Do Plant Clinics Improve Household Food Security? Evidence from Rwanda

One of the main drivers of food insecurity is pests, which are estimated to cause around 40% of crop losses worldwide. We examine the food security effects of plant clinics, a novel agricultural extension model that aims to reduce crop losses due to pests through the provision of demand‐driven plant health diagnostic and advisory services to smallholder farmers. The study is based on survey data from maize‐growing households in Rwanda, where 66 plant clinics have been established. Using switching regression and matching techniques as well as various food security metrics, including the food insecurity experience scale, we find evidence that participation in plant clinics is significantly associated with a reduction in household food insecurity. For instance, among the participating households, plant clinics contribute to a decrease in the period of food shortage by one month and a reduction in the severity of food insecurity by 22 percentage points. We also show that these effects are more pronounced for female‐headed households. Overall, our findings suggest that plant clinics can play an important role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of zero hunger.     

Local economic development in Ghana: From the ‘lost decades’ to a policy ‘maturing’ stage

Analysis and studies of local economic development (LED) tend to be under the rubric of case studies to the neglect of their historical context and the role of international development agencies. This article attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the experiences of Ghana. Adopting a systematic review of the policy documents and existing literature, it was found that, despite its significance, LED was not the priority of the governments of pre and post immediate independence era. In the fourth republic of Ghana, LED gained prominence in the various policy documents but this appears to be rhetoric and camouflage because they have not seen real implementation. However, international development agencies have played a significant role in initiating, funding and implementing specific LED activities in the various districts in Ghana. Overall, LED in Ghana has crawled from the ‘lost decades’ to a policy ‘maturing stage’.     

ARE IMPACTS OF EARLY INTERVENTIONS IN THE SCANDINAVIAN WELFARE STATE CONSISTENT WITH A HECKMAN CURVE? A META‐ANALYSIS

“Early intervention” has been a mantra in recent debates about human capital investment. Strong theoretical models motivate this focus by predicting that investment in children is most cost‐effective when they are young. The “Heckman curve” summarizes this idea visually (Heckman, 2006). However, hardly any reviews scrutinize this hypothesis empirically in modern welfare states such as those in Scandinavia that already invest heavily during early childhood. Any such review is ideally based on interventions conducted as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), set in the same welfare state, and comparable across ages through cost‐standardized effects. This meta‐analysis assembles cost‐standardized effect estimates from 10 RCTs, including a total of 18 intervention arms and 30,578 participants (aged 1.5–24 years), conducted by the same research center in the Scandinavian welfare state of Denmark. These interventions show significant effects relative to their costs, despite the large baseline investment level. Interventions targeted at younger children tend to produce larger effects, consistent with the Heckman curve. However, variation in the effect size within age groups is as large as it is across age groups. This indicates that both the quality and timing of investments matter and that “early interventions” are not necessarily superior to later interventions.     

Knowledge of entrepreneurial support and entrepreneurial intention in the rural provinces of South Africa

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether knowledge about government entrepreneurial support and entrepreneurial support institutions and their services have an influence on entrepreneurial intention and its antecedents. The study was carried out by means of a cross-sectional survey using a structured questionnaire. The sample consisted of 355 final-year commerce students from two universities located in two of South Africa’s most rural provinces, namely the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used to analyse the data. The results indicate that the respondents could hardly access information about entrepreneurial support offered by the government and support services available, and had a very low level of knowledge about these support services. The findings revealed some significant relationships between the knowledge of entrepreneurial support and entrepreneurial intention, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms and entrepreneurial self-efficacy.     

Judicial approaches to economic analysis in Australia

Although Australia has had State and Federal antitrust laws for most of the twentieth century, its antitrust jurisprudence has only developed significantly since the enactment of theTrade PracticesAct 1974. Judges have had to come to grips with economic concepts not readily amenable to syllogistic reasoning and traditional fact finding processes. There has been increasing sophistication in judicial reasoning in the area of competition law. However restrictions placed by the rules of evidence upon the role of expert economists have attracted criticism. A new rule of court enables such testimony to be received by way of argument or submission rather than as evidence. This reflects the evaluative and normative nature of many of the judgments required under competition laws. It also provides an opportunity for a more fruitful and constructive interaction between economists and the judiciary in the application of such laws.     

高职院校计算机基础教育教学方法探讨

计算机技术的迅速发展、计算机应用的日益普及和大学计算机基础教育的提高,使得高校计算机基础教育的教学目标、教学观念、教学模式都有待探讨,本文将结合教学经验,对高职院校的计算机基础教学方法提出探讨。