Search results

The majority of the literature on green buildings in Ghana focuses on environmental benefits, innovative designs, construction technologies and project management techniques. However, little is known about how such facilities are financed. This issue creates potential knowledge gaps, one of which this study aims to address. This study examines the key drivers for green building project financing in Ghana.

The study uses an explanatory sequential design with an initial quantitative instrument phase, followed by a qualitative data collection phase. An extensive critical comparative review of the literature resulted in the identification of eight potential drivers. One hundred and twenty-seven questionnaire responses based upon these drivers from the Ghanaian construction industry were received. Data were coded with SPSS v22, analysed descriptively (mean, standard deviation and standard error) and via inferential analysis (One Way ANOVA and One-Sample t-Test). These data were then validated through semi-structured interviews with ten industry professionals within the Ghana Green Building Council. Data obtained from the semi-structured validation interviews were analysed through the side-by-side comparison of the qualitative data with the quantitative data.

Though all eight drivers are important, the five key drivers for the Ghanian construction industry were identified as, in order of importance, “high return on investment”, “emerging business opportunity”, “ethical investment”, “conservation of resources” and “mandatory regulations, standards, and policies”. The interviewees agreed to and confirmed the importance of these identified drivers for green building project financing from validating the survey's key findings.

Key limitations of this study are the restrictions regarding the geographical location of the collected data (i.e. Kumasi and Accra); timing of the study and sample size (i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic making it difficult to obtain adequate data).

Though this study was conducted in Ghana, its implications could be useful to researchers, policymakers, stakeholders and practitioners in wider sub-Saharan Africa. For instance, financial institutions can invest in green buildings to expand their green construction and mortgage finance products to build higher value and lower risk portfolios. The findings from this study can provide investors with the enhanced certainty needed to help guide and inform their investment decisions, i.e. what to invest in, and when, by how much and how a scheme being “green” may influence their rate of return. Also, for building developers, it will give them a clearer understanding of the business case for green buildings and how to differentiate themselves in the market to grow their businesses.

This study's findings provide insights into an under-investigated topic in Ghana and offer new and additional information and insights to the current state-of-the-art on the factors that drive green building project financing.

Financial inclusion and digital finance go side by side and help enhance agricultural activities; however, the magnitude of digital financial services varies across countries. In line with this argument, this study aims to examine whether financial inclusion enhances agricultural participation and decompose the significance of the difference in determinants of agricultural participation between financially included – not financially included households and digital finance – no digital finance households.

This study uses Pakistan’s household integrated economic survey 2018/19 to test hypotheses. The logit model is used to examine the effect of financial inclusion on agriculture participation. Moreover, this study employs a nonlinear Fairlie Oaxaca Blinder technique to investigate the difference in determinants of agricultural participation.

This study reports that financial inclusion positively influences agricultural participation, meaning households may have access to financial services and participate in agricultural activities. The results suggest that the likelihood of participating in agriculture in households with mobiles and smartphones is higher. Moreover, household size, income, age, gender, education, urban, remittances from abroad, fertilizer, pesticides, wheat, cotton, sugarcane, fruits and vegetables are the significant determinants of agricultural participation. To distinguish the financially included – not financially included households’ gap, this study employs a nonlinear Fairlie Oaxaca Blinder decomposition and finds that differences in fertilizer explain the substantial gap in agricultural participation. Likewise, this study tests the digital finance – no digital finance gap and finds that the difference in fertilizer is a significant contributor, describing a considerable gap in agricultural participation.

Empirically identified that various factors cause agricultural participation including financial inclusion and digital finance. Regarding the research limitation, this study only considers a developing country to analyze the findings. However, for future research, scholars may consider some other countries to compare the results and identify their differences.

The accessibility of fertilizer can reduce the agricultural participation gap. However, increased income level, education and cotton and sugar production can also overcome the differences in agriculture participation between digital finance and no digital finance households.

This is the first study to decompose the difference in determinants of agricultural participation between financially and not financially included households.

This paper aims to explore whether there is a “low financing trap” that results in underfunding of education systems in low and lower middle income countries (LICs and LMICs). It shows public investment in education has not increased over the last two decades despite extensive advocacy and has equilibrated at about 4% of GDP. More than 6% of GDP is needed to achieve the sustainable development goals.

This research uses large scale data from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the World Bank to analyse patterns of investment across sub-Saharan Africa. The most recent data downloaded in 2022 are used for each country. The analysis uses time series analysis to show how flows of resources for education have evolved and illustrates the limits to growth.

The research develops a taxonomy of countries and identifies three bands of effort for investment in education. Individual countries tend to remain in the same band of expenditure level and only the highest band countries are likely to be able to finance their development goals from their own resources between now and 2030. Escape from the low financing trap is critical for future educational development.

Innovative approaches to external assistance are needed which recognise that domestic revenues are at the heart of sustainable financing and that greater efficiency and effectiveness are critical to sustainable solutions. The priority is to accelerate the development of fiscal states, which can finance public goods from domestic revenue and make good use of concessionary assistance.

The study explores how the intention to export affects financing and non-financing variables for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a low-income country (LIC). The objectives of this study are (1) to discern between regional and global exporting and (2) to evaluate its policymaking implications.

Primary survey data were collected from 330 Rwandan SMEs and were analysed using ordered logistic models as an application of the expectation-maximisation iterating algorithm, which was tested for robustness using a sampling model variation.

