Application of Stochastic Models to Growth and Decline Episodes of Financial Data

In this thesis work, we analyze fit of bivariate BEG and BTLG models to financial asset returns' episodes of growth and decline. Our data include foreign exchange rates, stock, and stock's indexes prices, and commoditites. We apply BEG and BTLG models to all data and decide if the models fit reasonably well based on univariate and bivariate fit methods. We also assess "stability" of the returns with respect to their geometric summation. Our results show BEG and BTLG models fitting best the foreign exchange rates

Strategic Lay Leadership Involvement in the Social Mission of a Western Ontario Denomination

Several Ontario communities face challenges requiring harnessing multisectorial partnerships to bring about community transformation. The church has the capacity to contribute to the community transformation needs of its community, but a particular denomination in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) appeared to be unaware of how to fulfil its social mission of community transformation. The purpose of this case study was to understand how members of the clergy perceived the lay leadership vacuum in the denomination and how these perceptions appear to inhibit the denomination\u27s achievement of its social mission. The theoretical framework was Akingbola\u27s strategic nonprofit human resource management theory. A qualitative case study was employed, using semistructured interviews of 10 clergy in the GTA. Data from the interviews were coded and categorized for thematic analysis and constant comparison. Findings indicated a lay leadership vacuum in the studied denomination. Participants concurred that the vacuum was influenced by the perceptions of the clergy, which inhibit the denomination\u27s capacity to address the needs of the community. The results of this study could lead to positive social change through providing an understanding of the obstacles denominations and similar nonprofit organizations may need to overcome to effectively identify, nurture, and deploy their volunteers for the benefit of community transformation

Agricultural Decisions after Relaxing Credit and Risk Constraints

AbstractThe investment decisions of small-scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can limit investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in which farmers were randomly assigned to receive cash grants, grants of or opportunities to purchase rainfall index insurance, or a combination of the two. Demand for index insurance is strong, and insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier production choices in agriculture. The binding constraint to farmer investment is uninsured risk: when provided with insurance against the primary catastrophic risk they face, farmers are able to find resources to increase expenditure on their farms. Demand for insurance in subsequent years is strongly increasing with the farmer’s own receipt of insurance payouts, with the receipt of payouts by others in the farmer’s social network and with recent poor rain in the village. Both investment patterns and the demand for index insurance are consistent with the presence of important basis risk associated with the index insurance, imperfect trust that promised payouts will be delivered and overweighting recent events.</jats:p

Parental Involvement and Academic Performance in Ghana

Parental Involvement and Academic Performance in Ghan

The effect of Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme on health care utilisation

Objectives: The study investigates the effect of Ghana&#8217;s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on health care utilisation.Methods: We provide a short history of health insurance in Ghana, and briefly discuss general patterns of enrolment in Ghana as well as in Accra in a first step. In a second step, we use data from the Women&#8217;s Health Study of Accra wave II to evaluate the effect of insurance on health seeking behaviour using propensity score matching.Results: We find that on average individuals enrolled in the insurance scheme are significantly more likely to obtain prescriptions, visit clinics and seek formal health care when sick.Conclusion: These results suggest that the government&#8217;s objective to increase access to the formal health care sector through health insurance has at leastpartially been achieved

Youth and Their Health in Ghana

Youth and Their Health in Ghan

VARIATIONS IN METADISCOURSE USE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW THESIS CHAPTERS

Studies have established that thesis chapters are both similar and dissimilar with respect to their rhetorical choices. This paper examined metadiscourse use in the Introduction and Literature Review (LR) chapters of English Language theses from a nonnative context. The Introduction and LR chapters of ten theses, resulting in 50, 000 and 100, 500 words respectively, constituted the data sets for this study. Drawing on Hyland’s metadiscourse model, we manually coded all the metadiscursive elements. The study reveals statistically significant differences across all the interactive and interactional subcategories, affirming the stance that the rhetorical function of a thesis chapter influences its metadiscoursal choices. The study also found a new subcategory of meta-discoursal category labeled continuants. The paper has implications for the teaching and supervision of postgraduate theses, and the theory of metadiscourse

Cost structure of yam farmers in Ghana: The case of the forest savanna transition agro-ecological zone

The study investigated the cost functions and the determinants of cost inefficiencies among yam farmers in Ghana using the stochastic frontier cost approach. The stochastic frontier cost approach estimates the general and inefficiency models simultaneously. Farm-level data and socio-economic variables on a sample of 374 yam farmers collected in 2009 in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions were used in the study. The empirical results showed that cost of stakes and cost of seeds are the most important determinants of cost in the yam production process across the study communities. The cost of stakes was found to be significant in determining total cost. Planting cost constituted about 18 per cent of total costs. About 49.2 per cent of farmers sampled were producing on the cost curves higher than the average of the sample. The average inefficiency level generated was about 46 per cent higher than the minimum cost possible for the industry. The level of education of the farmer has a negative impact on farmer inefficiencies. The yield, which is the only output variable in the model had a positive impact on total cost with a coefficient less than 1, signifying an increasing return to scale. The area under cultivation had a mixed effect on inefficiency across regions, whilst there was no significant effect of the area under cultivation on cost in the Ashanti Region. Increasing area causes inefficiency and decline in the Brong Ahafo Region

Bolstering Ontario Land-Use Planners’ Adaptive Capacity for Resilient Climate Change Adaptation through Education

For many land-use planners across the province of Ontario, the region that my research examines, the issue has been raised that the adaptive capacity required to effectively and efficiently implement the climate change adaptation strategies and policies that they have been mandated to employ is lacking. Even though the tools and resources are there in abundance, the ability to implement such strategies and policies has been recognized to depend on land-use planners’ understanding of the climate issue at hand and the number of accessible human and technological resources . This is the central argument of this paper. As such, I use this research opportunity to explore how to bolster the adaptive capacity of Ontario’s land-use planner in these ways for a better response to the challenge that climate warming poses. I begin with a brief history of the climate change regime, along with a brief explanation of the climate science behind the warming. I then proceed to discuss the role land-use planning plays in contributing to climate warming, how it can redirect its efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, the challenges land-use planners face when tasked to implement adaptation strategies and how it can be solved through the bolstering of their adaptive capacity using the resilience framework. This is followed by a discussion on the work that the province of Ontario is doing through the BRACE Project to help bolster the adaptive capacity of the land-use planner. Through this research, my objective is to highlight the gap that currently exists in our adaptation efforts where those we depend on to implement these climate change adaptation strategies are lacking in their ability to carry out the work due to their lack of climate change adaptive capacity and how to bolster this through a resilience framework that presents us with a solution – education