The emergence of agricultural cooperatives is extensively viewed as a necessary institutional arrangement that can help farmers in developing countries overcome the constraints that impede them from improving sustainable agricultural production and acquiring new marketing opportunities. Therefore, this study examines the determinants of cooperative membership and its impact on fish farm household income, using data collected from two regions in Ghana. An endogenous switching regression (ESR) model is utilized to address the potential sample selection bias issue. The results show that household heads’ decisions to join cooperatives are affected by their access to credit, off-farm work, education level, and peer influence. Cooperative membership can increase both household and farm income by 28.54% and 34.75%, respectively. Moreover, we show that different groups of households’ cooperative impacts on farm and household income are heterogeneous. Our findings highlight the importance of cooperative patronization and provide implications that can improve households’ welfare.

Purpose: In Covid-19 pandemic era when most households' members have lost their jobs and incomes, the government assistance and programs in ensuring household consumption smoothing is very significant. The main objectives of this study are to analyze the impact of government expenditure and free maternal healthcare (FMHC) policy on household consumption expenditure in Ghana in both long run and short run.Design/methodology/approach: They used the ARDL to estimate the impact of government expenditure on household consumption and Segmented Linear Regression to examine impact of FMHC policy household consumption using longitudinal data from 1967 to 2018.Findings: The results revealed that government expenditure had a negative and statistically significant effect on household consumption expenditure suggesting that government expenditure crowed-out private consumption in Ghana. Also, it was observed that before the implementation of the FMHC policy, there was an increase household consumption expenditure, but after the introduction of the FMHC policy, the study household consumption expenditure decreases significantly suggesting that FMHC policy has strong association with household consumption in Ghana.Research limitations/implications: Due to limited data availability, this study did not assess the impact of the FMHC policy at the household or district level. Also, Ghana has introduced a free senior high school education policy in 2017 so further research could analyze the implications of these policies for household consumption in Ghana at the micro-level using different estimation technique such as the difference in difference.Practical implications: The study suggests the need to increase public spending on basic social amenities and also extend the free maternal healthcare policy to all pregnant women especially those in the rural areas of Ghana as these have a greater impact on household consumption in Ghana. The findings from this study have important implications for household savings and interest rate in Ghana. The findings from this study also have important implications for both fiscal policy and healthcare policy in Ghana and other developing countries.Originality/value: To the best of my knowledge this is the first empirical study to examine the effect of government expenditure and free maternal healthcare policy on household consumption in Ghana.

This study aims to examine the determinants of public healthcare spending in Africa, focusing on the impact of pollution, debt servicing, birth rates, life expectancy, GDP per capita and urbanization. We employed the fixed effect, IV GMM estimation and panel data of 42 African countries from 2000 to 2021 to examine the association between real GDP per capita, crude birth rate, debt servicing, CO₂ emissions, population, urbanization and government healthcare expenditures. The study result indicates that real GDP per capita, CO₂ emissions and public debt servicing are the main determinants of government health expenditures in Africa. We again observed that income per capita and crude birth rate strongly impacted healthcare spending in upper-middle-income African countries more than in low- and middle-income countries. Additionally, CO₂ emissions have a more profound impact on healthcare spending in middle-income countries than in lower-income and upper-middle-income countries. Lastly, the association between debt servicing and health care expenditure is stronger for lower-income countries in Africa than for lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries. The outcome of this study has significant implications for macroeconomic and health policy not only for African economies but also for other developing and emerging economies. We suggest that African leaders adopt policies that lead to sustained growth in real GDP per capita, thereby stimulating healthcare spending. Governments should prioritize policies that curb CO₂ emissions and continue to remain creditworthy to external lenders to secure more funds needed to boost health infrastructure spending. While numerous studies have delved into the determinants of health expenditure, their focus has predominantly been on OECD and developed countries. Unfortunately, only a few studies have been done on African countries. Recent studies on the topic are scarce. The few recent studies on Africa related to the paper all seem to analyze how public healthcare expenditures affect health outcomes such as under-five mortality, life expectancy and maternal mortality. Our study is among the few studies analyzing the determinants of public healthcare expenditure in Africa.

The $20.81 trillion U.S. economy relies on a vast infrastructure network to thrive; however, empirical studies that examined that impact of infrastructure on economic growth in the U.S. are limited. This study’s principal objective was to examine the effect of railway lines on economic growth using annual data from 1980 to 2016 and cointegration analysis. The results showed a positive and significant impact of railway lines on economic growth in the long-run and short-run. The impulse response analysis indicates that shocks to railway lines initially cause GDP growth rates to increase and decrease continuously. The variance decomposition analysis also suggests that overtime, railway lines contribute largely to the variations in economic growth followed by inflation and population. This study’s outcome has important implications not only for the U.S. economy but also for developing and emerging countries. The results suggest that railway lines investments matter for economic growth in the U.S.

Purpose: This study analyzed the impact of monetary policy on unemployment in Ghana. In addition, the direction of causality among the monetary policy rate, the growth of the money supply and unemployment was performed.Design/methodology/approach: We used the vector error correction model and annual data from 1991 to 2020.Findings: The results show that the monetary policy rate positively and significantly affected unemployment in the long run. In contrast, money supply growth negatively and significantly impacted unemployment. However, in the short run, both the monetary policy rate and money supply growth had a negative and insignificant effect on unemployment. We also found that the adoption of inflation targeting reduces the unemployment rate. The causal analysis shows a unidirectional causality from the monetary policy rate to unemployment and from unemployment to money supply growth.Practical implications: The study suggests that the Central Bank of Ghana creates a conducive investment environment by lowering the interest rate to create more jobs, thereby decreasing unemployment. Second, currently, the mobile money business employs a lot of Ghanaian youths and serves many unbanked Ghanaian households. Thus, the Central Bank can regulate mobile money operations and use it as a medium to circulate money in the economy, thereby boosting aggregate demand and employment and eventually lowering unemployment. Thirdly, prudent and efficient management of inflation-targeting policy by policymakers is vital, as it has a negative impact on unemployment in the country.Originality/value: Most studies on Ghana have mainly focused on the effect of monetary policy on inflation and growth. To our knowledge, no study has examined the impact of monetary policy on unemployment in Ghana. Our study fills the gap in the literature examining the effect of monetary policy on unemployment in Ghana. The findings of this study have important implications for monetary policy and fiscal policy for Ghana and other developing countries.