Novel hybrid intelligent framework is introduces by integration of GMDH neural networks with Web -based Text Mining (WTM) and GA and Rule-based Exert System (RES) in this paper for forecast iron price. Our research reveals that by employing hybrid intelligent fr amework for iron price forecasting, there is better forecasting results respect to the GMDH neural networks. Therefore significance of this study is to survey a hybrid intelligent framework for iron price forecasting.

Financial is the result of an organized process that is commonly referred to as money management or financial planning and control. Financial planning is the process of managing money to achieve economic satisfaction. This planning process allows for controlling financial situation. Every organisation has a unique financial position, and any financial activity therefore must also be carefully planned to meet specific needs and goals. A comprehensive financial plan can enhance the quality of organisation life and increase future needs and resources. The specific advantages of personal financial planning include Increased effectiveness in obtaining, using, and protecting your financial resources throughout your lifetime The objective of the present study was to study the financial planning and to analyze the financial control. The tools applied for this study are Additional Fund Needed, Breakeven Analysis, Index analysis etc, findings reveals that the additional fund needed was increased during the study period. The company has to reduce the additional fund needed, dividend payout ratio, plant capacity and in order to increase the retained earnings and profit margin. For most companies, planning and controlling is a necessary but painful process. Unfortunately, it is often a prolonged exercise that takes so long that the starting assumptions are virtually meaningless by the time the process is complete. Add to that the rapidly increasing need for reporting and controls, both from investors and to meet regulatory requirements. As per the above observations and analysis the company will have to improve its financial planning and control for the upcoming years.

Marketing of crops in Tanzania has been undergoing change. Direct sales from farmers to traders and delivery to the Primary Cooperative Societies (PCS) were in practice at different points of time. Since 2007, the warehouse receipt system was introduced in Tanzania. The warehouse operators accept the deposit of crops in the warehouses and provide a receipt to the farmers through PCS and the farmers receive a part of the payments through bank financing based on these receipts. This study was conducted to assess whether Warehouse Receipt System has made any contribution in improving smallholder farmers ‘access to financial services. The study used cross sectional design where 100 smallholder farmers in Singida Rural district in Singida region were covered. Quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to analyze the data. The results showed that the motives that were used to influence smallholder farmers to join WRS included price, access to credit and access to market, although, most of the farmers participate into WRS to access credit for agricultural activities. Moreover, level of farming technologies adopted found to have increased significantly after joining the WRS. Based on these findings, it is recommended to increase sensitization efforts among the smallholder farmers in order to enable the larger spectrum of the community members becoming aware of the WRS practice. Also, policy maker should deliberately intervene to strengthen the capacity of WRS.

The study investigated the nature and direction of causality among road transport infrastructure development, economic growth and poverty level in Nigeria. These were with the view to providing information on the extent to which road infrastructure development influence economic growth and poverty reduction in Nigeria. The study used secondary source of data collection of annual time series data from 1980 to 2012 and VECM techniques was adopted. The findings showed that, road transport infrastructure development and economic growth were the sources of poverty reduction in the long run (F = 5.7, p>0.05) and that poverty reduction and economic growth could influence one another in the short run (F= 3.0, p>10). Therefore, the study concluded that road transport infrastructure development and economic growth could be seen as useful policy as it has the potential to contribute to the pace of poverty alleviation and vice-versa in the Nigerian economy.

The theoretical relationship of the long-run equilibrium between real exchange rates and interest rate differentials is essentially derived from the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and the uncovered interest parity. However, empirical evidence on this long-run relationship has rather been inconclusive. While several authors are able to establish the long-run relationship between real exchange rates and interest rate differentials other could not found this relationship. The reason for lack of relationship in some of the studies is as a result of omitted variables (Meese and Rogoff, 1988). Therefore, attempt is made in this study to evaluate this relationship between real exchange rate and interest rate differential for the case of Nigeria by controlling for foreign exchange reserves. The paper uses monthly data for the period 1993:1-2012:12 and applies Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) model. The estimates suggest the existence of long-run relationship between real exchange rate, interest rate differential and foreign exchange reserves. In the long run, the exchange rate coefficient has a positive effect on the foreign reserves. However, the effect of interest rate differential is negative and statistically significant. On the short run dynamics, the finding indicates a non-monotonic relationship between real exchange rate, interest rate differential and foreign exchange reserves. The out-of-sample forecast indicates a better forecast using ARMA model as all Theil coefficients are close zero for all the horizons used in the model.

