Decomposing energy demand across BRIIC countries

Energy plays an important role within the production technology of fast emerging economies, such that firms' reaction to changes in energy prices provides useful information on factor productivity and factor intensity, as well as the likely outcome of energy policy initiatives, among other things. Drawing on duality theory, this paper decomposes changes in energy demand into substitution and output effects using annual sector-level production data for Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia and China (BRIIC) for the period 1995–2009. Unlike previous studies, this study analyzed the economic properties of the underlying production technology. Results indicate that changes in energy demand are strongly dominated by substitution effects. More importantly, an intriguing finding that emerges from our analysis is the role of economies of scale and factor accumulation, as opposed to technical progress, in giving rise to the growth performance of sampled economies

Let beholders behold: can banks see beyond oil booms and mitigate the Dutch disease?

While the potential role of oil booms in crowding out the tradable sector is well documented in the Dutch disease literature, the potential contribution of bank lending behaviour to the oil resource curse syndrome remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we investigate contrasting variations in bank credit flows to the tradable (manufacturing) and non-tradable (service) sectors, across 14 oil-rich economies during 1994-2017, in order to shed light on whether bank lending behaviour mitigates or accentuates the syndrome. We uncover new evidence of significant contraction in the manufacturing sector share of bank credit during oil booms, while the service sector share of bank lending expands. Overall, our results are robust to alternative tests and unequivocally reject the hypothesis that banks can see beyond oil booms by allocating credit across sectors in a manner that mimics countervailing monetary policy to intermediate oil windfalls and mitigate the Dutch disease. Rather, bank sectoral credit allocation accentuates the Dutch disease by crowding out the tradable sector

Oil booms, bank productivity and natural resource curse in finance

Using a rich monthly microdata, this study is the first one to investigate the effect of commodity booms on bank productivity in the context of resource-endowed economies. Consistent with the axiom of a natural resource curse in finance, we find significant decline in banks’ total factor productivity (TFP) during episodes of oil booms

Oil price booms, Dutch disease and the crowding out of tradable sectors: new insight from bank lending behavior

The Dutch disease phenomenon is front and centre in explaining the poor economic performance of resource-rich economies. While it is well documented in the literature that resource discoveries or booms have adverse effects on manufacturing, little is known about the role of sectoral credit allocation in accentuating or mitigating this phenomenon. Using monthly sectoral loan data across 13 oil-rich countries over the period 1994-2017, we find the pattern of credit allocation to be consistent with the Dutch disease: oil price booms are associated with contraction (expansion) in manufacturing (services) sector share of credit. These findings are robust to a battery of robustness tests. Consequently, we argue that sectoral credit allocation is a channel through which productive resources are shifted toward the non-tradable sector at the expenses of the tradable sector. To the extent that financial systems in oil-rich economies efficiently intermediate resource windfalls, it could potentially countervail the Dutch disease syndrome

The impact of domestic and foreign R&D on agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa

We use a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model to investigate the impact of domestic and foreign R&D on agricultural productivity for a sample of 30 sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries during the period 1981–2011. The results reveal that total factor productivity is strongly influenced by both domestic and foreign R&D spending in the agricultural sector, albeit the former plays a more important role. The decomposition of total factor productivity (TFP) and its components show an annual average rate of productivity growth of 4.8%, driven mainly by technical change which had an average annual improvement of 3.2%. Efficiency change had a negative impact on productivity and generally exhibited a net reduction in TFP growth at an average annual growth rate of −0.8%. Our sub-regional analyses indicate the West African region recorded the highest productivity growth during the period under consideration. Overall, our findings highlight the crucial role of knowledge stocks in driving agricultural productivity in the SSA region.We wish to express our deep appreciation to the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) for the financial support to carry out this research under the grant RT16523

Higher education widening access initiatives - an estimation of wage returns from Scottish Articulation

We estimate the wage returns of undergraduates who attained their degree via Scotland's Further Education College (FEC) Articulation policy. We contribute to existing literature by adding to the research on varying returns based on paths to acquiring a degree, while also being the first paper to examine the returns associated with Scottish Articulation. While Articulation students receive a wage premium relative to college students, we find lower returns for Articulation students relative to those from older and higher-ranking university institutions in Scotland. This result questions whether improving educational equality, translates to improved income equality between low vs higher income backgrounds

Information asymmetry in voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs): theory and evidence from UK climate change agreements (CCAs)

Voluntary environmental agreements (VEAs) are often plagued by adverse selection problems, because the regulator has imperfect information about firm-specific production technologies and abatement costs. We explore this issue using the UK climate change agreement (CCA) as a case study. First, we present a theoretical emulation of the program. Second, we resolve the regulator’s asymmetric information problem by estimating unobserved energy efficiency using production theory. Third, we use microdata from three confidential manufacturing surveys to empirically test how limited information impacts resource allocation within the scheme. In line with the problem of limited information about firm production technologies, we find that firms with lower levels of energy efficiency receive higher CCA tax discounts. This finding holds over a range of robustness tests

Sources of marital stress experienced by married people as perceived by lecturers of College of Education

Stress is the condition that is in place when demands exceed the adaptive capacity of individuals. The study investigated sources of marital stress experienced by married people as perceived by lecturers of College of Education.  Respondents were stratified into different strata of gender, age group, educational qualification and number of children, after which simple random sampling technique was used for selecting 20 respondents from each of the five schools in the college i.e School of Education, Arts and Social Sciences, Science, Vocational Technology and Languages consisting of 42 males and 58 females making a total of 100 respondents. The “Sources of Marital Stress Expericenced by Married People Questionnaire” (SMSEMPQ) was administered to the respondents to collect relevant data. The t-test and Analysis of Variance (  ANOVA) statistics were used to test four generated null hypotheses and where the result of ANOVA showed a significant difference, Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT) statistics was used as a post-hoc test  to determine the group(s) that contributed to the significant difference. All null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 alpha level of significance. The findings showed that the major source of marital stress is “child rearing” with a mean score of 12.88 and ranked 1st while the least source is “social” with a mean score of 11.68 and ranked 8th. The findings equally showed that there was no significant difference in respondents’ perception based on gender while significant differences existed based on age, educational qualification and number of children. Based on the findings, recommendations were made for implementation -   professional counsellors should intensify efforts to set up clinics where people can come for counselling on stress management; the government at all levels ought to establish counselling centres in hospitals where people can come for counselling on stress related matters; and since child rearing has been identified as the most crucial source of stress, parents and guardians ought to be careful in the way they rear children so as to avoid stressful interaction as much as possible.   Key Words: Sources, marital, stress experienced, married people and lecturers