Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Africa
‘A valuable corrective to the fraying narrative of [African] failure.’ Foreign Affairs Not so long ago, Africa was being described as the hopeless continent. Recently, though, talk has turned to Africa rising, with enthusiastic voices exclaiming the potential for economic growth across many of its countries. What, then, is the truth behind Africa’s growth, or lack of it? In this provocative book, Morten Jerven fundamentally reframes the debate, challenging mainstream accounts of African economic history. Whilst for the past two decades experts have focused on explaining why there has been a ‘chronic failure of growth’ in Africa, Jerven shows that most African economies have been growing at a rapid pace since the mid nineties. In addition, African economies grew rapidly in the fifties, the sixties, and even into the seventies. Thus, African states were dismissed as incapable of development based largely on observations made during the 1980s and early 1990s. The result has been misguided analysis, and few practical lessons learned. This is an essential account of the real impact economic growth has had on Africa, and what it means for the continent’s future.
Income aspirations, migration, and investments on and off the farm: Evidence from rural Tajikistan
In places with few casual or salaried employment opportunities, investments in farm or non-farm assets may offer the main pathway to increased incomes locally, whereas others may seek alternative investment options elsewhere—as migrants. What factors, then, explain these investment choices? One theory suggests that aspirations that are ahead, but not too far ahead, of current levels provide the best incentive for promoting investment. If this theory holds, then estimates of the relationship between the aspirations gap and investment choices should take the form of a non-monotonic inverted U-shape. We test for such a relationship between the income aspirations gap and investments in migrati...
A network-driven data collection approach for agri-food value chains.
A key challenge in systematically collecting data on intermediary agri-food value chain actors is that value chains take the form of a network, with actors linked by a series of transactions. Moreover, we have limited ex ante knowledge about the structure or scale of these networks, which complicates the construction of valid sampling frames and limits traditional random sampling approaches to collect data. To address these challenges, we adapt the respondent-driven sampling approach to collect data on intermediary agri-food value chain actors within their transaction-linked network and implement this approach in the arabica coffee and soybean value chains in Uganda and the rice and potato v...
The unmet financial needs of intermediary firms within agri-food value chains in Uganda and Bangladesh
Intermediary firms within agri-food value chains operating between the farmgate and retailers typically account for at least as much, if not more, value added as the primary agricultural production sector of the economy, but little is known about how these small and largely informal firms conduct their business. Drawing on a set of innovative surveys implemented amid the arabica coffee and soybean value chains in Uganda and the rice and potato value chains in Bangladesh, we describe the financial activities of the firms that transform agricultural produce into food. We document four sets of results. First, across all intermediary actors in our data the overwhelming majority of transactions a...
Private sector promotion of climate-smart technologies: Experimental evidence from Nigeria
Sustainable intensification is predicated on climate-smart agricultural input adoption. We test strategies for promoting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural inputs in Nigeria with a private sector firm. We disentangle the effects of price discount promotions (25 percent discounts) relative to the firm’s standard “business as usual” marketing package. We find that the standard marketing package increases the adoption of climate-smart urea super granule (USG) fertilizer by 24 percentage points while reducing prilled urea utilization by 17 percentage points. Discounts increase adoption of USG by an additional eight percentage points, but are not profitable for the input supply firm as a scalable marketing strategy. Although treatment reduces nitrogen runoff damages valued between USD 43 and 113 per hectare, it did not lead to increased rice yields for farmers.
The Transmedia Construction of the Black Panther
This book explores the Black Panther character’s multimedia legacy against the backdrop of contemporary sociopolitical reality. The author critically analyzes the character’s role as a counter-narrative to regressive attitudes toward Africa and Black identity, as well as how he represents consolidated media reality.
Smallholder farmers’ participation in profitable value chains and contract farming: Evidence from irrigated agriculture in Egypt
The participation of smallholder farmers in high-value and profitable value chains as well as contract farming remains low in Africa. This paper aims to identify observable and unobservable constraints that explain joint participation in profitable value chains and contract farming. We use a multivariate probit model to estimate potential complementarities between the cultivation of these various value chains (vegetables, fruits, spices, herbs, and cereals), and participation in contract farming. We identify several important observable factors that reinforce and hence limit smallholders’ participation in both low and high value chains as well as contract farming. For example, we find sugg...
Research Ethics in Applied Economics
Emphasizing the new challenges posed by the data science revolution, digital media, and changing norms, Research Ethics in Applied Economics examines the ethical issues faced by quantitative social scientists at each stage of the research process. The first section of the book considers project development, including issues of project management, selection bias in asking research questions, and political incentives in the development and funding of research ideas. The second section addresses data collection and analysis, discussing concerns about participant rights, data falsification, data management, specification search, p-hacking, and replicability. The final section focuses on sharing results with academic audiences and beyond, with an emphasis on self-plagiarism, social media, and the importance of achieving policy impact. The discussion and related recommendations highlight emergent issues in research ethics. Featuring perspectives from experienced researchers on how they address ethical issues, this book provides practical guidance to both students and experienced practitioners seeking to navigate ethical issues in their applied economics research.
Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS 2012, held in Innsbruck, Austria, in September/October 2012. The 50 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 181 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: metamodels and domain specific modeling; models at runtime; model management; modeling methods and tools, consistency analysis, software product lines; foundations of modeling; static analysis techniques; model testing and simulation; model transformation; model matching, tracing and synchronization; modeling practices and experience; and model analysis.
The Effect
The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality is about research design, specifically concerning research that uses observational data to make a causal inference. It is separated into two halves, each with different approaches to that subject. The first half goes through the concepts of causality, with very little in the way of estimation. It introduces the concept of identification thoroughly and clearly and discusses it as a process of trying to isolate variation that has a causal interpretation. Subjects include heavy emphasis on data-generating processes and causal diagrams. Concepts are demonstrated with a heavy emphasis on graphical intuition and the question of what we do to data. When we “add a control variable” what does that actually do? Key Features: • Extensive code examples in R, Stata, and Python • Chapters on overlooked topics in econometrics classes: heterogeneous treatment effects, simulation and power analysis, new cutting-edge methods, and uncomfortable ignored assumptions • An easy-to-read conversational tone • Up-to-date coverage of methods with fast-moving literatures like difference-in-differences
