The impact of domestic and global trade liberalization on five Southern African countries

We compare the impact of alternative domestic and global trade liberalization scenarios on five economies in Southern Africa. The study applies a computable general equilibrium model that employs standardised 12-sector social accounting matrices for Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The approach incorporates stylised features such as own-household consumption and marketing margins that are of particular importance when a majority of agricultural producers are not sufficiently integrated into formal markets and thus rely on own production to meet their daily diets. Hence, improved infrastructure implies lower marketing costs and better market integration, which translates to increased production opportunities. The comparison of the results across all five countries reveals that common policy measures have different impacts depending on the underlying economic structures.Trade liberalization Africa. ,Malawi. ,Mozambique. ,Tanzania. ,Zambia. ,Zimbabwe. ,Household consumption. ,Markets. ,Economic policy. ,Social accounting Mathematical models. ,TMD ,

A gendered 1993-94 Social Accounting Matrix for Bangladesh

This working paper documents the construction of a 1993-94 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Bangladesh. The SAM distinguishes 10 agricultural sectors —including two different kinds of rice technology — and 19 manufacturing sectors, out of 43 sectors in total. It also differentiates between twelve socio-economic groups, allowing detailed analysis of household welfare and poverty. The SAM has ten factors of production: one type of capital, one type of land and eight different types of labor which are disaggregated by both level of education and gender. The innovative feature of the SAM is that it separates out female and male labor value-added for each educational level and in eachsector of the economy, providing a base for gender-sensitive analyses of policy changes. The SAM is estimated with a cross-entropy approach, which makes efficient use of all available data in a framework that incorporates prior information and constraints.Mathematical models. ,Households. ,Labor Gender issues. ,Rice Bangladesh. ,TMD ,

HIV/AIDS and Primary School Performance in Tanzania

We examine the performance of the primary school education system in Tanzania over the 1990sa decade characterized by substantial AIDS deaths. Given the relatively robust correlation between educational attainment and productivity established in the literature in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, human capital accumulation through education forms a major component of development strategy. At the same time, AIDS poses clear threats to the goal of human capital accumulation through education. To assess performance of the primary school system, we estimate non-stationary education transition matrices using a minimum cross entropy approach at the national, sub-national, and regional levels for girls, boys, and all students. Results indicate a deterioration in primary school performance using enrollments in grade 7, the final year of primary school, as a metric. This deterioration in performance occurred despite increased real resource allocations to the public education system and positive, if only tepid, overall economic growth trends. We conclude that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has quite likely slowed human capital accumulation in Tanzania.Health Economics and Policy, Labor and Human Capital,

A 1998 Social Accounting Matrix for Malawi

The last few years have seen a proliferation of attempts by various institutions to create a framework that would enable analysts to have a broad overview of all transactions in the Malawian economy. It was decided that 1998, the most recent year for which a comprehensive data set is available, would be the base year for the SAM. The National Statistical Office conducted a major household survey which provided information on budget shares, incomes and many other social-economic characteristics of households.Social accounting Malawi. ,Economic surveys Malaw. ,Household surveys Malawi. ,TMD ,

Random matrix model for quantum dots with interactions and the conductance peak spacing distribution

We introduce a random interaction matrix model (RIMM) for finite-size strongly interacting fermionic systems whose single-particle dynamics is chaotic. The model is applied to Coulomb blockade quantum dots with irregular shape to describe the crossover of the peak spacing distribution from a Wigner-Dyson to a Gaussian-like distribution. The crossover is universal within the random matrix model and is shown to depend on a single parameter: a scaled fluctuation width of the interaction matrix elements. The crossover observed in the RIMM is compared with the results of an Anderson model with Coulomb interactions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 eps figures included, a few minor change

The road to pro-poor growth in Zambia

"Zambia is one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Almost three-quarters of the population were considered poor at the start of the 1990s, with a vast majority of these people concentrated in rural and remote areas. This extreme poverty arose in spite of Zambia's seemingly promising prospects following independence. To better understand the failure of growth and poverty-reduction this paper first considers the relationship between the structure of growth and Zambia's evolving political economy. A strong urban-bias has shaped the country's growth path leading to an economy both artificially and unsustainably distorted in favor of manufacturing and mining at the expense of rural areas. For agriculture it was the maize-bias of public policies that undermined export and growth potential within this sector....Sustained investment and economic growth during recent years suggest a possible change of fortune for Zambia. In light of this renewed growth, the paper uses a dynamic and spatially-disaggregated economy-wide model linked to a household survey to examine the potential for future poverty-reduction....Although agricultural growth is essential for substantial poverty-reduction, the country's large poor urban population necessitates growth in non-agriculture. The findings suggest that returning to a copper-led growth path is not pro-poor and that non-mining urban growth, although undermined by foreign exchange shortages and inadequate private investment, is likely to be preferable for reducing poverty." Authors' AbstractCopper mines and mining ,Poverty alleviation Africa Zambia ,Manufacturing industries ,Spatial analysis (Statistics) ,Household surveys ,

Disordered mesoscopic systems with interactions: induced two-body ensembles and the Hartree-Fock approach

We introduce a generic approach to study interaction effects in diffusive or chaotic quantum dots in the Coulomb blockade regime. The randomness of the single-particle wave functions induces randomness in the two-body interaction matrix elements. We classify the possible induced two-body ensembles, both in the presence and absence of spin degrees of freedom. The ensembles depend on the underlying space-time symmetries as well as on features of the two-body interaction. Confining ourselves to spinless electrons, we then use the Hartree-Fock (HF) approximation to calculate HF single-particle energies and HF wave functions for many realizations of the ensemble. We study the statistical properties of the resulting one-body HF ensemble for a fixed number of electrons. In particular, we determine the statistics of the interaction matrix elements in the HF basis, of the HF single-particle energies (including the HF gap between the last occupied and the first empty HF level), and of the HF single-particle wave functions. We also study the addition of electrons, and in particular the distribution of the distance between successive conductance peaks and of the conductance peak heights.Comment: 25 pages, 16 figure

Two interacting particles in a disordered chain IV: Scaling of level curvatures

The curvatures of two-particle energy levels with respect to the enclosed magnetic flux in mesoscopic disordered rings are investigated numerically. We find that the typical value of the curvatures is increased by interactions in the localised regime and decreased in the metallic regime. This confirms a prediction by Akkermans and Pichard (Eur. Phys. J. B 1, 223 (1998)). The interaction-induced changes of the typical curvatures at different energies and disorder strengths exhibit one-parameter scaling with a conductance-like single parameter. This suggests that interactions could influence the conductance of mesoscopic systems similarly.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Other parts of the series: cond-mat/9706258, cond-mat/9801134, cond-mat/980813

Soil Fertility Management Choice in the Maize-Based Smallholder Farming System in Malawi

The paper analyses the factors that affect smallholder farmers choice of soil fertility management options in Malawi using a two-stage maximum likelihood estimation procedure. Using results from the Double-Hurdle model, the paper estimates the probabilities and intensities of fertilizer application conditional on choice of inorganic fertilizer. The findings indicate that relative wealthy indicators, human capital, credit and market access, food security index and land pressure are the main factors that greatly influence farmers choice and intensity of input investment. Although there is a high and positive correlation between probability of adoption and intensity of application, factors that influence adoption are not necessarily the same as those that influence the intensity of application, conditional on adoption. The paper concludes with policy and research implications aimed at informing the debate on enhancing sustainable soil fertility management among smallholder farmers in Malawi.soil fertility management, smallholder farmers, Double-Hurdle model, Malawi, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,