Oxen Plough Teams

Oxen-drawn ploughs are used for cultivating the land and weeding millet fields, allowing a much larger area to be farmed than would be possible by hand. This chapter presents the distribution of oxen and plough-team equipment between village households, alongside patterns of sales and purchases of animals and their costs. Alternatives to buying animals and equipment are investigated, such as borrowing animals, and hire of plough teams, before examining the difficulties faced by those households without their own plough-team. The costs of acquiring and maintaining a plough team, and flow of returns over a five-year period are presented. Returns to investment in a plough team are shown for the four household types, A, B, C, D, in terms of net-present-value and payback period, depending on choices made about expansion of land area cultivated over a five year period. The chapter explores the importance of joint investment in both a well and oxen plough-team, before turning to an assessment of risk to oxen plough-team investment, and the flexibility of capital held in this form.

Comparative analysis of the economic returns to management in single crop, fish, poultry and an integrated farming system in Obudu, Cross River State

A four year (2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019) field experiment was conducted to compare the economic returns to investment in single enterprise with integrated farming comprising of rice farm alongside with fish culture and poultry farm using mostly organic waste as feeds. In 2016 a rice farm was cultivated on a piece of land already procured for the experiment, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides were all applied. At maturity the rice was harvested, processed, bagged in 100kg bags and sold. Economic returns to management were calculated according to the methods of CIMMYT, (1988). In 2017, only fish farm was established, fed and harvested at maturity and sold to consumers. Economic returns to management were also calculated and recorded. In 2018, a poultry farm was established, 200 broilers were reared to maturity and sold, economic returns to management were calculated and recorded. Then in 2019, an integrated farm comprising rice farm, fish farm and poultry farm were all established in the same field. About 70% of the feeds used were organic waste collected mostly from poultry droppings. The silt from the pond was also used as fertilizer for the rice farm, while the rice bran was also fed to the poultry. The output from the farms were harvested and sold, and the economic returns to investment for each farm calculated. The result showed that the returns to investment were significantly (p<0.05) higher in integrated farming system than in the single enterprise farm, due to the low cost of production using low cost inputs in integrated farming compare to the use of high cost synthetic inputs in single enterprise. The paper therefore recommended that farmers should adopt integrated farming system with low cost inputs for higher profit than the single enterprise farming.

Returns to Investment in University Education - Economics Career at Continental University

The present work analyzes the returns to the years of superior schooling of graduates of Economics Career at Continental University within the labor market of the region Junín of the period 2019. For this purpose, the returns to education are investigated under the normal assumptions of Mincer's equation, and later the incorporation of the instrumental variable: school of origin is proposed, in order to correct the problem of endogeneity. Finally, to correct the problem of selection bias, Heckman's technique is used: two-stage regression. This consists of first analyzing the probability of accessing the labor market in the Junín region in terms of variables such as: geographic location, school of origin, age, direct costs. Subsequently, analyzing the return to years of schooling. Likewise, it is important to specify that in the modeling of the probability a second regression is estimated incorporating the variable Academic Grade in order to be able to study the Sheepskin Effect. The results obtained showed that the return to years of schooling is 0.8%, which is not significant and is not corrected for Heckman's selection bias. We also have that the R2 is 10.11% which is very low for this type of cross-sectional data. This result is explained by the degree of rootedness of the graduates in staying in the Huancayo province and the low migration to other labor markets. In addition, this means that they do not have better working conditions that can be transformed into higher income.

Some modules of poultry production in Kaduna State, Nigeria

Poultry production plays a very important role in providing Nigerians with one of the cheapest sources of animal protein. In spite of this great nutritional contribution, some degree of discrepancies exist between its demand and supply vis a vis other economic expectations. This paper evaluates and compares the profitability of four layer production modules using input-output data from secondury sources (research reports and field experiences) and primary sources (2002/2003 input and output prices in Zaria). The modules covered by this paper are: started pullets (0-8 weeks), point of lay pullets (9-20 weeks), commercial egg production (21 - 72 weeks) and full cycle layer production (0)- 72 weeks). Fixed and variable costs were estimated for 500 birds and deducted from gross returns to give the net cash returns. The major investments in the started pullets and point of lay modules were the cost of pullets, accounting for about 61% and 50% of the total cost of production respectively. Feed constituted about 71% and 86% of the total cost of production in the commercial egg and full cycle layer production modules respectively. The analysis also indicate that sales of started and point of lay pullets accounted for over 90% of the gross income from started and point of lay modules while sales of eggs accounted for about 86% of the gross return from the other two modules. Net cash returns were positive for all the modules considered. The returns to Naira invested per year were 0.75, 0.09, 0.14 and 0.16, for started pullets, point of lay, egg production and full cycle layer modules respectively. It is cvident from these results that modules with shorter production cycle tends to generate higher returns to investment, as more batches are turnout per year depending on the length of productiun cycle.

Natural Disasters and Economic Growth: A Semiparametric Smooth Coefficient Model Approach

Despite the fact that growth theories suggest that natural disasters should have an impact on economic growth, parametric empirical studies have provided little to no evidence supporting that prediction. On the other hand, pure nonparametric regression analysis would be an extremely difficult task due to the curse of dimensionality. We therefore re-investigate the impact of natural disasters on economic growth, applying a semiparametric smooth coefficient panel data model that takes into account fixed effects. Our study finds evidence that the coefficient curve of investment is a U-shaped function of the severity of the natural disasters. Thus, for relatively small disasters, marginal returns to investment decrease on the severity of natural disasters. However, after a certain threshold, the coefficient of investment starts increasing as natural disasters become more severe.

Declining returns to investment in tertiary education in Vietnam

The human capital theory in economics argues that education is an investment in human capital and that the acquisition of knowledge and skills would enable individuals to increase their productivity and earnings, and thereby contributing to economic growth. As an investment, education incurs costs and benefits at various points in time. To measure economic benefits of education investment by individuals, economists use the rate of return to investment in education. This rate of return should be positive and higher than that of alternative options to ensure economic benefits of education investment and motivate education decisions. Given that tertiary education attainment is costly to individuals and the society at large, highly positive returns to tertiary education matter for individual and social human capital investments being economically justified. In the present age of mass access to tertiary education, the pattern of declining returns to investment in tertiary education was observed in a growing number of countries that include Vietnam. This trend may avert individual investment in human capital formation, and thereby negatively affecting national economic growth and development. To contribute to addressing this problem, the current paper aims to analyse the factors that drive the decay in returns to investment in tertiary education in Vietnam. Based on the descriptive research method using descriptive statistics, we summarize key trends in tertiary education in Vietnam. We identify that the abatement in returns to tertiary education investment in Vietnam may be attributed to three main factors: (i) the expansion of education supply, in particular tertiary education; (ii) the economic downturn after the global financial crisis; and (iii) the mismatched quality of tertiary education. These findings are foundations for our suggestions on possible solutions to inform the tertiary education development strategy.