Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Poverty in Ghana Using Fuzzy Sets Theory

The paper studies the multidimensional aspects of poverty and living conditions in Ghana. The aim is to fill the vacuum that has been left by traditional uni-dimensional measures of deprivation based on poverty lines, exclusively estimated on the basis of monetary variables such as income or consumption expenditure. It combines monetary and non-monetary, and qualitative and quantitative indicators, including housing conditions, the possession of durable goods, equivalent disposable income, and equivalent expenditure, with a number of composite human welfare measures. The study employs the fuzzy-set theoretic framework to compare levels of deprivation in Ghana over time usig micro data from the last two rounds of the Ghana Living Standard Surveys (1991/1992 and 1998/1999). The estimation results of the membership functions, depicting the levels of deprivation for the various categories of deprivation indicators, show a composite deprivation degree of 0.2137 for the whole country in 1998/99 as compared to 0.2123 in 1991/92. This deprivation trend reveals that poverty levels hard scarcely changed in Ghana. In fact, it even rose slightly during the nineties, contrary to the uni-dimensional analytical GLSS 4 report of an overall broadly favourable trend in poverty in Ghana during the 1990s.Ghana, fuzzy set, multi-dimensional poverty, composite deprivation or poverty index

Targeting of and outreach to the poor by rural development nonprofit organizations in Cameroon

The importance of nonprofit organizations such as rural development organizations, farmers associations and common initiative groups as drivers of change in rural areas has been generally recognized in the economics of nonprofit organizations. While the economic theories attempt to explain the formation and functioning of nonprofit organizations, the targeting and outreach performance of these organizations has received little attention and at best is empirically divergent. Using the example of a nonprofit rural development organization in North West Cameroon, this paper analyzes the relative poverty of beneficiaries and non beneficiaries of its small scale fish farming program as a proxy for targeting efficiency. Poverty is measured through multiple indicators as well as household incomes. The results show that the nonprofit organization did a commendable job in serving poor communities, although its self targeting approach led to a disproportionately higher share of beneficiaries from the moderately poor and better-off terciles than from the poorest. Beneficiaries also had higher asset values and incomes than nonbeneficiaries, although the contribution of the fish farming activity to these was insignificant. This means that these households were already better-off prior to the program and not necessarily as a consequence of service delivery. The paper concludes with the need for relative poverty assessments prior to service delivery for improved targeting and outreach performance, while considering the additional costs involved.nonprofit organizations, targeting, poverty, Cameroon, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Food Security and Poverty, L31, I30, O18,

The Italian Labour Market and the Crisis

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of the crisis on the Italian labour market. The Italian labour market is characterized by deep gender differences and regional variability. The data show that the crisis lead to an increase in the gap of female employment rates and women?s inactivity rates with respect to Europe. The North of Italy experienced a higher increase in unemployment than the South, where many people withdrew from the labour market because of poor employment prospects. Moreover, in Italy, the increase in unemployment has been mitigated by the increase in the number of workers having access to the wage supplementation fund who are not computed within the unemployed. However, the heterogeneity in the system of unemployment benefits increased inequalities amongst the unemployed. Using a micro simulation techniques, we estimate the effect of the crisis on income distribution and poverty and find that at the national level, the population showed a reduction in equivalised household income by about 1 percent. The limited impact on household?s equivalent income can be connected to the relatively high share of unemployed who are young with relatively low income and sustained by other members of the householdlabour market, poverty, economic crisis

Mapping the distribution of Well-Being in Europe beyond national borders

Well-being is a concept difficult to define and eventually harder to quantify. The idea of providing descriptions and metrics to evaluate well-being goes back to Aristotle (1095 bc) and from there an increasingly large number of studies attempted to quantify well-being of individuals and societies. Well-being is generally perceived as a description of the state of human life which always captured the attention of sociologists, economists, psychologist, politicians and citizens, making it a largely debated interdisciplinary topic. In particular in recent times, characterized by even increasing concerns related to the economic and the environmental situation, an increasing attention has been devoted to determining integrated descriptions to include all the aspects of human life. In addition, a large attention, demonstrated by the increasing literature on the topic, has also been devoted to the contribution of politics and societal organization in the progress toward well-being. The first part of this report tries to review the existing literature on well-being. Two main broad wellbeing approaches will be considered, the subjective and the objective approaches. For every one of them, the main definitions, the most important theoretical perspectives and the most relevant metrics and quantifications will be reported. The major contribution is to provide a synthesis of the vast literature that exists on the concept of well-being. In addition, by presenting the most recent well-being approach based on the integration between the objective and the subjective ones, an overview of the future directions of well-being investigations is also provided.JRC.H.2-Air and Climat

Risk Assessment of Deadly Economic Socio-Political Crisis with Correlational Network and Convolutional Neural Network

From social analysis to biology to machine learning, graphs naturally occur in a wide range of applications. In contrast to studying data one at a time, graphs' unique capacity to capture structural relationships among data enables them to yield additional insights. Nevertheless, the capacity to learn from graphs can be difficult because meaningful connectivity should exist between data and the form of data such as text, numbers or categories should allow for building a graph from their relationships. Investigating hidden patterns in the variation of development indicators and severe socio-political crises that happened in low-income countries is an analytical approach that has been experimented with in this research. Evidence of a correlation between socio-political crises and development indicators suggests that a method to assess the risk of crisis should consider the context of each country, as well as the relative means of crisis. This research reviewed different risk assessment methods and proposed a novel method based on a weighted correlation network, and convolution neural network, to generate images representing the signature of development indicators correlating with a crisis. The convolution neural network trained to identify changes in indicators will be able to find countries with similar signatures and provide insights about important indicators that might reduce the number of deadly crises in a country. This research enhances the knowledge of developing a quantitative risk assessment for crisis prevention with development indicators

