Estimating Health Care Costs Among Fragile and Conflict Affected States: an Elastic Net-Risk Measures Approach

Fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS) are those in which the government lacks the political will and/or capacity to provide the basic functions necessary for poverty reduction, economic development, and the security of human rights of their populations.Until recent history, unfortunately, the majority of research conducted and universal health care debates have been centered around middle income and emerging economies. As a result, FCAS have been neglected from many global discussions and decisions. Due to this neglect, many FCAS do not have proper vaccinations and antibiotics. Seemingly, well estimated health care costs are a necessary stepping stone in improving the health of citizens among FCAS. Fortunately, developments in statistical learning theory combined with data obtained by the WBG and Transparency International make it possible to accurately model health care cost among FCAS. The data used in this paper consisted of 35 countries and 89 variables. Of these 89 variables, health care expenditure (HCE) was the only response variable. With 88 predictor variables, there was expected to be multicollinearity, which occurs when multiple variables share relatively large absolute correlation. Since multicollinearity is expected and the number of variables is far greater than the number of observations, this paper adopts Zou and Hastie\u27s method of regularization via elastic net (ENET). In order to accurately estimate the maximum and expected maximum HCE among FCAS, well-known risk measures, such as Value at Risk and Conditional Value at Risk, and related quantities were obtained via Monte Carlo simulations. This paper obtained risk measures at 95 security level

"The Minskyan System, Part I: Properties of the Minskyan Analysis and How to Theorize and Model a Monetary Production Economy"

This is the first part of a three-part analysis of the Minskyan framework. Via an extensive review of the literature, this paper looks at 12 essential elements necessary to get a good understanding of Minsky's theory, and argues that those elements are central to comprehend how a monetary production economy works. This paper also shows how important these 12 elements are for the modeling of the Minskyan framework, and how the omission of one of them may be detrimental to an understanding of the essential dynamics that Minsky put forward: the Financial Instability Hypothesis.

Farming Differentiation in the Rural-urban Interface of the Middle Mountains, Nepal: Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)Modeling

This article investigates the dominant factors of farming differentiation in the rural-urban interface of the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) modeling. The rural-urban interface in the Kathmandu Valley is an important vegetable production pocket which supplies a large amount of the vegetables in the city core. While subsistence farming in the rural area is characterized by a system which integrates livestock and forestry with agriculture, the intensification in the urban fringe is characterized by triple crop rotations and market-oriented intensive vegetable production. Seven factors which were supposed to cause farming variation in the interface were incorporated in the AHP framework and then subjected to the farmers’ judgment in distinctly delineated three farming zones. These factors played crucial yet differing roles in different farming zones. Inaccessibility and use of local resources; higher yield and accessibility and agro-ecological consideration and quality production are the key impacting factors of subsistence, commercial inorganic and smallholder organic farming respectively. The quantification of such factors of farming differentiation through AHP is an important piece of information that will contribute in modeling farming in the rural-urban interface of developing countries which are characterized by a high diversity of farming practices and are undergoing a rapid change in the land use pattern

Growth, Colonization, and Institutional Development: In and Out of Africa

This essay investigates the determinants of the growth performance of Africa. I start by illustrating a broader research agenda which accounts not only for basic economic and demographic factors, but also for the role of history and institutional development. After reporting results from standard growth regressions, I analyze the role of Africa’s peculiar history, which has been marked by its colonization experience. Next I discuss the potential growth impact of state fragility, a concept which reflects multiple facets of the dysfunctions that plague the continent. The last topic I address is the influence, in and out of Africa, of the slave trades. The essay ends with critical conclusions and suggestions for further research.growth, Africa, history, colonization, institutions, state fragility, slavery

Growth, Colonization, and Institutional Development. In and Out of Africa

This essay investigates the determinants of the growth performance of Africa. I start by illustrating a broader research agenda which accounts not only for basic economic and demographic factors, but also for the role of history and institutional development. After reporting results from standard growth regressions, I analyze the role of Africa’s peculiar history, which has been marked by its colonization experience. Next I discuss the potential growth impact of state fragility, a concept which reflects multiple facets of the dysfunctions that plague the continent. The last topic I address is the influence, in and out of Africa, of the slave trades. The essay ends with critical conclusions and suggestions for further research.Growth; Africa; history; colonization; institutions; state fragility; slavery