South Asian Journal of Social Studies and Economics

Traditionally, Small businesses in Nigeria find it particularly difficult to fund their operations from formal sources. The situation becomes more challenging when women are involved because of cultural bias. Credit is rarely made available to women as many perceive a business run by women a big risk. Several government credit intervention programmes in the past were initiated but the problem of financing remained unsolved. Similar businesses in more developed economies are turning to innovative financing known as crowdfunding. The need to explore such a financing mechanism in Nigeria is the aim of this study. We employed a cross-sectional and retrospective mixed-methods approach, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data. Findings from this study show that gender was not significant for understanding crowdfunding as a means of raising money from the public over the internet. This finding is very revealing as it shows that cultural barrier faced by women in accessing credit from traditional lenders will be solved by crowdfunding.

The focus of this study is to assess rice production in the different category of farms in Bangladesh. The relevant data were collected from secondary source collected by International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) under the Village Dynamics Studies in South Asia (VDSA) project. A total of 280, 318, 365 and 349 sample farmers were selected for the years of 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively and the selected farmers were categorized into marginal, small, medium and large categories. Descriptive statistics were used to measure the profitability of rice production. In the study areas, rice farming was profitable for the selected  years for all category of farmers but large and medium scale farmers received more profit than small and marginal farmers. Per hectare net return from rice production by small farmers was Tk.31324.28 in 2009 and Tk. 21776.97 in 2012 which provides a decreasing picture of profit for them. Cobb-Douglas stochastic cost frontier analysis was used to measure economic efficiencies. The regression result shows that estimated values of the relevant coefficients i.e., fertilizer cost, machinery cost, human labour cost, seed cost and herbicides cost had the positive and significant impact on the gross return of rice production and the coefficient of pesticide   was negatively significant. So, there is a scope for increasing return from rice production by increasing human labour, seed, fertilizer, machinery and herbicide uses since the coefficients of these parameters were positive and significant. The study will help to policymakers  for the development of all category rice farmers especially the small and marginal farmers of Bangladesh.

This research work focused on economic determinants that contribute to Commercial Banks Branches Expansion in Nigeria from 1988–2016 covering 29 years. This study used secondary data extracted from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin, 2016 and the Poisson Regression Analysis was used in the analysis. Based on the analysis from this work, it was discovered that there was a strong relationship existing between commercial banks branches expansion, population growth rate, bank assets, savings deposit and gross domestic product growth rate. Therefore, this study concludes that population growth rate, bank assets, savings deposit and gross domestic product growth rate influence commercial banks branches expansion in Nigeria. Finally, a recommendation was made that commercial banks management should consider these factors- population size of the area of interest, the bank asset, savings deposit and economic activity of the area of interest before the location of a branch.

This paper estimated the areas of main cereal crops in Egypt (Wheat, Maize, Rice) supply response of farm price, area harvested and net revenue by using Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) methodology to define the integral relationship between the dependent variable and independent variables, both in the long and short-run, in addition to determining the magnitude of the impacts of all dependent variables on the dependent variable, Main findings indicate that farmgate price has a statistically significant impact on wheat, maize and rice cultivated areas. Impact of yield on wheat cultivated area proved insignificant, while proved statistically significant on maize and rice cultivated areas. Impact of net revenue on wheat and maize cultivated areas were significant but was insignificant in case of rice. Applying ARDL bounds test revealed a long-term relationship between all variables in the model for wheat, but not for maize and rice, the study used the data during the period (2000-2017).

Aims: This paper reviews the body of evidence on gender and agriculture and gender and enterprise (including farm enterprise) development in developing countries.

Results: The resurgence of interest on the influence of gender and its subsequent mainstreaming into social and economic programmes and in particular, agricultural policy and practice, is largely a development of the 1990s and beyond. The extant body of literature on gender and agriculture is dominated by the liberal feminist construction that women are the disadvantaged group regarding resources such as time, assets (particularly land and credit) and household burden,Agricultural development would be facilitated if both men and women have equal access to resources for use in agricultural work.

Conclusion: There is no unique pathway for bringing this about nor are there singular notions of success. Indeed, gender issues should be integrated into the agricultural enterprise from the beginning on the back of broad-based needs assessment schemes.

Recommendation: The range of gender issues requiring intervention should include progressive identification and systematic dismantling of socio-cultural, ideological, institutional and legal barriers to equal participation of men and women in agricultural enterprise, orientating and skilling extension workers on gender issues and developing women and men cadre in extension services to cater to the specific needs of each gender and creating equal opportunities in education, employment and politics taking account of the realities of both gender.