The quest for economic development and growth cannot be achieved in isolation. There is need for assessing capital for productive uses. Such capital cannot be sourced from domestic markets only, hence the need for the international capital market (ICM). Nigeria particularly has experienced gaps in the desired investment and locally mobilized savings; between foreign exchange requirements and foreign exchange earnings; and between target revenue and locally raised revenue. The major objective of this study is to ascertain the operations of the ICM and its effect on foreign private investment. The objectives could be tested and empirically investigated using the multiple regression model and correlation analysis. Data is gotten through both primary and secondary sources. Information from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin of various issues secondary data. The paper recommended that government should provide enabling environment for a stable, virile and predictable macroeconomic variables attractive for investment purposes; government should also provide genuine information to foreign investors and enterprises with respect to scope of investment opportunities in the country.

It is evident that financial services industry has been undergoing a profound transformation in Nigeria. Rapid changes in the banking environment, increased competition by new players from non-banking sector, product innovations, globalization and technological advancement-all these have led to a market situation in which the battle for consumers is intense. We look at the prospect and challenges of mobile banking services in Nigeria using four selected’ banks as case study, reviewed prior literatures on mobile banking, analyze the different factors that impact the market, and give direction for future research on this emerging field. A framework of four contingency and five competitive factors were proposed to facilitate the analysis. Factors affecting mobile services in Nigeria such interoperability, unstable power supply, network problems etc. were identified. Finally, we recommended that non–bank led model of mobile banking be adopted by Nigeria banks to make the services transformational instead of additives as is currently being practiced.

Purpose: Considering the mixed results of previous empirical studies with regard to how the real exchange rates affect bilateral trade balance, this study intends to test the presence of not only the nonlinear relationship but also the J-curve effect and Korea data from January 1985 through December 2013 is adopted. The findings are helpful for emerging countries to evaluate their exchange policy. Methodology: Unit root test, cointegration analysis and Vector Autoregressive Error Correction Model are adopted in this study. Findings: The results indicate that there is a co-integration relationship between real exchange rates and bilateral trade balance in both linear and nonlinear models and Korea-U.S. bilateral trade balance exhibited no J-curve effect when the Korean won depreciated against U.S. dollar. A performance evaluation proves nonlinear model is better than linear model. Recommendation: The findings help us to realize that depreciation has a limited effect on promoting trade balance. Sharp currency depreciation will hurt country’s trade balance.

This paper applies the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) technique to annual data from 1980 to 2013 to provide empirical evidence on the long-run relationship between export trade and economic growth in Malawi. The export trade in this study is disaggregated into services and goods exports. Thus, the paper estimated two models. The first model deals with the relationship between export of services and growth, and the other one determines the relationship between goods export and growth. While the paper finds no evidence for long-run relationship between export of services and goods on economic growth, the empirical results suggest existence of a short-run nexus between export of goods and economic growth in Malawi. The Granger causality test results have also confirmed existence of a unidirectional causality from goods exports to economic growth and another unidirectional causality from goods exports to service exports.

