The effect of urban air pollutants in Germany: eco-efficiency analysis through fractional regression models applied after DEA and SFA efficiency predictions

Cities and living standards contribute intensively to air pollution, an environmental risk factor which causes diseases. Recently, in developed countries, the majority of cities has grown rapidly and has experienced increasing environmental problems. In this article we analyze the effect of urban air pollution considering the available data for the years 2007, 2010 and 2013 in 24 German cities. Proposing a new model, we start the analysis using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to predict eco-efficiency scores for the 24 German cities. Afterwards, it is applied fractional regression to infer about the influencing factors of the eco-efficiency scores, at the city level. Results suggest a significant impact over eco-efficiency due to the excess of PM10, the average temperature, the average of NO2 concentration and rainfall. The findings in this study hold important implications for policymakers and urban planners in Germany, especially those that coordinate environmental protection and economic development in cities. Therefore, interventions to reduce urban air pollution can be accomplished on different regulatory levels, leading to synergistic effects as the decrease of climate change effects and noise.publishe

Oil price and bank performance in the Middle Eastern oil exporting countries

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel UniversityBanks as the most evident financial institutions which provide a range of financial services in their primary role as intermediary from lenders and borrowers of money to sophisticated tools concerned with credit and liquidity provision, risk management and remittance of funds play a vital role in the economy of countries. Measuring the performance of banks, and identifying the factors which impact it, is an issue of major interest for regulators, policy makers, stakeholders, investors and the general public. Oil price movement as an external factor influencing the performance of banks, may affect macroeconomic events which, in turn, influence cash flows significantly in the finance and banking industry. Examining the performance of banks and how oil price movement impact their performance significantly those operating in oil exporting countries, is of interest of bank managers and policy makers. It will help top level managers of banks to be aware of relationship between oil price movement and the performance of their banks and will help them in formulating better policies and strategies in taking on opportunities and avoiding possible risks which this movement may cause. Moreover, it will help policy makers in oil exporting countries to understand how the banking industry of an oil exporting country can reap benefits from economic booms as a consequence of an increase in the price of oil. Therefore, this thesis attempts to investigate the impact of oil price movement on the performance of banks under different operational styles in oil exporting countries. The sample is consisting of 98 commercial, investment and Islamic banks in eight Middle Eastern oil exporting (MEOE) countries during the period 2000-2011. The research applies a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis to examine the impact of oil price movement on performance of banks. In the first stage, four different efficiency scores of banks operating in the MEOE countries are derived and compared. The empirical results suggest that overall, MEOE banking industries mostly suffer from poor usage of and mal-location of resources by management to produce outputs, rather than a failure in operating at the most productive scale. A low level of overall technical efficiency in the MEOE banking industry means that management has poor skills in controlling operating expenses, marketing activities, absorbing deposits and the monitoring and effective screening of borrowers. In the second stage, to find out the impact of oil price movement on the performance of banks, technical efficiency scores obtained from the first stage are regressed over the oil price movement variable and environmental variables. The empirical results show that while oil revenue impacts the efficiency of the banks directly, positive oil price shocks impact efficiency of banks indirectly, and through inflation and economic growth. These findings suggest that when there is an increase in the price of oil, banks operating in oil exporting countries will derive benefit from the surplus income injected into the economy and their performance will be enhanced

On Counterinsurgency: Firepower, Biopower, and the Collateralization of Milliatry Violence

This dissertation investigates the most recent cycle of North Atlantic expeditionary warfare by addressing the resuscitation of counterinsurgency warfare with a specific focus on the war in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2014. The project interrogates the lasting aesthetic, epistemological, philosophical, and territorial implications of counterinsurgency, which should be understood as part of wider transformations in military affairs in relation to discourses of adaptation, complexity, and systemic design, and to the repertoire of global contingency and stability operations. Afghanistan served as a counterinsurgency laboratory, and the experiments will shape the conduct of future wars, domestic security practices, and the increasingly indistinct boundary between them. Using work from Michel Foucault and liberal war studies, the project undertakes a genealogy of contemporary population-centred counterinsurgency and interrogates how its conduct is constituted by and as a mixture firepower and biopower. Insofar as this mix employs force with different speeds, doses, and intensities, the dissertation argues that counterinsurgency unrestricts and collateralizes violence, which is emblematic of liberal war that kills selectively to secure and make life live in ways amenable to local and global imperatives of liberal rule. Contemporary military counterinsurgents, in conducting operations on the edges of liberal rule's jurisdiction and in recursively influencing the domestic spaces of North Atlantic states, fashion biopoweras custodial power to conduct the conduct of lifeto shape different interventions into the everyday lives of target populations. The 'lesser evil' logic of counterinsurgency is used to frame counterinsurgency as a type of warfare that is comparatively low-intensity and less harmful, and this justification actually lowers the threshold for violence by making increasingly indiscriminate the ways in which its employment damages and envelops populations and communities, thereby allowing counterinsurgents to speculate on the practice of expeditionary warfare and efforts to sustain occupations. Thus, the dissertation argues that counterinsurgency is a communicative process, better understood as mobile military media with an atmospheric-environmental register blending acute and ambient measures that are always-already kinetic. The counterinsurgent gaze enframes a world picture where everything can be a force amplifier and everywhere is a possible theatre of operations

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in MENA countries: an Analytical and Econometric Approach

This paper assesses the achievements and disparties toward SDGs in MENA countries in two-stage performance analysis. First, we use a descriptive approach and then a composite indicator ‘SDG achievement index’ (SDGI) for the social develoment in the the region through Principle Component Analysis weighting. After that, the analysis examines the coherence between this index and income per capita. The descriptive analysis and the composite indicator confirm the existence of disparties between the countries of the region in all components of social development. Furthermore, the results reveal consistency between the SDGI and GDP per capita for some countries and inconsistency for others

