Banks, non-bank companies and stock exchange: do we know the relationship?

This paper investigates the role played by the banking sector in founding, sustaining and developing stock exchange markets. The paper has constructed data on market capitalisation separately for banks and non-bank companies. We apply cointegration techniques developed by Engle and Granger [1987] and Johansen [1988] and we bootstrap the variables to examine the nature of relationship between the banks and stock markets. We found that banks have played an important role in the development of stock exchanges. Further, the empirical analysis made amongst ten developed and developing exchanges suggests a listing of non-bank companies important for development of stock markets. These findings have also been verified by analysing the data of an exchange not included in the test

Quantum Advantages Quantum Algorithm for Finding the Minimum

Theories about quantum computers and how they would work have been around for a few decades. Peter Shor and Lov Grover even came up with algorithms during the 1990s when the idea of building a quantum computer was far-fetched. We are now at a point where our processors are getting faster and smaller, only a few nanometres thick. This obviously has its limits. Big companies like Google, Microsoft, and IBM are at a point where their quantum computers are equivalent to the room sized computers that we see in some old pictures. Here we build up the necessary background required to understand how quantum computers work and what advantages a quantum computer has over a classical computer. We will also be looking at the famous Grover’s quantum search algorithm and will be using the ideas from that to create our own simple algorithm that finds the minimum value from a given set of data

Assessing Potential Impact of a Farmer Field School Training on Perennial Crop in Cameroon

This study is an attempt of the combination of multiple data sources referring to the same time period and to the same farmer population, it aims at assessing the potential impact of a cocoa Farmer Field School Training on Integrated Pest Management in Cameroon. Using a combination of a latitudinal and a longitudinal comparison, the results indicate that FFS-trained farmers have significantly more knowledge about crop husbandry practices than those in the non-participant comparison group. A 32% production increase and 45% income increase relative to the non-participants was estimated in the latitudinal analysis. The longitudinal comparison is showing significant adoption rates of 94, 93, 90, 66 and 35 % respectively for shade management, phytosanitary harvest, pruning, improved spraying practices and grafting of improved materials. There was a 47 % reduction in the frequency of spraying fungicides and a 17 % reduction in the number of sprayers applied per treatment following the implementation of the training. Labour inputs increased significantly for pruning, phytosanitary harvest, and shade management but decreased for spraying. A partial budget analysis reveals that the IPM practices lowered overall costs of production by 11 % relative to previous practices. The two different analytical tools (longitudinal and latitudinal) are convergent in their results, showing more evidence about the higher potential impact of the farmer field school training on the restructuring process of the cocoa sector in Cameroonintegrated pest management, farmer field school, adoption rate, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Demand and Price Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Land Economics/Use, Marketing, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Socially responsible investment and market performance: the case of energy and resource companies.

Do financial markets reward the energy and resource companies for adopting socially responsible practices? In this study, we investigate the stock market performance of major international energy and resource firms, classified within the socially responsible investment (SRI) category, from 2005 to 2016. We simulate investments in the portfolios of the SRI energy and resource companies stocks during this 11-year period and we further assess their risk-adjusted performance. The returns of the energy and resource SRI portfolio as a whole were neither consistently superior nor inferior to those of the benchmark indices. However, there exist substantial differences across the individual sub-sectors. The overall results show that markets do not reward or penalize the energy and resource firms for their SRI attitudes. We also find that the crude oil price consistently had a significant influence on the stock returns of the SRI energy and resource companies

Stakeholder mapping, analysis and engagement for development projects in southern Mali

United States Agency for International Developmen

Efficient scholars: academic attention and the disappearance of anomalies

This study examines the dynamics of ten most notable stock market anomalies through 1926–2018 and assesses the joint impact of academic attention, post-publication decay, data-snooping bias, institutional trading, and time trend on their disappearance. It proposes new and simple measures of academic attention attracted by stock market anomalies using the number of articles published on the relevant topic available via Google Scholar or respective citation counts. The study finds that academic attention is the most dominant factor explaining the diminishing abnormal returns of anomaly-exploiting strategies. The approach developed by this study can also be useful in determining whether a stock return regularity is a behavioural anomaly or a systematic risk factor

Analyst herding-whether, why, and when? Two new tests for herding detection in target forecast prices.

This study proposes two novel tests for security analyst herding based on binomial correlation and forecast error volatility scaling and applies it to investigate herding patterns in analyst target prices in 2008-2020 in the UK. Analysts robustly herd in their valuations, with results consistent across years, sectors, in panel fixed effect, quantile, instrumental variable regressions, and when controlled for optimism and conservatism. Herding becomes prominent for stocks followed by at least five analysts and towards the long sides of Fama-French sorts, reinforcing its non-spurious and behavioral nature. Analyst herd more strongly subject to low volatility and uncertainty

Engaging development partners in Africa RISING research for better socioeconomic impacts in West Africa semi-arid countries

United States Agency for International Developmen