Paper Review “Financial Liberalization, Crisis and Restructuring: A Comparative study of bank performance and bank governance in South East Asia Authors: Jonathan Williams, and Nghia Nguyen: Journal of Banking and Finance 29 (2005) 2119 – 2154”

This paper examines the impact of changes in bank governance on bank performance for a sample of commercial banks operating in South East Asia between 1990 and 2003.  To meet their objective, authors collect data from Bankscope and IBCA databases for bank financial statements whilst macroeconomic data were obtained from the IMF International Financial Statistics and the Asian Development Bank. To qualify bank ownership, authors relied on the aforementioned databases, bank websites, and academic sources that have detailed changes in banking ownership including privatizations

Determinants of Poverty on Household Characteristics in Zanzibar: A logistic Regression Model

The two succession of Zanzibar Household Budget Survey (ZHBS) in 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 use head count to address poverty as the base of all analysis with several social and economic variables. This study attempts to use logistic regression to venture ratio of the probability of occurrence of poverty in Zanzibar with social dimension. The study reveals that social demographic dimensions are important in explaining poverty and that the likelihood of poverty significant relates to household size, household head, and basic education (primary and secondary). Furthermore, the study exposes that all district in Pemba are on high risk of being enter into poverty. Key words: Zanzibar, poverty, households, determinant of poverty, logistic regressio

Export Trade and Economic Growth in Tanzania: A Disaggregated Approach

This paper applies the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) technique to annual data from 1980 to 2009 to provide empirical evidence on the long-run relationship between exports trade and economic growth in Tanzania. The exports trade in this study is disaggregated into services and goods exports. Thus, the paper estimated two models. The first model deals with the relationship between export of services and growth, and the other one determines the relationship between goods export and growth. While the paper find no evidence for long-run relationship between export of goods and growth, our empirical results suggest existence of a long-run nexus between export of services and economic growth in Tanzania. The Granger causality test results have also confirmed existence of a unilateral causality from economic growth to service exports. Keywords: Export Trade; Economic Growth; Cointegration; Granger Causality.

The Impact of Foreign Aid on Economic Growth of East African Countries

In this paper, we employ panel data methods, namely Pooled OLS, Random Effects, and Fixed Effects, to examine the impact of foreign aid on economic growth of East African countries over the period of 1985 to 2010. The results suggest that foreign aid has significant negative influence on economic growth for these countries. This calls for further studies to investigate the possible channels through which foreign aid can have positive influence on growth. Keywords: EAC countries, Foreign aid, Panel data approac

Economics banking efficiency in selected African countries in the post-reform period

Banks play an important role in the developing economies as they intermediate between the savings and the demand for investment and consumption funds that finance the development of business and trade. To efficiently and effectively perform this function and help optimize the allocation of scarce investment funds, evaluation of banking sector efficiency is necessary. Not much has been documented on the efficiency of banks in Africa due to a combination of several reasons such as in availability of reliable data,corporate non-transparency, and political and economic uncertainty. Therefore, to date there is no comprehensive evidence documented on banking efficiency in Africa. However in recent years, most of the African countries had some form of economic and financial reforms initiated that has attracted foreign investment in their economies and had some observed improvements in their banking system to support this new development. This study fills this gap by analyzing cost and profit efficiency and tests the management behavior of 128 commercial banks in six African countries during 1998 to 2011 using DEA technique. The determinants of the banking efficiency were also investigated using the Generalized Least Square (GLS), management behaviour were examined using Generalized Method of Moment (GMM), and the causal relationship between bank efficiency and economic growth using Granger causality approach. The findings are inconclusive for commercial banks in Africa. Mixed results were observed for banks in Algeria and South Africa, and Tanzania are found to be more profit efficient,whereas banks in Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria found to be more cost efficient. The implication of these findings is that commercial banks in Algeria, South Africa, and Tanzania are more efficient in generating profit than controlling cost, while banks in Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria are more efficient in controlling cost than generating profit. The findings on determinants of bank efficiency using bank specific, macroeconomic specific and industry specific determinants vary between countries but do significantly contributes towards bank efficiency. There was evidence of causality relationship between bank efficiency and economic growth which implies no long run relationship between these variables where in both case the null hypothesis of no cointegration cannot be rejected. Nonetheless, in almost all cases there is a Granger causality relationship between bank cost efficiency and economic growth and between bank cost efficiency and profit efficiency, suggesting that more cost efficient bank are also the more profit efficient bank. For the bank management behavior perspective, the findings suggests that the ‘bad luck’ hypothesis applies to commercial banks in Algeria and Nigeria but not for banks from Egypt, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania.When banks were classified on group of countries basis, unlike the commercial banks in Kenya and Tanzania, the bad luck hypothesis supports the behavior of commercial banks in the SENA region. The bad management hypothesis explains the behavior of commercial banks in the SENA region but not for banks in the Kenya and Tanzanian region

Obesity may increase the prevalence of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) while PD may reduce obesity index in patients

Objective: Currently, Parkinson’s disease (PD) is becoming more common among younger people of ages from 30 – 40 years. The incidence is higher among patients with higher body mass index (BMI), and some reports had it that Obesity is a risk factor for PD while some reported that there is no relationship between obesity and PD. PD patient at the time of diagnosis has an above-normal BMI but which goes below normal as the disease progresses. Therefore, it is essential to explore the relationship between PD and Obesity. Methods: 349 outpatients and inpatients with PD were selected from Jiangsu University Affiliated People’s Hospital from January 2014 to December 2018, while 74 inpatients with non-cerebrovascular illness in the same period were selected as the control group. According to Hoehn-Yahr grade, Parkinson’s patients were divided into three groups. The height, weight, waist and hip circumference, total cholesterol (TC), Total Glycerol (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) were measured and recorded. The relationship between the severity of Parkinson’s disease and blood lipids was evaluated. Results: The BMI of patients with PD in the early stage was higher than that of the control group, but lower than that of the control group in the late stage, and the level of blood lipid in the patients with early PD was significantly higher than that in the control group and patients with advanced PD, especially in TG. The waist circumference and hip circumference of the patients with early PD were higher than those in the control group, but there was no statistical difference. Conclusion: i) Obesity may increase the prevalence of PD. ii) The BMI of patients with PD shows two-way changes in different periods. iii) The BMI is higher and cholesterol is more elevated in the early stage of patients with PD, while at the advanced stage of the disease, the BMI and lipid levels of the patients showed a downward trend, which may be associated with a metabolic syndrome associated with dopamine depletion