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This study investigates the role of energy imports in domestic production function in the case of 15 energy-importing countries for the period of 1995–2015. Apart from energy imports, renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, capital, trade openness, and urbanization are included in the growth model. In doing so, long-run elasticity coefficients are estimated with the Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (DSUR) model after determining the cointegration relationship between the variables. In addition, for robustness checks, Panel Correlated Standard Errors (PCSE) and Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) estimators are applied. Our results show that renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, trade openness, and capital have a positive effect on economic growth. Energy imports negatively affect economic growth. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality analysis reveals a bidirectional causality relationship between renewable energy consumption, capital, trade openness, urbanization, and economic growth. A unidirectional causality relationship exists from economic growth to non-renewable energy consumption and energy imports. This analysis can be interpreted as having a negative impact on economic growth by putting pressure on the current account deficit due to energy imports. Therefore, investments in the renewable energy sector will play an important role in economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the short-run and long-run impacts of foreign aid and remittances on economic growth in a panel of 31 African countries from 1980 to 2019 utilizing the ARDL Pool Mean Group (PMG) estimation technique. The PMG is utilized based on the outcome of the Hausman test which justifies it appropriateness. There is long-run association among the regressors and the regressand in the model. Our results indicate that, in the short-run, remittance and foreign aid respectively have a negative impact on economic growth but that impact is statistically insignificant. In the long-run, however, remittances have a positive and significant impact on economic growth while foreign aid has a positive but insignificant effect on economic growth on the continent. These results have substantial policy implications. African governments should adopt effective policies to maximize the usefulness and effectiveness of foreign capital, such as foreign aid and remittances, in boosting economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the important manifestations of economic globalization, such as increased international trade, inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and air passenger transport (PAX) on economic growth and environmental quality in Southeast Asian countries. The results of data analysis for the period 1990–2019 using the panel autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) have confirmed the long run impact of these factors on economic growth and environmental quality (the reduction of CO2 emissions into the environment per unit of production) in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, international trade and PAX positively affect economic growth in both groups of lower-middle-income countries and upper-middle and high-income countries. Inward FDI, however, only has a positive effect on economic growth for the group of lower-middle-income in the short run. In the long run, it has a negative impact. On the other hand, when the manifestations of economic globalization increase, they lead to an increase in CO2 emissions, but there is a decrease in this ratio per unit of production in the long run and in most countries in the short run. These findings are the basis for making economic growth and environmental quality improvements in different regions and countries of Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of national security threats on a nation's economic growth and fiscal policy based on a case study of the Korean peninsula. I construct four measures of provocations using a newly-assembled list of North Korean provocative events going back to 1960. The results show that the overall impact of North Korean provocations on South Korea's short-run economic growth is negligible. Since inter-Korean relations have gone through four phases, this paper also estimates the impact of provocations over each subperiod. Provocations had a significant impact on South Korea's economic growth during 1960-1970 and 1992-1997 when inter-Korean tensions were high, but the effects took on different signs. While provocations decreased South Korea's economic growth during 1992-1997, it had a positive impact on South Korea's macroeconomy before 1970. This paper provides evidence that the effect of national security threats may vary with the responses from the government and political factors such as the relation between the targeted country and the country that inflicts the threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to analyze the impact of external debt on economic growth with mediating role of institutional quality by employing a heterogeneous panel Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model through a pooled mean group (PMG) estimator over periods of 22 years spanning from 1998 to 2019 in East African countries. The finding reveals a significant long-term positive relationship between the stock of external debt as a percentage of GNI and economic growth. However, its square revealed a significant long-term negative relationship, suggesting a non-linear relationship. The positive effect of external debt on economic growth is limited to a threshold level of 62.9%. According to the error term's coefficient, the rate at which short-run returns to long-run equilibrium became disequilibrium in the current year was 45.5%. Furthermore, the result shows that institutional quality's indirect effect on external debt interaction had a significant positive impact