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The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of labour force participation and the factors affecting labour supply among older persons in Ghana. Both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply were analysed.

The paper uses nationally representative samples of household and individual data in 2016–2017 – Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS 7) data – for the analysis. Heckman’s sample selection model is used to analyse both the extensive and intensive margins of older persons’ labour supply.

The study found that older persons in Ghana who are pensioners, widowed, have high levels of education, poor health status and live in urban areas are less likely to participate actively in the labour market. On the other hand, being head of a household, married and owning certain assets increase the likelihood of an older person to work. Furthermore, pensions, household headship and post-secondary education have negative effects on the labour supply as having them make older persons work fewer hours per week compared to their counterparts.

This research is the first study to examine the prevalence of old age employment and factors that affect labour market decisions of older persons in Ghana. It also adds to the limited literature on pension and retirement decisions in developing countries.

The participation of females in economic activity remains a challenge, and received a lot of attention for a better labor policy discourse. The empirical research focused widely on the relationship between female labor force participation (FLFP) and economic development, called the feminization U-shape hypothesis. However, the linear/nonlinear relationship has been questioned due to empirical and methodological anomalies. Hence, this study aims to extend the previous work by reexamining this relationship in Pakistan.

The annual data from 1980 to 2021, the unit root tests augmented Dickey–Fuller and Phillips and Perron, the conventional autoregressive distributed lag bound test approach by including the quadratic-term of GDP per capita and the novel Sasabuchi–Lind–Mehlum (SLM) U test (2010) used for empirical estimation.

The findings revealed the prospects of a long-run nonlinear association between FLFP and economic development in Pakistan. However, an inverse U-shape exists between the female labor force participation rate (FLFPR) and GDP per capita, predicting that FLFP may decline in the future.

The traditional feminization U-shape hypothesis has little empirical support in the case of Pakistan. Therefore, the Government of Pakistan should enhance the enabling environment for females through the provision of better job opportunities, technical skills, on-the-job training and social security benefits during all phases of economic development.

The conventional approach of testing U-shape is insufficient. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, therefore, this study incorporated a wider data set in a time series that is less evident, an advanced methodology SLM U test (2010), to validate the feminization U-shape hypothesis in Pakistan for the first time.

The context of sustainable development dwells, quite significantly, upon the one of gender parity in a society and nation. This is so because the issue of gender equality is key to distributive justice, which is in turn much essential for creating a good amount of precondition for sustainable development. Academic inquests into the problem into the gender disparity are indicative of how gender disparity on economic and social parameter triggers a negative productivity change over time and space. Thus, the current chapter brings forth an analytical approach to contemplating into the above-mentioned narratives in both theoretical and empirical terms. The tack of our analysis is as follows. To begin with, this chapter develops an index to determine the extent of gender disparity in health, education and participation in workforce (namely, Gender Gap Index or GGI). Moving on, the study extends to looking at India changing dynamics on gender gap vis-à-vis developing and less-developed countries. Besides, a general equilibrium model has been developed to unfurl the fallout of gender disparity in terms of the wage gap between male and female workers in the labour force, extant and conditioned further by demographic and sociopolitical factors.

Little is known about gender relations in young African migrant families residing in Hong Kong (HK). This study aims to present a first-hand account of daily lived experiences of African international doctoral student couples residing in HK, with special emphases on their Africa–HK migratory motivations, perceptions of female-breadwinning status, the effects of HK Immigration policy on marital power structures and the influence of spousal relative statuses (“breadwinner” versus “dependent”) on couples gender role performances and decision-making participations.

This study used ethnographic method involving several indoor family visits, non-participant observations and 21 in-depth interviews in six African student families. Fieldnotes were taken and interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis.

