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Effect of electronic commerce on output and total factor productivity in Kenya
Get PDFAbstract. Kenya seeks to transform into a middle-income country by 2030 with target annual growth rates of 10 percent. However, this has not been realized since growth rates are under 10 percent while 36 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Various studies interpret this as an underperformance. However, this study held the view that the economic growth witnessed in the years 2007 to 2018pointed to a resilient economy characterized by average steady growth rates of 5.4 percent despite the deterioration of the global economic outlook. This resilience coincided with the adoption of e-commerce, increased output in absolute values and emphasis of Information and Communication Technology as a key industry under the economic pillar of the Kenya Vision 2030. The period also saw the emergence of mobile payment gateways, which is a key enabler for E-commerce among others. E-commerce activities increase efficiency and ease of doing business by reducing costs and barriers of operation, which are important for achieving economic growth in transition countries such as Kenya. The main objective of the study was to investigate the effect of e-commerce on output and total factor productivity. The study developed a framework following the neoclassical and endogenous growth theories. The study used quarterly time-series data from the period 2007 to 2018 and applied Ordinary Least Squares regression models. The results showed that e-commerce had a positive effect on output. The effect of e-commerce on Total Factor Productivity was positive when considering the value of mobile payments while that of card payments was negative. The results suggest that continued investments towards e-commerce in terms of capital and mobile payments technology will be important for Kenya to sustain output growth and productivity increase.Keywords. E-commerce, ICT, Output, Mobile payments, Total factor productivity.JEL. 011, 033, 041, 047, P24
Non-timber forest incomes and economic welfare in the South-West region of Cameroon: The incidence of rural income inequality
Get PDFAbstract. With the aim of answering the question whether or not Non-Timber Forest Products can contribute in reducing rural income inequality in the South-West region of Cameroon, the study used primary data collected from a survey on 408 rural household heads. The Data was collected using a structured questionnaire. We adopted three different methodologies – The Gini Coefficient, The Lorenz curve, and The Income Decomposition by income sources to obtain identical results. The results revealed that incomes from non-timber forest products reduces rural income inequality in the rural parts of the region significantly, and occupy an important position amongst the different income sources which were investigated. We therefore recommend improved value-added for Non-Timber Forest Products through processing. A better management of the forest in general and the forest resources in particular will ensure improved benefits to the community as a whole especially in the areas of total income and income inequality..Keywords. Economic Welfare, Rural Income Inequality, Non-Timber Forest Incomes, Gini Coefficient Income Decomposition by income sources and Cameroon.JEL. O11, E20, Q13, C30
Attitudes towards privacy by design in e-government: Views from the trenches
Get PDFAbstract. In light of increasing public pressure and strict regulation, issues of information security and privacy gain prominence in the e-government domain. A promising approach to ensure data protection is to embrace the Privacy by Design principles and practices in the public sector but this remains a major challenge for practitioners. This article leverages in-depth interviews with e-government stakeholders in Bulgaria to explore their opinions and preferences on data protection issues, thus outlining the main drivers and barriers for Privacy by Design implementations. The key insight is that increasing citizen demands and regulatory oversight engender a change in privacy thinking that defies the current status quo. Limited understanding, scarcity of best practices, legacy systems and insufficient financial and administrative capacity seem to be the main implementation obstacles.Keywords. Privacy by Design, e-government, data protection, personal data.JEL. C80, H10, H11
Effect of economic growth and inflation on unemployment: An empirical analysis in Senegal from 1991 to 2018
Get PDFAbstract. Nowadays, unemployment is a big issue for policymakers. The high rate of unemployment can lead to instability such as crime and poverty. For this reason, unemployment can be viewed as heartbreaking for the country’s economy. This paper mainly studies the relationship between Senegal’s unemployment rate, economic growth and the inflation rate for the period 1991-2018. In this study, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling approach (Pesaran & Shin, 1999) and the bound test of cointegration were applied. Furthermore, the Augmented Dickey-Fuller Test (ADF) and Phillips Perron (PP) was applied to the test unit root or stationary issue. Finally, the Granger Causality Test also was conducted to check if it exists a unidirectional or bidirectional causality among variables. The findings show a negative long-run and short-run relationship between unemployment, growth, industry and age dependency ratio whereas it appears a positive relationship between unemployment and inflation in both periods. It is also indicated that there is no Granger causality relationship between unemployment, economic growth, and inflation. Whereas unemployment and economic growth have a Granger causality on the industry.Keywords. Unemployment rate, Inflation, Economic growth, ARDL, Granger Causality.JEL. F53, E31, J60
