This thesis explores how decision-making agency roles played by doctors, pharmacists and government affect the social efficiency of choices in the prescription drug market. The primary objective is to contribute to the quality of expenditure decompositions in this sector and, thereby, to draw attention to the real cost of drug consumption in Canada. Expenditure growth in the pharmaceutical sector may occur because Canadians are purchasing more drugs or more in terms of the health outcomes sought through drug consumption. Prices may also be rising for the drugs that patients consume. Furthermore, with new generations of prescription drugs replacing older and often equally effective ones, expenditure inflation may be due, at least in part, to growing inefficiencies in consumption. Deflating nominal expenditures with traditional economic price indexes is a commonly used approach to decomposing expenditure changes into changes in price, changes in productivity or both. This method may be biased because decision-making agency relationships and non-standard financial incentives give rise to possible inefficiencies in the pharmaceutical sector that would not commonly be found in other sectors. This proposition is explored theoretically and empirically. Potential biases stemming from financial incentives are explored in the context of the measurement problem posed by the entry of generic drugs. Traditional techniques of the economic approach to measurement do not capture the full effect of generic competition because decision-making agents do not always have incentive to consider the full price of drugs consumed. Potential information-related problems in pharmaceutical price and productivity measurement are explored within the context of the hypertension market. Health outcomes based indexes are constructed for this treatment category based on recognized national guidelines for the treatment of hypertension. Economic indexes of price and productivity appear to overstate social productivity in this segment because persistent non-compliance with national guidelines has resulted in higher costs without corresponding health improvements.

The main objective of this work is to analyze the prices of pork in selected EU countries in the period 2003-2013. This work consists of several parts. In the first part dealt with theoretical issues - agriculture sector, and therefore the Czech agriculture, the issue of the pricing in agriculture. The last part of the theoretical part contains a comparison of costs and revenues on a pig.The second part is called the methodology, this section contains instructions for calculations that are performed in solutions and results. The third part contains the results of calculations, because the prices of agricultural producers were used per 100 kg live weight and average annual wages. At the end of the work are collected all the results obtained in this work results.

This thesis explores how decision-making agency roles played by doctors, pharmacists and government affect the social efficiency of choices in the prescription drug market. The primary objective is to contribute to the quality of expenditure decompositions in this sector and, thereby, to draw attention to the real cost of drug consumption in Canada. Expenditure growth in the pharmaceutical sector may occur because Canadians are purchasing more drugs or more in terms of the health outcomes sought through drug consumption. Prices may also be rising for the drugs that patients consume. Furthermore, with new generations of prescription drugs replacing older and often equally effective ones, expenditure inflation may be due, at least in part, to growing inefficiencies in consumption. Deflating nominal expenditures with traditional economic price indexes is a commonly used approach to decomposing expenditure changes into changes in price, changes in productivity or both. This method may be biased because decision-making agency relationships and non-standard financial incentives give rise to possible inefficiencies in the pharmaceutical sector that would not commonly be found in other sectors. This proposition is explored theoretically and empirically. Potential biases stemming from financial incentives are explored in the context of the measurement problem posed by the entry of generic drugs. Traditional techniques of the economic approach to measurement do not capture the full effect of generic competition because decision-making agents do not always have incentive to consider the full price of drugs consumed. Potential information-related problems in pharmaceutical price and productivity measurement are explored within the context of the hypertension market. Health outcomes based indexes are constructed for this treatment category based on recognized national guidelines for the treatment of hypertension. Economic indexes of price and productivity appear to overstate social productivity in this segment because persistent non-compliance with national guidelines has resulted in higher costs without corresponding health improvements. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