on economic growth, indicating that the negative impact of external debt on economic growth decreased as the region's institutional quality rose. Therefore, a comprehensive improvement in institutional quality is required to both lessen the negative effects of external debt and maximize the benefits of government borrowing. In order to stabilize the external debt, governments should cut back on wasteful spending and uphold sound fiscal management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the purpose of this paper, we examine the association between foreign direct investment, openness to trade, infrastructure, innovation, and economic development in 10 members of the Commonwealth Independent States between 2000 and 2020 using a panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag model. According to the results, none of the elements that are researched for this paper has a statistically significant influence on economic growth over the short term. On the other hand, in the long run, each of the variables, including foreign direct investment, infrastructure, innovation, and trade openness, has a statistically favorable and substantial impact on economic growth; furthermore, the findings are in line with the findings of the baseline static panel data models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the long-term effects of civil war in former Yugoslavia on economic growth and development. To this end, we employ the synthetic control methodology, and estimate the missing counterfactual scenario for the long-run growth and development of former Yugoslav republics, in the absence of the civil war by matching their growth and development characteristics with non-Yugoslav countries at the similar stages of development. The results suggest that the civil war led to unprecedented long-run growth and development losses. In the absence of the war, per capita income levels of former Yugoslav republics would improve markedly with notable differences in the magnitude of the growth and development gains across the affected countries. The estimated effects of the civil war are robust to a large number of placebo checks, and falsification-based random permutation tests. The results show that not a single former Yugoslav republic down to the present day has achieved the level of per capita income predicted by their synthetic control groups in the years preceding the civil war. Our results show that the Yugoslav civil war appears to be a permanent institutional shock with long-lasting implications for economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human capital and trade liberalization are playing a central role in growth theories. However, the link between human capital, trade liberalization, and economic growth remains a challenging question due to the inconclusive results of the previous studies. Paper contributes to this debate through asymmetric links among human capital, trade liberalization, and economic growth by incorporating labor and capital for Pakistan's economy by applying the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model. Results suggest that the positive and negative asymmetric impact of trade liberalization and human capital on growth substantially vary in the short and long run. In the long run, the increased trade liberalization hurts economic growth, while increased human capital has a minimal positive impact on economic growth in the short and long run. The implications of this paper are for economists and policymakers to strengthen the role of human capital and trade liberalization for Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the large literature on military spending and growth, the heterogeneity of the categories of expenditure is seldom considered. Military spending is used to pay for a variety of things, including salaries, large weapon systems, and physical infrastructure, along with ongoing operations, training, and readiness - each of which might be expected to have different implications for economic growth. One reason for the focus on aggregate spending is the lack of disaggregated cross-country data, but there are some data available from NATO and the EU that break military spending into personnel, equipment, infrastructure and other expenditures (primarily operations and maintenance). This paper uses these data, available for 34 countries, for as many as 49 years, to investigate whether the composition of military budgets affects economic growth. Estimating standard growth models with this data it finds that as expected there is considerable heterogeneity in the effects of the different components. Specifically, the negative correlation between military spending and growth found in recent studies is primarily driven by personnel expenditures, and - slightly less clearly - by operating expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the linear and non-linear threshold impacts of transparency on economic growth in 70 developing countries from 1984 through 2018, utilizing panel generalized method of moments (GMM) and dynamic-panel threshold estimations. We find that the impact of transparency on growth is stronger when we use non-linear GMM, and dynamic-panel threshold estimations. There is a U-shaped relationship between transparency and economic growth, while transparency is found to stimulate economic growth, especially in a high-transparency threshold regime. The result reveals that financial development plays an important role in moderating the transparency–economic growth nexus in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world needs to move quickly towards sustainability that should characterize all production and consumption patterns. The global economic growth which was built on natural resources and biodiversity over centuries has resulted in two main issues: environmental degradation and climate change. This created a big challenge in the recent decades related to balancing economic growth with environmental quality preservation, which