COMPUTABLE GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM MODELS FOR DEVELOPMENT POLICY ANALYSIS IN LDCs

Abstract. The use of CGE models has gained much popularity among policy analysts in LDCs and there is a fast growing body of literature on this area of economics. In this survey, the advantages of general equilibrium approach over partial equilibrium approach in analysing a wide range of policy issues are highlighted. The evolution of CGE modelling is discussed and more than 60 CGE applications related to different policy issues in LDCs are surveyed. This comprehensive survey shows that the CGE models have become quite popular analytical tools among policy analysts in LDCs over the last decade or so. The debate in the economic profession regarding the value and appropriateness of using CGE models for policy analysis is examined in the final section of this paper. Some of the criticisms levelled at CGE models are discussed and it is argued that despite this criticism such models are capable of providing insight into important policy problems.     

Youth labor market expectations and job matching in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from school-to-work transition surveys

In this paper, we investigate the factors that influence youth labour market expectations and outcomes. We also perform a job matching exercise to understand youth labour market dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results show that youth education is an influential factor of youth employment expectations and employment, ceteris paribus. Higher educational attainments have a great impact on expecting and securing better jobs, particularly in the technical and professional fields. Youth with low educational attainments, particularly primary education and lower, have a higher tendency to expect to be employed in occupations with low job complexity. Our results indicate a severe job-skill mismatch in all occupational categories, both before and after the youth’s transition into the labour market. Using education as the only selection criterion, we found that less than 10 per cent of employment expectations match with skills required while 55 per cent and 34 per cent are under or over-educated for the jobs expected, respectively. Over and under education is a notable feature in youth labour markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 47 per cent of employed youth in the sample are overqualified for their respective jobs while 28 per cent are under qualified.     

Addressing privacy predicaments in the digital marketplace: A power‐relations perspective

The utilization and governance of the internet and adjacent disruptive technologies have created numerous challenges to ensuring consumer online privacy. This study employs the power–responsibility equilibrium theory to explore emerging online privacy issues in the data‐driven marketplace. This exploratory study, based on semi‐structured interviews, explains why online shopping consumers are increasingly worried about their privacy and why they behave in a manner that could be detrimental to the consumer–vendor relationship. The findings suggest that deficiencies of corporate privacy responsibility and regulatory protection have deprived consumers of privacy empowerment. These deficiencies have also accentuated perceived privacy contract violations to trigger privacy concerns and subsequent defensive responses. We identify enhancement of consumer privacy empowerment and assuagement of privacy contract violations as two separate mechanisms of addressing online privacy issues. We also highlight the importance of addressing power and responsibility dynamics for maintaining a healthy information‐exchange environment.     

Impact of sanitation,safe drinking water and health expenditure on infant mortality rate in developing economies

Despite of significant growth in all walks of life, the issue of infant mortality still a major concern in most of the developing economies. The World Development Indicators have reported that 4.45 million infants died across the globe in 2015, meaning that 32 deaths per every 1,000 live births. A number of times, the World Health Organization (WHO) have stressed the significance of sanitation, safe drinking water and healthcare facilities in reducing infant mortality rate, though most developing countries still lacks in these services. Given this background, the present study aims to examine the role of sanitation, water facilities and health expenditure on infant mortality rate across a panel of 84 developing economies using annual data from 1995 to 2013. The study also account for per capita income and depth of food deficiency as the control factors in the model. The findings of this study establish a significant long-run equilibrium association among the variables. The long-run elasticities on infant mortality suggest that improved water and sanitation facilities, health expenditure and per capita income substantially reduce infant mortality rate, while food deficiency increases. Given these findings, we suggest that increasing access to improved water, sanitation and healthcare facilities will significantly reduce child mortality in developing economies around the world.     

The Economic Cost of Gender Gaps in Effective Labor: Africa's Missing Growth Reserve

This study analyzes the impact of the gender gap in effective labor – defined as the combined effect of the gender gaps in labor force participation and education – on economic output per worker. The results indicate that the gender gap in effective labor has a negative effect on the economic output per worker in African countries. A 1 percent increase in the gender gap in effective labor leads to a reduction in output per worker by 0.43–0.49 percent in Africa overall, 0.29–0.50 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 0.26–0.32 percent in a wider group of countries from Africa and Asia. The total annual economic losses due to gender gaps in effective labor could be as high as US$255 billion for the African region. Results confirm that Africa is missing its full growth potential because a sizeable portion of its growth reserve – women – is not fully utilized.     