This study examined strategies for enhancing student’s enrollment into Home Economics Education in tertiary institutions in Edo state. The study was a descriptive survey. A total of 21 lecturers participated in the study. No sampling technique was adopted as all the 21 lecturers in the 4 tertiary institutions who lectures Home Economics Education in Edo State were used for the study. Three research questions were raised and answered in the study. A validated questionnaire was used for data collection while the weighted average mean was adopted for data analysis. Findings from the study revealed that there has been dwindling enrollment into Home Economics Education in tertiary institutions in Edo State. Some of the factors responsible for the state of enrolment are negative attitude of parents, poor institutional funding and low awareness of the relevance of Home Economics Education to the students. Strategies if adopted is capable of enhancing the enrolment were; increased funding of tertiary institutions by the government, provision of well equipped laboratories and libraries, creating awareness among parents and students, giving of loans to graduates of Home Economics to aid their business and students should spent longer period in industrial attachment. One of the recommendations proffered was that the existing tertiary institutions offering Home Economics Education should be properly funded by the government.

The growth and development of any nation is highly dependent on the level of infrastructure. Infrastructural decay has taken a big toll on the economic development of most Sub- Saharan African nations. This paper investigated the effect infrastructural decay on the growth of the manufacturing sector in Sub- Saharan Africa with particular reference to the Nigerian situation. The data necessary for this study were obtained from secondary sources. The results of unit root suggest that all the variables in the model are stationary. The ordinary least square regression with a coefficient of 0.92 revealed a strong positive relationship between the variables of interest. A co-integration test was performed on these variables to determine the long-run relationship between the variables. The results of causality tests suggest that electricity supply, transport infrastructure and inflation rate (the explanatory variables) jointly explain changes in the manufacturing sector performance. The result also reveals a one-way causation running from interest rate to manufacturing sector performance. The Johansen cointegration result reveals the existence of a common trend among the variables of interest. Electricity decay was found to have the greatest negative impact on the manufacturing sector’s financial performance and output followed by inflation and transportation. The government is therefore enjoined to continue the reform programmes across the infrastructural segments of the economy.

The objective of this article on information content of dividend announcement and stock price movement, using data drawn from oil and gas sector is to establish if there is any relationship between dividend announcement and stock price movement in the oil and gas sector in support/or not of signaling hypothesis in Nigeria. Using Event studies and back testing methodology. The research period is from 2009-2013.Result have confirmed that dividend change has a statistically significant value to investors. A dividend increase and dividend decrease resulted with a statistically stock price change in the same direction, but dividend retention resulted with no statistically significant stock price change.

The paper examines the impact of public sectoral expenditure on economic growth in Nigeria for the period 1981-2013. It was observed that the growth of government expenditure has not fully felt by the economy. The econometric methodology employed is the ARDL model and results show that while the impact of government expenditure on administration and debt servicing were positive on economic growth in the long and short run, expenditure on economic and social sectors has negative impact. We argue that this may not be unconnected with the high level of corruption prevalent in the public sector where funds that are meant for provision or maintenance of social-economic activities like agriculture, roads, transportations, schools and hospitals are diverted for personal use. The CUSUM and CUSUMSQ test show the model is stable as neither of them cross the 5% boundary. The paper recommended that government should increase expenditure to the social and economic sectors while debts or debt servicing should be reduced. Also, corruption so prevalent in the public sector must be minimized if cannot be eradicated.

This paper aims to assess the impacts of variables such as D/P, E/P and B/P which influence on the interest rate and risk of the securities listed. The result of this research reflects that such variables do affect the interest rate, yet the D/P and B/P do not follow the theory of risk and return. To a certain extent, such outcome indicates that Vietnamese investors care less about security’s dividend or book value in which they invest but majorly more depend on their own sensation and may end up getting themselves under control of institutional investors.

The main objective of this paper such as the Karachi Stock Exchange market development working capital management (WCM) on firm performance is to determine the impact. In this paper the chemical industry for the period 2009-2014 to 6 years for a sample of 22 firms Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) working capital management and firm performance of different variables used for analysis . Working Capital Management to measure the variables that were used in this study are the number of recovery days , days in inventory and size , leverage , inventory , equity , sales and gross domestic product (GDP) numbers are control variables. Firm performance measure used in this study for the dependent variable is the return on assets. Firm size is positively affected by the firm’s profits. Firms whose profits are high, their working capital firms are not interested in management and firm performance. The result of the study and working capital is negative relationship between firm performance shows. Is a positive relationship between size and profitability? Firm size is increased or decreased profit increased or decreased respectively. Moreover, profits and principles that support the pecking order used by firms are negative relationship between debts.

