The Finance Growth Link: Comparative Analysis of Two Eastern African Countries

This paper examines the finance growth link of two low-income Sub-Saharan African economies – Ethiopia and Kenya – which have different financial systems but are located in the same region. Unlike previous studies, we account for the role of non-bank financial intermediaries and formally model the effect of structural breaks caused by policy and market-induced economic events. We used the Vector Autoregressive model (VAR), conducted impulse response analysis and examined variance decomposition. We find that neither the level of financial intermediary development nor the level of stock market development explains economic growth in Kenya. For Ethiopia, which has no stock market, intermediary development is found to be driven by economic growth. Three important inferences can be made from these findings. First, the often reported positive link between finance and growth might be caused by the aggregation of countries at different stages of economic growth and financial development. Second, country-specific economic situations and episodes are important in studying the relationship between financial development and economic growth. Third, there is the possibility that the econometric model employed to test the finance growth link plays a role in the empirical result, as we note that prior studies did not introduce control variables

CTL+FO Verification as Constraint Solving

Expressing program correctness often requires relating program data throughout (different branches of) an execution. Such properties can be represented using CTL+FO, a logic that allows mixing temporal and first-order quantification. Verifying that a program satisfies a CTL+FO property is a challenging problem that requires both temporal and data reasoning. Temporal quantifiers require discovery of invariants and ranking functions, while first-order quantifiers demand instantiation techniques. In this paper, we present a constraint-based method for proving CTL+FO properties automatically. Our method makes the interplay between the temporal and first-order quantification explicit in a constraint encoding that combines recursion and existential quantification. By integrating this constraint encoding with an off-the-shelf solver we obtain an automatic verifier for CTL+FO

Efficient CTL Verification via Horn Constraints Solving

The use of temporal logics has long been recognised as a fundamental approach to the formal specification and verification of reactive systems. In this paper, we take on the problem of automatically verifying a temporal property, given by a CTL formula, for a given (possibly infinite-state) program. We propose a method based on encoding the problem as a set of Horn constraints. The method takes a program, modeled as a transition system, and a property given by a CTL formula as input. It first generates a set of forall-exists quantified Horn constraints and well-foundedness constraints by exploiting the syntactic structure of the CTL formula. Then, the generated set of constraints are solved by applying an off-the-shelf Horn constraints solving engine. The program is said to satisfy the property if and only if the generated set of constraints has a solution. We demonstrate the practical promises of the method by applying it on a set of challenging examples. Although our method is based on a generic Horn constraint solving engine, it is able to outperform state-of-art methods specialised for CTL verification.Comment: In Proceedings HCVS2016, arXiv:1607.0403

Business Plan Template Prepared on Dairy Cows

Kennan dairy cow farm business will be operated to supply dairy cow products in the Jimma town and surrounding areas to meet demand of customers in the area. The main mission of the business is to satisfy the demand of customers in niche markets and other spatial markets, creating permanent customer in order to assure sustainability of the business and being committed to sacrifice time and effort to make our target customers happy on our products there by meeting quality standards. The major objectives  from the business point of view is to  supply the quality dairy products to customers to  generate income from business in order  to increase profitability and competitiveness of the business by providing customer oriented dairy products. The major dairy products that the business is going to supply may include liquid milk, cheese, butter, calves and dairy by products.  The business will be opened with startup capital of 3417961.49 ETB. From this total capital, about 56% is acquired from the commercial bank of Ethiopia in the form of loan at the 5% interest rate and the remaining 44% will be derived from owners of the business. A contingency of 10% of initial capital will be retained as account capital for the periods in which the business faces a harsh condition. The business will increase production by stressing on milk production, manure handling, grass forage, corn silage and young stock as production strategies. The estimated amount of the product which will be supplied to Jimma town and surrounding community is 60% of total product of the business such as fresh milk, butter and cheese while the remaining 40% of the products like butter, cream and cheese will be supplied to the spatial markets such as Addis Ababa, Agaro and Bedele. The business will be promoted through Medias such as television, fana radio; electronic mobile and etc. sales promotion will also be used to capture attention of the customers. Postcards, business cards and tapela will also be used for promotion by showing the address where the business is operating. As it was explained here above, 30 cows (jersey breed) each costing 15,000 ETB will be purchased and at the beginning year 20 cows (jersey breed) will give milk and milk products. In the first year operation, there is negative profit (1006349ETB) for the businesses because of a large portion of costs have been incurred for fixed and intermediate assets. For the three consecutive years, the business will obtain a positive profit of 660747 ETB, 806445.315 ETB and 969210.575 EBT, respectively. In four year operation, the business will obtain a profit of 41.84% of the startup capital of the business

Adoption and Challenges of Mobile Banking Systems in Ethiopia: The Case of Cooperative Bank of Oromiya

The incorporation of information system into organizations for the purpose of getting competitive advantage, easing workload, providing intangible (soft) work place and coping up with technological advancement has become an indispensable for organizations. Due to these many companies (like banks) are getting advantages of information communication technology implementation like Mobile Banking (M-banking), Internet banking, Automatic Teller Machine, etc. Accordingly Ethiopian commercial banks have implemented Mbanking system into their service system. This research examine adoption of M-banking system in Ethiopia focusing on Cooperative bank of Oromiya with respect to the challenges which can influence the bank from taking advantage and expected benefits of M-banking system derived by adopting the system. The result of the research indicated that, drivers of M-banking are relative advantage, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness while challenges are perceived risks, trust reliability and lack of ICT infrastructure

Towards a Better Commercial Arbitration: Should Ethiopia Ratify the New York Convention?

