A Benchmarking Study of Island Electricity Companies: The Case of the Central Electricity Board of Mauritius

In this paper, we study the performance of the electricity company of Mauritius, the Central Electricity Board (CEB). We undertake a comparative analysis with other island companies in similar environmental conditions. We mainly rely on data available on annual reports for the CEB and four other companies operating in islands: EAC (Cyprus), CEM (Macao), EEM (Madeira), and MEA (Isle of Man). The period under study covers the years 2000–2010 and uses the Malmquist Index and Data Envelopment Analysis. For the CEB, results show that productivity change is driven mainly by technical change. CEB operational costs grew during the study period due to the increasing price of fossil fuel used in the generation of electricity. Companies less dependent on thermal production were less exposed to increasing costs

Determinants of Women’s Participation in Decision-Making on Household Income Allocation

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as is the case in most sub-Saharan African countries, women make a significant contribution to household income. However, they are traditionally excluded from the decision-making process regarding the allocation of household income, as only the man is considered the head and decision-maker. With modernization, we increasingly observe another form of household organization that takes into consideration the participation of women in decision-making in African households. This article analyzes the determining factors that contribute dynamically to this change. Starting with qualitative analysis, the binary logistic method was used to highlight the variables that explain the probability of a woman participating in the decision-making process that affects the couple's income

Investor Behavioral Anomalies in Wartime Uncertainty: The Case of North Kivu in DRC

After combining the CPT1, SARF2, and greed and grievances dynamical systems, and the overreactions models, we conducted a questionnaire survey with a sample of 921 investors from North Kivu in the DRC, of which 879 (95%) were in the service sector. The evaluation of the risk taken by investors is carried out at two levels. At the first level, it is assessed according to an informational asymmetry focused on estimating probabilities describing the outlook for results over three years (from 2014 to 2016). At the second level, the analysis describes the investors’ attitude regarding their level of profit expectation as an endogenous variable of heuristic optimization, cognitive bias, and self-expressive bias. The results show that the anomalies described in the interactive behavior of N-K investors during wartime uncertainty stem from a plurality of attitudes reflecting an ambiguity of choices dominated by a sub-reaction at the base of reluctance and a loss of opportunity in the market

Public and Private Management of Sub-Saharan African Railways Companies: A Comparative Analysis of Technical Efficiency

The railway sector in Africa, facing recently different reforms, becomes progressively entirely controlled by private consortiums. Studying a panel of 16 sub-Saharan railways companies from between 1995 and 2005, we found private management had a positive effect on technical efficiency as measured by Data Envelopment Analysis. This approach also showed that public–private partnerships create several distortions in the sector, including the progressive abandonment of passenger transport

Sub Saharan Railway Firms: Reforms and Demand Effects on Technical Efficiency - A Stochastic Frontier Analysis Between 1995 and 2005

The purpose of this paper is to study the technical efficiency of the Sub-Saharan African railway sector and its influencing factors. This efficiency depends on several factors. Using stochastic distance function methodology for a sample of 16 Sub-Saharan firms between 1995 and 2005, we found a positive effect of the public private partnerships and of the high levels of network exploitation and freight specialization on the performance of the railway sector. We decompose the measured scores of efficiency regarding the environmental context which permits to adjust the benchmarking efficiency studies and allows setting the appropriated objectives by the policy deciders