Land grabbing and resistance of indigenous landowners in Ibadan, Nigeria

The focus of existing studies on land grabbing in Nigeria has been on acquisition by foreign investors for their socio-economic gain, usually supported by the national government. However, narratives on land grabbing by government through the Land Use Decree and the consequent resistance deployed by the indigenous landowners are scarce. The Accumulation by Dispossession theory and an exploratory design were combined with qualitative methods to gather data from 41 participants through a combination of key informant and in-depth interviews and focus groups in Ajoda New Town. Data were ethnographically and content analysed and findings revealed that locals resisted government activities consequent upon their exclusion from compensatory and resettlement activities promised by the government. Displacement from patrimonial inheritance led to resistance, though government claimed it discharged its financial and moral responsibilities. Resistance took the form of violent, economic and civil protests.

The Effectiveness of TCL

The challenge for TCL lies in balancing the five interests associated with commodity activity—control, participation, preservation, development, and economic gain. Whereas our account of the application of TCL within the commodity governance matrix above has demonstrated which of these objectives the individual norm subsets are seeking to foster primarily, the subsequent assessment will focus on the balancing quality of TCL. Where it strikes a balance, it can be deemed to be effective in ensuring a functional commodity sector.

The Architect-Craftsperson

The scarcity of craftsmanship in our society is the result of modernist philosophies that celebrate mass production, mechanized industry, exponential economic gain and a corporate/developer-led economy. This relatively recent rupture in thousands of years of human history has led to the loss of generations of valuable knowledge and of an understanding of life stretching beyond material face value. A reconciliation between the traditional values of craftsmanship and contemporary technological advances has been at the core of my practice for over three decades. Here, the need for the “Architect Craftsman” is presented as an alternative approach to the egocentric modernist figure of the “Architect Artist” that has in recent times so widely informed our ways of building.

Determinants of the Economic Vulnerability of Businesses to Pandemics and Similar Events

After providing a general overview of factors that make businesses economically vulnerable to pandemics (such as COVID-19), this article identifies specific elements that increase the vulnerability of businesses to pandemics. These specifics include the extent to which the demand for their production declines, how easy it is for them to reduce the costs of their production (cost escapability), the importance of disruptions or breaks in the supply chains of inputs utilized by businesses, and their ability to sustain their liquidity. Businesses that rely on personal contacts for sales are especially threatened, for example, those in the hospitality and tourism sector. However, others are also vulnerable for the reasons given. Nevertheless, some businesses do gain as a result of pandemics and similar events. Their economic gain adds to GDP. However, it could be more appropriate to regard their gains as a part of the cost of a pandemic rather than a benefit of it. The effect on the vulnerability of businesses if government policies designed to control pandemics is also considered. The main original contribution of this article is to show how the microeconomic theory of the firm can be adapted to conceptualize the vulnerability of individual businesses to pandemics, particularly COVID-19, while also noting the limitations of this approach.

China-Venezuela Relations: China Dilemmatic Options towards Venezuela Crisis and the Role of China Community of Common Destiny Principles in Maintaining Cooperation

Oil prices directly impact Venezuela's circumstance due to 95% of their revenue come from oil export. Since 2013, oil prices drop significantly compared to the previous year. Thus, the crisis hits Venezuela severely. The impacts not only feel in domestic level but also in international level. China is Venezuela's bilateral partner that was impacted by the Venezuela crisis. Venezuela failed to fulfill their oil export to China to pay their loan in the oil-for-loan diplomacy scheme. Thus, their cooperation failed to fulfill the economic gain. However, China still shows the action that favorable Venezuela. Backing up non-intervention toward Venezuela in the UN, provide new loan and adjust the payment of the previous loan also diversify their investment in Venezuela. This paper argues that this action is no more for merely material gain. But it is the action that is based on the newly ideational aspect of China's foreign policy, which is the China Community of Common Destiny. Thus, this research will analyze how this rhetoric idea involves China's action towards Venezuela. Also, this research will address their relations and China's diplomatic option toward their relations with Venezuela in crisis circumstances.

