世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(08)61690-6.pdf

Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

Sustainable Development Goals

This paper discusses the characteristics of SMEs to economic development, and the constraints to SME development in developing countries with particular reference to Ghana and South Africa. SMEs in Ghana have been noted to provide about 85% of manufacturing employment of Ghana. They are also believed to contribute about 70% to Ghana’s GDP and account for about 92% of businesses in Ghana. In the Republic of South Africa, it is estimated that 91% of the formal business entities are SMEs. They also contribute 52-57% to GDP and provide about 61% to employment .Notwithstanding the recognition of the important roles SMEs play in these countries, their development is largely constrained by the number of factors such as lack of access to appropriate technology; limited access to international markets, the existence of laws, regulations and rules that impede the development of the sector; weak institutional capacity, lack of management skills and training, and most importantly finance. This paper provides some relevant recommendations to policy makers, development agencies, entrepreneurs, and SME mangers to ascertain the appropriate strategy to improve the SME sector in these countries.

Issues in SME development in Ghana and South Africa

/pdf/the-policy-environment-for-promoting-small-and-medium-sized-4bn1n8lw49.pdf

The Policy Environment for Promoting Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Ghana and Malawi

Financing the growth of SMEs in Africa: What are the contraints to SME financing within ECOWAS?

Migrant remittances have become a source of external finance whose magnitude exceeds the amount of official development assistance in some developing countries. Balance of payments statistics from the Bank of Ghana indicate the amount of remittances to Ghana exceeds ODA and is a potential force to reckon with particularly considering its growth rate in recent years. It is general knowledge in Ghana that families with migrant workers,particularly those in developed countries, are able to withstand shocks to income. This relationship has not been tested empirically, however, even though the Ghana Living Standards Survey is rich with such micro-data on the economy. This study therefore uses Waves 1 to 4 of the GLSS to investigate whether migrant remittances significantly affect household poverty (welfare). The study found that remittances improve household welfare and help to minimize the effects of economic shocks to household welfare.They do not offset the shocks completely, however, except for food crop farmers (the poorest in Ghana).

The impact of migrant remittances on household welfare in Ghana

Domestic resources serve as a vital engine of growth and poverty reduction. However, the effective mobilization of domestic resources depends on an efficient and well-developed financial market. The financial sector in Ghana has undergone change in terms of the number of institutions and services rendered, as a result of the financial sector liberalization programme pursued in the late 1980s, which led to interest rate liberalization and the entrance of new players. The outcome of this liberalization policy is reflected in Ghana’s financial development indicators: the M2/GDP ratio increased from 0.195 in 1996 to 0.32 in 2003. Similarly, over the same period the currency/M2 ratio declined from 0.41 to 0.29.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/63611/1/509141919.pdf

Peter Quartey

Papers

Issues in SME development in Ghana and South Africa

The Policy Environment for Promoting Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Ghana and Malawi

Financing the growth of SMEs in Africa: What are the contraints to SME financing within ECOWAS?

The impact of migrant remittances on household welfare in Ghana

Financial Sector Development, Savings Mobilization and Poverty Reduction in Ghana