AbstractThe 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral awards is currently ratified by 161 states. The Convention gives a visa for arbitral awards made in a Convention state and guarantees enforcement of the award elsewhere except on few grounds. It imposes obligations on states and their courts to recognize and enforce foreign arbitral awards and arbitration agreements. It also imposes on courts the obligation to stay proceeding with a matter subject to the arbitration agreement. Ethiopia has not yet ratified the NYC. This article aims at demonstrating the challenges and prospects of ratification of the Convention by Ethiopia. I argue that by ratifying the Convention, Ethiopia would be able to, inter alia, increase trade and investment, get access to lower interest rates and rates of return, improve its international image, improve on competition for trade and investment, improve its arbitration system, decrease caseloads of courts and hasten its move towards the accession to WTO. These factors show that it is in the country's interest to ratify the Convention and domesticate it through the instrumentality of the UNCITRAL Model Law.Key termsCommercial arbitration · New York Convention · Ethiopian laws · UNCITRAL· Model Law · Ethiopi

PHYSIOLOGY AND PERSISTENCE OF ALFALFA WITH CHANGES IN SOIL CHEMISTRY

The influence of liming on soil chemical changes and on nodulation, nitrogen fixation and yield of alfalfa was investigated. In the field, increasing rates of lime improved alfalfa dry matter yield at the Kingman Farm. Optimum dry matter yield was obtained with 3.5 tons lime/ha. A quadratic response curve showed that liming accounted for about 70 percent of the yield variation in alfalfa. Herbage N, P and Mg increased in response to liming six years after establishment. The simple correlations between dry matter yield and plant N, plant P and Plant Mg were positive and significant. Plant Al and Mn showed negative influences on plant P, N and Mg as well as on dry matter yield. Total nitrogen accumulation and protein yields were significantly increased with liming. Nitrogen content was strongly associated with the yield of alfalfa. Depletion of soil N appeared to be the main cause for the improvement in the response of N(,2) fixation and yield to liming, especially in the last two years (1980-1981). The relation between herbage composition and alfalfa yield was studied with regression analysis. In 1981 optimum alfalfa dry matter of 14.9 tons/ha was obtained with a herbage composition of 0.33% P, 1.0% Ca, 0.33% Mg, 4.7% N and 2.4% K. This optimum yield was 143% of the control yield. In the greenhouse, exchangeable Al was found to be a better indicator of crop response to lime application than soil pH. The relationship of improved yield to reduced Al saturation was far more pronounced than the relationship between yield and soil pH. Top and root dry weights were shown to be more correlated to Al saturation than pH or available P. Work with radioactive phosphorus in the soil showed that liming caused a precipitation of the applied (\u2732)P. The (\u2732)P was reverted and so less (\u2732)P was mobilized to plant roots when lime was applied to the soil. The ratio of Al/P in \u27Iroquois\u27 roots was reduced through liming

Determinants of Producers’ Participation Decision and Level of Participation on Milk Value Addition at Farm Level: In Case of Esssera Woreda Dawuro Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Producersers play great role along dairy value chain in study area. Dairy sector has crucial role in improving the livelihoods of farmers through family income, employment generation, achieving food security, poverty alleviation as well as to improve nutritional status of the family in Essera Woreda. Even if there is potential of dairy production, processing, marketing and consumption, there is insufficient information about socio economic factors that hinder farmers’ participation decision and level of participation on milk value addition at farm gate. But determinants of farmers’ participation decision and level of participation decision on milk value addition were not identified and analyzed to take intervention area to improve the dairy sector. This study aimed at identifying determinants of the farmers’ participation decision and extent of participation on milk value addition. The primary data for this study were collected from 133 producers and analyzed using application of appropriate statistical tools. The result of probit (Heckman first stage) model indicated that farmers’ participation decision on milk value addition is significantly affected by gender, quantity of milk yield produced per day, family size, access to extension service, types of dairy cows’ breed and access to credit.  While farmers’ participation decision on volume of milk value addition is significantly affected by gender, family size, education level of household, distance nearest to market, farmers cooperative, types of breed owned by household, access to extension service, access to credit, quantity of milk produced per day and consumers’ quality preference on value added dairy products. Therefore, policy aiming at improving producers’ and traders’ access to improved inputs such as improved breed of dairy cows, credit, extension service. Keywords: - Heckman, Probit, value addition, level of participation, Lambd

Ecological and Economic Roles of Agrobiodiversity

Biodiversity is a complex, abstract concept. It can be associated with a wide range of benefits to human society, most of them still ill understood. In general terms, the value of biodiversity can be assessed in terms of its impact on the provision of inputs to production processes, in terms of its direct impact on human welfare, and in terms of its impact on the regulation of the nature-ecosystem-ecological functions relationships. The services that agricultural biodiversity provides are critical to the functioning of food support systems. They contribute to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet. The main cause of the loss of biodiversity can be attributes to the influence of human beings on the world’s ecosystem, In fact human beings have deeply altered the environment, and have modified the territory, exploiting the species directly, for example by fishing and hunting, changing the biogeochemical cycles and transferring species from one area to another of the Planet. Conserving biodiversity has economic, social, and cultural values. Conservation of biodiversity is integral to the biological and cultural inheritance of many people and the critical components of healthy ecosystems that are used to support economic and social developments. For successful and sustainable conservation there needs to be local community involvement especially for agro ecosystem. Conservation can broadly be achieved into two ways: In-situ -Conservation of habitats, species and ecosystems where they naturally occur. This is in-situ conservation and the natural processes and interaction are conserved as well as the elements of biodiversity and Ex-situ: The conservation of elements of biodiversity out of the context of their natural habitats is referred to as ex-situ conservation. Zoos, botanical gardens and seed banks are all example of ex-situ conservation. Keywords: Biological diversity, Agrobiodiversity, diversit