The competitiveness puzzle: Interpretations, misunderstandings, and conceptual reorientations towards integrated competitiveness policy approaches
Get PDFAbstract. Competitiveness is a field of discord and controversies among economists from the very first moment it appeared in the theory and practice of economic policy. This article aims to identify how the concept of competitiveness evolves and find out possible points of convergence, divergence, and synthesis in contemporary scientific dialogue. It first presents older and recent approaches to competitiveness by identifying potential conceptual enrichments and reorientations at the meso-level of analysis. It finds that the rediscovery and deepening into the meso-economic approaches, which connect the micro and macro-economic levels of analysis dynamically, have the potential to offer new analytical content and interpretive potential on competitiveness. Growth poles, industrial districts, and innovation environments constitute such meso-level approaches. In conclusion, we propose a multilevel synthesis of competitiveness and an integrated form of industrial policy in the scheme of “competitiveness web” and “co-opetitiveness pole.”Keywords. Competitiveness, Micro-meso-macro analysis, Growth poles, Industrial districts, Innovation environment, Competitiveness web, Co-opetitiveness pole.JEL. L52, Β50
Diagnosis of the agricultural information, training and advices system in Bulgaria
Get PDFAbstract. Despite the great theoretical and practical significance, in Bulgaria there are no comprehensive analysis of the state and evolution of the system of agricultural information, training and advices in Bulgaria. The goal of this paper is to analyze the state and evolution of the system of agricultural information, training and advices in Bulgaria during the period after country’s EU accession, identify major trends in that area, make a comparison with other EU states, specify main problems, and suggest conclusions for improvement of policies during next programing period. The analysis has found out that in years after accession of the country to EU the number of the farm managers who undertook full agricultural training increases, but despite that almost 93% of them are still with practical experiences and without any agricultural training. The extent of participation of rural areas rests weak and constantly decreasing, and Bulgaria is among the last in EU in hours of formal and informal education and training. In years of EU membership the number of provided consultations is doubled and in recent years 17% of all registered agricultural producers and each tenth farmer in the country are consulted while the subjects of provided consultation widened. Also hundreds of events associated with knowledge and innovation transfer and sharing are organized as most of them are jointly organized by the National Advisory Service with the institutes of Agricultural Academy, agrarian and other universities, research and development organizations. The number of organized events, the overall number of participants, and the average number of participant per event tend to decrease.Keywords. Training, Consultation, Advices, Agriculture, Bulgaria.JEL. Q10, O31, O33, Q01, Q16, Q18
Dynamic risk sharing in the Central African Economic and monetary community
Get PDFAbstract. In contrast to the first Optimum Currency Area (OCA) theory which was mostly about preventing currency areas’ exposure to asymmetric shocks, the second model introduced by Robert A. Mundell (1973) focuses on risk sharing across member states when facing adverse macroeconomic shocks. This paper explores how risk is shared across the six member states of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). Using dynamic panel VAR, we measure disposable income and consumption smoothing of negative output shocks. We find that more than 72 percent of GDP idiosyncratic shocks remain unsmoothed in the case of the Central African currency area from 1986 to 2018.Keywords. Optimal currency area, International risk-sharing, Dynamic panel VAR, Fiscal consolidation, Currency devaluation, Shock smoothing.JEL. C32, E41, E21, F32, F45
Case analysis: Enron; Ethics, social responsibility, and ethical accounting as inferior goods?
Get PDFAbstract. In 2001 soon after the Asian Crises of 1997-1998, the DotcomBubble, 9/11, the Enron crises triggered a fraud crisis in Wall Street that impacted the market to the core. Since then scandals such as the Lehman Brothers and WorldCom in 2007-2008 and the Great Recession have surpassed it, Enron still remains one of the most important cases of fraudulent accounting. In 2000’s even though the financial industry had become highly regulated, deregulation of the energy industry allowed companies to place bets on future prices. At the peak of the dotcom bubble Enron was named as a star innovator but when the dotcom bubble burst, Enron’s plan to build high speed internet did not flourish and investors started to realize losses. Furthermore, the financial losses of the operations were hid using the market to market accounting technique instead of book value and using special purpose entities to hide debt. The root cause that was identified as a company with a toxic corporate culture focused on officer compensation rather than social responsibility and hence faulty leadership. Is it possible then that; ethical accounting practices, social responsibility and ethics all become inferior goods as income rises in an ‘irrationally exuberant’era?Keywords. Enron (ENE, ENRN), Dotcom bubble, Accounting fraud, Deregulation, Speculation, Corporate culture, Social responsibility, Government intervention, Risk management, Consumer behavior, Energy markets.JEL. N0, M1, M4, M12, M14, G32, K4, K32, H12