The results show that alternative sources of finance are the predominant choice to finance the intention to export within and outside Africa. As the scope of export intentions broadened from regional to global, there was a shift in preferences from less formal to more formal lending technologies, moving from methods like factoring to lines of credit. Moreover, reliance on bank officers became more significant, with increasing marginal effects. Finally, the study determined that government financing schemes were not relevant for SMEs pursuing either regional or global exporting.

Whilst alternative sources of finance predominate the export intentions of Rwandan SMEs, establishing a robust banking relationship becomes crucial for global exporting. Despite this implication, the intention to export should prompt more transparent communication regarding government financial support programmes. There is an opportunity for increased usage of relationship lending to customise support for SMEs involved in exporting, benefiting both the private and public sectors.

This study accentuates how export distance alters SME financing priorities. The results also contribute to understanding how the value of relationship lending changes when less familiar markets (i.e. global exporting) are the objective. Moreover, the study offers a new perspective on how institutional voids affect entrepreneurial financing decisions in LICs.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and highlight the results of a study that identified critical risks involved in the procurement of community‐based infrastructure projects in Zambia.

Brainstorming was chosen as the method for identifying risks in the study. It was applied in the form of group discussions with project management committees at community level to identify potential risks affecting their particular projects.

The identified critical risks were classified into six categories: project initiation; community contribution and participation; budget and finance; skilled labour; materials procurement and technical supervision; and quality control. Several significant risk factors were identified in all these six categories in community‐based construction projects. The paper concludes that indeed there are critical risks in community‐based construction projects that require forward planning, assessment and mitigation.

The consequences of not assessing and managing construction risks in both conventional and community‐based procurement systems are that projects may experience time and cost overruns and lead to poor quality structures. It is therefore important to identify risks in community projects.

In this paper, the authors use a new methodology, called paper affiliation index, to create finance journal ranking using expert judgment and research impact, both of which are based on secondary, objective measures, thus making it possible to produce lists every year without human manipulation at virtually no cost.

Bibliometrics. Python implementation.

A new ranking with 65 finance journals.

This procedure helps to reduce bias and to deal with known problems associated with current methodologies. The data used in the methodology comes from public sources; the procedure is therefore easily replicable. This methodology is not subject-dependent and thus can be transferred to other realms of knowledge. Once the bibliometric institutional data has been gathered, the procedure is not computationally costly: a Python implementation of the algorithm executes the whole computation in a few seconds. Results seem to correct the pernicious Matthew effect which is so evident in citation-based methods.

The institutional classification created includes all institutions that have contributed papers to the field of finance. The procedure helps to reduce bias and to deal with known problems associated with current methodologies. The data used in the methodology comes from public sources, the procedure is therefore easily replicable. The methodology is not subject-dependent and thus can be transferred to other realms of knowledge. Once the bibliometric institutional data has been gathered, the procedure is not computationally costly.

This study takes the position that the concept of fraud is socially constructed. Moreover, it asks why and how different understandings of fraud have emerged. Insights from the work of Lakoff and Johnson (1999, 2003; Lakoff, 2002, 2004, 2009) are used to analyze language revealing dominant worldviews and metaphors regarding fraud. The research method is a case study (Yin, 2014), and the analytical approach used parallels the one described in O’Dwyer (2004). The research setting is a report issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which provides a context to study different understandings of fraud due to the report’s divided nature. The analysis reveals three alternative worldviews, representing different assumptions about reality, that are at the root of the different understandings of fraud. These worldviews also lead to the usage of different conceptual metaphors which allow the commissioners to interpret facts in a manner that supports each worldview’s assumptions. The paper also concludes by providing a nuanced and critical examination of the results of the commission concerning its understanding of fraud.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of financial factors on firms’ financial and tax reporting decisions. Firms often face the difficulties of accomplishing both financial and reporting goals. The extent to which reporting they put more value depends on the differential weighting of firms’ financial reporting and tax costs. The authors incorporate various financial factors as a source of cross-sectional differences in the weighing of both financial reporting and tax costs.

To examine firms’ decisions when fulfilling both the purposes of financial and tax reporting is difficult, the authors use a large set of firms in Korea, where book-tax conformity is high and aggressive tax shelters are restricted. The authors develop a new measure that can specify firms’ decision making between financial and tax reporting by considering both earnings management and tax avoidance.

The findings show that debt ratio affects firms’ financial and tax reporting decisions non-monotonically depending on the level of the debt ratio. The authors also find that firms with more long-term debt financing are more likely to be aggressive in financial reporting, while firms with higher financing deficit or better access to the capital market are more likely to be aggressive in tax reporting.

Thus, the findings provide more compelling evidence of firms’ decision making between two conflicting strategies, particularly when fulfilling both the purposes of financial and tax reporting is difficult. The authors expect that the results provide practical implications to standard setters, auditors and financial statement users who are interested in the ongoing debate over book-tax tradeoffs.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how firms’ decision making between two conflicting reporting strategies are affected by the various financial factors, which are closely linked to a firm’s financial reporting and tax costs.

In the life of a business, the lack of adequate liquidity to meet current obligations when they come due frequently results in problems which, more often than desirable, result in the failure of the enterprise. A common cause of such small business failures at various stages in the business's life cycle is poor financial planning. One planning deficiency which results in early failure is under capitalization. Under capitalization results from several errors made during the initial stages of financial planning and implementation. Cash flow problems are a common symptom among businesses with this problem.