1,720,970 research outputs found
Financial liberalisation in Zimbabwe : what went wrong?
No full textBibliography: pages 84-86.Zimbabwe officially abandoned financial repression when it introduced financial liberalisation in 1991. Since independence in 1980, the government had used interest rate controls and strict foreign exchange regulations in order to control the economy. This mini-dissertation will analyse financial reforms in Zimbabwe from 1991 to 1997. The analysis will consider whether there were statistical grounds to believe that the financial liberalisation hypothesis would work. That is, do real interest rates in Zimbabwe have a statistically significant and positive relationship with real money demand and real savings? This paper will show that in Zimbabwe this relationship does indeed exist. The existence of such a relationship suggests that the freeing of interest rates in 1991 should have raised savings and financial intermediation as the theory predicts. However, as this did not happen, this paper will put forward reasons why, from 1991 to 1997, lifting controls in the economy did not increase savings as expected
The sustainability of microfinance institutions in South
Get PDFMicrofinance targets the poor and very poor, both in urban and rural areas. It has become a common method of poverty alleviation in many developing countries. Several microfinance institutions have adopted a social mission to eradicate poverty by providing credit to the poor. In the past, microfinance organizations used to focus on farmers in rural areas. Modern microfinance programs are focused on the population that is largely neglected by the formal financial sector, specifically women. Due to the perceived risk in this type of uncollateralized lending, private equity markets are not keen on financing microfinance institutions. Furthermore, microfinance institutions are seen as socially motivated as opposed to being financially motivated. For that reason, their profitability and sustainability has come under question in the last decade. Two approaches to the issue of sustainability exist. The dominant institutionist approach argues that microfinance institutions should focus on being sustainable as this will improve their chances of alleviating poverty. The welfarist approach disagrees with this view by arguing that focusing on sustainability will result in the neglect of the poorest of the poor. This study analyses the sustainability of microfinance in South Africa by using a case study research approach. The study explores the challenges to sustainability in South Africa. The results of the study indicate that the microfinance institutions are not profitable nor self- sufficient. The most notable challenge to this sustainability is the high personnel costs. South African MFIs experience higher operating costs than their African counterparts. The study also indicates that the more financially sound microfinance institutions have a lower level of depth outreach than the more subsidy dependent institutions
Namibia and the common monetary area : costs, benefits and choices
No full textThis study analyses if the Common Monetary Area 1s an optimum currency area for Namibia. It analyses if Namibia should continue its membership of the Common Monetary Area or whether it should consider alternative exchange rate regimes. The analysis was done in terms of the theory of optimum currency areas. The traditional theory of optimum currency areas points labour mobility, openness, diversification, intensity of mutual trade, financial and goods market integration, wage flexibility and symmetry and asymmetry of shocks as important criteria for optimum currency area. The new theory of optimum criteria points generalised purchasing power parity hypothesis, time inconsistency and the issue of nominal anchor as criteria for optimum currency area. Elimination of transaction costs, savings on foreign exchange reserves, reduction of exchange rate uncertainty are identified as important benefits from using a common currency, while the loss of seigniorage revenue, real exchange rate misalignment, impact of exports on employment are identified as the most visible costs associated with using a common currency. All criteria, benefits and costs were analysed. The results suggest that Namibia should not withdraw from the CMA, but should continue its membership and encourage negotiations for a full monetary union. That is because although the economy of Namibia is not well diversified and there is no labour mobility between Namibia and South Africa, there is a high degree of financial and goods markets integration, high intensity of mutual trade between Namibia and South Africa, and high degree of openness of Namibia's economy. The analysis of purchasing power parity hypothesis shows that the real exchange rates of Namibia and South Africa are cointegrated, and the shocks to the two economies are symmetric suggesting that the two countries require similar policy response. Analysis of the benefits and costs also shows that the benefits are far high than the costs. There are significant gains from the elimination of transaction costs, and savings on foreign exchange reserves. The impact of real exchange misalignment on measures of economic performance as well as the impact of exports on 2 employment is very weak. This weak impact of real exchange rate misalignments on measures of economic performance, and also weak impact of exports on employment as well as the symmetry of shocks of Namibia and South Africa as indicated by the Bayoumi-Eichengreen model suggest that Namibia should continue its membership of the Common Monetary Area. The symmetry of shocks of Namibia and South Africa suggests that the Common Monetary Area is still optimum currency area because these two countries require similar policy response
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Programme - impact on income of smallholder farmers
Get PDFAgriculture is the single most important sector in Malawi due to its contribution to the economy ranging from employment creation, contribution to GDP growth to source of foreign exchange earnings. These significant contributions have necessitated the Government of Malawi to develop strategies and policies such as the Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP), whose main aim is to increase household incomes and reduce food insecurity and ultimately reduce poverty. It is nine years since the introduction of FISP but its results remain mixed. Using the 2009/10 Integrated Household Survey Phase 3 (IHS3) dataset, a logistic regression in a multivariate data analysis approach was used to investigate the impact of FISP on income levels and food security of rural smallholder farmers in Malawi. The analysis showed that about 82 percent of smallholder farmers live in rural areas, about 75 percent of them were males, 71 percent were married, 70 percent did not go to school and 69 percent benefited from FISP. In farming, 68 percent of these smallholder farmers had less than 1 hectare of farms, 70 percent of them had labour force of less than 5 people, 51 percent of them harvest less than 5 bags of 50kgs of maize of which 92 percent sell most of their harvested maize and 89 percent of them receive less than MK5, 000 from sales. In addition, about 99 percent of these smallholder farmers were food insecure as they save less than 1 bag of 50kgs after harvest. Only 1 percent of these smallholder farmers receive remittances and 21 percent had other income generating activities (IGAs). Demographic and socio-economic factors have no impact on these farmers capability to increase income levels and enhance their food security. There is also no statistically significant difference between FISP beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in terms of capabilities of increasing incomes and enhancing food security. It is, therefore, concluded that FISP had no significant impact on the abilities of these smallholder farmers to increase their incomes and enhancing their food security. Hence, FISP did not prove to be the best food security and poverty alleviation tool in Malawi
Budget deficits and the term structure of interest rates : evidence from Mauritius (1968-1999)
No full textBibliography: leaves 80-85
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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