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The purpose of this paper is to ascertain if practising healthy lifestyles improves the technical efficiency of farms in Kwara state, Nigeria. In theory, all deviations from the optimum level of output are due to random effects and inefficiency of producers in which their health plays a key part and is dependent on the kind of lifestyle practiced whether healthy or unhealthy.

Cross-sectional data were employed through a three-staged sampling technique to pick 320 arable crop farmers across the state using a well-defined questionnaire. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics, healthy lifestyles index (HLI), stochastic production frontier (SPF) and propensity score matching (PSM).

First, the analysis showed that about one-third of the sampled arable crop farmers practised healthy lifestyles. Second, the average technical efficiency of arable crop production for farmers who practised a healthy lifestyle was 0.893, and the level of technical inefficiency of the farms was determined by health-related lifestyle status, number of day's illness and educational level. Third, technical efficiency was improved by 0.00431067 for farms whose farmers practised a healthy lifestyle.

Rather than seeing that technical efficiencies of farms are attributed to farm characteristics, inputs used and socioeconomic characteristics alone, the findings suggest that technical inefficiencies of arable crop farmers were also due to the kind of lifestyle practised, which was evidenced in the increased efficiency for farmers who practised healthy lifestyle.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2023-0353

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of socio‐economic variables on households' food demand. This paper derived the indirect utility function in terms of expenditure and price through the use of nonlinear demand quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) model to estimate price, expenditure and elasticities of food items consumed in the North‐Central, Nigeria, and the impact of the socio‐economic variables on households' food demand.

The primary data used came from random selection of 396 households between 2006 and 2007 through a stratified random sampling procedure from Kwara and Kogi states making up the North Central zone in Nigeria.

All own price elasticities of the six food groups analyzed (root and tubers – RT, cereal – CR, legume – LG, animal protein – AP, fruits and vegetable – FV, fats and oil) showed that they are price inelastic. The results of income elasticity show that AP consumption is the most sensitive to income changes, while fats and oil is the least sensitive to income changes. Factors that positively and significantly affected demand for LG, FV, AP, CR and RT were household size (HSZ), level of education, primary occupation, access to credit, presence of children ≤6 years mainly at P<0.01. HSZ (P<0.01) negatively affected demand for AP.

This paper is original and novel in that it examines the impact of socio‐economic variables on households' food demand. High‐income elasticities of demand for all the food groups in QUAIDS except fruits and vegetable, as well as fats and oils, suggests that income‐generating policies will foster higher levels of consumption for these commodities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of network-based individual social capital on the access of rural households to services.

In the context of development economics, an innovative data collection approach is used to determine network-based social capital. The approach originates from the field of sociology and entails a personal network survey. The authors define four social capital variables according to tie strength and social distance between the respondent and his/her network member.

Social network ties are not homogeneous. The econometric results suggest that social capital with weaker ties in combination with socially distant ties can potentially improve households’ access to rural services.

The empirical survey focusses on a single province in Northern Vietnam. Thus, the main limitation of the micro-study is its regional focus. A more representative sample of the whole country would be desirable to backup the policy recommendation.

The results indicate that access to services in rural Vietnam it still too personalized and subjective. Thus, a thorough review of the access procedures and making them more objective would be better choice. This would also root out a potential alley for corruption and nepotism.

The purpose of this paper is to examine farmers’ access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity in the Northern Savannah ecological zone of Ghana.

Secondary data from the Ghana Feed the Future baseline survey involving a total sample of 2,968 farm households were used. The conditional mixed process (CMP) framework was applied to estimate access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity simultaneously. As a system estimator the CMP corrects for possible heterogeneity and sample selection bias.

The results from the estimations revealed that age, literacy, farm non-mechanized equipment, and group membership were the variables influencing farmers’ access to credit. Credit constraint conditions were determined by household size, locality, group membership, and household durable assets. Finally, the results showed that productivity of farmers was dependent on marital status, household size, locality, farm size, commercialization, farm mechanized equipment, group membership, and household durable assets.

This paper is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to use the CMP framework to jointly estimate access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity. The results indicate that estimating credit access and constraint models separately would have yielded biased estimates. Thus, this paper informs future research on farmers’ credit access, credit constraint, and productivity for informed policymaking.

The aim of this paper is to investigate causal link between social capital and microfinance by testing the role of social capital in explaining the household's access to microcredit under the group‐based lending approach.

Household level primary data was collected from a rural district of Pakistan. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to construct a social capital index, whereas two logit models were developed to predict the probabilities of access to credit. Besides, few qualitative statements have also been used to supplement the results from main empirical analysis and to understand the impact mechanism of social capital on microfinance participation.

Participation in local organizations, heterogeneity of associations and level of both generalized and institutional trust were identified as the key dimensions of structural and cognitive social capital to influence households' access to credit. On the other hand, when these dimensions were combined in a single social capital index, the result indicated that social capital index has no significant effect on microfinance participation. This result provides support to the argument that grouping all the dimensions of social capital into one index may run the risk of losing the explanatory power of social capital.

The results of the study could be encouraging for governments and other development agencies. The existing social capital could be utilized in the design and delivery of microfinance programs as well as other rural development activities. The results of the study also encourage policy makers to invest in the creation of social capital either directly or by providing environment supportive of its creation.

The study is a contribution to the limited empirical literature on social capital and microfinance. This study is the first of its kind in Pakistan and hopefully will contribute to the limited knowledge on social capital literature in the country generally and in the context of rural development specifically.

The economic recession that Nigeria recently passed through caused distortions in economic and well-being of Nigerians. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the economic recession on households’ demand for basic foodstuffs in Southwest Nigeria.

