How consumer confidence in food safety practices along the food supply chain determines food handling practices: Evidence from Ghana

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

The relationship between consumer confidence in food safety measures for vegetables sold in open markets and their use of safe food handling practices in the domestic environment was investigated for a set of 332 randomly sampled vegetable consumers within the suburbs of Accra, Ghana.

Experiments, Policy Design

Unveiling the energy saving role of banking performance in Sub-Sahara Africa

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

This article examines the effect of commercial bank performance on an indicator of energy efficiency (i.e. energy intensity) while controlling for the mediating effect of political institution. To achieve this goal, the study develops a theoretical model based on the neoclassical theory of the firm that links energy efficiency to bank sector development, and a unique bank-based data by Andrianova et al. (2015) for 43 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1998 to 2012.

Energy

Does mobile phone technology reduce agricultural price distortions? Evidence from cocoa and coffee industries

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

Agricultural price distortion which is the discrepancy between world market price of agricultural produce and price received by farmers as a result of market interventions by governments, either through subsidies or taxes or even trade protection systems, has received rare attention in the cocoa and coffee sub-sectors. This study examines the contribution of mobile phone technology in reducing price distortions in cocoa and coffee production.

Agriculture

Estimating economic value of site quality for uncertain ecosystem service provision in Swedish forests

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

As in other ecosystems, provision of ecosystem services from forests is uncertain because of stochastic weather conditions. In general, society is risk-averse, which means that factors increasing or decreasing the uncertainty in ecosystem services add a source of cost or value to society, measurement of which is lacking in the literature. This article suggests a method for calculating the impact of site-specific ecological conditions in Swedish forests on the economic value of uncertain ecosystem services in terms of timber and carbon sequestration.

Forestry

Deriving a Benefit Transfer Function for Threatened and Endangered Species in Interaction with Their Level of Charisma

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

Biodiversity and species conservation are among the most urgent global issues. Both are under serious threat because of human intrusion and as a result, it is likely that present and future projects will affect threatened and endangered species. Thus, it is important to account for these impacts when evaluating and conducting cost and benefit analyses of projects.

Biodiversity

Natural Resource Revenues and Public Investment in Resource-rich Economies in Sub-Saharan Africa

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

The general policy prescription for resource‐rich countries is that, for sustainable consumption, a greater percentage of the windfall from resource rents should be channeled into accumulating foreign assets such as a sovereign public fund as done in Norway and other developed but resource‐rich countries. This might not be a correct policy prescription for resource‐rich sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries, where public capital is very low to support the needed economic growth. In such countries, rents from resources serve as an opportunity to scale‐up the needed public capital.

Policy Design

Quality of institution and the FEG (forest, energy intensity, and globalization) -environment relationships in sub-Saharan Africa

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

The current share of sub-Saharan Africa in global carbon dioxide emissions is negligible compared to major contributors like Asia, Americas, and Europe. This trend is, however, likely to change given that both economic growth and rate of urbanization in the region are projected to be robust in the future. The current study contributes to the literature by examining both the direct and the indirect impacts of quality of institution on the environment.

Energy, Forestry

Climate variability and infectious diseases nexus: Evidence from Sweden

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

Many studies on the link between climate variability and infectious diseases are based on biophysical experiments, do not account for socio-economic factors and with little focus on developed countries. This study examines the effect of climate variability and socio-economic variables on infectious diseases using data from all 21 Swedish counties. Employing static and dynamic modelling frameworks, we observe that temperature has a linear negative effect on the number of patients.

Climate Change, Health

What drives the energy saving role of FDI and industrialization in East Africa?

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

Analysis of the unconditional impacts of foreign direct inflows (FDIs) and industrialization on energy intensity does not show the hidden roles of some economic conditions such as income and trade openness. In this study, we focused on the conditional impacts of FDIs and industrialization on energy productivity using a panel data consisting of thirteen (13) East African countries covering 1980–2011. The baseline result shows that higher income and a well-integrated economy are pro-energy productive, but FDIs and intense industrialization are anti-energy productive in the sub-region.

Energy