Seasonality of income and poverty in Bangladesh

Seasonal food deprivation in Bangladesh, locally known as Monga, sometimes rises to the level of famine during the pre-harvest period of aman rice. An analysis of household income and expenditure survey data shows that income and consumption are lower during Monga than in other seasons, and that seasonal income greatly influences seasonal consumption. Econometric estimates reject the hypothesis of perfect consumption smoothing. In the northwestern region of greater Rangpur, rural households suffer disproportionately from Monga. Seasonal differences in poverty across regions are due mainly to differences in household-specific seasonality of income and consumption. Income diversification explains the lower incidence of income seasonality observed in non-Rangpur regions. To contain seasonal hunger in greater Rangpur, public policies should promote rural income diversification together with seasonal migration. A flexible microfinance scheme that provides both production and consumption loans on flexible repayment terms could help diversify income and reduce seasonality of income and poverty.     

Macro–micro feedback links of water management in South Africa: CGE analyses of selected policy regimes

The pressure on an already stressed water situation in South Africa is predicted to increase significantly under climate change, plans for large industrial expansion, ongoing rapid urbanization, and government programs to provide access to water to millions of previously excluded populations. This article employs a general equilibrium approach to examine the economy‐wide impacts of selected macro and water‐related policy reforms on water use and allocation, rural livelihoods, and economy at large. The analyses reveal that implicit crop‐level water quotas reduce the amount of irrigated land allocated to higher‐value horticultural crops and create higher shadow rents for production of lower‐value water‐intensive field crops, such as sugarcane and fodder. Accordingly, liberalizing local water allocation within irrigation agriculture is found to work in favor of higher‐value crops, and expand agricultural production and exports and farm employment. Allowing for water trade between irrigation and nonagricultural uses fuelled by higher competition for water from urbanization leads to greater water shadow prices for irrigation water with reduced income and employment benefits to rural households and higher gains for nonagricultural households. The analyses show difficult trade‐offs between general economic gains and higher water prices, which place serious questions on subsidizing water supply to irrigated agriculture, i.e., making irrigation subsidies much harder to justify.     

Average out-of-pocket healthcare and work-loss costs of traffic injuries in Karachi, Pakistan

The objective of this study was to assess the average out-of-pocket healthcare and work-loss costs of road traffic injuries (RTI) in Karachi. In this cross-sectional study, RTI patients presenting to the five trauma centres in Karachi were contacted using stratified sampling to report their inpatient and outpatient expenses, the time spent in hospital and their average monthly income. These costs were compared among different categories of patient-related variables using analysis of variance test. Out of 341 RTI victims, two wheelers accounted for the majority of injuries (77.2%, N?=?256) followed by pedestrians (14.2%, N?=?48). Almost half of the sample patients were breadwinners (N?=?135, 45.2%), with 87.4% (N?=?118) earning less than US$ 248. Average out-of-pocket healthcare costs were US$ 271 (SD?=?440.9), which were significantly higher (P ≤ 0.026) for pedestrians (US$ 442), moderate (US$ 341.7) or severe (US$ 553.8) injury, and treatment in private hospitals (US$ 451.7). Similarly, average work loss was US$ 67.1 (SD?=?132.1), which were significantly higher (P?=?0.001) for breadwinners (US$ 99.1), moderate (US$ 130.0) or severe (US$ 157.1) injury, and treatment in private hospitals (US$ 150.0). Study results clearly showed the need to advocate RTI prevention measures in Pakistan as any such event could lead to a difficult economic situation for those involved and their family.     

Identifying Financial Distress Indicators of Selected Banks in Asia

The banking sector plays a pivotal role in the economic development of most Asian countries. In 1997, a full-fledged banking and financial crisis took place in South Asian countries. Many banks had to be bailed out by their governments. It is believed that an examination of indicators that led to the problems suffered by banks in this region will be of enormous benefit. Models were developed for each country that identified banks experiencing financial distress as a function of financial ratios. The countries in the study include Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. The banking sectors of these three countries are ideal for this study, as the banks enjoyed profitability during the pre-crisis period and were the most severely affected by the financial crisis in 1997. Logistic regression was used to analyze the data sample from 1995 to 1997. In the findings, capital adequacy, loan management and operating efficiency are three common performance dimensions found to be able to identify problem banks in all three countries. It is hoped that the financial ratios and results of the models will be useful to bankers and regulators in identifying problem banks in Asia.     

Saving dynamics in the Asian countries

This paper investigates empirically the factors that have influenced the savings behavior in the fast growing Asian economies—Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Both the short and long-run movements of savings are modeled during the 1960–1997. The empirical results of the analysis based on time series data may be summarized as follows: (i) foreign savings deters domestic saving both in the short and long run; (ii) savings does not Granger cause economic growth, except for Singapore; (iii) the effect of interest rate on saving in Asian countries is inconclusive and it reflects the extent of financial liberalization adopted in these countries; and (iv) in the long run the causality runs from foreign to domestic savings.     

Christian roots of capitalist civilization

A conceptual argument is offered for the centrality of religion to the structure of capitalist civilization. This centrality is documented by examples of the role of Christianity in European civilization.     

Financial Analysis of Palestinian Industry Including Small Scale Firms

The study aims to explore the financial aspects of the Palestinian industry, and to investigate productivity and efficiency of small scale industry compared with large scale firms. In order to help policy makers in industrial planning in the new emerged Palestinian state. A special instrument has been used to collect the financial and quantitative data for the related manufacturing firms from a random sample of 215 Palestinian firms. The one way analysis of variance test was used to examine whether the mean scores differ significantly among scale sizes of the Palestinian industry concerning the selected performance measures. In addition, the Scheffe test was used as a post hoc comparison way to identify which scale size firms' performance differs than the other two scale sizes.The research revealed that small scale firms in Palestinian industry have higher labor productivity values than large scale firms, while large scale firms accomplished higher net profit margin compared to small scale industry. Creating an additional job in large scale Palestinian industry needs less cost than creating a job in small scale industry, and large scale firms have better opportunity in getting external financing than small firms.     

Time-varying Cost of Equity Capital in Southeast Asian Countries

This paper investigates variation in the cost of equity capital for the Southeast Asian countries using firm-level data over the period of 1990–2004. It is found that decreases in the firm-level cost of equity capital have been associated with stock market liberalization and securities market development. The results of the present study suggest that earlier empirical evidence regarding the decrease in the cost of equity capital using country-level data cannot be generalized to different types of firms. There has been significant time variation in the cost of equity capital within countries and across firms.     

Social capital and poverty in Uganda

This paper investigates the links between social capital and household poverty in Uganda. It assumes a two-way causal relationship between poverty and access to social capital. This suggests an endogeneity problem, so the paper uses econometric techniques that control for endogeneity. Using two nationally representative datasets, the authors' analyses revealed that access to social capital defined in terms of membership of social organisations positively affects household income and reduces poverty. Education was the key determinant of income and increases the probability of joining social networks. Their results further show that household income and welfare are positively associated with access to social capital or group participation. This suggests that government strategies to increase household income that take into consideration existing social institutions will go a long way to encourage associational growth and performance and consequently reduce poverty.