has been a hot topic capturing the interest of researchers from different disciplines. One of the possible ways to reduce environmental degradation while enhancing economic growth is investing in human capital. This study investigates the determinants of ecological footprint as a proxy for environmental quality in Algeria from 1980 to 2017 using several economic indicators. Another objective of the present study is to assess how education and life expectancy as social indicators can influence the environmental quality. The autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) approach is used to estimate the constructed environmental degradation models. As expected, the obtained findings show that import is a significant factor that reduces ecological footprint in the long- and the short-run contrary to economic growth, energy use, export and natural resources rent. Moreover, the findings show that education and life expectancy increase environmental degradation in the short-run. However, while life expectancy keeps increasing environmental degradation in the long-run, education reduces it. In light of these findings, the current study provides several recommendations for better management of the country's natural and human resources, which could help policymakers in directing the country towards sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have investigated the relationship between political instability and economic growth separately from the relationship between military expenditure and economic growth. Besides, they did not cover the period after 2011 (i.e. the Arab Spring and its consequences). Therefore, this paper attempts to empirically analyze the long-run and short-run impacts of both political instability and military expenditure on economic growth in Egypt. We estimate the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach using data on the Egyptian economy over the period 1982–2018. For the robustness of our results, we use the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) estimator. Results of the ARDL approach indicate a significant negative relationship between political instability and economic growth in both the long-run and short-run. Contrarily, military expenditure has an insignificant impact on economic growth, especially in the long-run. These results are confirmed by the FMOLS estimator. Moreover, the estimated coefficient on the one-period lagged error correction term (ECTt-1) indicates that deviations from the long-run equilibrium relationship are corrected within a year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have proven a positive impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on economic growth. Nevertheless, some studies have suggested a limited effect, while others have found no statistically significant effect. Faced with this problem, we conducted a study with the aim to assess the role of moderation of ICT diffusion between financial development and economic expansion in Saudi Arabia from 1990 to 2019. Using the bootstrap approach for the ARDL model, the results prove that financial development as well as ICT diffusion affect negatively (positively) economic development. The financial development interaction term with ICT diffusion has a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth. The results suggest that ICT diffusion does not only directly impact economic growth but also increase the indirect impact of financial development on economic growth. This result indicates that ICT diffusion boosts the role of financial development in economic development. This means that financial development can only boost the Saudi economy when ICTs are well developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines migration from less developed areas to more developed areas. Based on recent data collected in Hong Kong in 2020, we explore the intention of Hong Kong Chinese residents aged between 18 and 50 to move to mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). Despite rapid economic growth in the area, many local Hong Kong Chinese residents still consider mainland cities in GBA as less developed. In this study, we provide an alternative framework for exploring the ways that economic and non-economic factors can influence the intention to migrate from less developed areas to more developed areas. The results of our analyses demonstrate that non-economic adjustment cost, such as the level of familiarity with the destination, social networks, and ability to speak Putonghua, plays an important role in shaping the intention of working-age adults in Hong Kong to move to mainland cities in GBA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to shed some insights into the ongoing debate on the aid-growth nexus by examining whether sources of aid matter in explaining aid effectiveness. In doing so, we consider three main proxies for bilateral aid based on three sources of aid such as Total Aid (TA); Traditional Donors aid (TDA) and Non-Traditional Donors aid (NTDA) as independent variables in a dynamic panel growth model within a system GMM framework. The study uses a panel dataset from 25 Low-Income Countries (LICs) in Africa over the period 2000–2017. The main findings show that the impact of aid on economic growth appears to be negative and significant for TA and TDA proxies, while it is positive but insignificant when the aid proxy is NTDA. A relatively larger share of TA and TDA disbursement away from the direct growth-enhancing productive sectors towards the unproductive sectors seems to have contributed to their strong negative impact on growth. The key policy implication is that governments in LICs in Africa and donors should work in collaboration to design effective ways to ensure that TDA should target the direct growth-enhancing sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a globalized world, the identification of proximate determinants of economic prosperity is both demanding and pressing for governments particularly in developing