Will African Agriculture Survive Climate Change?

Measurement of the likely magnitude of the economic impact ofclimate change on African agriculture has been a challenge.Using data from a survey of more than 9,000 farmers across 11African countries, a cross-sectional approach estimates howfarm net revenues are affected by climate change compared withcurrent mean temperature. Revenues fall with warming for drylandcrops (temperature elasticity of –1.9) and livestock (–5.4),whereas revenues rise for irrigated crops (elasticity of 0.5),which are located in relatively cool parts of Africa and arebuffered by irrigation from the effects of warming. At first,warming has little net aggregate effect as the gains for irrigatedcrops offset the losses for dryland crops and livestock. Warming,however, will likely reduce dryland farm income immedia-tely.The final effects will also depend on changes in precipitation,because revenues from all farm types increase with precipitation.Because irrigated farms are less sensitive to climate, wherewater is available, irrigation is a practical adaptation toclimate change in Africa.     

Psychographic clustering of blood donors in Egypt using Kohonen's self‐organizing maps

• Blood donation has historically been marketed as one of the purest examples of altruistic or pro‐social behavior. The recruitment of blood donors is, however, a challenge as transfusion centers worldwide strive to attract and retain blood donors. This study uses self‐organizing maps (SOM) to examine the effect of various psychographic and cognitive factors on blood donation in Egypt. SOM is a machine learning method that can be used to explore patterns in large and complex datasets for linear and nonlinear patterns. The results show that major variables affecting blood donation are related to altruistic values, perceived risks of blood donation, blood donation knowledge, attitudes toward blood donation, and intention to donate blood. The study also shows that SOM models are capable of improving clustering quality while extracting valuable information from multidimensional data.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Malmquist indices of productivity growth for Islamic and conventional banks in Malaysia

This paper studies the total factor productivity （TFP） of banks in Malaysia with the emphasis on comparing the relative productivities of Islamic and Conventional banks. The Malmquist index approach is used to decompose productivity growth into technical efficiency and technological change. The productivity growth is measured and decomposed into technical change and efficiency change. The efficiency change is further decomposed into pure efficiency change and scale efficiency. It is found that Islamic banks＇ productivity growth is limited by its lack of technological change compared to its conventional counterparts. Nonetheless, both types of banks are operating at the correct level in terms of scale or size.     

Financial market integration: Theory and empirical results

In this article, we introduce a new theoretical international asset pricing model which accounts for partial financial market segmentation. We show that if some investors do not hold all international assets because of implicit and/or explicit segmentation factors, the world market portfolio is not efficient and the classic ICAPM must be augmented by a new factor reflecting the local risk undiversifiable internationally. We test this model empirically for a sample of emerging markets. Our findings show that the degree of market integration is time-varying and that the premium associated with the domestic risk factors is the most important component of the total risk premium. However, our results also show that most of the emerging markets we study have become more integrated in the end of our sample period as a result of liberalization and reforms.     

Cost and profit efficiency of Chinese banks: A non-parametric analysis

Using a non-parametric technique for data from 1995 to 2004, we investigate the cost and profit efficiency of 28 Chinese commercial banks. We examine the influence of ownership type, size, risk profile, profitability and key environmental changes on the bank efficiency using a Tobit regression. Consistent with the existing literature, we find that profit efficiency levels are well below those of cost efficiency. This suggests that the most important inefficiencies are on the revenue side. Our findings are also consistent with prior evidence on ownership and efficiency: joint-stock banks (national and city-based), on average, appear to be more cost- and profit-efficient than state-owned banks while medium-sized banks are significantly more efficient than small and large banks. These and other results suggest the need for speedier reforms to open the banking market, improving risk management, minimizing the government's capital subsidy and diversifying ownership of Chinese banks.     

Financial development,ICT diffusion and economic growth: Lessons from MENA region

This paper aims to test jointly two economic puzzles: the effect of financial development and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on economic growth. Theories predict a positive effect of financial development and ICT on growth but empirical studies on these relationships produced mixed results. Further, we investigate the interaction between financial development and ICT Diffusion to test whether the impact of financial development on growth is strengthened by better ICT infrastructure. In this paper we assess empirically these relationships in some MENA countries. The empirical study is based on estimation of a dynamic panel model with system GMM estimators. There are three main findings. First, our empirical results join empirical literature that find a negative direct effect of financial development on economic growth. This ambiguous relationship may be linked to many phenomenons but there are not yet clear explanations of this puzzle. Second, the estimates reveal a positive and significant direct effect of ICT proxies on economic growth. This implies that MENA countries need to reinforce their ICT policies and improve using of new Information and Communication Technology. Finally, the interaction between ICT penetration and financial development is found positive and significant in the growth regression. This implies that economies in Mena region can benefit from financial development only once a threshold of ICT development is reached.     

On the feasibility of monetary union among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: does the symmetry of shocks extend to the non-oil sector?

GCC countries’ output is heavily dichotomized into oil and non-oil. Oil shocks have similar effects on all member countries but little is known about their responses to non-oil shocks. This paper sets out to determine (1) whether aggregate demand (AD) and non-oil supply shocks (AS) are symmetrical across these countries to justify their suitability for monetary union; and (2) whether there is any commonality of shocks with the United States and the three major European countries, namely France, Germany, and Italy, which can warrant the choice of either the US dollar or the Euro as the anchor for the expected common currency of the bloc. We use bivariate structural vector autoregression models identified with long-run restrictions to extract the shocks. Our results show that (a) AD shocks are unequivocally symmetrical but non-oil AS shocks are weakly symmetrical across GCC countries thereby suggesting a monetary union is feasible, but not overwhelmingly; (b) neither AD nor AS shocks are symmetrical between GCC countries and the selected European countries; (c) GCC’s AD shocks are symmetrical with the US but non-oil AS shock are not. Furthermore, there are no significant changes in the results when we aggregate the GCC countries as a bloc. We therefore surmise that the US dollar is a more appropriate anchor for the new currency than the Euro since US monetary policy can at least help smooth demand shocks in GCC countries.     

The pyramids plateau: A dream searching for survival

Recognized as one of the most unique archaeological sites in the world, the Giza pyramids plateau is the location of the three great pyramids and the Sphinx, tombs, seven smaller pyramids, and other monuments. Over the centuries the plateau has been instrumental in introducing Egyptian civilization to the world, and was recently declared as one of the most iconic travel spots on the planet.In recent years, the location of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) within the site of the plateau re-ignited the debate between scholars, practitioners and activists over development activities within and around this unique site. Consequently, a growing conflict re-emerged between conserving the plateau and developing the surrounding areas. Additionally, this invaluable site is threatened by urban expansion and development, pollution, rising groundwater and extensive tourism. Yet, currently there are neither tourism management nor development plans for the site.Building on national and international conservation conventions and charters, this paper explores analyses and documents the current gap between ideal conservation management sittings within and around the pyramids plateau and the reality of urban development trends and tourism activities.     

Pooling surveys in the estimation of income and price elasticities: An application to Tunisian households

This paper presents a methodological extension of Deaton's (1990) model for estimating price elasticities, by pooling Tunisian data from several surveys to improve the inter-cluster variability of unit values which is one of the key elements used in the derivation of these elasticities. Since the surveys cover a relatively long period, possible structural changes in consumption behaviour occurring over time are accounted for by postulating that certain response coefficients of the basic model vary from one survey to the other. The own price and cross price elasticities calculated using appropriate estimates of the extended model are satisfactory both from the economic point of view of their sign and the statistical point of view of their significance and superior to those obtained using a single survey. First version received: April 2000/Final version received: June 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  The authors would like to thank Angus Deaton and anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions.