Government and private sectors electronic transfer practices and financial inclusion in the economic community of the West African States

أكتوبر 04, 2020

Ibrahim Niankara

Relying on a pooled-cross-sectional panel of the 2014 and 2017 Global Findex data, and a Random Utility Theoretic Model for revealed financial preferences data analysis, this paper examines the impact of government and private sector electronic transfer practices on financial inclusion, in terms of individuals’ ability to save and borrow within the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS). For sensitivity analysis, we adopt a sequential empirical strategy in which we estimate and contrast four specifications of the saving and borrowing processes. Overall, our findings are stable across all specifications and show that along with socio-economic factors such as age and income, public welfare transfers and employment based salary transfers foster financial inclusion by significantly raising individuals’ marginal propensity to save (MPS) (by 11.6% and 12.9% respectively) and marginal propensity to borrow (MPB) (by 12.6% and 8.2% respectively) within ECOWAS. We found however that within ECOWAS, both MPS and MPB have decreased by 21.4% and 7.2% respectively between 2014 and 2017. Therefore, in addition to other economic growth promoting fiscal tools in the government toolkit, mandates on public (government to citizens) and private (Business to citizens) electronic financial transfers are significant policy leverages for improving financial inclusion and growth within ECOWAS.

Pooled cross-sectional panel of the 2015-2018 PISA student questionnaire data files for the evaluation of youth related strategies implemented under the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development

أكتوبر 04, 2020

ibrahim niankara

This data article is a follow up to the cross-national data on the environmental affection and cognition of adolescent students of varying levels of interest in ecosystem services and sustainability [1]. The data is being provided as a pooled cross-sectional panel of the 2015 [2] and 2018 [3] publicly released student questionnaire data files from the Programme for International Student assessment (PISA). The 2015 cross-section was used in the studies “Interest in the biosphere and students’ environmental awareness and optimism: A global perspective” [4] and “Scientific media dieting and students’ awareness and expectations about the environmental issues of deforestation and species extinction in the Middle East and North America: An integrated cross cultural ecologic-economic analysis” [5]. The present article presents key information and indicators on the world youth population before and after United Nations (UN) country members’ adoption of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in 2015. In doing so, it provides about a five year window of facts and figures, which can be used by researchers and policy makers to evaluate the effectiveness of early stage implementation of SDGs strategies in relation to youth education, access to information and communication technologies (ICT), and well-being worldwide. The presented data covers 409747 youth respondents distributed across 46 countries, 199511 of the respondents are from the 2015 cross-section, and the remaining 210236 from the 2018 cross-section. The data is further supplemented with spatial metadata containing the geographical coordinates of each of the covered 46 countries, which can be used for spatial Analysis and econometric modeling as illustrated in the present data article.

Data for the Regional and Provincial Analyses of Households’ Economic Well-Being in Burkina Faso.

أكتوبر 04, 2020

Although household and business surveys generally collect regional codes, indicators are usually not tabulated by that dimension in international comparisons [13], as a result information on the extent of regional disparities or dispersion within countries is often unavailable [11]. This is why a call was made for collaboration between international organizations and G20 countries and partner countries to make regional data available, by advancing on methods to make microdata more accessible for progress [12]. The present data article inscribes itself within this context with the aim of bridging the above highlighted data gap. We achieve this by capitalizing on the 2014 Burkina Faso’s National Survey on Households Living Conditions, to provide regional and provincial levels aggregated households’ welfare indicators, along with socio-economic and demographic characteristics in Burkina Faso. The presented welfare extract, which covers 10411 households distributed across 45 provinces, and grouped into 13 administrative regions, is further supplemented with geospatial meta-data for analyses in the space dimension.