Econometric framework for electricity infrastructure modernization in Saudi Arabia, An

2017 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.The electricity infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is facing several challenges represented by demand growth, high peak demand, high level of government subsidies, and system losses. This dissertation aims at addressing these challenges and proposing a multi-dimensional framework to modernize the electricity infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The framework proposes four different scenarios—identified by two dimensions—for the future electric grid. The first and second dimensions are characterized by electricity market deregulation and Smart Grid technologies (SGTs) penetration, respectively. The framework analysis estimates global welfare (GW) and economic feasibility of the two dimensions. The first dimension quantifies the impact of deregulating the electricity market in Saudi Arabia. A non-linear programming (NLP) algorithm optimizes consumers surplus, producers surplus, and GW. The model indicates that deregulating the electricity market in Saudi Arabia will improve market efficiency. The second dimension proposes that allowing the penetration of SGTs in the Saudi electricity infrastructure is expected to mitigate the technical challenges faced by the grid. The dissertation examines the priorities of technologies for penetration by considering some key performance indicators (KPIs) identified by the Saudi National Transformation Program, and Saudi Vision 2030. A multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) algorithm—using the fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)—evaluates the prioritization of SGTs to the Saudi grid. The algorithm demonstrates the use of triangular fuzzy numbers to model uncertainty in planning decisions. The results show that advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technologies are the top priority for modernizing the Saudi electricity infrastructure; this is followed by advanced assets management (AAM) technologies, advanced transmission operations (ATO) technologies, and advanced distribution operations (ADO) technologies. SGTs prioritization is followed by a detailed cost benefit analysis (CBA) conducted for each technology. The framework analysis aims at computing the economic feasibility of SGTs and estimating their outcomes and impacts in monetary values. The framework maps Smart Grid assets to their functions and benefits to estimate the feasibility of each Smart Grid technology and infrastructure. Discounted cash flow (DCF) and net present value (NPV) models, benefit/cost ratio, and minimum total cost are included in the analysis. The results show that AAM technologies are the most profitable technologies of Smart Grid to the Saudi electricity infrastructure, followed by ADO technologies, ATO technologies, and AMI technologies. Considering the weights resulting from the fuzzy AHP and the economic analysis models for each infrastructure, the overall ranking places AAM technologies as the top priority of SGTs to the Saudi electricity infrastructure, followed by AMI technologies, ADO technologies, and ATO technologies. This dissertation has contributed to the existing body of knowledge in the following areas: • Proposing an econometric framework for electricity infrastructure modernization. The framework takes into account technical, economic, environmental, societal, and policy factors. • Building an NLP algorithm to optimize a counterfactual deregulation of a regulated electricity market. The algorithm comprises short run price elasticity of electricity demand (ε), level of technical efficiency improvement, and discount rate (r). • Proposing an MCDM model using AHP and fuzzy set theory to prioritize SGTs to electricity infrastructures. • Adapting a Smart Grid asset-function-benefit linkage model that maps SGTs to their respected benefits. • Conducting a detailed CBA to estimate the economic feasibility of SGTs to the Saudi electricity infrastructure, This work opens avenues for more analysis on electricity infrastructure modernization. Measuring risk impact and likelihood is one area for future research. In fact, risk assessment is an important factor in determining the economic feasibility of the modernization. Probabilistic economic analysis can be applied to assess the risk associated with the implantation of the previously mentioned dimensions. The parameters used for the economic analysis, such as economic life of a project, and the discount rate, are usually deterministic. However, a probabilistic method can be applied to capture the uncertainty of the parameters. Another area for future research is the integration of both dimensions into one model in which GW resulted from market deregulation and SGTs insertion are summed

Targeting of and outreach to the poor by rural development nonprofit organizations in Cameroon

The importance of nonprofit organizations such as rural development organizations, farmers associations and common initiative groups as drivers of change in rural areas has been generally recognized in the economics of nonprofit organizations. While the economic theories attempt to explain the formation and functioning of nonprofit organizations, the targeting and outreach performance of these organizations has received little attention and at best is empirically divergent. Using the example of a nonprofit rural development organization in North West Cameroon, this paper analyzes the relative poverty of beneficiaries and non beneficiaries of its small scale fish farming program as a proxy for targeting efficiency. Poverty is measured through multiple indicators as well as household incomes. The results show that the nonprofit organization did a commendable job in serving poor communities, although its self targeting approach led to a disproportionately higher share of beneficiaries from the moderately poor and better-off terciles than from the poorest. Beneficiaries also had higher asset values and incomes than nonbeneficiaries, although the contribution of the fish farming activity to these was insignificant. This means that these households were already better-off prior to the program and not necessarily as a consequence of service delivery. The paper concludes with the need for relative poverty assessments prior to service delivery for improved targeting and outreach performance, while considering the additional costs involved

Єдина Європа: Погляд у майбутнє

Викладено результати наукових досліджень щодо сучасних проблем глобалізації та інтеграційних процесів, участі в них українських та польських підприємств, вирішення екологічних та соціально-економічних питань, пов’язаних з інтеграційними процесами, підвищенням конкуренції та інтенсифікацією виробництва. Видання буде корисним для наукових співробітників, фахівців-практиків, які займаються проблемами європейського розвитку, викладачів, аспірантів, студентів вищих навчальних закладів, урядових і неурядових аналітичних організацій, інституцій ЄС