countries. In recent years, the quest to uncover them has led to the shift in focus from conventional economic factors to noneconomic factors. In this backdrop, this study complements the existing literature by empirically investigating the nexus between trade openness, institutional quality and economic growth in five emerging countries. Specifically, it analyzes the trade-growth link and the mediatory role of institutions in different specifications. The study employs an endogenous growth model duly estimated through a contemporaneous correlation expunging an efficient approach called a cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive lag distributed (CS-ARDL) approach. The empirical estimates indicate that imports are fundamental in augmenting economic growth while exports and overall trade openness though having positive impact are statistically insignificant. Institutional infrastructure augments economic prosperity on its own but retorts trade-growth relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a nation that has persisted through turbulent times. The country's leaders have long attempted to balance the allocation of resources between a strong military and a developing economy in their quest for stability, peace and prosperity. This paper examines and sheds further light on the relationship between Jordan's military expenditure and its economic growth during the period 1970–2015. Using the Gregory -Hansen cointegration technique allowing for structural breaks, and the ARDL methodology this paper tests the short – and long–run equilibrium relationship between military expenditure and economic growth in Jordan. Furthermore, with the error correction model (ECM) and the CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests, we examine the stability of the above relationship. The results reveal positive short – and long–run relationships between military expenditure and economic growth in Jordan, during the period under study. This finding has important policy implications for the Jordanian state, as it justifies the transfer of resources to the military, showing that it has not had a negative impact on economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines the relationship between private capital inflows (foreign direct investment and remittances), institutions and economic growth in a panel of 45 African countries from 2002 to 2018. Using the system generalized method of moments (SGMM), the study found that foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) have a significant and positive impact on economic growth in Africa. However, remittances exert no significant impact on economic growth. The study further analyzed the moderating role of institutions in the relationship between private capital inflows and economic growth by examining the impact of the interactions between private capital inflows and institutions on economic growth. The study concluded that the coefficient(s) of the interplay between FDI and institutional variables is negative and statistically significant presupposing that institutions in Africa do not complement FDI inflows in driving economic growth. In the same vein, the coefficient of the interactive variables between remittances and institutions (regulatory requirement) is negative and significant indicating that remittances and institutions are substitutes rather than complements. The implication of the study, therefore, lies in the fact that institutions in Africa are weak and as a result cannot play a supportive role in reaping the positive spillovers of private capital flows to Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used a threshold regression model to examine the existence of real sector threshold effects in the relationship between financial development and economic development in 38 sub-Saharan African countries from the period 1986–2015. The study identified threshold values of 31.1860, 33.8982% and 1.2241% for industrial value-added, agricultural value-added and total factor productivity respectively in sub-Saharan Africa. The study found that only when the real sector is proxied by industrial value-added that financial development has a significant impact on economic growth. The conclusion drawn from this empirical study is that financial development will only have a positive and significant impact on economic development when the growth in the real sector accompanies the growth in the financial sector. This study, therefore, recommended that the government of sub-Saharan African countries should ensure that the real sector is not below the threshold value so that financial development can bring development to the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data for the period 2000–2018, the study employed an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology to examine the long-run cointegrating relations between service subsectors and economic growth in Albania. Results are presented both for the short run and long run. Findings indicate that the transport sector, communication and financial services have a positive impact on economic growth. However, the manufacturing sector has a negative impact. This confirms Baumol's theory on cost disease but does not corroborate Kaldor's theory. Furthermore, agriculture and industry stimulate the Albanian economy whilst expenditure on health have a limited impact. In addition, the Granger causality test indicates a bidirectional causality from transport, communication and financial services to GDP per capita. Lastly, our models are robust to all the conventional battery of tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the economic impacts of China's emissions trading system (ETS), implemented in 2013, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita GDP. The methodology drew on a difference-in-differences (DID) method using dynamic panel data for 30 provincial regions. The estimation results show that implementing an ETS policy has statistically significant negative effects