The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and its associated technologies are revolutionising socio-economic sectors, including agriculture. This article explores the impact of digitalisation on African food systems. The article uses secondary and primary sources in academic and grey formats to examine how digital tools can shape agriculture and create new opportunities for developing Africa's food system. It identifies digital tools usable across the food system chain and explores their potential impact on food production, processing, storage, marketing, transportation, and consumption. The article also examines the challenges to transforming the digital food system in Africa. The article shows that while digital technology has the potential to increase food production, reduce food waste, and improve food marketing and distribution, several economic, political, and social challenges exist that frustrate digital uptake. It argues that African governments should enhance the capacity of actors in the food systems chain to adopt digital tools. This can be achieved through adopting relevant policies and rolling out digital infrastructure to enable actors to access it in their areas of operation.
The development of the nation’s economy is supported by the growing diversity and enthusiasm of interest among academics, particularly in the transforming procedures with an entrepreneurial orientation. The study investigates changing entrepreneurial-oriented practices and the performance of SMEs utilizing a cross-sectional survey amongst the four top grocery registered SMEs operating in Ikorodu local government division of Lagos State, Nigeria. The tool for gathering data is a questionnaire with two sections: bio-data and research questions. While 100 respondents formed the sample size proportionally selected from the study focus. Pearson correlation is the statistical tool for data analysis. The study reveals that creativeness and alleviation of business loss have a highly significant impact on SMEs performance; with pro-activeness having a weak, but positive relevance on SMEs performance. In conclusion, to further improve and optimize entrepreneurial orientation practices and adapt to future threatening changes, firms need to strengthen the desire for healthy competition, identifying and targeting the weaknesses of their competitors. It is recommended that more innovativeness should be sought after as guiding principles for capability and adaptability to handle the complexity of the ever-changing business surrounding, while involvement in risk-taking should be adopted with inevitable zeal and willingness to attain organizational growth and improved performance. Pro-activeness should be given adequate consideration to maintain and surpass existing performance as opportunities come but once. Despite study limitations, future researchers may need to enlarge the sample size and create awareness of research conducted on SMEs generally. Keywords: Change, Entrepreneurial orientation, Performance, Practices, SMEs.
Objective: This study aims to evaluate one of Algeria's key strategies for developing an entrepreneurial culture among university students in higher education, which is entrepreneurial education. It analyzes the number of files submitted by university students through the National Agency for the Support and Development of Entrepreneurship from 2013 to 2020, as well as the statistics on students who participated in the Entrepreneurship House from 2013 to 2019. Methods: The study evaluates entrepreneurial education as a strategy for fostering an entrepreneurial culture among university students in Algeria, based on the number of files submitted for establishing micro-enterprises at the National Agency for the Support and Development of Entrepreneurship. It also assesses the outcomes of activities promoting entrepreneurship by entrepreneurship centers in higher education institutions in 2019. Results: The statistics reveal that Algeria’s experience in teaching entrepreneurship in higher education is both recent and weak. This weakness is due to the limited role of educational programs in business plan preparation and their inability to keep up with scientific advancements. These programs also fail to equip students with the necessary knowledge, skills, and capabilities to start their own projects or invest in opportunities for small business creation. Conclusions: Developing an entrepreneurial culture in universities requires collaboration across various efforts. This includes the Entrepreneurship House, which connects students to the economic environment through awareness and training, university business incubators that provide support and funding, and student clubs and research labs that foster an entrepreneurial culture within the academic setting.
The positive impacts of fiscal policy could be undermined when accompanied by uncertainty. We examined the effect of fiscal policy uncertainty on economic activities in the provinces of Iran. It includes production, investment, unemployment, and economic participation of the active workforce in these provinces, taking into account the effects of economic sanctions imposed on the economy. We employed two types of shocks: fiscal level shock (representing fiscal policy) and its volatility shock (as fiscal policy uncertainty), which derived from a specified fiscal reaction function. We estimated a Panel VAR model using provincial data from 2003 to 2020. The results of the impulse response function indicated that following the impulse in the fiscal policy uncertainty, the response shows an increase in the unemployment rate in the short run, a decrease in the capital investment, and an increase in the inflation rate in the short and medium terms. In the medium and long term, the response indicates a decrease in GDP growth and a reduction in the economic participation rate of the active workforce.
