presents a use case where selected content from Europeana is used as a resource for Social Scientists working in the agriculture and food domain. The process starts with the profiling and the identification of content requirements of the research community of the Greek Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AGRERI) to the enrichment of its library with quality content from Europeana and the development of a discovery microsite for AGRERI, providing access to the aforementioned selected content. The paper presents the connection of this content with AGINFRA, the data infrastructure for European agricultural research. This paper aims to showcase how researchers working in completely different disciplines may discover and exploit data sets of interest to them, from the vast amount of resources available through Europeana. By using these resources, agricultural (and not only) researchers can investigate various topics using different scientific methods and tools, thus making multi-disciplinary agriculture research more useful and meaningful.

Improving the Timeliness of Turning Signals for Business Cycles with Monthly Data

The conventional growth rate measures (such as month‐on‐month, year‐on‐year growth rates and 6‐month smoothed annualized rate adopted by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and Economic Cycle Research Institute) are popular and can be easily obtained by computing the growth rate for monthly data based on a fixed comparison benchmark, although they do not make good use of the information underlying the economic series. By focusing on the monthly data, this paper proposes the k‐month kernel‐weighted annualized rate (k‐MKAR), which includes most existing growth rate measures as special cases. The proposed k‐MKAR measure involves the selection of smoothing parameters that are associated with the accuracy and timeliness for detecting the change in business turning points. That is, the comparison base is flexible and is likely to vary for different series under consideration. A data‐driven procedure depending upon the stepwise multiple reality check test for choosing the smoothing parameters is also suggested in this paper. The simple numerical evaluation and Monte Carlo experiment are conducted to confirm that our measures (in particular the two‐parameter k‐MKAR) improve the timeliness subject to a certain degree of accuracy. The business cycle signals issued by the Council for Economic Planning and Development over the period from 1998 to 2009 in Taiwan are taken as an example to illustrate the empirical application of our method. The empirical results show that the k‐MKAR‐based score lights are more capable of reflecting turning points earlier than the conventional year‐on‐year measure without sacrificing accuracy. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Shankar Aiyar Memorial Lecture

*This article is an outcome of a project supported by South Asia Network of Economic Research Institutes under 16th RRC.

'Leave me alone and let me teach.' Teachers' views of Welsh Government education policies and education in Wales

The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to discuss what teachers in Wales think about the Welsh Government’s recent education (mainly school) policies and secondly, how the educational system in Wales might be improved. It is based on the findings from a general survey conducted by the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods (WISERD) Education. The views of 220 primary and secondary teachers and head teachers were gathered in 2014. The paper’s central theme is that teachers in Wales generally welcome policies with a strong element of social justice but believe that there have been too many educational initiatives over recent years. They think the educational system in Wales can be improved through various means, including: reducing bureaucracy, increasing their professional autonomy, developing quality professional development and clear leadership. The findings are limited by the nature of a small-scale survey but reinforce conclusions reached in other research studies in the United Kingdom, regarding teachers’ criticisms of the pace of curriculum change and initiative overload (Berliner, 2011; NUT, 2014) as well as general pointers towards more effective educational systems (OECD, 2014). For its part, the challenge for the Welsh Government is building consensus at a time when the performance of Welsh youngsters, relative to other countries, is poor.

The Phillips Machine (MONIAC)

The Phillips Machine, or Monetary National Income Analogue Computer (MONIAC), is a hydraulic representation of cash flow within the UK economy in the early 20th century. It represents the circular flow of income (New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, 2015), shown by the economic equation Aggregate Demand = Consumer Expenditure + Investment + Government Spending + (Exports – Imports), or Y = C + I + G + (X – M), which is an important equation in determining the national output of an economy (Pettinger, 2008). Though no longer in use, of the 14 that were built, the majority were originally restricted to military and government use owing to their effectiveness in determining economic policy. This paper describes an implementation of an emulation of this machine that satisfies, or mostly satisfies, almost all of the requirements specified in the ISO/IEC 25010 software quality assurance standard and would be suitable for deployment to support A-Level Economics teaching. With further work it would also become suitable as part of a museum display of a Phillips Machine.