Data were collected from 380 respondents drawn from urban areas of Lagos, Osun and Oyo states using multistage sampling technique. Descriptive statistics and Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System were employed to analyze data collected.

The study showed sharp increase in the prices of basic foodstuffs during recession. Households were compelled to spend higher percentage of their monthly income on basic foodstuffs. Also, 51.1 percent of the respondents were government workers who experienced inconsistent or modulated monthly salary during the period. The percentage of households that were food insecure was 36.4 percent. Osun State had the highest monthly per capita expenditure (₦5,147.13) on foodstuffs, followed by Lagos and Oyo states while rice had the highest expenditure share (0.26), followed by yam (0.18), beans (0.106), vegetable oil (0.104) and garri (0.101). The breakdown also showed that 11.7, 18.1 and 17.7 percent of the total household monthly expenditures in Lagos, Osun and Oyo states, respectively, were spent on basic foodstuffs.

There purchasing power of naira reduced significantly during recession, thus compelled households to spend more on basic foodstuffs compared to similar purchases before economic recession.

The reduction in purchasing power of naira affected the formal and informal sector. Irregular salary for civil servants reduced their expenditure on goods and services.

The study is original and topical, serving as literature of accounts that transpired among the households as far as demand for basic foodstuffs is concerned during the economic recession.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze determinants of farmers’ participation and credit rationing in microcredit programs using survey data from Ghana.

The authors use the Garrett Ranking Technique to analyze farmers’ reasons for participation or non-participation in credit programs, a probit regression model to estimate factors influencing farm households’ participation, and the Heckman’s sample selection model to identify factors influencing farm households’ probability of being credit rationed by microcredit programs.

The results reveal that farm households participate in credit programs because of improved access to savings services and agricultural loans. Fear of loan default and lack of savings are reasons for non-participation in credit programs. Furthermore, membership in farmer-based organizations (FBOs) and the household head’s formal education are positively associated with farmers’ participation in credit programs. The likelihood of farmers being credit rationed (i.e. their loan applications were either rejected or the amount of credit they applied for was reduced) is less likely among higher income farmers and members of FBOs such as farmer cooperatives and savings clubs.

The findings suggest that policy strategies aiming to improve access to savings and credit services should educate farmers and strengthen FBOs that could serve as entry points for financial service providers. Such market smart strategies have the potential to improve farmers’ access to financial services and reduce rural poverty.

Although existing studies have examined farmers’ participation in credit markets and credit rationing separately, the unique contribution of this paper is the analysis of participation in microcredit programs as well as the likelihood of farmers being credit rationed in Ghana.

Most demand studies have concentrated on the estimation of expenditure elasticities for single commodity at a time thereby not being able to reveal the details of the relationships among various food items demanded by households. The purpose of this paper is to simultaneously estimate the demand equations for a number of food items and to estimate cross-price elasticities which are necessary for studying consumer behaviours, marketing, production planning and policy making.

Relevant data were collected from 320 randomly selected households in a multistage sampling procedure. The normalized data were analysed in a system of equation with symmetry, adding-up and homogeneity restrictions imposed on the model.

Expenditure elasticities show that gaari and palm oil were inferior food items while others could be classified as normal. Own-price elasticities showed that beans, plantain, yam flour and rice were luxuries while others were necessities. Cross-price elasticities revealed that some were substitutes of one another while others were compliments and some were not related.

The data were collected using a month recall approach and generalizing its findings beyond such months of a year may be misleading. Therefore, other researchers should repeat the study across months and locations.

The study recommended that food policies should be broad based to encompass majority of the food items consumed in the study area given the intrinsic relationship inherent among them as their demands were interrelated and consumer behaviours as revealed by various elasticities be considered in formulating food-related policies.

The paper emphasized the need to model food demand in a system of equations as against single equation modelling.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of credit constraints on agricultural labour productivity as well as the impact of credit constraints and agricultural labour productivity on rural households' consumption in Ghana.

This study uses the Ghana Living Standard Survey round six (GLSS 6) as the main source of data, which happens to be one of the most comprehensive household datasets in Ghana. Quantitative estimation techniques (namely: Endogenous Switching Regression and Two Stage Least Squares) are used to address possible endogeneity and selection into credit markets.

First, large households are prone to credit constraints while age (experience) and compliance with extension advice reduce credit constraints. Second, the determinants of agricultural labour productivity for both constrained and unconstrained households are age, sex, farm equipment, herbicide and farm size. Third, household size, education and livestock rearing influence agricultural labour productivity of constrained households. Fourth, credit constraints, irrespective of how they are measured, impede agricultural labour productivity while access to credit fosters labour productivity. Lastly, credit constraints robustly reduce consumption while agricultural labour productivity strongly enhances rural households' consumption.

The first contribution is that, unlike most previous studies, we do not focus on the widely used measure of productivity – output per unit land, but on agriculture labour productivity in particular. Secondly, unlike most previous studies which examine the effect of credit constraints either on productivity alone or consumption alone, our study examines the impact of credit constraints on both. Thirdly, unlike the existing literature which uses one or two measures of credit constraints, we use a wide range of measures of credit constraints – seven different measures of credit constraints. Lastly, our empirical strategy solves at least two critical econometric problems – sample selection bias and endogeneity.

If complaints about an agent’s sale of “ABC” mutual fund are handled by the state securities commissioner… Why should complaints about the same agent’s sale of a variable annuity invested in “ABC” mutual fund be handled exclusively by the state insurance commissioner? Are state laws enacted 35 years ago still relevant today when most agents who sell variable annuities are also licensed to sell mutual funds?