ABSTRACT Economic Community of West African States‘ (ECOWAS) total trade has reflected deficit in the last two decades. It was $1.42 billion in 1990, increased to $3.32 billion in 2000 and $6.24 billion in 2009. This trade imbalance in the ECOWAS region can be traced to the dominance of primary over manufactured products in the region‘s exports. However, the imbalance can be reversed with trade in similar products that is Intra-Industry Trade (IIT) between the region and her highest trad...
ABSTRACT Urban population growth exerts pressure on energy demand resulting in inefficient supply. This consequently leads to increase in prices of energy sources. The literature on the determinants of urban household energy use in Nigeria has focused little attention on substitution possibilities as well as welfare implications of price increases. This study investigated the determinants of urban household energy demand, substitution possibilities and welfare implications of price increases...
ABSTRACT One of the important primary macroeconomic convergence criteria of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) is the attainment of single-digit inflation. Available data show that but for The Gambia, none of the member states has achieved this objective on sustained basis. This raises concerns about the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission mechanism in controlling inflation in the Zone. This thesis addressed three policy relevant issues: (1) investigated the effectiveness of mon...
The importance of credit demand cannot be overemphasised given its potential positive influence on individuals’ livelihood and economic growth of countries. In spite of the financial sector liberalisation in Ghana, some individuals still face financial constraints which make it difficult to cover up their spending gap. This paper investigates whether individuals’ socio-demographic and economic characteristics are important in loan demand. A simple random sampling technique was used to sel...
ABSTRACT International reserves of West African countries rose sharply by 84.3% between 1991 and 2001 and 287.1% between 2001 and 2011. However, due to high macroeconomic instability in the form of persistent asymmetric shocks, output variability and fiscal policy distortions, the reserves were inadequate and the countries in the sub-region are continually faced with the problem of balancing the costs and benefits from reserves holdings. Previous studies have paid little attention to the fac...
ABSTRACT The study examined the effect of public expenditure on unemployment in Ghana using annual data for the period 1980 to 2016 by employing Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to co-integration. The study revealed that there is an inverse relationship between government consumption expenditure and unemployment rate. However, government capital expenditure and unemployment rate were found to be positively related. The study therefore established that the threshold of governmen...
ABSTRACT This study focused on the relationship between methods of financing government eh.1Jenditures and economic growth in Ghana using a dynamic econometric framework. In the study, we developed a two equation system with economic growth and government expenditure as the endogenous variables and seven exogenous variables -domestic borrowing, borrowing from abroad, direct taxes, indirect taxes, private investment, exports and imports. Stationarity tests indicated all variables were integra...
ABSTRACT The study set out to examine in terms of severity, the constraints to production, distribution and consumption of locally processed poultry meat. A multi-stage sampling technique was used where simple random was used to select the farmers and snow-ball used to select the consumers and sellers. This summed up to 36 poultry farmers, 72 poultry meat sellers and 108 poultry meat consumers, making a total of 216 respondents for the study. Linear multiple regression model and Ordinary Leas...
ABSTRACT The increased spending of household on occasions has become both social and economic issue today and it is being discussed by many scholars. Financial deepening has made it easier and possible for household to have access to credit to spend on needs of household that on the other way wouldn’t have been possible. This study sought to estimate the effect of the amount of credit on social spending and also to estimate the effect of social spending on households’ health expenditure i...
ABSTRACT Economic Community of West African States‘ (ECOWAS) total trade has reflected deficit in the last two decades. It was $1.42 billion in 1990, increased to $3.32 billion in 2000 and $6.24 billion in 2009. This trade imbalance in the ECOWAS region can be traced to the dominance of primary over manufactured products in the region‘s exports. However, the imbalance can be reversed with trade in similar products that is Intra-Industry Trade (IIT) between the region and her highest trad...
ABSTRACT Rural households in developing countries have for a long time been perceived as farm households, and that they receive their income predominantly from agriculture. There is growing evidence however in the rural livelihoods literature to show that rural households in developing countries derive a significant proportion of their incomes from non-farm activities, and income from this source is growing. In addition, nonagricultural activities constitute the main occupation of an increas...
ABSTRACT In Ghana healthcare institutions are not anticipated to be efficient but due to the rising demands on hospital reimbursement levels, focus on efficient operations is becoming more vital. This study compared technical efficiency levels of private and public clinics and hospitals in Central Region. A sample of 34 private and public hospitals and clinics in the Central Region of Ghana was used for the study. The main estimation technique employed was the Data Envelopment Analysis, with ...
ABSTRACT The countless incidences of injury, death, frequent absenteeism and huge compensation costs that characterized most Ghanaian industry are worries to the country’s economic development. This draws from the fact that these negative implications of unhealthy and unsafe working environment continue to plague labour productivity in the country and have the tendency of retarding economic growth. At least 7 per cent of Ghana’s GDP is spent on solving problems related to the improper man...
ABSTRACT Cocoa swollen shoot virus disease has severely hampered the production of cocoa and the economy of Ghana since pre-colonial days. This study set out to find the impact of the cocoa swollen shoot disease on the living standards of cocoa farmers in Ghana. A structured questionnaire was used to seek information from cocoa farmers in Chorichori in the Sefwi Akontombra District of the Western Region of Ghana where the disease is currently epicenter. All households in the community were in...
Abstract The employment generation capacity of the formal sector comprising the public and organized private sectors in Nigeria is shrinking. The informal sector therefore offers a ray of hope for employment and earnings for urban unskilled and semi skilled labour. The promotion of informal sector activities by the government requires an insight into their mode of operation for better policy targeting. This paper therefore examines the operational characteristics, financing, training, employ...