Journal of Economic Structures

In this paper, the time–frequency dependency of political risk as well as economic and financial risks is explored in Venezuela using quarterly data from 1984Q1 to 2018Q4. The present study uses the wavelet coherence technique, which allows the investigation of both the long and short-term causal relationships between political risk and economic and financial risks in Venezuela. The findings of this study indicate that: (i) significant vulnerabilities in political risk, economic risk, and financial risk are observed at different time periods and different frequency levels; (ii) political risk has a strong power for explaining economic risk from 1995 to 2005 in the long run, while between 1984 and 2010, economic risk and political risk are positively correlated at different frequency levels; (iii) in the long run, changes in political risk significantly lead to changes in financial risk in Venezuela.

This study aims to shed some light on the one of the most popular phenomena in the economics and finance literature—nexus between economic growth and financial development—for the case of Greece over 1990Q1 to 2018Q4 within the framework of risk. In other words, this study investigates the causal link between financial risk and economic risk in Greece using wavelet coherence tests while answering the following questions: (i) does financial risk lead to economic risk in Greece and/or does economic risk lead to financial risk in Greece, and (ii) if so, why? The wavelet coherence approach allows the study to capture the long-run and short-run causal linkages among the time series variables since the approach combines time and frequency domain causalities. The findings from wavelet coherence supports the Schumpeter hypothesis since the findings proves that there is unidirectional causality from financial risk to economic risk in Greece (i) between 1995 and 1998; (ii) between 2003 and 2013; (iii) between 2013 and 2017 at different frequency levels. The findings clearly reveal how financial risk is important predictor for economic risk in Greece over the period of 1990–2018.

Technical inefficiency persists in Ghana’s cocoa farms. Farm-level guidelines from empirical studies are essential to inform programmes dealing with this challenge and subsequently improves farmers’ welfare. This study evaluates the two-way effects of technical efficiency and welfare using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Conditional Mixed-process (CMP). The study reveals that, with no additional inputs, farmers have the potential of increasing their output by an average of 56% (overall technical efficiency) with mean pure technical and scale efficiencies estimated at 76% and 58%, respectively. Observed inefficiency in the Ghanaian cocoa farms is due to both inefficient utilization of inputs and farmers’ inability to operate at the most productive scale size. Furthermore, findings from the study indicated that improved technical efficiency and welfare of smallholder cocoa farmers are crucial for the sustainable growth of Ghana’s cocoa sector as farmers’ efficiency and welfare significantly complement each other. In other words, improved welfare enhances technical efficiency, and higher technical efficiency score translates into better welfare. Hence, farm-level policies such as inputs subsidy programmes, training farmers on the proper application of agrochemicals, among others to enhance farm efficiency should be strengthened since efficiency is tied to household welfare. Moreover, investment in education targeted at farmers to improve their managerial and technical capacities will enhance their ability to optimize the operational size of the cocoa production system, and subsequently improve their welfare.