Regional Disparities in Ghana: Policy Options and Public Investment Implications

Ghana has achieved sustained growth and poverty reduction during the 1990s, but such growth did not benefit the three poor northern regions and the development gap has increased between the south and north. One of the most important reasons is that much of the growth has been generated by export agriculture in which northern Ghana has little contribution if any. This paper sets out to identify avenues for pro-poor growth in Ghana, focussing on agricultural opportunities, particularly in northern Ghana. Using an economywide, multimarket model and based on time series production data between 1991 and 2000 and Ghana Living Standards Survey data of 1991/92 and 1998/99, this paper analyzes the possible poverty reduction trends up to 2015 by assuming different patterns of growth. The results show that agriculture-led growth has a larger poverty reducing effect than nonagriculture-led growth. Within agriculture, growth in staple crop production reduces poverty more than export crops. In northern Ghana, the staple crops whose growth exerts the largest effect on poverty reduction are groundnut, cassava and cowpea. However, despite the large effects of the agriculture-led growth, the projections of poverty rates in the regions, particularly Upper East are still high implying a need for complementary avenues for poverty reduction. A review of the literature shows that while the north generally is a net migration area, the rewards of migration have been limited because people who migrate have no skills and are, therefore, limited to entering the informal job market where wages are low. The implication is to enhance this labour with education and skills. Ultimately, the regions must attract production investment to boost economic activity and generate local growth. The state must play a leading role in investing in productive and social infrastructure as a way of facilitating the environment for private sector operators

Regional disparities in Ghana: Policy options and public investment implications

"The development pattern in Ghana is characterised by a north-south divide in which the north lags far behind the south... This paper sets out to identify avenues for pro-poor growth in Ghana, focussing on agricultural opportunities, particularly in northern Ghana. Using an economywide, multimarket model and based on time series production data between 1991 and 2000 and Ghana Living Standards Survey data of 1991/92 and 1998/99, this paper analyzes the possible poverty reduction trends up to 2015 by assuming different patterns of growth. The results show that agriculture-led growth has a larger poverty reducing effect than nonagriculture-led growth... A review of the literature shows that while the north generally is a net migration area, the rewards of migration have been limited because people who migrate have no skills and are, therefore, limited to entering the informal job market where wages are low. The implication is to enhance this labour with education and skills. Ultimately, the regions must attract production investment to boost economic activity and generate local growth. The state must play a leading role in investing in productive and social infrastructure as a way of facilitating the environment for private sector operators.: from Authors' AbstractPro-poor growth, Pro-poor policies, Regional inequality, Poverty reduction, Agricultural growth, Economywide modeling, Public investment,

Agriculture for development in Ghana: New opportunities and challenges

"This paper has been prepared in support of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) roundtable in Ghana. The study also takes a fresh perspective on the role of agriculture for development in light of the global food crisis. It addresses two main questions: what are the impacts of Green-revolution type agricultural growth to reach the CAADP goal in Ghana? Given the large investments required to achieve such productivity-led growth, what is the sector's contribution to the overall economy? Results from the dynamic computable general equilibrium model suggest that by closing the existing yield gaps in crop production and supporting essential growth in the livestock sector Ghana can achieve CAADP's 6 percent growth target. In this process, agriculture supports the rest of the economy through substantial and largely invisible monetary transfers to the nonagricultural sectors, which are primarily driven by the reduction of domestic food prices. Thus, CAADP growth benefits both rural and urban households, and reduces poverty by more than half within 10 years. However, widening regional disparities between the North and the rest of Ghana will increasingly pose a challenge for the development. Additional measures more targeted towards generating growth in the lagging North will be necessary to bridge the income gap and reach Ghana's poorest of the poor." from Author's AbstractAgriculture, Poverty, Computable general equilibrium (CGE), Development strategies, Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP),

Efficient Grover search with Rydberg blockade

We present efficient methods to implement the quantum computing Grover search algorithm using the Rydberg blockade interaction. We show that simple pi-pulse excitation sequences between ground and Rydberg excited states readily produce the key conditional phase shift and inversion-about-the mean unitary operations for the Grover search. Multi-qubit implementation schemes suitable for different properties of the atomic interactions are identifed and the error scaling of the protocols with system size is found to be promising for immediate experimental investigation.Comment: Detailed description of algorithm for sub-register architecture. Error budget modified for Cs atomic parameters. To appear in J. Phys. B. Special Issue on Strong Rydberg interactions in ultracold atomic and molecular gase

Quadrisecants give new lower bounds for the ropelength of a knot

Using the existence of a special quadrisecant line, we show the ropelength of any nontrivial knot is at least 15.66. This improves the previously known lower bound of 12. Numerical experiments have found a trefoil with ropelength less than 16.372, so our new bounds are quite sharp.Comment: v3 is the version published by Geometry & Topology on 25 February 200

Developing Country Trade: Implications of China’s Changing Trade and Competitiveness in Intensive and Extensive Margin Goods

This paper delves into China’s differential growths in trade flows with high income and developing countries by focusing on bilateral content of trade data over the time period 1978-2005. Unlike other studies, we account for end use of traded goods ranging from primary, intermediate, and finished goods because China’s policies impact all segments China’s trade flows. In the last 28 years, China has specialized in deficits in the upstream production segments (parts and components) and rapid diversification in consumption goods (extensive margin). While in the late 1970s China’s export and import growth on all goods with major high income countries is outstanding in the most recent years China’s trade growth with developing countries has taken the lead while China is gaining in extensive margins goods trade. This general pattern evolving is in agreement with some of the new trade theory that gives a dominant role to an expansion of the number of export varieties (the extensive margin), which provides an additional channel for welfare gains from trade.China, international trade, growth, intensive, extensive margins, developing countries, International Relations/Trade,

XOR multiplexing technique for nanocomputers

In emerging nanotechnologies, due to the manufacturing process, a significant percentage of components may be faulty. In order to make systems based on unreliable nano-scale components reliable, it is necessary to design fault-tolerant architectures. This paper presents a novel fault-tolerant technique for nanocomputers, namely the XOR multiplexing technique. This hardware redundancy technique is based on a numerous duplication of faulty components. We analyze the error distributions of the XOR multiplexing unit and the error distributions of multiple stages of the XOR multiplexing system, then compare them to the NAND multiplexing unit and the NAND multiplexing multiple stages system, respectively. The simulation results show that XOR multiplexing is more reliable than NAND multiplexing. Bifurcation theory is used to analyze the fault-tolerant ability of the system and the results show that XOR multiplexing technique has a high fault-tolerant ability. Similarly to the NAND multiplexing technique, this fault-tolerant technique is a potentially effective fault tolerant technique for future nanoelectronics