Does Foreign Direct Investment really affect Ghana’s Economic Growth?

In this paper, we investigate the linkage between FDI and economic growth using macro econometric model in the Ghanaian context. Structural shocks in an SVAR model were used to identify the contemporaneous and short run relationships effects of these variables. The AB model restriction approach was used for the Identification and was compared to the Cholesky decomposition. We showed that, there exit a contemporaneous short run positive effects of FDI inflows on GDP growth but as the time horizon expands these effects tend to converge to the equilibrium, however FDI’s deteriorate domestic investment

Gompertz Distribution for Survival of Inpatients with Cluster Comorbidities

Cluster comorbidity explains statistically significant associations between diseases without etiological explanation. Our prior study shown that multimorbidity can be separated into three clinically consistent clusters, namely gastrointestinal low back pain and anxiety disorders (GLAD), cardio-metabolic and pain disorders (CMPD), and cardio-pulmonary disorders (CPD). The aim of this study is to assess the extent at which each cluster influences the survival of elderly patients. The study utilized follow-up clinical data of 154 inpatients in the age group 50+ from a health facility in Ghana. The dataset was computationally formatted as right censored from which the Gompertz survival model was fitted. Overall, 61 mortalities were observed, of which 52.5%, 32.7% and 14.8%were patients with diseases classified under CMPD, CPD and GLAD respectively. We demonstrated that the pattern of survivorship of these patients is Gompertz distributed. As per our model, we found that the risk for mortality associated with the comorbidity clusters increases exponentially over the length of hospital stay. The patients with diseases classified under CPD and CMPD have increased risk for mortality with hazard ratio (HR) of 3.85 and 3.76 respectively, compared to GLAD with HR of 1.0

Review of E-Learning Environment at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana

This study explores the policies for e-learning and examines the awareness of teaching practices that incorporates e-learning among educational managers, librarians, teachers, IT experts and students of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. The study is based on a survey data extracted from the KNUST-based BSU Project. The results revealed that 84.1% of the educational managers and 87.1% of the teaching participants claimed the university has no policy for introducing e-learning, while 63.6% of the IT experts reported otherwise. The participants outlined a few teaching practices that involves e-learning, some of which are frequently and others rarely utilized by teachers and IT experts. Awareness of these practices was extremely high in the IT experts, teachers and student participants but low in the educational managers. The findings of this study draw attention to the strengths, weaknesses and gaps in the e-learning environment of the university

WTO must ban harmful fisheries subsidies

Sustainably managed wild fisheries support food and nutritional security, livelihoods, and cultures (1). Harmful fisheries subsidies—government payments that incentivize overcapacity and lead to overfishing—undermine these benefits yet are increasing globally (2). World Trade Organization (WTO) members have a unique opportunity at their ministerial meeting in November to reach an agreement that eliminates harmful subsidies (3). We—a group of scientists spanning 46 countries and 6 continents—urge the WTO to make this commitment..