Towards Industrialisation in Tanzania: Drivers and Barriers to Green Manufacturing

For the industrialization efforts to be fruitful and sustainable, they should be coupled with Green Manufacturing (GM) which simply implies clean manufacturing. This study analyses the drivers and barriers to GM in Tanzania. It specifically analyses the drivers and barriers to GM and ranks them for prioritisation. The study made the use of cross-sectional primary data which were collected using interviewer administered questionnaires from a random sample of 185 manufacturing firms in two purposively selected regions of Dodoma and Mwanza in Tanzania. In the analysis, the Binary Logistic regression was used to estimate the drivers and barriers to GM using the STATA software. The results showed that some of the significant drivers to green manufacturing include; firm size, firms resources, current legislation, incentives, and public pressure, The significant barriers included high short term costs, low customer demand, technological risk, lack of awareness and unclear benefits. It was also found that the highest ranked driver to GM was the firm size and the highest ranked barrier to GM was the short term costs. The study finally recommends that the relevant authorities should prioritize on the significant drivers and barriers to GM so that the move towards industrialisation in Tanzania can be more fruitful and sustainable.

Lay Explanation of Poverty During the Pandemic in Hungary

The paper analyzes perceived causes of poverty in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, Hungary, one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. Data collection was carried out in the second half of 2020 using consensus theory and the methods of systematic data collection. The aim of the research is to discover whether support for explanations which blame structural conditions is dominant in the public perception of poverty during the pandemic. From the research discussed it is clear that structural conditions are not dominant and that the poor are often seen as being themselves responsible for their unfavourable situation. The COVID-19 pandemic is not associated with a high support for the social type of lay explanations.

How Have the Subjective Poverty Lines and The Perceived Consequences of Poverty Changed During the Pandemic in Minnesota?

I examine how the subjective interpretation of poverty has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic downturn in St. Louis County, Minnesota, using comparative data from a data collection conducted before and during the pandemic. The data collection using cultural domain analysis asked information about the informants’ beliefs about poverty. I find that the importance of the main perceived consequences of poverty did not change significantly during the pandemic. In both Surveys, consequences related to material needs made up an important part of the items. A remarkable difference, however, is that the problem of perpetuated poverty is perceived to be more important during the pandemic. The subjective poverty lines did not change significantly during the pandemic either. The income level below which most of the people can be considered poor is between $ 14-15 per capita hourly net income on average. Three friends who are ready and able to help were enough to avoid poverty. Most of the large families are perceived to be poor when they bring up at least three children, while it was two children right before the pandemic. As for educational level, the poverty threshold was increased from 11th grade to high school graduate. It implies that if the individual did not graduate from high school, (s)he is more likely to become poor than before the pandemic.

The Effect of “Brexit” Uncertainty on The FTSE 100 Index and The UK Pound

We investigate the impact of the uncertainty surrounding the United Kingdom’s proposed departure from the European Community (“Brexit”) on financial assets. We conduct an event study around the November 14th 2018 draft withdrawal agreement. Our motivation was that the economic impact of the various political permutations that persisted throughout the negotiation period were both measurable and distinct. The probability of each Brexit scenario that was discussed varied over the political discourse. Using opinion poll data we investigate the event impact on both the FTSE 100 and the UK Pound. We found that, in accordance with existing academic evidence, asset prices discounted the weighted probabilistic economic impact of likely outcomes. We observe, however, that this impact was not as immediate as theory suggests. Interestingly, currency markets had the greater sensitivity. Our conclusions have important implications for the pricing of country risk premia in general and the European Union in particular. Key takeaways: 1) Asset prices were slow to discount the weighted probabilistic economic impact of Brexit risk. 2) Currency markets had the greater sensitivity to changes in Brexit risk. 3) Country risk premia can be impacted by perceived changes in custom union.

Attitudes About the Economic Impact of the COVID-19 Lockdown in the Republic of Croatia on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus in the coronavirus family that affect humans which causes COVID-19 disease. It was first detected in the town Wuhan in China at the end of 2019 and later spread all over the world. The first COVID-19 case in Croatia was detected on February 25th, 2020. Less than a month later, on March 16th, 2020, the Government of the Republic of Croatia declared a lockdown due to the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus in Europe, especially in the neighbouring Italy, as well as the increase of the number of patients in the Republic of Croatia. During the lockdown all business activities, except grocery stores, were closed and the economy slowed. On March 17th, 2020, the Government announced relief measures to support the economy in coping with COVID-19 epidemic, that include interventional procurement of critically important medical and sanitary equipment, delays in tax payments, purchasing of surpluses of potentially threatened business such as agricultural or industrial goods, measures to support tourism activities, as well as rationalization of public spending without measures for healthcare and social services. From April 27th to May 11th, 2020 the social and economic activity gradually started again. This research discusses how Croatian SMEs have been affected by the COVID-19 epidemic lockdown and answers some of the most important questions about the resilience of Croatian SMEs during the COVID-19 outbreak.