Thesis (M.Sc. (Agricultural Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / Agricultural production measures the performance and efficiency of a country’s agricultural sector. The state of agricultural production can be assessed through the value of agricultural production, which is a product of agricultural gross production and output prices in monetary terms. The study examines the relationship between the value of agricultural production, government spending on agriculture, and other selected variables. Annual data for the value of agricultural production, government expenditure in agriculture, consumer price index, average annual rainfall, food import value, and population from 1983 to 2019 were collected from different sources and were used in the analysis for this study. The Johansen cointegration test was used to determine the existence of a long-run relationship between the value of agricultural production and selected variables by using both the trace and eigenvalue tests. The results indicated that there is a long run relationship among the variables. The study further used the Granger causality test to check the causality between the value of agricultural production and government expenditure in agriculture. The results show that there is no causal effect between the two variables. Lastly, the study used a Vector autoregressive (VAR) model to determine the relationship between the value of agricultural production and selected variables. The results of the VAR model indicated that government expenditure on agriculture, average annual rainfall, food import value, and population positively affect the value of agricultural production. The study also found that the consumer price index negatively affects the value of agricultural production. The study recommends that the government increase its spending on the agricultural sector, which could be in the form of research investment in technologies such as climate-smart agricultural technologies. Additionally, the study recommends that policymakers should review the monetary policy of South Africa to ensure price stability and prevent inflation. Lastly, the study recommends that the South African government should discourage imports and encourage South African agricultural producers to produce more major imported food products.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Statistics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / Using the ARFIMA (autoregressive and fractionally integrated moving aver age) model extended with sGARCH (standard generalised autoregressive con ditional heteroscedasticity) and ’gjrGARCH (Glosten-Jagannathan-Runkle gen eralised autoregressive conditional heteroscedascity) innovations, fractional in tegration approach and state space model, this study has empirically examined persistency of inflation dynamics of Ghana and South Africa, the only two coun tries in Sub-Saharan Africa with Inflation Targeting (IT) monetary policy. The first part of the analysis employed monthly CPI (Consumer Price Index) in flation series for the period January 1971 to October 2014 obtained from the Bank of Ghana (BoG), and for the period January 1995 to December 2014 ob tained from Statistics South Africa. The second part involves the estimation of threshold effect of inflation on economic growth using annual data obtained from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) database for the period 1981 to 2014, for both countries. Results from the study showed that structural breaks, long memory and non linearities (or regime shifts) are largely responsible for inflation persistence, hence the ever-changing nature of inflation rates of Ghana and South Africa. ARFIMA(3,0.35,1)-‘gjrGARCH(1,1) under Generalised Error Distribution (GED) and ARFIMA(3,0.50,1)-‘gjrGARCH(1,1) under Student-t Distribution (STD) mod els provided the best fit for persistence in the conditional mean (or level) of CPI for Ghana and South Africa, respectively. The results from these models pro vided evidence of time-varying conditional mean and volatility in CPI inflation rates of both countries. The two models also revealed an asymmetric effect of inflationary shocks, where negative shocks appear to have greater impact than positive shocks, in terms of persistence on the conditional mean with time varying volatility. This thesis proposes a model that combines fractional integration with non linear deterministic terms based on the Chebyshev polynomials in time for the analysis of CPI inflation rates of Ghana and South Africa. We tested for non-linear deterministic terms in the context of fractional integration and esti mated the fractional differencing parameters, d to be 1.11 and 1.32 respectively, for the Ghanaian and the South African inflation rates, but the non-linear trends were found to be statistically insignificant in the two series. New ev idence from this thesis depicts that inflation rate of Ghana is highly persistent and non-mean reverting, with an estimated fractional differencing parameter, d > 1.0, and will therefore require some policy action to steer inflation back to stability. However, the South African inflation series was found to be a cyclical process with an order of integration estimated to be d = 0.7, depicting mean reversion, with the length of the cycles approximated to last for 80 months. Finally, the thesis incorporated structural breaks, long memory, non-linearity, and some explanatory variables into a state space model and estimated the threshold effect of inflation on economic growth. The empirical results suggest that inflation below the estimated levels of 9% and 6% for Ghana and South Africa respectively, will be conducive for economic growth. The policy implications of these results for both countries are as follows. First, both series had similar properties responsible for inducing inflation persistence such as structural breaks, non-linearities, long memory and asymmetric re sponse to negatives shocks - but with varied degrees of magnitude. For both countries, the conditional mean and unobserved components such as volatility for both countries were found to be time-varying. This thesis, therefore, recom mends to the BoG and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) - responsible for monetary policies, and the Finance Ministers of both governments - respon sible for fiscal policies, to take the above-mentioned properties into account in the formulation of their monetary policies. Second, the thesis recommends that the BoG and the SARB consolidate the IT policy, since keeping inflation below the targets set of 9% and 6%, respectively for Ghana and South Africa, will boost economic growth. Third, policymakers could also design measures (monetary and fiscal policies) such as increase in interest rates, credit control, and reduction of unnecessary expenditure, among others, to control inflation due to its adverse effects on market volatility. Even though an increase in interest rates could assist in curtailing the recent and anticipated increase in inflation rates in both countries, where targets have been missed by Ghana and South Africa, it will also be prudent to legislate monetary policies around demand-supply side since the problem of both coun tries appears to be more of a structuralist than a monetarist. It is, therefore, recommended that both countries tighten the IT monetary policy in order to re duce inflation persistence. This will eventually impact on poverty and income distribution with ramifications for economic growth and/or development. The fourth implication of these results is that governments and central banks should be mindful of the actions and decisions they take, in the sense that unguarded decisions and unnecessary alarms could raise uncertainties in the economy, which could, in turn, affect the future trajectory of inflation. Finally, the thesis recommends that governments of both countries strengthen the pri vate sector, which is the engine of growth. For small and open economies such as Ghana and South Africa, this will grow the economy through job creation and restore investor confidence. / National Research Foundation (NRF), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Telkom’s Tertiary Education Support Programme (TESP) and the NRF-DST Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (CoE-MaSS)

