No / The article examines the contribution of financial development to poverty reduction in developing countries. Building on earlier research which has established links between financial development and economic growth, and between economic growth and poverty reduction, the article tests for a causal process linking financial sector growth and poverty reduction. The empirical results indicate that, up to a threshold level of economic development, financial sector growth contributes to poverty reduction through the growth-enhancing effect. The impact of financial development on poverty reduction will be affected, however, by any change in income inequality resulting from financial development.

In recent years the development community has pressured LDCs to privatize agro- industries. This pressure stems from poor public enterprise performance and an ideological shift. However, public enterprises mitigate market failures. The major objective of this study is to measure the impact of privatizing the Nepalese yak cheese industry. To achieve the objective, public and private behavior are determined. The impacts of privatization stem from changes in monopsony behavior and institutional constraints that differ between the public and private sectors. The Dairy Development Corporation (DDC) of Nepal produces yak cheese. The DDC's mandate is to provide a "fair" price to consumers and producers. Private producers of cheese have emerged in recent years. Milk shed structures include: single DDC factories, single private factories, multiple private factories, and mixed production. Market performance is evaluated using partial equilibrium models that include the yak cheese and milk markets. Economic surplus measures are used for evaluation. Herder producer surplus is the most important criterion because herders are the poorest beneficiaries. The impact of privatization is determined through comparison of observed DDC and predicted private equilibria. Private equilibrium is predicted using a simultaneous equation system developed for this research. The equations ensure that supply and demand balance at the aggregate and individual milk shed levels. The Lerner index is incorporated to model monopsony behavior. Private monopsony parameters used in the system are estimated econometrically. A private equilibrium is also predicted with a modified firm cost structure reflecting reduced impacts of institutional constraints. Findings show that private and public firms are exercising monopsony power. DDC privatization can be advocated because it increases herder producer surplus by 15.4%. Total surplus falls slightly because private cheese is lower quality. DDC privatization decreases herder welfare in milk sheds that support only a single firm. The simultaneous equation system developed to predict the private market equilibrium for post agro-industry privatization has the potential to be extended to solve a broader range of economic problems. The equation system can be adapted to applications where there are multiple production regions and monopsony behavior varies by regional characteristics. / Ph. D.

This dissertation is comprised of three essays that generate methods to measure the ex-ante economic impacts of agriculture technology innovations. The first essay entitled 'Valuing Intellectual Property Rights in an Imperfectly Competitive Market: A Biopharming Application' presents a method for valuing the intellectual property rights (IPRs) for an innovation that lowers product production costs below those associated with the patented process of a monopolist. The application to Glucocerebrosidase enzyme from transgenic tobacco suggests an intellectual property rights (IPRs) value of about $1.75 billion. Despite the innovator's market power, significant surplus gains also accrue to consumers. Further, U.S. antitrust laws that prohibit IPRs acquisition by the current monopolist increase consumer welfare by almost 50 percent. The second essay entitled 'Ex-Ante Analysis of the Benefits of Transgenic Drought Tolerance Research on Cereal Crops in Low-Income Countries' develops a framework to examine the ex-ante benefits of transgenic research on drought in eight low-income countries, including the benefits to producers and consumers from farm income stabilization and the potential magnitude of private sector profits from IPRs. The framework employs country-specific agroecological-drought risk zones and considers both yield increases and yield variance reductions when estimating producer and consumer benefits from research. Benefits from yield variance reductions are shown to be an important component of aggregate drought research benefits, representing 40 percent of total benefits across the eight countries. Further, estimated annual private sector benefits of $US 178 million suggest that significant incentives exist for private sector participation in transgenic drought tolerance research. The third essay entitled 'Ex-Ante Evaluation of Alternative Strategies to Increase the Stability of Cropping Systems in Eastern and Central Africa' examines the ex-ante economic impact of transgenic drought resistance maize breeding and of conventional maize, millet and sorghum drought resistance breeding in Kenya, Uganda, and the Amhara region in Ethiopia. An expected utility framework is combined with a partial equilibrium model and a spatial drought risk zonation scheme to estimate benefits from mean yield increases and yield variance reductions at the market level as well as at the household level for maize, millet and sorghum producers in the administrative regions of each country. Results suggest that annual ex-ante benefits of $87 million, $6.8 million and $4.8 million can be generated from public sector conventional breeding research on maize, sorghum and millet, respectively. Private sector transgenic drought tolerance research may also generate substantial benefits of $97 million for maize producers and consumers, particularly through the reduction of yield variance arising from drought, and an additional $21 million as profits from intellectual property rights protection. / Ph. D.