Couples, especially dependent men, had a hard time deciding to migrate to HK for family reunion, unlike dependent women who willingly resigned to join their husbands in HK. Among the male dependents, the main reasons for migrating included anticipated economic returns, while women migrated in response to neolocal cultural expectations. Overall, patriarchy persisted – while men had the final say over key household decision-making domains, women remained primary performers of household chores, but manifested little bargaining power, restraining husband’s ability to spend family income when they are the family’s sole-earners. Women’s relative breadwinning status had very minimal significant impact.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of HK’s immigration policy on married African students’ migration motivations and the effects of female-breadwinning status on spousal gender relations in HK’s African student migrant households.

Even if digital financial services have a positive impact on financial inclusion, it creates a digital as well as gender divide within and across countries, creating regional disparity even within developing nations. Though pandemic has initiated digitalization of various services, there has been scanty research on whether digital transfer of income can improve digital financial inclusion in post-pandemic era, especially in developing countries. The purpose of the current study is to explain the regional disparity within developing countries from three regions East Asia Pacific, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, using latest World Findex data, 2021.

The author takes an instrumental variable approach to run bivariate probit model to find the factors that motivate the users to make digital payments.

The study observes that electronic transfer of wages, government transfers and remittances can motivate individuals to make use of digital mode of transactions and mobile. The practice of formal saving and borrowings are the prerequisites. However, this mechanism holds good for East Asia Pacific and not for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, which are poor in information and communication technology infrastructure. Women are lagging behind men, but digital transfer of wages motivate them to make digital transaction.

Digitalization of all government services and provision of affordable mobile network and internet services are necessary for regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In East Asia Pacific region, data protection, data governance and better regulatory framework are required. Higher female labor force participation with digital transfer of wages and empowerment with smartphones are key to reducing the Gender gap.

The current study corrects for the possible endogeneity issue, which the extant literature has not paid attention to, and provides region-specific and gender-specific policy recommendations for an improved digital inclusion.

Many European countries suspended mandatory conscription after the Cold War, and especially between 2000 and 2010. However, with the changing security situation in Europe, more and more countries are considering the re-introduction of the draft. That is why, it is important to evaluate the impact of conscription on draftees, including its effect on fertility outcomes. Additionally, fertility is of particular interest because birth rates have been below replacement levels in most European countries at least in the last two decades. This, combined with the increase in life expectancy, has contributed to aging population and raises concerns about the future economic prospects and sustainability of the continent. Military service could be related to fertility in several ways. Compulsory service for men would affect the marriage market and subsequently child-bearing outcomes. For example, men who serve in the military would have to delay higher education at least by a year, given that they plan to continue their education after high school. One possibility is that this leads to older men meeting younger women if partners meet at college. Alternatively, in case the partners know each other prior to the draft, service could delay marriage by up to a year due to the conscription, postponing planning and having children, and potentially having fewer children as women might be less able or less willing to have a child after a certain age. Finally, some men who plan and would otherwise continue their education might choose to not do so or to further postpone it once they disattach from studying during their service. For some men, this might influence their marital and subsequent fertility outcomes. In either of these scenarios, a draft or its suspension is likely to be connected to fertility.

This study examines the effect of the suspension of the draft in Spain in December 2001 on three fertility outcomes of men that would have been drafted in the absence of the suspension. The author performs the analysis in a difference-in-differences framework. Potential concerns and policy implications are also discussed.

The findings suggest that after the suspension of the draft, individuals started to have their first child earlier given that they decide to have children. Consistent with the overall time trend, they became less likely to have a child and started to have fewer children. However, the age at birth of the first child decreased while the number of children and the likelihood of having a child increased for men relative to women, after compared to before the suspension of the mandatory draft.

The author extends prior literature by investigating the effect of the abolition of compulsory military service in Spain in December 2001 on fertility. This is novel is several ways. First, to the best of the author’s knowledge, previous literature has examined the effect of this Spanish reform only on labor market outcomes prior to men's conscription. Second, even for other countries that terminated the compulsory draft, fertility has been under-studied, providing an opportunity for further exploration. Third, this analysis is based on rich Census data, representative of the population in Spain. Finally, given the inconclusive findings of previous studies for other countries and the proposed re-introduction of the draft in some parts of Europe, additional evidence of the effect of the conscription has important policy implications necessary for the evaluation of future military service policy decisions.