Learning capabilities,human resource management innovation and competitive advantage

The growing literature on innovation pays limited attention to the role of human resource management (HRM) innovation in creating competitive advantage. This paper adopts a knowledge-based approach to examine how firms design and implement HRM innovations (HRMIs) and how such innovations support competitive advantage. Drawing from multiple streams of literature and qualitative evidence from Australian manufacturing and service firms, our findings reveal that human resource (HR) functional-level learning capabilities, through which HR professionals build and nurture new knowledge configurations, facilitate the design and implementation of HRMIs. The findings also reveal that HRMIs, when coupled with top management support, can play a vital role in firm competitive advantage. Addressing the limitations of the term radical innovations to fully capture HRMIs and based on our findings and extant literature we propose a new classification that will capture the unique nature of HRMIs. In addition to contributing to theory, our paper provides valuable insights to practitioners for building and nurturing learning capabilities for HRMI-related competitive advantage.     

Does asymmetry in price transmission exist in the rice market in Sri Lanka?

This study analyses asymmetry in price transmission between wholesale and retail rice markets in Sri Lanka, using the threshold autoregressive model. We found that the wholesale and the retail rice markets in Sri Lanka are integrated, with price changes moving from the wholesale to the retail market. However, the price transmission process is asymmetric. In particular, price increases at the wholesale market transmit immediately to the retail market while price decreases transmit more slowly. Parameter stability test and follow-up analysis indicated that the price transmission process is asymmetric only during periods of price surges, suggesting that the rice market is not efficient during these periods.     

An empirical analysis of Sri Lanka's Manufacturing Productivity slow-down

This paper analyses empirically the changes in Sri Lanka's manufacturing productivity during a period of regime shift from import substituting industrialisation to export-oriented industrialisation. We have used a varying coefficients stochastic production frontier model on a balanced panel data set to shed light on the effects of trade liberalisation on Total Factor Productivity which incorporates both changes in Technical Efficiency and Technical Progress. The results of the empirical validation of the stochastic production frontier model reveal that there were two distinct phases of output and productivity growth under each of the two trade liberalisation episodes that occurred during 1978–88 and 1988–97, respectively. The analysis carried out in this paper decomposing Total Factor Productivity into Technical Progress and Technical Efficiency also reveals that during early years of each episode, perspiration or factor inputs was the driving force of increased output growth giving way to ‘inspiration’ or technical progress as each phase matured. The stochastic production frontier empirics reported in this paper together with negative feedback effects emanating from the political turmoil and the prolonged ethnic conflict virtually brought the growth of foreign direct investment to a grinding halt in late 1980s, when the election of new right-wing government appears to have given a shot in the arm to overcome the paralysis of technical progress that seem to have contributed to the productivity slow-down in Sri Lanka's manufacturing sector in the eve of the new millennium.     

Marketing Jihad: the rhetoric of recruitment

ABSTRACT

The key question from a marketing perspective is why has Islamic State (IS) been so successful and how did it displace Al Qaeda (AQ) as the most prominent brand of global jihad from 2014 to 2016? The political and military elements have been examined but comparatively little attention has been paid to the ability of IS to commandeer the AQ narrative by appropriating and extending key themes and using them via social media to market itself as a choice for disaffected youth. It is suggested that IS has done this by making skilful use of rhetoric to position its brand and facilitate recruitment. To illustrate this, eight major themes of jihadi social media communications are identified and then analysed. Then a comparison is made between the way that AQ has used these themes in the online journal Inspire and the way that IS has used them in their online journals, Dabiq and Rumiyah.     

Modelling agricultural land use allocation in regional Australia

An analysis of the drivers of agricultural land use is important for policy makers as the issues of climate change and food security become increasingly prominent in the political landscape. This paper analyses the role of prices, total land holdings and climate on land use in Australia. The analysis relates to a unique comprehensive coverage of commodity types at a regional level. An explicit treatment of missing data and the novel use of cluster analysis is employed within a partial adjustment framework for modelling land allocation. The majority of commodity types across regions exhibit significant degrees of slow partial adjustment for land allocation, the frequency of slow adjustment is greatest with crops and livestock and weakest for vegetables. In general, relative own and cross prices, total land holdings and rainfall only have a minor impact on short‐term land allocations, however numerous individual commodity/regional combinations have identified significant short‐run impacts.