Assessment of major requirements for accessing credit among paddy farmers in Jigawa state, Nigeria

This paper examined major credit requirements of financial institutions in providing credit to paddy farmers of Jigawa state, Nigeria. Data were collected in 2019 from three selected paddy farming local government areas of the state. A total of 120 respondents were randomly selected through a multistage sampling technique, and a questionnaire. The binary logit model and the marginal effect were applied in the analysis. The results indicated that paddy farmers' educational level, family size, and guarantor requirements were statistically significant on access to credit, with their P-value signifies 0.041, 0.060, and 0.000, respectively. While, farm size, administrative process, collateral requirement, interest charge, and principal repayment duration were insignificant on accessing credit. Failure to address these problems may continue to worsen the Nigerian government's effort on food self-sufficient and poverty alleviation. The study suggests similar research to consider more years to see the impact in the long term. The study further recommends credit providers to modify the guarantor requirement and to delegate a staff who can translate and guide the applicants on how to fill the credit application forms

Low-power radio-frequency excitation as a plasma source in a Penning–Malmberg trap: a systematic study

A novel method was experimentally demonstrated to produce a low-density electron plasma in a Penning–Malmberg trap, exploiting the static electric and magnetic confinement fields together with a periodic excitation with amplitudes as low as 0.5–5 V and frequencies in the MHz range. This unusual technique proved to be applicable as a replacement for conventional electron sources in Penning devices and presents interesting aspects both in terms of basic science and technological applications. Nevertheless, the experimental observations demonstrate the high sensitivity of plasma features of interest (charge, mean density and density distribution) to the experimental conditions, namely trap configuration and excitation parameters, and as a consequence clear trends have not been identified so far. We present an experimental campaign of measurements where several parameters were systematically changed leading to a better assessment of the plasma production mechanism and to the identification of common trends.

Deferral and Repatriation: A Proposal to Encourage Repatriation of Offshore Income

ABSTRACT The need for U.S. tax laws to encourage and reward repatriation of offshore income is stronger than ever. We propose an approach that will penalize retaining earnings overseas, while rewarding entities that undertake a repatriation policy. The reward structure requires an accountable use of the repatriated funds for designated investments that further the economic needs goals of the U.S. Under our proposal, an interest charge would be assessed on unrepatriated offshore profits and would be reduced as various remission targets are met. The dividends-received deduction on repatriated earnings would increase as various remission and usage targets are met. A clawback provision would require the taxpayer to repay tax benefits received if there is a subsequent failure to meet the usage targets. The potential difficulties of operationalizing our proposal are identified and considered. A combination of the strategies developed in this proposal, perhaps in concert with features of other proposals, would encourage participating corporations to modify their cash management plans in ways that would provide a sustainable boost for the U.S. economy while also increasing tax revenues.

Spectrum Auction and Investment in Telecom Industry: A Suggested Policy

Recently, Indian telecommunication industry has passed through an auction process of 3G spectrum, which has enabled the government to collect hefty license fees. The successful bidders are expected to borrow this bid amount from the commercial banks and repay from the revenue to be generated from the new services. This paper looks at this issue theoretically. The telecommunication firms operate on the basis of acquisition of airwave space, which is licensed by the government. The usual policy practice is to distribute the available spectrum by an ascending auction. As per the economic theory, auction has two merits. Firstly, auction ensures that spectrum goes to the most efficient firm, which is by definition the firm that makes the maximum profit among all. This firm by virtue of their maximum profit bids the highest amount in the auction and gets the spectrum. Secondly, spectrum auction ensures revenue maximization of the government. This result of efficiency optimization however holds under the assumption of perfect information and no uncertainty. Uncertainty and irrationality like over-optimism can lead to problems like ‘winners‘ curse' or ‘broke winners’ under auction. Still auction is market-based and less controversial than discretionary distribution. However, this paper argues that high amount of auction bid can result in several deficiencies in the telecom industry. An issue of debate is whether high auction bid will result in higher price for the services. Under the assumption of infinite time horizon, high license fee is a sunk cost and therefore does not raise price. But this paper shows that a high license fee can raise the lending bank�s interest charge for which not only price rises but the infrastructural investment in the telecom industry suffers. After the acquisition of spectrum through auction the industry needs infrastructural investments to roll out the quality services. Inadequate investment in infrastructural activities like procurement of quality equipments, erection of tower, etc., may result in lower quantum of services with degraded qualities. This is in fact a reality in India where not only rural telecom infrastructure is vastly inadequate, the urban telecom infrastructure is also under severe stress. In this paper, using the tool of game theory we show how capacity and quantity choice game of firms ends up in high auction bid and sub-optimal investment on infrastructure. Then how can the social planners simultaneously achieve the twin objective of growth and revenue maximization? The paper shows that these objectives are realized if a part of the license fee is spent for the subsidization of infrastructural investment in the telecom industry.

Leverage and the Cost of Capital: Some Tests Using Nepalese Data

This paper is devoted to test the MM’s propositions about the relationship between leverage and cost of capital in the context of Nepalese capital markets. The main objective of the study is to determine whether the firms' overall cost of capital and cost of equity decline with the increasing use of leverage. The results showed a negative but insignificant beta value of the relationship between leverage and the overall cost of capital. Therefore the leverage may not be regarded as contributing variable to the cost of capital function for Nepalese firms. But finding contradicts with the traditional approach of the capital structure theories. It is further concluded that the cost of capital declines not only with leverage because of the tax deductibility feature of interest charge. The relationship between the cost of equity and leverage is also strongly negative. Besides leverage, the size, and D-P Ratio are other important variables that affect the cost of capital in Nepalese context.Journal of Nepalese Business Studies 2006/III/1 pp. 85-91