Many countries are currently increasing the advanced funding of their public pension systems to improve their sustainability in the face of rapidly aging populations. When pensions are funded, the issue of asset allocation becomes of paramount importance. Standard portfolio selection theory...

Many developing countries undertaking a fiscal adjustment have followed the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) recommendation to create a large taxpayer unit (LTU) to ensure stable or enhanced revenue flows, but the problem is that researchers have not conducted a systematic evaluation (other...

This paper examines that the impact of firm-specific characteristic on firm capital structure in Chinese-listed companies and attempts to solve a few puzzles existing in previous related studies. The key factors include state ownership, institutional ownership, and the risk of default. From the...

Low efficiency is a problem in most developing agriculture, and is one of the reasons for food insecurity. This paper provides information on smallholder production efficiency in one of the developing Sub-Saharan Countries: Kenya. It applies Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to farm-level seasonal...

The supply of human capital in the economy's production activities is a function of the quality and volume of education services provided at the secondary and tertiary levels in the education system. Hence, the allocation of resources by government to education is an important determinant of...

We investigate the determinants of rosca participation in Bolivia by using a sample of 5,746 households. Evidence shows that in Bolivia rosca is a consumption driven phenomenon. The probability of participating in roscas increases parallel to households' income. Middle-income families with more...

The fiscal performance of many sub-Saharan African countries has been quite dismal over the past, with a number of them accumulating huge deficits. This paper examines fiscal sustainability in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). It departs from the standard model of fiscal sustainability and...

This study examines the regional divide for Mexican manufacturing. Mexico's north-south disparity is widely noted, but rarely analyzed empirically and at detailed regional level. We use a panel of municipality-level data to estimate regional production functions. An important contribution is the...

This paper estimates a quadratic stochastic frontier production function to examine the determinants of technical efficiency in rice farming in Bangladesh using the computer program FRONTIER 4.1. Primary data has been collected using multi-stage random sampling technique from twelve villages in...

A theory of strongly endogenous interactive relationship in participatory development is expounded through the use of a class of models of complementarities between selected variables representing their underlying agencies. Such a model is referred to as circular causation approach and resembles...