Technological progress has transformed the payment industry. Although alternative payment instruments such as bank cards share some characteristics with banknotes, they are not direct competitors to cash. First, cash possesses unique attributes—its functionality without electrical power and its inherent anonymity. Second, statistical data indicate that the ratio of cash to M1 has stabilized at approximately 10% in recent years, primarily due to its substitution with demand deposits. In this paper, we model the demand for banknotes by incorporating technology-related characteristics alongside conventional theories of money demand. Our approach has important implications for central bank, particularly in liquidity management, currency issuance, effective management of physical currency, and continued investment in digital payment infrastructures. We adopt a macroeconomic perspective that considers banknote demand from both transactional and asset viewpoints. To this end, we estimate an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, which allows us to analyze both short-term and long-term coefficients within a framework of model uncertainty. A key focus of our study is the estimation of a payment system development index using logistic growth and Gompertz models, through which we assess its impact on cash demand. Our empirical evidence supports the notion of S-shaped growth in the adoption of payment technologies. The findings demonstrate that advancements in the payment sector have led to a significant decline in cash demand. Moreover, while increased real economic activity exerts a positive and significant influence on cash demand, a higher opportunity cost of holding cash has a pronounced negative impact.
The implementation of an effective tax system requires specific conditions, among the most critical being equity and efficiency. Taxation on income must align with the principle of the ability to pay; therefore, governments strive to set tax rates appropriately and impactfully. An disproportionate increase in income tax rates can lead to significant social repercussions on income distribution and public welfare. Consequently, calculating the optimal tax rate to maximize social welfare is deemed essential. This paper models the strategic interaction between taxpayers and the tax authority to achieve an optimal tax rate and identifies the factors influencing this rate. By designing a game among taxpayers, assumed to be uniformly distributed within the interval [0, 1], and evaluating the revenue generation of the tax authority, the paper delves into the game formulation and analyses the results. Findings indicate that the optimal tax rate exhibits an inverse relationship with the assessment rates set by investigating groups. Additionally, under specific conditions, the optimal performance tax rate has been determined to be 18%.
Innovation in developing platform businesses is very significant nowadays due to the importance of businesses and their role in economy. As businesses will use in future the collective wisdom and extra-organizational knowledge, applying open innovation in the businesses seems to be a must. The expert participants of the research are twelve specialists and managers of platform businesses. Reviewing the theoretical foundations, four factors were extracted from the opinions of experts: attraction capacity, networking and network management, knowledge and technical capacity, and collaboration capability. Taguchi experiment design method was used for determining the role of the factors. Four levels is defined for each factor (between 0 and 0.25 for level 1, between 0.25 and 0.50 for level 2, between 0.50 and 0.75 for level 3, and between 0.75 and 1 for level 4). Using Qualitek software sixteen scenarios extracted. For determining the optimal scenario, questionnaire and fuzzy Taguchi experiments were used. The results showed that the appropriate level of platform development indicators using open innovation should be at the fourth level (0.75-1) for all four factors. That is, all four factors impact drastically the development of platform businesses. Moreover, the results of variance analysis showed that the importance of the factors in the development of the platform are, respectively, knowledge and technical capacity (42.70% of participation), attraction capacity (24.37%) and networking and network management (21.09%), and collaboration capability (6.84%).
The exchange rate is one of the crucial and effective variables in the economy of countries and contributes to the current and future economic conditions of every country significantly and undeniably by impacting many economic variables. Thus, selecting an optimal exchange system is imperative for countries. This study has investigated effective economic and political factors in selecting exchange regimes in three groups of developing countries, i.e., low-income countries, lower-middle-income countries, and upper-middle-income countries in the 2000-2018 period using the logit panel method. The results showed that for the lower-middle-income countries, the escalation of the trade balance increased the likelihood of selecting a floating exchange rate regime, and the uptrend of the Human Development Index (HDI) decreased the probability of choosing a floating exchange rate regime. Concerning the lower-middle-income countries, the upsurge of civil liberties and HDI diminished the likelihood of selecting a floating exchange regime, and the rise of the inflation rate increased the possibility of choosing a floating exchange regime. Finally, considering the third group, i.e., upper-middle-income countries, the increase in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) made the selection of a floating exchange regime more likely, and the HDI elevation enhanced the probability of selecting a fixed exchange rate.