Thesis (M.Sc. Agriculture (Agricultural Economics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / Beef and chicken meat play a very crucial role in providing food to South African consumers. However, the rise of food prices in South Africa is viewed to curtail progress and drives consumers into debt and forgone opportunity to access food. Hence, it is of importance to understand the consumer price index (CPI) of meat and the disaggregate components of beef and chicken meat producer price indexes (PPI) as they give a clear insight into how individual commodities contribute to the general and food price inflation. The study aimed to comparatively analyse the relationship between PPI beef and CPI meat as well as PPI chicken meat and CPI meat in South Africa from 1991 to 2018. The objectives of the study were to compare the indexes’ variability, correlation, and causality between the different PPI and CPI components. The objectives were analysed using the Coefficient of variation (CV), the Pearson coefficient correlation, the Granger causality test, and the Vector Error Correction model. The CV findings highlight that PPI beef had high variability (65%) compared to CPI meat (56.7%), whereas PPI chicken meat had low variability (49.2%) compared to CPI meat(56.7%). There was evidence of a positive correlation (0.99) between PPI beef and CPI meat as well as PPI chicken meat and CPI meat using Pearson coefficient correlation. In addition, a long-run relationship was found between PPI beef and CPI meat as well as between PPI chicken meat and CPI meat by using the VEC model. Granger causality results indicated that there was a unidirectional relationship from PPI chicken meat to CPI meat, and independent relationships were found from PPI beef to CPI meat, CPI meat to PPI beef as well as CPI meat to PPI chicken meat. Based on the findings, the study recommends that policymakers, through evaluation of monetary policies, should continue maintaining a specific inflation target range as that will assist in stabilising meat prices in the economy. At the same time, protect meat producers against input price inflation using instruments such as input subsidies, grants, and the provision of modern technologies. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

過去由於國內住宅市場的資訊並不流通，以致市場上出現的價格資訊相當混亂，就價格的種類來看，各種名目住宅價格間的差異未有明確釐清，使一般人常會對不同的住宅價格產生誤解。就時間序列來看，不同的時間、地區及住宅類型，到底住宅價格的變動如何，也未能有一嚴謹且量化之指標表示。 　　本研究運用標準住宅的概念編製住宅價格指數，所謂標準住宅乃是指一定時間、地區、類型，市場上成交的住宅中，典型的住宅屬性及其數量的組合，也就是說，觀察市場上成交典型住宅的價格變動情形，作為指數編製的基礎，以控制住宅的異質性，再以特徵價格法來求得各屬性的單價以進一步控制品質。另外，由於住宅成交數量變動較大，因此運用裴氏公式作為指數公式，使加權權重的誤差不致太大。 　　由各地區的指數變動趨勢可得到以下幾點結論：首先，一般所認為的三次房地產價格高峰期（62至63年、68至70年、76至78年），從指數的變動來看並不明顯，只有76至78年的上漲趨勢較明顯，在經過幣值平減後，長期趨勢更顯平緩；其次，長期來看，住宅價格持續上漲，部分時期持平或下跌，但幅度及持續時間有限，故所謂房價下跌，其實跌的是上漲率；最後，就上漲幅度來看，台北縣、市的幅度最大，除台北市外，非都市地區（非省轄市）房價的上漲速度較都市地區（省轄市）為高。 　　最後歸納二個造成一般人對住宅價格變動之錯誤印象的原因。主要是品質未加控制，由於品質會影響住宅價格，且消費的住宅品質及數量會隨時間而改變，一般人未察覺此點，而造成對房價上漲的誤解。其次是未考慮幣值，由於「今天的一塊錢不等於明天的一塊錢」，因此以名目價格觀察住宅價格變動的作法，也會造成對房價變動的誤解。