Evaluating the Economic Impacts of Improvements to the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Numerical Weather Prediction Model

Forecasts from numerical weather prediction (NWP) models play a critical role in many sectors of the American economy. Improvements to operational NWP model forecasts are generally assumed to provide significant economic savings through better decision making. But is this true? Since 2014, several new versions of the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model were released into operation within the National Weather Service. Practically, forecasts have an economic impact only if they lead to a different action than what would be taken under an alternative information set. And in many sectors, these decisions only need to be considered during certain weather conditions. We estimate the economic impacts of improvements made to the HRRR, using 12-hour wind, precipitation, and temperature forecasts in several cases where they can have “economically meaningful” behavioral consequences. We examine three different components of the U.S. economy where such information matters: 1) better integration of wind energy resources into the electric grid, 2) increased worker output due to better precipitation forecasts that allow workers to arrive to their jobs on time, and 3) better decisions by agricultural producers in preparing for freezing conditions. These applications demonstrate some of the challenges in ascertaining the economic impacts of improved weather forecasts, including highlighting key assumptions that must be made to make the problem tractable. For these sectors, we demonstrate that there was a marked economic gain for the U.S. between HRRR versions 1 and 2, and a smaller, but still appreciable economic gain between versions 2 and 3.

Effectiveness of Weather Based Agromet Advisories on Economics of Farmers in Gaya District of Bihar

Present study was conducted during Summer and Kharif 2020 across villages of Gaya district under the South Alluvial zone of Bihar to assess the usefulness of Agro-met Advisory Services (AAS) and to quantify the economic gain of farmers through adoption of advisory in their day-to-day farming practices. To achieve this, two groups of farmers were formed namely, a group adopting the agro-met advisories (AAS farmers) and other group not aware of agro-met advisories (non-AAS farmers). A total of 80 farmers (including AAS and Non AAS) were identified. The agro-met advisory were circulated among AAS farmers for Summer and Kharif season of 2020 and care was taken for proper implementation of advisories by this group. Expenditure incurred & crop situation of both the group of farmers were compared at every stage from land preparation to harvest and crop growth and yields were monitored regularly among them. Significant results were reported for crop growth and yield among the AAS farmers compared to non-AAS. AAS farmers have obtained a net income of Rs. 45188 and Rs. 37273 while, non AAS farmers obtained a net income of Rs. 26225 and Rs. 28510 for green gram and rice respectively. The AAS farmers reported 41.96 and 23.5 per cent of additional benefit in green gram and rice, respectively. The gain in additional benefit was due to management of crop according to agro-met advisory bulletins. Therefore, adoption of agro-met advisory bulletin based on past, current and future weather forecast is an effective tool for enhancing the net productivity and income.

Improved AdaboostM1 for Stock Price Prediction Using Multi-layer Perceptron to Integrate Weak Learners

Investment in the stock market is currently very popular due to its economic gain. Therefore, numerous researchers and academicians work is focused on financial time series prediction due to its data availability and profitability. Based on the literature it can be seen that various versions of the AdaboostM1 algorithm have been applied in the stock market either by tuning the algorithm parameters or attempting various base learners but the accuracy has not yet reached to favorable and reliable level. Therefore, this study proposes an improved version of AdaboostM1(ADA), which is implemented in the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis(WEKA) to predict stock market prices based on historical data. The improved AdaBoostM1 integrates the set of Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) predictors instead of using DecisionStumps, which is normally being applied. The enhanced AdaBoostM1 is named Adaboost with Multilayer Perceptron (ADA-MLP). As the result, the ADA-MLP was found to be outperforming the original ADA by 1.52%, in which the ADA-MLP achieved the CA of 100% on average while the ADA achieved 98.48%. Furthermore, the ADA-MLP was al