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals in MENA countries: an Analytical and Econometric Approach

This paper assesses the achievements and disparties toward SDGs in MENA countries in two-stage performance analysis. First, we use a descriptive approach and then a composite indicator ‘SDG achievement index’ (SDGI) for the social develoment in the the region through Principle Component Analysis weighting. After that, the analysis examines the coherence between this index and income per capita. The descriptive analysis and the composite indicator confirm the existence of disparties between the countries of the region in all components of social development. Furthermore, the results reveal consistency between the SDGI and GDP per capita for some countries and inconsistency for others

Agricultural Innovation and Sustainable Development

This book deals with sustainable agriculture at a time of climate change. It seeks to identify a number of solutions to deal with the agricultural stresses caused by climate change. These range from the identification and cultivation of appropriate crop varieties and the adoption of climate adaptive agricultural practices. Significant sustainable agricultural innovation is required to deal with these challenges. Intellectual property rights (IPRs) may be of crucial importance for modern agriculture. They serve to make R&D in agriculture attractive, by encouraging investment in new technologies and generating tradeable assets. A number of the chapters of this book refer to the principal IPRs relevant to agricultural innovation, namely: (i) patents, which protect inventions; (ii) plant variety rights, which protect the breeding of new and distinct plant varieties; and (iii) trademarks and geographical indications, which facilitate the marketing of products by providing protection for the symbols of their manufacturing or geographic origin. The United Nations Climate Change Panel has urged the consideration of the agricultural practices of traditional communities and some of these practices particularly involving rice, banana, and brassica cultivation are explored in the book. This book is essential reading for officials of governments and international organizations concerned with sustainability, as well as scholars and students concerned with these subject

Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency is finally a common sense term. Nowadays almost everyone knows that using energy more efficiently saves money, reduces the emissions of greenhouse gasses and lowers dependence on imported fossil fuels. We are living in a fossil age at the peak of its strength. Competition for securing resources for fuelling economic development is increasing, price of fuels will increase while availability of would gradually decline. Small nations will be first to suffer if caught unprepared in the midst of the struggle for resources among the large players. Here it is where energy efficiency has a potential to lead toward the natural next step - transition away from imported fossil fuels! Someone said that the only thing more harmful then fossil fuel is fossilized thinking. It is our sincere hope that some of chapters in this book will influence you to take a fresh look at the transition to low carbon economy and the role that energy efficiency can play in that process

The environmental sustainability of diets: insights from life cycle and optimisation approaches

Current diets and food production practices are causing substantial environmental degradation on a global scale. The impacts caused by food production jeopardise ecological and climate stability and contribute to the transgression of environmental limits. Meanwhile, consumption of low-quality, nutrient-poor diets worldwide lead to different forms of malnutrition. One solution that could alleviate both environmental damage and malnutrition is dietary change. Research on the sustainability of diets often employ interdisciplinary approaches which consider multiple criteria framed in wider environmental and socio-economic contexts. This thesis contributes to this body of research by advancing the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) and mathematical optimisation techniques. Insights are uncovered through three approaches which examine the environmental sustainability of dietary patterns using various methods and underlying concepts. First, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)–a linear programming (LP) method–is employed to provide a global environmental and nutritional assessment of national food supplies and gauge how efficiently food supply compositions convert environmental impacts into calories and nutrients. In the second analysis, an LP model is developed to identify nutritionally-adequate optimal diets within the environmental limits of the planet defined by the ‘planetary boundaries’ framework. Lastly, the global ecological and socio-economic externalities of national dietary patterns are estimated using a ‘true cost accounting’ method based on the monetarisation of life cycle impacts. The global assessment using DEA reveals significant scope for countries to reduce the environmental impacts from their food without also having to decrease calorie and nutrient supply, particularly upper-middle- and high-income countries. Optimising the average diet of the UK–a high-income country with environmentally unsustainable food consumption patterns–yields diet compositions which meet, or close to meeting, downscaled planetary boundaries, but may have trade-offs with affordability. Finally, the global costs of food production to health, ecosystems and resource scarcity embedded in diets are revealed to be substantial but could be significantly reduced via shifts to more plant-based diets in developed regions.Open Acces

A Business Case for Enhanced Investments in the Groundnut Value Chain in Tanzania

Apart from providing food, agriculture contributes to economic growth and the livelihoods of people in both urban and rural areas through trade. This study analyzes the business case for groundnut farmers and off-takers in Tanzania and beyond to identify opportunities for enhancements along the commodity value chain. A systematic sampling was used to collect data from 300 groundnut farmers in 11 districts across seven agro-ecological zones through individual interviews. Of the farmers interviewed, 240 were from Tropical Legumes (TL) III project intervention districts and 60 were from non-intervention districts. Also, 123 off-takers were purposively selected from commercial areas. Secondary data was obtained from literature and the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute at Naliendele. Descriptive statistics, probit regression model, cost-benefit analysis and economic efficiency model were used for data analysis. The empirical results showed that a total of 17 improved groundnut varieties have been released with their adoption rate among groundnut farmers being 35%. The adoption rate was found to be influenced by age and gender, farmer group membership, availability of improved seed and seed cost. Results further showed that only 25% of the groundnut produced annually is used for subsistence purposes while 75% is for commercial purpose. It was further revealed that a farmer is assured of gaining at least TZS 475,000/ha annually by way of groundnut farming. However, only 31% economic efficiency in grain production was noted among farmers, as this was influenced by their level of education, experience and group membership. Finally, it was observed that about 21 t of groundnut grain varieties similar to those available in Tanzania is imported from neighboring Malawi and Zambia