on economic growth. When considering the additional control variables, these effects are still statistically significant. Furthermore, these negative impacts increase over time with respect to both GDP and per capita GDP. The counterfactual tests confirm the robustness of our DID estimation results. The specific influence mechanism of China's ETS policy was finally discussed. Our findings provide a quantitative decision-making support for popularizing ETS policy in China. Based on our DID model, empirical investigations of the ETS policy, especially concerning economic growth in other regions would produce prolific contributions to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research reaffirms a sustainable transport investment should go forward in a way that enforces consistent economic growth while maintaining environmental benefit. Society's economic input-output relations reinvest the time saved by the transport system, of which benefit appeared as the income level's rise. This research empirically proves that the recursive profit is possible when the infrastructure aligns accessibility enhancement with industries' productivities. Specifically, we found that the interactions between industries and accessibilities make synergy when the industries maintain appropriate productivity. Under the same context, the measure for the socially vulnerable should start at capacity building even given transport, based on which we can build economically equitable accessibility. This research takes environmental sustainability granted as long as the incumbent Korean infrastructure investment principle exists without empirical analysis. A comparative analysis using structural equation models proved the existence of the synergy due to the accessibility-industry interactions. Besides, we captured the quantities of the synergy through groups of partial cross-sectional correlations. Authors conclude that government authority needs to pursue the best synergy between transport plan and economic development strategy, and prepare a capacity building for the socially vulnerable furthermore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research is to analyze whether the Brazilian economy behaved under a wage-led or profit-led regime between 1960 and 2011, considering a Post-Kaleckian model in a context of external constraints. The time span is limited by data availability (i.e., 2011). To answer the question of whether the Brazilian economy works under a wage-led or profit-led regime, we propose a simple Post-Kaleckian model. The model suggests that a profit-led regime is more probable for Brazil. Moreover, a wage-led regime occurs when a balance of payments constrained growth model is taken into consideration. Likewise, the real exchange rate has a positive impact on economic growth through the export channel. This result is a novelty in the recent literature about the relationship between real exchange rate and economic growth within a Post-Kaleckian model. The Brazilian economy was chosen as it is one of the biggest economies in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a unique data set of annual nighttime satellite images from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System, this article, under the assumption that the density of sum of lights is a proxy for the concentration of populations and economic activities, provides empirically based evidence on the extent of concentration, growth and convergence in Europe between 1992 and 2012. We find that the concentration of populations and economic activities was associated with the level, density and growth of economic factors. Decomposing these economic factors, the agricultural sector, which was a sector resilient to economic recession, seems to have been the key determinant of concentration. Finally, there is strong evidence of divergence in concentration, implying that socioeconomic activities will continue to be concentrated in European urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation investment has served as one of the most promising economic instruments to lower transportation costs and promote economic growth. To enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of such kind of capital investments, one critical issue is to gain a better understanding of the pathways that transportation investment would have to influence economic growth. By using a provincial panel data in China, this study attempts to investigate how transportation investments impact economic growth through a variety of pathways. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is applied to understand the relationship between transportation investment, investment in relevant sectors, industrial structure, employment growth, and economic development. It finds that investment in transportation sectors can promote economic growth through direct and multiple indirect pathways. The indirect pathways can improve economic performance through the investments in relevant sectors, growth of industry and employment growth. These impacts would be significantly changed under diverse spatial and temporal conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most studies of resource peripheries are macroeconomic in scale, a regional perspective permits a better understanding of the economic implications of commodity dependence. This study of the boom in commodity exports in Chile in the period 2005–15 shows that while a boom may have adverse effects on other activities, it also had positive impacts on the demand for 'non-tradable' construction, commerce and hospitality services in urban areas through the investment of economic rents and expansion of the secondary circuit of capital. These impacts differed significantly between booming and non-booming cities, leading to a call for rescaling, spatializing and temporalizing research on resource peripheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the question of aid's effects on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by