Studies on the efficiency of rice production focused on the technical and allocative; thus, the literature on economic efficiency in Kano is absent. The objective of this study is to identify the economic efficiency of fertilizer, hybrids, and farmland on rice farming. Using the multistage and purposive sampling, questionnaires distributed to a random sample of 768 rice farmers. The result of the socioeconomic characteristics shows that 55.3% of the respondents are within the active population (30 to 49) years, 55.3% have a low level of education, 78.7% spent at least six years in rice farming, 61.9%, 76.7%, and 47.7% have access to nitrogen fertilizer, improved rice, and at least one extension visits respectively. Further, the stochastic frontier result shows that an average rice farmer could economically save inputs worth of 29.54% to meet the most efficient counterpart in the study area. The worst rice farmer could economically save the cost of inputs by 86.18% to meet the best counterpart. The study suggests that overhauling the educational system, guidelines for agricultural inputs usage should have a translated version into the three major Nigerian’s languages (Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba). Collaboration between public and private to provide more extensions, construct rural link roads.
Unemployment is considered one of the most challenging economic problems in Kosovo. In fact, the very high unemployment rate is also the primary economic problem of the country. The purpose of this study is to analyze the correlation and the impact of macroeconomic aggregates in Kosovo's unemployment. Specifically, this study utilized macroeconomic aggregates as follows: Gross Domestic Product, Foreign Direct Investment, Exports, and Inflation. To prove this relationship, based on the theoretical literature, the econometrical model was constructed with multiple regressions analysis based on the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method, utilizing secondary data from World Bank Indicators for the time period of 2001 till 2018 The paper concludes that in Kosovo, for the time period under consideration (2001–2018), the link between unemployment and economic growth is significant and the results show that 1% growth of Gross Domestic Product will lower the unemployment rate by 1.7%. Also, the results of the regression model show that the relationship between Export and Unemployment rate is significant, namely the increase in Export by 1% will reduce the Unemployment rate to (1,154) while the relation between Foreign Direct Investment and Unemployment rate results negative as growth for 1% of Foreign Direct Investment will increase the Unemployment rate to 1.25. Meanwhile, the results between unemployment and inflation showed an unsatisfactory and insignificant relationship between them.
This study examines the maturity and repayment structure of sovereign debts in the Nigerian economy between 1981 and 2017 using the Ordinary Least Squares technique since debt has been the largest source of capital flows to the country for about five decades. Hence, the study employs economic development proxied with the per capita income, employment, and mortality rate, as dependent variables, while sovereign debt proxied with external debt stock, external debt service payment, domestic debt, sovereign debt repayment plans, and the exchange rate as independent variables. Empirical findings show that sovereign debt positively but insignificantly impacts economic development, external debt service payment has a negative but insignificant effect on economic development, domestic borrowing positively and significantly impacts the economic development, and sovereign debt repayment plans negatively and significantly impacts economic development in Nigeria. The study, therefore, concluded that sovereign debt enhanced the performance of the Nigerian economy while the repayment plans retarded economic development in Nigeria over the study period. It is recommended that sovereign debt repayment plans should be well spelt-out to reduce the burden on the economy.
Government capital spending on healthcare and infant-maternal mortality are important indices to measure development. This study seeks to examine the relationship between capital health expenditure and infant-maternal mortality ratio (IMMR) by adopting the Grossman (1972) theoretical framework. It relied on the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique using WDI data from 1980 to 2017. The impact of capital health expenditure (CHE) on IMMR is mixed in the short and long run. Also, the error correction model shows that it will take 23 years to reduce IMMR to its minimum. Thus, the study recommends that public-private-partnership targeted at increasing capital health spending would reduce the IMMR in tandem with the sustainable development goals.
Monetary policy could be seen as a policy motivation for the attainment of economic development, through its production facilitating mechanism. One of the crucial indices of economic development is life expectancy which is a direct outcome of the standard of living. The relatively low life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa continued to receive attention in economic literature owing to its devastating effect on the affected economies. In this paper, the effect of monetary policy on life expectancy, in the region, is examined. The study covers 37 countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 2004 and 2017. The paper uses panel co-integration and System GMM model in its estimation. The result establishes that, although an expansionary monetary policy is relevant in controlling life expectancy, its level of impact is not strong; monetary policy is less effective. Fiscal policy, environmental quality (CO2) and standard of living, on the other hand, are found to be more effective in the determination of the life expectancy with environmental quality appearing as a dominant factor. The study, therefore, recommends, among others, that monetary policy should be made relevant to economic transactions on goods and services that bother on health outcomes. It was also established in this study that the policy has enhanced the resource ability and competitiveness of the sector.