This study aims to assess the alignment of South Korea’s government-certified social enterprises (GCSEs) with prevailing social enterprise (SE) models, notably the entrepreneurial nonprofit, social cooperative and social business models delineated in the “Emergence of Social Enterprises in Europe” (Defourny and Nyssens, 2012, 2017a, 2017b) and the “principle of interest” frameworks (Defourny et al., 2021). Thereby, it seeks to situate these enterprises within recognized frameworks and elucidate their hybrid identities.

Analyzing panel data from 2016 to 2020 for 259 GCSEs, this study uses tslearn for k-means clustering with dynamic time warping to assess their developmental trajectories and alignment with established SE models, which echoes the approach of Defourny et al. (2021). We probe the “fluid” identities of semi-public sector SEs, integrating Gordon’s (2013) notion that they tend to blend various SE traditions as opposed to existing in isolation.

Results indicate that GCSEs do align with prevalent SE frameworks. Furthermore, they represent a spectrum of SE models, suggesting the versatility of the public sector in fostering diverse types of SEs.

The concept of a semi-public sector SE model has been relatively uncharted, even though it holds significance for research on SE typologies and public sector entrepreneurship literature. This study bridges this gap by presenting empirical evidence of semi-public SEs and delineating the potential paths these enterprises might take as they amalgamate various SE traditions.

This study aims to investigate the impact of seaport efficiency on economic growth in Ghana over the period 2006–2020.

Comprehensive methodology, diverse data analysis techniques, including Augmented Dickey–Fuller tests, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling and Granger Causality, were applied to explore the intricate relationship between Seaport Efficiency and Economic Growth.

The findings reveal a statistically significant and positive association between seaport efficiency and GDP, underscoring the crucial role of efficient seaport operations in actively stimulating economic growth. Beyond seaport efficiency, influential factors such as capital, human capital, knowledge spillover and productive capacities were identified, contributing to the dynamics of economic growth.

The Granger Causality Test solidifies seaport efficiency as a robust predictor of GDP fluctuations, emphasizing its significance in economic forecasting. Notably, this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge with its nuanced exploration of the intricate relationship between seaport efficiency and economic growth in the specific context of Ghana.

This study’s implications extend beyond academia, offering invaluable guidance for policymakers and planners. It serves as a comprehensive roadmap for informed decision-making, emphasizing the pivotal role of efficient seaports in charting a trajectory for enduring and resilient economic progress in the nation.

While the broader theme has been explored in existing literature, the uniqueness of this study lies in its specific application to the Ghanaian context. The choice of Ghana, a nation where maritime transport handles over 90% of trade, underscores the significance of understanding seaport efficiency in this regional and economic setting. The study’s originality is reinforced by incorporating diverse economic variables, aligning with recommendations for a comprehensive analysis of factors influencing port performance.

This paper explores whether data back the claim that imports of armaments are inherently bad for economic growth. Regardless of one's point of view, the production and trade of weaponry is a significant industry with serious economic implications that warrant investigation. The financial repercussions of military spending have been extensively studied, but the economic effects of arms importation remain unknown.

This study adopts a pooled mean group approach to investigate the nexus between arms imports, military expenditure and per capita GDP for a balanced panel of twenty-five of the top arms importers in the world from 2000 to 2021.

The authors find that arms imports and military spending negatively impact GDP per capita in the short run, but military spending is beneficial over the long run. The authors also used the Dumitrescu Hurlin Granger causality test, which revealed a unidirectional causation between per capita GDP and military expenditure, and a unidirectional causal relationship from military spending to arms imports.

This paper is deficient in a few aspects: first, it looks at only those countries comprising the top 70% of arms imports. Second, it omits many political, technological and legal factors that impact arms imports and military expenditures.

This paper looks into the impact of defense spending and arms imports on economic growth for twenty-five nations with the highest share of arms imports in recent times. It is a significant addition to the literature as it resolves the debate of whether or not the military expenditure is wasteful and whether arms imports significantly harm the nation's economic growth.