1,720,957 research outputs found
Rice Policy and Food Security in West Africa: Lessons and Challenges within Global and Open Economy Context
No full textThe general objective of this study is to measure the relative magnitude of effect of the key economic factors affecting West African rice producers’ planting decisions. Factors that are responsive to yield and trade liberalization effect on consumers and producer decisions are identified and estimated by using an econometric model of the demand and supply to rice in West Africa. The results suggest that area planted to rice in West Africa is more responsive to changes in area planted in previous years than to changes in producers’ prices of rice. It is also found that many West African countries have the potential to increase productivity through increasing yield per hectare and that low import price of rice continue to underpin rice import at the expense of domestic production. An important implication of the study is that policies to reduce yield gap could do more to enhance the production of rice in West Africa, which will also ensure food security in West African countries in the long run
Factors Affecting Groundnut Exports in The Gambia: The Vector Error Correction Approach
Full text linkGroundnut, a leguminous oil seed grown in the uplands serve as food and main export crop in The Gambia. Despite a long tradition of groundnut farming, practical knowledge, favorable climatic conditions, and suitable land, recent declines in production and exports have hampered groundnut farming's contribution to poverty reduction, food security, and income generation. Revitalization of cash crop, such as groundnut has emerged as a national priority, embraced on a daily basis by rural development actors, particularly famers seeking to improve and secure their income. Thus, groundnut appears to be obvious and necessary, not only for farmers' income security, but also for the country's ability to attract foreign currency, provide livestock feed, and develop national trade. Given the country’s poor performance in groundnut exports, we deem it necessary to identify the key factors influencing that performance and study their effects on groundnut export earnings in order to draft appropriate policies aimed at increasing exports earnings in The Gambia. This paper employs the cointegration approach, with export value serving as the independent variable, to examine the country’s export performance over a 49-year period using time series data (1970-2018). Once a cointegration vector between the variables is discovered, the Vector Error Correction Model is applied. The findings reveal that nominal exchange rate, producer price are key factors affecting significantly the country’s export performance in short-run. Furthermore, in the long-run exchange rate, production, producer price, and world export price are significant factors determining groundnut export earnings in The Gambia. To increase the country’s market share and export earnings, especially in the long-run, it is recommended to ensure an effective transmission of international prices increments to farmers and to improve the production by raising yields significantly. Keywords: Determinants of Agricultural Exports, Agricultural Exports, Cointegration, Groundnut, The Gambia DOI: 10.7176/DCS/11-8-04 Publication date:October 31st 202
Dynamic Modeling of Causal Relationship Between CO2 emissions, Economic Growth, Energy Consumption and Foreign Direct Investment in The Gambia
Full text linkEnvironmental degradation is a problem in developing countries. The use of non-renewable energy consumption for economic growth causes environmental degradation, but the consequences of environmental degradation cannot be ignored. The aim of the study was to understand relationship between CO2 (Carbon dioxide) emissions, economic growth, energy consumption and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in The Gambia for the period from 1980 to 2019. To investigate the relationship between the variables, cointegration and granger causality are used. The findings support the existence of long-run equilibrium between the variables. The empirical results reveal that energy consumption positively influences CO2 emissions in short-run. Moreover, in the long-run, energy consumption and FDI influence CO2 emissions. The results of the study also reveal that there are two-way causalities between CO2 emissions and economic growth, and between energy consumption and economic growth in both short-run and long-run in The Gambia. Therefore, policies aimed at increasing energy efficiency, as well as the adoption and utilization of renewable energy sources to replace old traditional energy sources such as charcoal, firewood, gas, and oil, are critical in reducing CO2 emissions in the country while also sustaining economic development. Keywords: CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, Economic growth, Energy consumption, Foreign direct investment, The Gambia DOI: 10.7176/DCS/11-6-03 Publication date:June 30th 2021
Determinants of Cashew Agroforestry Adoption Among Smallholder Farmers in the Gambia: Implications for Resilient Farming Systems
Full text linkAlthough agroforestry effectively addresses uncertainty, risk, and shocks, its adoption is slow among rural smallholder cashew farmers in the Gambia. This study investigates the factors influencing cashew agroforestry (AF) adoption through a household survey of 250 farmers from seven villages in the Kombo East District, West Coast Region. The adoption determinants were analyzed using a logit regression model and grouped into five categories: a) household preferences, b) resource endowment, c) risk and uncertainty, d) biophysical factors, and e) institutional factors. The study identified 28 factors, including demographics, experience, wealth, environmental threats, awareness, support, and climate change, as significantly influencing AF adoption. Despite recognizing the potential benefits of AF, farmers face constraints such as insufficient funds, poor-quality seedlings, limited extension services, lack of farmland, and low climate awareness. This study’s findings offer important insights for addressing the slow adoption of cashew AF in the Kombo East district, with potential relevance for similar regions in the Gambia and beyond. It offers insights for developing policies and programs to promote and accelerate AF adoption, enhance resilience in local farming systems, improve adaptive capacity, and provide diverse livelihood and socioeconomic benefits
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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