Search Results (8)

Foreign remittances have become a crucial component of the Nepalese economy. This study investigates the impact of remittances on household consumption patterns in rural Nepal using data from the World Bank’s Nepal Household Risk and Vulnerability (NHRV) Survey Panel, covering the period from 2016 to 2018. Employing an instrumental variable regression approach, we estimate the elasticity of remittances to various consumption categories. Our findings indicate that foreign remittances significantly affect total consumption expenditure. Disaggregated results reveal that remittances positively influence spending on food items and non-food categories such as education and healthcare, highlighting their role in enhancing nutrition and human capital development. However, remittances do not contribute to unproductive expenditures like tobacco, alcohol, or rituals. Therefore, other things remaining the same, remittance is enhancing welfare in rural Nepali households. Full article

This paper empirically investigates the short- and long-term impact of public expenditure on economic growth. We use annual data from 28 European Union (EU) countries for the 1995–2022 period and estimate a growth model augmented for public expenditure employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) panel data approach. Our results support the view that different categories of public expenditures have dissimilar long- and short-term effects on the economic performance of EU countries. Full article

Objectives: The goal of this study was to evaluate the application of the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire Survey (IPAQ-SF) in the rural Senegalese Fulani pastoralist population by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. Design and participants: For the quantitative method, 101 men completed the IPAQ-SF questionnaire measuring moderate, vigorous, and walking physical activity. Self-rated health, BMI, and sociodemographic variables were also collected. With regard to the qualitative methods, a total of 22 participants were recruited and interviewed. Four themes were addressed, including (i) physical activity (PA) and its definition, description, related experiences, and representations of social actors; (ii) PA and health; (iii) PA and sport; and (iv) the body and Fulani world of life (i.e., Pulaagu/Ndimaagu). Results: Sahelian herders have a high level of self-reported PA and a low amount of daily sitting time. The measure of PA as proposed by the IPAQ-SF is not adapted to the Senegalese Ferlo pastoralists, mainly because this scale gives too much importance to leisure-time PA, perceived as unproductive energy expenditure, which is factually and symbolically antinomic to the Fulani lifeworld. Thus, neither intense nor moderate PA is related to self-rated health. However, sedentary lifestyles are linked to self-rated health and, therefore, to mortality and morbidity in Fulani pastoralists. Finally, walking, which is the dominant PA during transhumance and herd surveillance, is related to BMI. It therefore represents a protective factor against the occurrence of overweight and associated chronic non-communicable diseases. Conclusion: The mixed method approach developed in this study has shown that the IPAQ-SF is not a valid measure of PA in the population of Fulani male herders from the Ferlo region, given that unproductive energy expenditure is incompatible with the Fulani way of life, which condemns excess and immoderation. Full article

Fiscal imbalances in China are widening; the problem of fiscal sustainability in each province is becoming increasingly serious. However, so far, few studies have focused on the issue of the fiscal sustainability of China’s provinces. This paper will focus on it to clarify the degree of fiscal sustainability in China’s provinces. In this paper, the GH test method is used to analyze the structural breaking of fiscal revenue and expenditure data of each province, the panel cointegration method is used to analyze the relationship between fiscal revenue and expenditure and DOLS is used to estimate the degree of fiscal sustainability of each province. It is found that the fiscal sustainability of most provinces in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, is strong, while that of some provinces, such as Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang, is weak. This paper states that people should pay more attention to the fiscal sustainability of China’s provinces, and provinces with weak fiscal sustainability should minimize unproductive expenditures while the central government should continue to give appropriate financial support to local governments. Full article

This study examines the effects of fiscal policy on private expenditure using a panel VAR for the sample of 60 developing countries from 1990 to 2020. The VAR panel model framework was used to focus on the disaggregated government expenditures which included the defense, economic and social expenditure. The main findings showed a positive shock effect of defense expenditure which led to crowding out effect on private expenditure and domestic income. Conversely, economic and social expenditure had the crowding in effect on private consumption and domestic income. To detail out the analysis, the composition of government spending was divided into two, namely productive expenditures and non-productive expenditures. Therefore, the findings indicate that defense expenditure is non-productive since it does not stimulate an increase in private spending and national income while economic expenditure and social expenditure are classified as productive expenditure with the ability to increase economic activity. The policy implication suggests that the government should carefully examine and identify the sectors or composition that have greater potential, capacity and relevance in stimulating sustainable economic growth. Full article

Several fiscal policy strategies have been implemented in South Africa since 1994, starting from the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), Broad-Black Economic Empowerment strategy (BEE), AsgiSA (Accelerated and shared growth initiative for South Africa), and the New Growth Path framework (NGP) with the aim of boosting economic growth. However, the rate of economic growth in the country over the years is not convincing. It is also important to note that poverty still remains prevalent and persistent, predominantly in the poverty-stricken areas of provinces such as Eastern Cape, Limpopo, North West, and Mpumalanga. In light of this, the main aim of the study was to examine the effect of fiscal policy instruments on economic growth in South Africa for the period from 1988 to 2018, utilising the autoregressive distributed lag model, mainly due to the order of integration of the variables. Empirical results revealed that there is a positive relationship between fiscal policy instruments (public sector expenditure, public consumption spending, and taxation) and economic growth. Based on the findings, the study recommends that the government should distinguish between productive and unproductive spending and increase spending on productive sectors. The implication of these findings is that South Africa’s economy is likely to perform better if more resources are diverted from government consumption to investment spending. Full article

This article takes an approach to creating a machine learning model for the oil and gas industry. This task is dedicated to the most up-to-date issues of machine learning and artificial intelligence. One of the goals of this research was to build a model to predict the possible risks arising in the process of drilling wells. Drilling of wells for oil and gas production is a highly complex and expensive part of reservoir development. Thus, together with injury prevention, there is a goal to save cost expenditures on downtime and repair of drilling equipment. Nowadays, companies have begun to look for ways to improve the efficiency of drilling and minimize non-production time with the help of new technologies. To support decisions in a narrow time frame, it is valuable to have an early warning system. Such a decision support system will help an engineer to intervene in the drilling process and prevent high expenses of unproductive time and equipment repair due to a problem. This work describes a comparison of machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection during well drilling. In particular, machine learning algorithms will make it possible to make decisions when determining the geometry of the grid of wells—the nature of the relative position of production and injection wells at the production facility. Development systems are most often subdivided into the following: placement of wells along a symmetric grid, and placement of wells along a non-symmetric grid (mainly in rows). The tested models classify drilling problems based on historical data from previously drilled wells. To validate anomaly detection algorithms, we used historical logs of drilling problems for 67 wells at a large brownfield in Siberia, Russia. Wells with problems were selected and analyzed. It should be noted that out of the 67 wells, 20 wells were drilled without expenses for unproductive time. The experiential results illustrate that a model based on gradient boosting can classify the complications in the drilling process better than other models. Full article

This paper aims to measure the effect of tax contributions in promoting innovation while highlighting the role of corporate taxes in governance quality in nations within and outside the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The study applied the generalized method of moments (GMM) framework and found that good governance invariably increases the Innovation Index. Moreover, research and development expenditures revealed a positive association with the Innovation Index. However, corporate taxes and taxes paid by the business sector harm the Innovation Index. Following the investigation, we recommended that policymakers should plan well to balance the costs of innovation and tax incentives, to avoid stimulating unproductive innovations or affecting operating budgets. Full article