Objective: The tourism sector, a significant component of the global service industry, is vital for a nation’s economic development and income generation. Therefore, it is essential to ascertain the factors influencing the demand for this type of service. The main aim of this study is to examine the impact of exchange rates on tourism demand in Iran. Methods: This study examined the long-term and short-term relationships between Iran’s tourism arrivals and variables such as the exchange rate, political risk, and other factors influencing tourism demand, including inflation, foreign investment, oil revenue, GDP, and population, employing time series data from 1995 to 2024 and the Dynamic ARDL simulation method. Results: The results indicate that political risk significantly detrimentally affects Iran’s tourism demand, whereas the exchange rate has a notable positive influence. Since 2010, when the fourth round of sanctions began, political risk has escalated owing to internal and external conflicts, negatively impacting international tourism demand. Conclusions: The interplay between exchange rate variables and political risk was found to positively influence tourism demand. The increase in the exchange rate decreases the costs of tourism services, and also stimulates creative business endeavors in the tourism industry.
A developed financial system, which ensures the provision, allocation, and direction of resources toward productive economic sectors, is one of the key drivers of economic growth and development. On the other hand, given the low efficiency of various economic, productive, and social sectors, attention to total factor productivity (TFP) is fundamental for global competitiveness. Given resource constraints in the economy, improving this factor can enhance investment, optimize resource allocation, prioritize productive sectors, reduce costs, improve product quality, and increase value added in economic sectors. Accordingly, the present study aims to investigate the impact of credit on total factor productivity and the growth of value added in Iran’s economic sectors using the Panel ARDL approach and quarterly time series data from 2012Q1 to 2024Q4 (Persian calendar). The results indicate that real credit, real exchange rates, and real capital formation in machinery have a positive and direct impact on the growth of value added and total factor productivity in economic sectors. Specifically, credit in the industrial sector and exchange rates in the service sector exert the greatest influence on TFP and the growth of value added. Additionally, capital formation in machinery in the agricultural sector has the most significant impact on total factor productivity.
Nowadays, insurance is considered as an integral part of the financial system of every country. Insurance companies as important financial institutions in the capital market, in addition to risk coverage, play the role of financial intermediaries. As for-profit institutions, these companies must achieve profitability by implementing these two roles. For this purpose, this study aims to identify the factors that determine the profitability of Iran's insurance industry between 2011-3 and 2022-3 on a seasonal basis using the TVP-DMA model. The results showed that financial leverage variables, exchange rate, and insurance premium growth are, respectively, the most influential variables affecting the performance of Iran's insurance industry. Additionally, the results show that the manner and probability of these variables influencing the performance of the insurance industry over time is not constant and is influenced by factors such as the JCPOA agreement, withdrawal from the JCPOA, the continuation of the privatization process, the elimination of value-added tax in the insurance industry, and the change in the articles of association insurance companies, notification of the establishment of the general natural disaster insurance fund and the use of the capital market capacities of the insurance industry.
The exchange rate is a critical variable that impacts the economy in the international environment. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the two approaches to exchange rate determination outlined in the Law on Permanent Decrees of the Country's Development Programs under economic sanctions. The analysis involves a theoretical discussion of a set of mathematical equations and software results, obtained from the algebraic and numerical solving of a simulated version of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in the context of the international economy for a small open economy. The model is calibrated using the structural parameters of the Iranian economy. The criterion for evaluating the rule and comparing it with other policy options is the "stability" of macroeconomic variables, a key aspect of the Resistive Economy Strategy as the obliging basic document in economic policy-making and planning. The stability is quantified using the "Variance" index. Based on the results of this study, the adoption of the rule-based inflationary exchange rate determination approach, compared with the contingency approach to exchange rate determination, on the one hand, offers the possibility of achieving lower inflation rates and exchange rate growth pace. On the other hand, it will reduce the instability of selected macroeconomic variables, which is desirable from the perspective of the overall policies of the resistance economy strategy. Therefore, it is recommended that, in the presence of foreign economic sanctions, the economic authority should implement inflationary rule of exchange rate determination based on the current inflation rate.
