What explains the technical efficiency of banks in Tunisia?Evidence from a two‑stage data envelopment analysis

In this study we examine the potential determinants of technical efficiency for the Tunisian commercial banking sector over the period of 1995–2017.First,we estimate banking technical efficiency with a radial and non-radial bootstrap data envelopment analysis.For the radial technique,we use an input-oriented approach and for non-radial we use the Range Adjusted Measure(RAM).Second,we use a double bootstrapping regression technique to estimate the influence of a set of eventual determinants on technical efficiency.Finally,based on all possible regressions,we gauge the overall effect of each determinant.Our results reveal that the input-oriented and RAM approach gave somewhat similar results.We found that the return on equity,the expense to income ratio,the loan to deposit ratio,and the growth rate are insignificant to Tunisian banking technical efficiency.In particular,banking technical efficiency increases with capitalization and inflation,whereas,it decreases with size,number of bank branches,management to staff ratio,and loan to asset ratio.In addition,we identified evidence supporting the moderate success of the last decade of reforms and a noticeable one for the post-revolution reforms in helping improve banking technical efficiency.The post-revolution reforms,largely revolving around reinforcing the rules of good governance and banking supervision,coupled with the restructuring of public banks,were found to be insufficient to raise overall banking technical efficiency despite improvement in the technical efficiency of private banks.

Effects of Gender and Other Factors on Agricultural Commercialization in Peri-urban and Rural Cassava Farms of Rivers State, Nigeria

The study was designed to investigate into the level of cassava commercialization, extent of gender effects and other factors on household commercialization index （HCI） of cassava in both rural and peri-urban areas of Rivers State, Nigeria. The study used a stratified random sampling technique to select 50 cassava farmers each from Etche and Ekwerre LGAs of the state （i.e. 100 farmers in all）. A set of structured questionnaire and interview schedule was used to retrieve information from the farmers. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics, Chow test and truncated regression analysis model based on Maximum Likelihood derived from Censored Normal or TOBIT approach. It was found that significant difference exist in the HC1 of rural farmers （49%） and peri-urban （40%）. The drivers of HCI varied across the areas but on the whole it was noted that gender, farm size, distance to market, labour, farming experience, price of cassava and access to market information signiftcantly influenced the probability of expanding the scale of commercialization of cassava in the area. It was recommended that government and interested bodies should give priority to women in designing and implementing cassava commercialization programmes policies that will improve farmers access to land and also help build on capacities of the farmers to commercialize such as access to extension service, establishment of market information service （MIS）, development of market and transport infrastructure were recommended too.