Department of Economics and Commerce
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Item Do Hegemonic-Party Regimes Reward or Punish Voters? ATale of Distributive Politics in Tanzania(SAGE, 2022) Mugizi, Francisco M.P.; Pastory, ParesticoDoes resource allocation by the central government to local governments in Tanzania favour opposition or the ruling party’s strongholds? The literature advances two opposing theories – electoral competition and hegemonic party hypotheses. We use unique data on fiscal transfers and human resource allocations to investigate the effect of electoral support on government allocations. Contrary to the two hypotheses, we find no political bias in fiscal resources transferred to local governments. Similarly, we find no strong evidence to suggest any political bias in human resource allocation. On the whole, neither does the evidence confirm nor conclusively disconfirm the two hypotheses. The findings imply that hegemonic-parties do not necessarily opt for a discriminative strategy in intergovernmental resource allocations even after facing a threatening opposition. Flexibility in autocratic menu and the path dependence of government’s social policy are likely to explain this kind of hegemonic party’s allocative behaviour.Item Household Resilience to Food and Nutrition Insecurity during COVID‑19 in Tanzania(Springer, 2022) Mkupete, Mkupete Jaah; Donath, Livini Tesha; Mugizi, Francisco M. P.We examine food and nutrition security and the household’s ability to respond adequately to shock and stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we assess household resilience to food insecurity and its relation to future food security. We use two survey rounds collected during the pandemic–before and after the second wave of the pandemic– from the vulnerable population living in slums in Tanzania. The findings reveal that many households have low resilience to shock. We find that COVID-19 reduced access to food in 68% of the households and left about 30% without any food to eat. We also find that micronutrient consumption significantly declined among households who reported food insecurity following the second wave of COVID-19. We also find that the probability of experiencing food insecurity reduced with the initial resilience level. High resilient households have a higher likelihood of maintaining or diversifying more their diets even when are exposed to shock. The disruption of income-generating activities was found as a leading pathway through which COVID-19 affected household food security. The findings suggest that with persisting COVID-19 pandemic and the low level of micronutrients consumption, the nutrition of children and adult household members of the vulnerable population is at stake.Item Stronger together? Shocks, educational investment, and self‑help groups in Tanzania(Springer, 2022) Mugizi, Francisco M.PDo income shocks affect educational investment? Can self-help groups or Savings and Credit Cooperative Organizations (SACCOs) mitigate the impact of shocks on educational investment? Using nationally representative panel data from Tanzania, I find that educational investment suffers because of income shocks. On a whole, I find that income shock is negatively correlated with educational investment measured in per school-age child educational expenditure. However, I find no strong evidence to suggest that self-help groups and SACCOs buffer against income shocks. This suggests that locally available buffering mechanisms such as self-help groups and SACCOs do not necessarily help households to cushion against income shocks partly because many of the shocks affect most people in a given locality. Therefore, relying solely on the local mitigating mechanisms may not be a good option. This calls for a need to design policies that would enable households to insure themselves beyond their local insurance mechanisms. Public insurance and social safety nets programs may help households to overcome income shocks.Item Gender differences in formal wage employment in urban Tanzania.(UNU-WIDER, 2021-06) Mugizi, Francisco, M.P.This paper uses the latest Tanzania labour force survey—the Integrated Labour Force Survey—and a censored bivariate probit model to analyse gender differences in labour force participation and gender bias in formal wage employment in urban Tanzania. Our findings indicate that, compared to men, women are less likely to participate in the labour market and less likely to get formal wage employment, suggesting the existence of gender bias in the labour market in urban areas of Tanzania. However, after accounting for selection into labour force participation, the existing gender bias is narrowed for women with high school or university education. The regression results suggest that the existing gender differences in formal wage employment probabilities cannot entirely be explained by observable characteristics. The finding of a positive unexplained formal wage employment probability differential suggests that the possibility of gender discrimination against women in urban Tanzania cannot be completely ruled out.Item From conflict to conflicts: War-induced displacement, land conflicts, and agricultural productivity in post-war Northern Uganda(Elsevier, 2021) Mugizi, Francisco; Matsumoto, TomoyaItem A curse or a blessing? Population pressure and soil quality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from rural Uganda(Elsevier, 2020) Mugizi, Francisco M.P.; Matsumoto, TomoyaItem Analysis of Transaction Costs in Coffee Cooperatives: A Case of Arumeru District of Tanzania(2009) Mbise, MirauThis study assesses the capacity of co-operatives in reducing the transaction costs in Arumeru district, Arusha region. The main objective was to compare transaction costs between users and non users of co-operatives. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test were used to analyse the data. When the transaction costs from all aspects were added up and the means compared by using t-statistic, the result showed that transaction costs incurred by members and non-members of co-operatives don’t differ significantly. The study recommends the monitoring and evaluation of policies formulated to insure good performance of coffee production and marketing.Item The Determinants of Interest Rate Spreads in Developing Countries: Evidence on Tanzania, 1991-2009(2011) Mugizi, Francisco M.P.; Aikaeli, Jehovaness; Ndanshau, Michael O.A.The now market based financial system in Tanzania is characterized by relatively high interest rate spreads. This paper sought to establish relative importance of macroeconomic and regulatory factors in explaining persistence of interest rate spread in Tanzania during the period 1991:I - 2009:IV. A Cointegration and Error Correction Model (ECM) was used to fit the data for Tanzania. The results revealed the interest rate spreads in Tanzania were strongly influenced by net government borrowing from commercial banks, development of the banking sector, statutory minimum reserve requirement and the discount rate. Among others, the results suggest the importance of low discount rate and reduced or total dispense with reserve requirement as a monetary policy strategy to reduce interest rate spreads in Tanzania. Importance of price stability in financial deepening is also underscored by the results.Item Population pressure and soil quality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Panel evidence from Kenya(2020-05-01) Mugizi, Francisco M.P.; Matsumoto, Tomoya