Bradford Scholars
Bradford Scholars is the University of Bradford online research archive. Access is free to anyone interested in research being conducted at Bradford. In the repository you will find a range of materials from journal articles and conference papers to research reports and theses.
Contact the repository team via openaccess@bradford.ac.uk with any queries about Open Access or how to deposit your research papers.
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Publication Assessing the impact of regeneration spending: lessons from the United Kingdom and the wider world(2008-12-16)The government increased the funding for regional development agencies to £2.3 billion in 2007/8, yet hard evidence on the effectiveness of the spending is difficult to find. Techniques for valuing benefits in difficult areas have existed for many years. They range from the hedonic methods and contingent valuation studies of environmental economists to the estimates of shadow wage rates used by development economists to take account of the economic value of additional employment. The latter have been used for years in some of the poorest developing countries in the world, as well as some countries in the European Union. Meanwhile some attempts to capture the indirect benefits of regeneration spending have surfaced through the United States with the ‘Social Return on Investment’ and Local Multiplier 3, yet the proponents of these approaches do not seem to have come across the abundant literature on the use of shadow pricing in the context of developing countries. This article attempts to explore the extent to which practices used and lessons learned in the economic analysis of environmental impacts and of investments in developing countries can inform the evaluation and appraisal of regeneration projects in the United Kingdom.Publication When prices change: consistency in the financial analysis of projects(1996)There are problems in practice with dealing with inflation and exchange rate changes in the financial analysis of projects. This paper reviews existing procedures for dealing with changing prices, identifies problem areas and explains how they can be dealt with. The approach is manageable in its complexity, comprehensive in its coverage and consistent in so far as possible with both economic and accounting disciplines. It is illustrated with an example of a productive sector project with a ten-year life cycle.Publication Regional trade institutions in West Africa: historical reflections(2018-11)This paper reflects on trade institutions across West Africa from the Empirehood to the present day. We found that regional trade institutions were more standardised across West Africa before the current countries gained their independence. We argue that reflection on past trade institutions could provide important guidance for policy makers currently involved in deepening the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Our review of the literature suggests that the Empirehood was an era with more standardised trade institutions across the region relative to the current ones. Societal norms and political consensus such as the ‘Mande charter’ and the coming of Islam created a discipline that enhanced confidence in the ability to trade, which was facilitated by common trade institutions such as convertible common currencies and letters of credit. During the colonial era, West African common currencies were also established to facilitate exchange. Historical changes in governance resulted in the loss of some facets of well-functioning trade institutions. This paper argues that historical context can provide policy makers with the confidence that current institutional barriers to trade can be addressed. ECOWAS members could reflect on historical good practices if they are to accelerate the integration process and to realise the full potential of regional trade.Publication Farmer-pastoralist conflicts in the Kilosa district of Tanzania: A qualitative study of stakeholder perspectives on causes, impacts and responses(2020)This study applies a qualitative approach in examining the stakeholder perspectives on the causes and impacts of, and responses to, the farmer-pastoralist conflicts. The study is primarily a response to the broader stakeholder concerns surrounding the farmer-pastoralist conflicts in the Kilosa district of Tanzania. The interdisciplinary approach and, more importantly, the environmental security and political ecology theories, were used for conflict analysis in a bid to determine the gaps in the existing body of the literature. Specifically, the study aimed at determining: first, the causes of the conflicts in question driven by the growing concern around the increasing land conflicts between farmers and pastoralists in the district; second, the impacts of the conflicts and respective implications to the causes and conflict management mechanisms; third, the relevance of the conflict management mechanisms in place. The study adopted a case study design drawing from a range of qualitative methods involving semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis for collecting and analysing the stakeholder perspectives obtained from the field. The study then reveals that farmer-pastoralist conflicts in Kilosa district are mainly grounded in the broader domestic and external socio-political forces. The escalation into violence, however, depends mostly on resource scarcity driven by climate change manifesting as drought. In this regard, the lone environmental scarcity-conflict nexus is found to be less significant in causing farmer-pastoralist conflicts in Kilosa, a finding underpinning the political ecology’s structural influence. The study finds that the use of multistakeholder bricolage institutions is more relevant for addressing these conflicts in Kilosa district.Publication Shadow pricing agricultural projects: an approach using unknown parameters(1990)The ‘Modified UNIDO Approach’ to economic analysis of projects is described. It was used in Tanzania when no national parameters were available for shadow pricing. The main features are: the choice of a domestic price numeraire; the use of cost breakdowns rather than composite conversion factors, and their application on a year-by-year basis rather than to present values; the treatment of the shadow exchange rate as an unknown and the presentation of results as a matrix of NPV values relating to different combinations of parameters; and calculation of the domestic resource cost of foreign exchange to rank the efficiency of projects in earning or saving foreign exchange.