The impact of macroeconomic variables on stock prices in Tanzania

Abstract. This paper examines the relationship between stock prices and macroeconomic variables namely, inflation rate, Treasury bill rate, exchange rate and money supply in Tanzania. The paper uses monthly time series data spanning from January 2012 to December 2016 across 10 companies listed on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange. Johansen’s co-integration and vector error correction models have been applied to investigate the long-run relationship between stock prices and macroeconomic variables while considering average stock price on one hand and individual companies stock prices on the other hand. We specify 11 models, whereas model 1 examines the effects of macroeconomic variables on overall stock price, models 2-11 explore the effects of the same macroeconomic variables on individual firm’s stock price across 10 firms. This is important because some firms tend to behave differently as far as changes in macroeconomic variables are concerned. The empirical analysis reveals that macroeconomic variables and the stock prices are co-integrated across all models and, hence, a long-run equilibrium relationship exists between them. Equally important, all regression models pass the specification tests of heteroscedasticity, serial correlation, Ramsey RESET test of specification and Jacque-Bera Normality test. The overall model regression results show that money supply and exchange rate have a positive effect on stock prices. By contrast, Treasury bill rate tends to have a negative effect on stock prices. Inconsistent with the a priori expectation, inflation rate seems to exert no impact on overall stock prices. However, individual firms’ regressions show that the coefficient on inflation is negative and statistically significant in 6 models but weakly significant in 2 models, and positive and statistically significant in 1 model. Similar controversial results across firms are revealed on the other macroeconomic variables while considering individual firms regressions. Nevertheless, money supply is found to be the main determinant of stock and hence, it should be targeted as the main monetary policy aimed at directing the stock market in Tanzania.Keywords. Stock prices, Macroeconomic variables, Error correction models.JEL. D51, H54, O24

Social Care Research in Action – An ‘unconference’ at the LSE on 19 October 2012

Social care practitioners are keen to influence the research agenda but also want help and guidance on how to access and implement its findings; researchers want to understand how their work could better influence the decision-making processes in social care and how best to communicate complex research results

A protocol paper on the preservation of identity: understanding the technology adoption patterns of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL)

There are a growing number of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) for whom technology holds promise in supporting their engagement in daily activities. Despite the growing presence of technologies intended to support older adults with ARVL, there remains high rates of abandonment. This phenomenon of technology abandonment may be partly explained by the concept of self-image, meaning that older adults with ARVL avoid the use of particular technologies due to an underlying fear that use of such technologies may mark them as objects of pity, ridicule, and/or stigmatization. In response to this, the proposed study aims to understand how the decision-making processes of older adults with ARVL, as it relates to technology adoption, is influenced by the negotiation of identity. The study protocol will justify the need for this critical ethnographic study, unpack the theoretical underpinnings of this work, detail the sampling/recruitment strategy, describe the methods which included a home tour, go-along, and semi-structured in-depth interview, as well as the collective approach taken to analyze the data. The protocol concludes by examining the ethical tensions associated with this study, including a focus on the methods adopted as well as the ethical challenges inherent when working with an older adult population experiencing vision loss

Short-term health and social care benefits of the Family Nurse Partnership lack evidence in the UK context but there is promise for child developmental outcomes

Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) home visiting from pregnancy to 24 months post partum, guided by a manualised curriculum, has been shown in three randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to have multiple beneficial outcomes and to be a cost-effective way to decrease the risk of child abuse for children of young, psychologically vulnerable first-time mothers.1 NFP has also been shown to strengthen families through increased maternal employment and wider spacing of pregnancies, and has demonstrated a range of benefits for children through adolescence.2 The US-developed programme was introduced into England in 2007 (renamed Family Nurse Partnership, FNP) and a pragmatic, non-blinded RCT was launched in 2009

End-of-life care and outcomes. Summary.

6 pages.Evaluates the effectiveness of end-of-life care

Academic research groups: evaluation of their quality and quality of their evaluation

In recent years, evaluation of the quality of academic research has become an increasingly important and influential business. It determines, often to a large extent, the amount of research funding flowing into universities and similar institutes from governmental agencies and it impacts upon academic careers. Policy makers are becoming increasingly reliant upon, and influenced by, the outcomes of such evaluations. In response, university managers are increasingly attracted to simple indicators as guides to the dynamics of the positions of their various institutions in league tables. However, these league tables are frequently drawn up by inexpert bodies such as newspapers and magazines, using rather arbitrary measures and criteria. Terms such as "critical mass' and "metrics" are often bandied about without proper understanding of what they actually mean. Rather than accepting the rise and fall of universities, departments and individuals on a turbulent sea of arbitrary measures, we suggest it is incumbent upon the scientific community itself to clarify their nature. Here we report on recent attempts to do that by properly defining critical mass and showing how group size influences research quality. We also examine currently predominant metrics and show that these fail as reliable indicators of group research quality.Comment: Presented at the International Conference on Computer Simulation in Physics and Beyond in Moscow, 2015. The Proceedings will appear in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS

Bad news: analysis of the quality of information on influenza prevention returned by Google in English and Italian

Information available to the public influences the approach of the population toward vaccination against influenza compared with other preventative approaches. In this study, we have analyzed the first 200 websites returned by searching Google on two topics (prevention of influenza and influenza vaccine), in English and Italian. For all the four searches above, websites were classified according to their typology (government, commercial, professional, portals, etc.) and for their trustworthiness as defined by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) score, which assesses whether they provide some basic elements of information quality (IQ): authorship, currency, disclosure, and references. The type of information described was also assessed to add another dimension of IQ. Websites on influenza prevention were classified according to the type of preventative approach mentioned (vaccine, lifestyle, hygiene, complementary medicine, etc.), whether the approaches were in agreement with evidence-based medicine (EBM) or not. Websites on influenza vaccination were classified as pro- or anti-vaccine, or neutral. The great majority of websites described EBM approaches to influenza prevention and had a pro-vaccine orientation. Government websites mainly pointed at EBM preventative approaches and had a pro-vaccine orientation, while there was a higher proportion of commercial websites among those which promote non-EBM approaches. Although the JAMA score was lower in commercial websites, it did not correlate with the preventative approaches suggested or the orientation toward vaccines. For each of the four search engine result pages (SERP), only one website displayed the health-of-the-net (HON) seal. In the SERP on vaccines, journalistic websites were the most abundant category and ranked higher than average in both languages. Analysis using natural language processing showed that journalistic websites were mostly reporting news about two specific topics (different in the two languages). While the ranking by Google favors EBM approaches and, in English, does not promote commercial websites, in both languages it gives a great advantage to news. Thus, the type of news published during the influenza season probably has a key importance in orienting the public opinion due to its high visibility. This raises important questions on the relationships between health IQ, trustworthiness, and newsworthiness