In recent years, the literature on group lending has increased considerably, inspired by the successful microfinance experiences in Bangladesh, Bolivia, and other developing countries. A great deal of this literature has emphasized the ability of group lending mechanisms to reduce borrower...

Background: Previous methods of empirical mapping involve using regressions on patient or general population self-report data from datasets involving two or more instruments. This approach relies on overlap in the descriptive systems of the measures, but key dimensions may not be present in both...

Biology and Anthropology/Sociology have dealt with issues of diversity for a long time,developing different concepts, theories and methods. In recent years there has been, if not a convergence, but at least a recognition that problems in nature and in society are interrelated. This paper...

For the purchase of durable goods such as cars sometimes buyers use credit, sacrificing thereby future income to pay for the present value. Analyzing the link between credit and automobile sales is useful for establishing long and medium term marketing strategy. This paper proposes such an...

This paper focuses on the evolution of child labour, fertility and human capital in an economy with two production sectors and two types of workers endowed with two different levels of human capital. Adults allocate their time endowment between work and child rearing and choose the time...

Mechanism design, a reverse problem of game theory, is an important branch of economics. Nash implementation is the cornerstone of the theory of mechanism design. The well-known Maskin's theorem describes the sufficient conditions for Nash implementation when the number of agents are at least...

Background: The equipments for taking body weights (scales) are more frequent in Cameroon health centres than measuring boards for heights. Even when the later exist there are some difficulties inherent in their qualities; thus the height measurement is not always available or accurate....

In the first decade of the new century, social transfer programmes emerged as a new paradigm in the fight against poverty in the global South. These programmes currently reach more than 860 million people worldwide. This paper focuses on three policy questions: first, do programme objectives...

Background: When estimating health state utility values (HSUV) for multiple health conditions, the alternative models used to combine these data can produce very different values. Results generated using a baseline of perfect health are not comparable with those generated using a baseline...

Objective: Recent years have seen increasing interest in the use of ordinal methods to elicit health state utility values as an alternative to conventional methods such as standard gamble and time trade-off. However, in order to use these health state values in cost effectiveness analysis using...