Transportation is not merely a derived demand, but a determinant of new production possibilities. In developing economies, where the lack of mobility is self-evident, it is absolutely necessary to consider the catalytic impacts of transport services. Transportation not only directly affects the overall output in an economy through accessibility and costs, but also stimulates and influences the shift in the demographic sector in terms of population movements and unemployment rates. To successfully plan for the development of a region, one must understand the possible causal relationships, feedbacks and interactions between the different sectors of both the investment region and the possible spatially impacted region. In this study, the impacts of three investment strategies for the Essequibo Coast region, in Guyana, are evaluated through the use of a computer simulation and system dynamics methodology. The model consists of two regions -- the region in which investment is provided and the region that is spatially impacted due to this investment. The hypothesized interrelationships of the main sectors (demographic, economic and transport) and components of each region were first developed as causal submodels. Secondly, the submodels were synthesized to form a compre- hensive system dynamics computer model represented by approximately 280 equations to evaluate the three strategies: (1) Do Nothing; (2) Investments in Roads Only; and (3) Investment in Roads, Drainage and Irrigation. Sensitivity analyses were performed on the key socio-economic variables (Drainage, Irrigation, Fertilizer, Mechanization and Regional Migration) to determine which variables most significantly influence regional behavior. These tests showed that a tacit acceptance (i.e., not explicitly incorporating the above factors in a model) of the availability of these resources overstates the impacts due to transport investments -- i.e., roads equal development is also a misconception. The investment strategy in Roads, Drainage and Irrigation provided the greatest net benefits and most favorable socio-economic characteristics in terms of population level, regional income per capita, outmigration and unemployment. So, given its financial feasibility, it is reco1m1ended for implementation. Further, it is also suggested, because of the model's demonstrable flexibility, that it be used for post investment analyses and future model calibration. / Ph. D.

yes / Whilst some argue that volunteer tourism is nothing more than neo-colonialism, we propose that it can (under certain conditions) make a positive contribution to local communities in developing countries and can also contribute to a ¿globalising, humanising civil society¿. We also argue that an increase in volunteer tourism is likely to be an unstoppable trend as international travel and easy global communication make ¿Do-it-Yourself¿ development activities ever more possible. In this chapter, we consider further the conditions required for volunteers to have a positive rather than a negative or neutral impact.

The feasibility of Less Developed Countries (LDC) using the U.S. wheat futures market as an alternative strategy to reduce the cost of maintaining a more stable supply of food grains was investigated. India was used as a case study. A technical trading strategy for wheat futures, involving moving averages, was employed. Results from this technical approach were compared with more traditional approaches involving storage operations, periodic buying of grain needs, and a hedging strategy based on reports of world and India crop expectations. Both hedging strategies reduced the cost of securing wheat to offset production shortfalls. The technical hedging strategy was the superior approach. / Master of Science

The three principal objectives of this study were: (i) to identify the levels of agricultural project planning where an economic analysis, utilizing natural disaster risk information, could be introduced, (ii) to examine methods of incorporating natural disaster risk into economic analyses of agricultural projects, and (iii) to include this information in an economic analysis of an agricultural project, and to consider the potential effects of such information in planning. Several economic analysis methods were investigated, and four were selected to incorporate natural disaster information into the planning of a case study project in st. Lucia. The first two methods selected were cut-off period and discount rate adjustment. Sensitivity analysis was also utilized to investigate the parameters of two key economic decision making variables, net present value and benefit-cost ratio. Finally, a stochastic simulation program was utilized to conduct mean-variance analyses on the project with and without a disaster mitigation measure, for comparison. Results from cut-off period, discount rate adjustment and sensitivity analyses suggest that disaster information can be readily incorporated into agricultural project planning. This information greatly increases the amount of information available to project planners. Results from the mean-variance analysis suggested that disaster mitigation options could increase the benefits from a project. In turn, these more stable benefits could improve the development in developing nations. / M.S.

This developmental research used components of Rogers\' diffusion of innovations (1962) theory to develop a technology planning framework for school districts in developing countries. The Framework may be used by officials from developing countries in different levels of government to develop a technology plan for their districts and states. The study utilized two types of expert reviewers to evaluate the proposed Framework. The first type was the Diffusion of Innovations theory expert reviewers who were selected to determine if the Framework conforms to the principles of the theory. The second expert reviewers were individuals in different parts of Africa who were selected to establish if the Framework is feasible and practical to the conditions of developing countries. The overall feedback from expert reviewers was positive and suggestions and comments were used to modify the Framework in order to improve it to be an effective technology planning tool. The final product of this study is a step-by-step procedural guide consisting of activities and suggestions that can be used to develop a school district technology plan in a developing country. / Ph. D.

As the proliferation of AI technologies has increased, so has the widespread fear of an obsolete workforce whose jobs have been automated. This paper investigates the impact of AI on the unemployment rate across 55 countries, including an in-depth analysis of the heterogeneous impacts on developed and developing countries. Our study includes 55 countries divided into 28 developed and 27 developing from 2010-2020. We conduct a panel data analysis using two-way fixed effect models to assess the relationship between the two variables and their significance. The main results show that AI has a positive significant relationship with the unemployment rate, which validates the doomsayer's view of negative disruptions to the labour market. Further analysis shows that the countries that will suffer the brunt of AI proliferation are the developed countries whose analysis, unlike the developing countries, showed a positive significant relationship between AI and the unemployment rate. After multiple robustness checks, we find that the results still hold to an extent and that the effects of AI will mainly be felt in the developed world. The paper calls for policymakers to distribute the gains from AI equitably and create a framework for possible digital capital taxation to protect workers from the fallout of the impact of AI.

Previous studies have paid little attention to analyzing the impact of agglomeration externalities on a firm’s survival, especially for developing countries. This study applies various survival analysis methods to examine the relationship of three main types of agglomeration externalities: specialization, diversification (related variety and unrelated variety), and urbanization on the survival of firms in Vietnam, with respect to different types of firms ownership: state-owned firms, foreign-owned firms, and domestic private firms. This study confirms the positive role of specialization in reducing the exit probability for firms, especially for foreign-owned firms. The survival probability of foreign-owned firms and domestic private firms is insensitive to any type of diversification, and only related variety increases the survival chance for state-owned firms. In contrast, urbanization has a small negative impact on domestic private firms.