disaggregating aid into grants and loans during 1994–2015. The estimation results indicate that grants have a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth, while loans have a negative but insignificant effect on it. When we break down the panel data into Low Income Countries (LICs) and Middle Income Countries (MICs) in order to gain further insight, grants have been effective in spurring growth in both LICs and MICs, while loans have had positive and significant impact on economic growth in neither LICs nor MICs. Accordingly, the main findings of this study provide a consistent evidence in support of the grants-effectiveness on growth in both MICs and LICs, contrary to the ineffectiveness of loans. The other supplementary results show that the domestic investment (GCF) and education (SEC) which are basically public policy variables have significantly positive impacts on economic growth in MICs, while they are not statistically significant in LICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a rapidly growing economy, India faces many challenges, including in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Moreover, post-2020 climate actions outlined in India's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement envision development along low-carbon emission pathways. With coal providing almost three-quarters of Indian electricity, achieving such targets will have wide-ranging implications for economic activity. Assessing such implications is the focus of our research. To do so, we use a hybrid modelling architecture that combines the strengths of the AIM/Enduse bottom-up model of energy systems and the IMACLIM top-down economy-wide model. This hybrid architecture rests upon an original dataset that brings together national accounting, energy balance and energy price data. We analyse four scenarios ranging to mid-century: business-as-usual (BAU), 2°C, sustainable 2°C and 1.5°C. Our 2°C pathway proves compatible with economic growth close to the 6% yearly rate of BAU from 2012 to 2050, at the cost of reduced household consumption but with significant positive impact on foreign debt accumulation. The latter impact stems from improvement of the trade balance, whose current large deficit is the primary cause of high fossil fuel imports. Further mitigation effort backing our 1.5°C scenario shows slightly higher annual GDP growth, thereby revealing potential synergies between deep environmental performance and economic growth. Structural change assumptions common to our scenarios significantly transform the activity shares of sectors. The envisioned transition will require appropriate policies, notably to manage the conflicting interests of entrenched players in traditional sectors like coal and oil, and the emerging players of the low-carbon economy. Key policy insights Low carbon pathways are compatible with Indian growth despite their high investment costs Moving away from fossil fuel-based energy systems would result in foreign exchange savings to the tune of $1 trillion from 2012 to 2050 for oil imports. Achieving deep decarbonization in India requires higher mobilized capital in renewables and energy efficiency enhancements. Phasing out fossil fuels would, however, require careful balancing of interests between conventional and emerging sector players through just transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic impact assessment (EcIA) has attracted some criticism due to its limited focus. Typically, EcIA is used to validate the proposed proposals based on growth in income and employment. This paper argues that EcIA should play a more active and stronger role in impact assessment. For example, the impacts of the proposed projects should be assessed using the economic development goals rather than only changes in economic growth. The conceptual framework for the comprehensive impact assessment is discussed. Examples of indicators that can be used in relation to sustainable development goals are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to increased banking regulation and competition, banks are facing challenges to maintain their profitability. This article studies the affect on profitability of banks' internal factors and external economic factors. The evidence shows that liquidity risk has a significant negative affect on profitability of the PSU banks. Also operational risk and capital efficiency have a significant negative impact on profitability. Return on assets, bank size, and economic growth rate are found to influence profitability negatively; only the affect of the former was statistically significant. Increase in nonperforming assets adversely affects profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing population and demand for food, reducing food loss and waste is one of the greatest challenges worldwide. Current estimates point to over 1 billion tons of food lost and wasted worldwide, though nearly 10 percent of the global population is suffering from undernourishment and food insecurity. In Mozambique, about one-quarter of the population suffers from undernourishment and food insecurity. Estimates from FAO point to postharvest losses of maize in Mozambique at about 3.69 to 7.92 percent; this is less than one-fifth of the on-farm losses reported by other authors. In this study, an Equilibrium Displacement model is used to assess the economy-wide impact of postharvest losses of maize at the farm level. The impact of a 3 percent postharvest loss is tested. Results suggest that even this very conservative percentage of postharvest losses has a direct annual net cost of around $USD 28 million for both farmers and consumers domestically. This is equivalent to over 1 percent of the national budget. It is also higher than the average cost of food aid programs received over the last three years. Therefore, reducing postharvest losses of maize along with other interventions is crucial to achieve sustainable development and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]