The purpose of this paper was to know the sustainable development goal 4 and find out the quality of education in Zambia. The quality of education was measured by the number of primary and secondary schools, enrolment of students, dropout rate, the equity indicators – gender parity index and student-teacher ratio and quality indicators like exam pass rate and infrastructure. The study concluded that the growth rate of schools under private/church/community was higher than the Government run schools during the study period. There prevails inequality between different provinces with regard to the availability of schools. The average annual growth rate in enrolment for grade 1-12 for female students was higher than the male students, whereas, in public universities the percentage of enrolment for male students was higher than female. The dropout rate was higher for female than male students, due to early pregnancy. The gender parity index increased due to the policy of the Government towards girls. To achieve the sustainable development goal for education, the study suggested that the teachers in rural areas should be provided better service conditions, education should be enhanced according to the needs of the economy and student loan scheme should be initiated by the banks and financial institutions.

This study investigates the impact of the introduction of index options on emerging market volatility in the context of Malaysia. Company specific daily closing prices for 29 listed companies were examined to determine the conditional volatility shifts before and after the introduction of index options. Multiple window periods are examined to avoid year-end effects.The exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) (1.1) model is used to determine the conditional volatility shift before and after the introduction of index options in Malaysia. The findings of this study suggest that the introduction of index options reduced market volatility in the Malaysia equity market at the 0.01 level of statistical significance. Further, this study contributed to extant literature because it uses company-specific daily equity price data and no such previous study exists on the impact of index options for this important emerging market. The study will be useful for academics, researchers, domestic and foreign investors and policy-makers, among others.

Good governance is essential for economic development as it enhances the effectiveness of economic policies undertaken by the government. The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between governance and economic growth in Africa. Using the World Bank governance indicators we construct a composite index to resume all the indicators in one variable that will be used to measure the impact of governance on growth. The main result of this study is that a change in the governance index of a unit is likely to produce an increase of 1.7% in real GDP. This result seems to be extremely important considering the shortage of financial resources in Africa. Improving governance seems to be the best and the less expensive way the boost economic growth. Thus, African countries need to strengthen their economic efficiency by promoting results-based fiscal management, improving their doing business environment and investing in education to improve the quality of human factor.

An important question amongst economists is: what is the impact of accession to the World Trade Organization on the economies of member countries? Using a comparative analysis, econometric approach, and data from Saudi Arabia, this study proves that trade patterns have changed in some areas and remained unchanged in others as a result of accession to the WTO. The study proves that accession to the WTO has resulted in a remarkable increase in trade share and that accession to the WTO has a positive and significant effect on economic activity.

In this paper, we examine the existence of the size effect in the Tunisian stock exchange (TSE) over the period January 2008 to December 2013 and we test the relationship between size and January effects. Thefindings reveal that there is a size effect in the TSE. However, we report that size and January effects are separateanomalies. More specifically, we document that average returns are found to increase with decreases in size.However, we find that small firms don’t significantly outperform large firms in January.

To analyze the factors affecting the price volatility of stocks, microeconomic and macroeco-nomic elements must be considered. This paper selects elements that are appropriate with the daily data of stock prices to build the GARCH family models. External variables such as global oil prices, consumer price index, short interest rates and the exchange rate between the United States Dollar and the Euro are examined. The GARCH models are developed in order to analyze and forecast the stock price of the companies in the DAX 30, which is Germany’s most important stock exchange barometer. The volatility of the residual of the mean function is the important key point in the GARCH approach. This financial application can be extend-ed to analyze other specific shares or stock indexes in any stock market in the world. There-fore, it is necessary to understand the operating procedures of their pricing for risk manage-ment, profitability strategies, cost minimization and, in addition, to construct the optimal port-folio depending on investor’s preferences.