Role of Libraries in Research Productivity of Social Science Research Institutions: A Case Study

In India, research in Social Science dates back to the establishment of Universities across the country but the pace of research actually accelerated with the establishment of Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR) in 1969. At present, research in Social Science is carried out in different categories of organizations such as specialized research institutions, Universities, Deemed to be Universities, Social Science departments in Institutes of National Importance such as IITs, IIMs etc. With a backdrop argument that libraries play a vital role in research output of social science research institutions, this paper tried to find out the use of libraries by researchers attached to two major social science research institutions in India, viz. the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) and Sardar Patel Institute of Economic and Social Research (SPIESR) by studying the extent of availability of resources in libraries of these two research institutions out of the total number of citations of the publications of the faculty members of these two institutions. It was found that the percentage of availability of cited resources is not encouraging in the libraries of these two institutions and the percentage of availability of cited resources by respective faculty members of these two institutions is more in SPIESR when compared with GIPE.

Институту экономических исследований ДВО РАН – 40 лет

Институту экономических исследований ДВО РАН – 40 лет

Comment on “The Long‐Term Impacts of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games on Economic and Labor Market Outcomes”

Comment on “The Long‐Term Impacts of the 1998 <scp>N</scp>agano <scp>W</scp>inter <scp>O</scp>lympic <scp>G</scp>ames on Economic and Labor Market Outcomes”

Do Swedish Consumer Confidence Indicators Do What They Are Intended to Do?

Abstract In this paper, we investigate whether the two main consumer confidence indicators available for Sweden – that of the National Institute of Economic Research and that of the European Commission – can nowcast Swedish household consumption expenditure. In a simulated outof-sample nowcast exercise, we find that the consumer confidence indicator of the National Institute of Economic Research appears most useful for this purpose. The root mean square error of the nowcast from the model employing this indicator is the lowest of all models relying on survey data. The nowcasting performance of the model using the consumer confidence indicator of the European Commission is less impressive; while it outperforms the simplest possible benchmark model, its root mean square error is considerably higher than that of the model relying on the consumer confidence indicator of the National Institute of Economic Research. An implication of our findings is that while the European Commission’s survey programme may have...

Information-seeking behavior of social sciences scholars

Information-seeking behavior is one of the most important areas of user studies and a concept affected by many factors. Previous researches in these areas indicate that the information-seeking practices of scholars are dependent on their field of research, and vary from one discipline to another. This paper examines the information-seeking behavior of scholars in the social sciences, based on the premise that information-seeking behavior follows universally applicable stages and patterns worldwide. The study was conducted at the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER). Fifty eight active social sciences scholars were interviewed via a questionnaire about their information sources for research and consultancy purposes, their preference for electronic or printed formats, their use of electronic or Internet resources, and how they meet or satisfy their information needs, among others. Results show that journals and books were the most preferred information sources, and a large majority of scholars “regularly” used electronic information resources for their research and consultancy needs. The findings of the study also demonstrate diverse usage patterns for electronic information resources among users of different academic ranks and age range. Based on the research findings, the author provides suggestions on how current information services and products can be improved to better serve the users. The author also makes recommendations for improving library services and technologies to better meet the information needs of social sciences scholars in general.

Multidimensional Poverty in Japan

Not very much is known about poverty in Japan. Until recently, official figures on the diffusion of income poverty among the population did not exist. The Japanese income poverty rate was first announced in October 2009, almost 40 years after the United States did so. Even less is known about multidimensional poverty and material deprivation. A new multidimensional poverty index, including food, clothing and other living conditions, has been in the making since 2012 but, to the best of our knowledge, no official measure exists as of today. What is the share of the population in non-income poverty? How many Japanese are unable to enjoy the minimum standards of living? And who are they according to demographic and social characteristics? These are some of the questions we answer in this paper. We base our analysis on aspects of material living conditions collected in the Quality of Life Survey in 2012 and 2013 conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Cabinet Office of Japan.

World Economic Performance—past, present and future: essays in celebration of the life and work of Angus Maddison edited by D.S.Prasada Rao and BartvonArk (eds) Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA, 2013 Pp. ix + 432, ISBN 978 1 84844 848 3

Asian-Pacific Economic LiteratureVolume 29, Issue 1 p. 186-193 Review Essay World Economic Performance—past, present and future: essays in celebration of the life and work of Angus Maddison edited by D.S. Prasada Rao and Bart Ark (eds) Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA, 2013 Pp. ix + 432, ISBN 978 1 84844 848 3 Konosuke Odaka, Konosuke Odaka Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Konosuke Odaka, Konosuke Odaka Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 19 May 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/apel.12097Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume29, Issue1May 2015Pages 186-193 RelatedInformation

