ABSTRACT The increasing competition among banks in Ghana is largely explained by the liberalisation and implementation of the various financial sector reforms recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. In today’s competitive world, one of the challenges facing many managers in the banking sector is how to increase business market shares and profits concurrently. Although the correlation between market shares and profitability has been sustained over the years, ...
ABSTRACT The Ghana Health Service adopted a number of policies and strategies which were aimed at improving antenatal care attendance in the country. In addition, there were relative improvement in facilities and professionals at these facilities. Inspite of these improvements, the national antenatal care coverage continued to be irregular, though some regions made some remarkable improvements. Antenatal care was thought to have an impact on the reduction of maternal and perinatal mortality, ...
ABSTRACT This study determines whether or not the effect of physical exercise on blood pressure is only direct as most studies posit or is also mediated by some socioeconomic factors, including the wealth status of the household. The study used data on 13,784 individuals from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) and employed two models, namely the multinomial logit and the multiple regression models. The multinomial model was used to determine, while controlling for other varia...
Abstract Focusing on the #NoToSocialMediaBill Twitter protest against the introduction of The Frivolous Petitions (Prohibition, etc.) Bill 2015, in Nigeria, this chapter examined the composition of the loudest voices that framed the protest, explored the level of engagement of those voices with the content of the bill, and analysed the nature and outcome of the protesters' reactions to the bill. To achieve these objectives, the study adopted a mixed method sequential design consisting of qua...
ABSTRACT The study sought to empirically investigate the effects of microfinance on small scale businesses in Ghana using Keta municipality as a case study. An ordinary least squares method was used, based on primary data of 200 small scale business entrepreneurs, 100 of whom have taken loans and 100 without loans. A Cobb-Douglas production function was first estimated to find the effect of microfinance loans on productivity. Afterward, a profit function was used to estimate the effects of mi...
ABSTRACT This thesis addresses three themes: (1) assess household poverty in Ghana and Kenya; (2) compare poverty methods and examine the poverty-reducing role of social protection in Ghana; and (3) examine rural-urban catch-up in child poverty in Ghana. The last five rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys of Ghana and Kenya and the sixth round of Ghana Living Standards Survey were used. The First Order Dominance, Multidimensional Poverty Index, Multiple Overlapping Deprivation and Fost...
ABSTRACT This study sought to determine and compare the technical efficiency in pineapple production among exporters and non-exporters using primary data collected from four districts of Central Region of Ghana. Results from the Cobb-Douglass stochastic frontier model and a farm-specific efficiency model showed that for the exporters land and labor had a positive influence on technical efficiency while chemicals and fertilizers, planting materials and annual capital charge had a negative effe...
ABSTRACT The study examines the burdens and outcomes that elections impose on Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Conspicuously missing in the literature is the extent to which the level of development and literacy moderate the effect of election on government expenditure; and complexity of ballot paper and marginality on the proportion of invalid vote in SSA. Using macrodata from the World Bank and other sources, the study employed the System Generalised Method of Moment (GMM), Fixed Effect...
This research investigates empirically the relationship between government deficit and inflation in Nigeria. The study aimes at determining the nature of causality between deficit and inflation; the dynamics of inflation; and the role of deficit in the process of inflation, among others. Both descriptive and analytical techniques have been used to carry out the study. Specifically, ratios, charts, growth rates and a macro econometric model have been used to analyse relevant statistics....
Abstract The study explored the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and several covariates including external debt, GDP per capita income, and gross fixed capital formation, for Ghana from 1980 to 2013. It was conducted following Ghana’s bail out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stabilise the Ghanaian currency (the Cedi) as debt levels soared and the Cedi depreciated precipitously against the Dollar. The primary research question that precipitated the study was: ...
Abstract After metamorphosing into a lower middle income country, Ghana needs to transform and diversify its economy if it is to consolidate its lower middle income status, reach upper middle income status and drag more of its people out of poverty. Pertinent questions that remain unanswered include: what are the principal self-imposed problems Ghana needs to resolve; what are the institutional changes Ghana needs to make to transform and diversify its economy and what lessons can Ghana glean...
ABSTRACT The incidence of cross-country per capita income convergence has been debated for long by economists; all in the attempt to either validate or reject the per capita income convergence hypothesis as predicted by the Human capital - augmented Solow model (HC-ASM). However, researchers seem to have given little attention to the Economic Community of West African State (ECOWAS) region in this ongoing discourse despite the wide per capita income disparity gap in the region. Using panel da...
ABSTRACT Nations continue to explore ways and means of increasing and optimising their export flows with other nations across the world. Eliminating supply-side constraints in the export industry is a way to maintain and promote international demand for a country’s exports. To achieve this goal, it is important for every country to be fully aware of its export potential and gaps as well as the inefficiencies that confront their exports. In this regard, the study employed the stochastic fron...
ABSTRACT The role of macroeconomics on firm performance has attracted attention of economists for decades due to the complexity in formulating corporate policies in achieving success among many organizations. This study aims to examine the relationship between macroeconomics and performance of firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). Following literature, ROE and ROA were selected as proxy for firm performance and suggested independent variables included were growth in the sales of the...
ABSTRACT Getting monetary policy right is crucial to the health of any economy (Mishkin, 2004). While the current policy regime is expected to have better control at inflation, certain issues have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the policy regime. As a result, monetary aggregate targeting has surfaced and a commitment has been made to incorporating this in the current policy framework. This has raised the importance of the demand for money function for Ghana again. The study estimates a lo...