Ново българско изследване на външната търговия в Африка

The international trade of the African Regional Communities has been in the focus of multilateral political debates for a long time, but has not been noticed by the researchers yet. A lot of literary works were dedicated to the subject of regional integration in many regions and in plenty of historical examples, but we should agree, that the African integration is quite complex and specific. Therefore, we have to go through the lessons, suggested by the theories in order to answer the question: Does the conventional theory matter, when it comes to the integration of African Regional Economic Communities (RECs)? This is exactly what makes the book “International Trade of African Regional Economic Communities”1 by Eduard Marinov, PhD (Economic Research Institute at BAS) highly topical. Moreover, this is the first study of these issues conducted by a Bulgarian researcher over the last decades.

Institutional environment, firm ownership, and IPO first-day returns: Evidence from China

We examine two inconclusive issues in the IPO (initial public offering) underpricing literature. It is unclear whether private firms or state-owned enterprises (SOEs) underprice their IPOs more and how the institutional environment affects IPO underpricing. Using a much larger China IPO sample of SOEs, we conclude that SOEs underprice their IPOs more than private firms. Specifically, SOEs controlled by the central government (CSOEs) underprice their IPOs 27 percentage points more than private firms, whereas SOEs controlled by local governments (LSOEs) underprice theirs 7 percentage points more than those of private firms. Using the National Economic Research Institute Index of Marketization (NERIIM) to measure the institutional environment, we find that one index score improvement in institutional environment is associated with a two percentage-point reduction in IPO underpricing. Importantly, a better institutional environment reduces IPO underpricing most effectively for private firms, followed by LSOEs, and the least for CSOEs.

Научна конференция по проблемите на икономическия растеж

"Economic Growth: Incentives and Restraints", a most important issue for the economic development of Bulgaria, was the focus of an international scientific conference held on 6th and 7th October 2014 at the Economic Research Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (ERI-BAS). This event was marked by the celebration of the 145th anniversary of the foundation of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Many scholars and lecturers from this country participated in the event delivering reports or attending as guests representing the Economic Research Institute (ERI) and other institutes at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as well as University of National and World Economy, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", D. A. Tsenov Academy of Economics - Svishtov, University of Trakia - Stara Zagora, New Bulgarian University (NBU), Veliko Tarnovo University "St. Cyril and St. Methodius", South-Western University “Nеofit Rilski” - Blagoevgrad, University of Forestry, VUZF University – Sofia, International Business School (town of Botevgrad), Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski", and others. Foreign guests from the UK, France, Romania (Romanian Academy of Sciences - RAS), and FYR Macedonia, have maintained various forms of cooperation with scientists from the ERI-BAS for years.

Assessing proficiency in the National English Ability Test (NEAT) in South Korea

The English language as a symbolic resource holds more notable cultural and social significance in South Korea than any other foreign language. In the current trend of globalisation, proficient English skills have been identified by the government as a critical resource for the country's survival, and developing these skills has been a major priority in all areas. A number of elite universities and sought-after conglomerates such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai have policies which noticeably favour and recruit students with high English proficiency levels (Lee, 2006: 67). In particular, scores achieved in the international proficiency tests such as the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), in preference to scores gained in other English tests, have become a major determining factor in gaining employment and promotion. According to the Samsung Economic Research Institute between 2004 and 2005, 102,340 Koreans sat for TOEFL. Koreans represented 18.5% of the total 554,942 people taking the test worldwide and they spend 700 billion Won (approximately US$700 million) a year on tests to evaluate their English proficiency.

Metric-based data quality assessment — Developing and evaluating a probability-based currency metric

Data quality assessment has been discussed intensively in the literature and is critical in business. The importance of using up-to-date data in business, innovation, and decision-making processes has revealed the need for adequate metrics to assess the currency of data in information systems. In this paper, we propose a data quality metric for currency that is based on probability theory. Our metric allows for a reproducible configuration and a high level of automation when assessing the currency of attribute values. The metric values represent probabilities and can be integrated into a decision calculus (e.g., based on decision theory) to support decision-making. The evaluation of our metric consists of two main steps: (1) we define an instantiation of the metric for a real-use situation of a German mobile services provider to demonstrate both the applicability and the practical benefit of the approach; (2) we use publicly available real world data provided by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany and the German Institute of Economic Research to demonstrate its feasibility by defining an instantiation of the metric and to evaluate its strength (compared to existing approaches).