International Journal of Business and Economic Development

Today we can identify a variety of political and economic systems in the world. A free market economic system is more likely to work if it is based on a democratic political system. According to the Democracy Index 2021, Mexico went from being an imperfect democracy to a hybrid regime, with the risk of becoming an authoritarian regime. The transition from a political system of imperfect democracy to a hybrid regime represents a great risk for domestic and foreign private investment. There is a latent political risk for investors in this type of countries, which scares away foreign direct investment.

This research presents an analysis of the behavior of foreign direct investment in Mexico from 2000 to 2021 by state and political party. The results from a point biserial correlation test prove the existence of a dependence between the attraction of foreign investment and the political party in government. Mexico attracted lower capital inflows since the presence of MORENA, actual political party that is in both, the federal and some state governments. Descriptive statistics show that in most of the matches there is a dependence and also a correlation, however it is prudent to study the direction of this relationship and the strength.

The findings are based on an analysis of three years of government of the MORENA political party; therefore, a longer period could be considered for future research.

The purpose of this study is to determine the ISO 9001 factors that improve performance in the Emergency Services. Proper understanding of these factors might help to improve emergency services performance and related organisations. a structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 121 emergency service employees. ISO principles served as measurable variables and the results were interpreted based on these variables. Descriptive statistics and cross-tab analysis were applied for the purpose of this study.The results show that high level of training, effective communication and proper record keeping as factors that could improve performance in the emergency services. Management commitment is revealed to be insignificantly related to performance. The study is the first in the emergency services (firefighting and ambulance) in relation to quality management. The study provides emergency services managers with thorough understanding of the implementation of ISO 9001 quality management system and can use it to further enhance their decisions, thus improving performance.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement seeks to integrate markets in Africa into one large market. With the growing concerns about continental integration, this study identifies prospects and challenges of achieving structural transformation in Africa through the AfCFTA. The study employs the Interactive Structural Modelling technique, which helps to develop a contextual relationship between the factors in terms of their driving power or dependence power. The results indicate that unequal trade and investment opportunities, poor infrastructure, poor access to development finance, and the degree of industrialisation have a high driving power, hence a greater potential to create a ripple effect on other factors associated with African integration. Based on the findings, this study recommends that a platform be created within the agreement where these challenges can be tackled. In this view, the establishment of various development finance institutions monitored and facilitated by the AfCFTA affiliates, could be explored.

This study aims to perform a comparative analysis of the influence of township entrepreneurship on unemployment and economic development among the Francophone and Anglophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The study employed a descriptive and quantitative research design where a longitudinal data was sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and World Bank Entrepreneurship databases on 12 and 9 Francophone and Anglophone countries respectively. A Fixed Effect panel regression model was employed to attain the objectives of the study. The findings of the study revealed that there is a significant negative effect of township entrepreneurship on unemployment; and also, township entrepreneurship has a positive significant effect on economic development. Both relationships were found to have insignificant differences between Anglophone and Francophone countries suggesting that the ability of township entrepreneurship to minimize the rate of unemployment and boost economic development is generic and irrespective of cultural and social differences. This study was anchored on the behavioral theory of social entrepreneurship to provide empirical contribution to existing literature.

Despite of positive impacts of the earnings management on the business purposes, many businesses have been suffered due to the audit failures as a result of aggressive earnings management. Therefore, the study on true reflection of earnings management, the controlling factors and how aggressively manipulated earnings quality can be mitigated are the areas of concern these days.

For the estimation of earnings management, performance matched discretionary accruals model has been implemented as this model has been identified as the best explanatory models. Thereafter, this research has accumulated the sector-wise earnings management to identify the impact of sectors on the sectorial earnings management. There are eleven different industries involved in the research while four of them have revealed that the managers from certain sectors have got involved in the aggressive earnings management.

Further, this research has investigated the impact of the attributes of the corporate governance on the sector-wise earnings management. the variables of corporate governance like managerial ownership, block-holders, institutional ownership and non-executive directors’ fees have significant impact on sector-wise earnings management where other variables like board meeting, board size, number of female members on the board, board independence have not been identified as they have significant impact on controlling earnings management.

Univariate and multivariate methods are used to demonstrate the results and to establish the inferences of the outcomes of the research. The use of coefficients (β  -value) and p-value are much prominent in this study.

Globally, female entrepreneurship is acknowledged as a major force behind innovation, social progress, and economic success. But to launch and expand successful businesses, women in South Africa face many obstacles. Considering the significance of inclusive participation in the mainstream economy, it is necessary to understand the factors that may inspire or impede the intention of women in becoming entrepreneurial. The population consisted of students of a private higher education institution. Data was collected from female students of postgraduate certificate in education. An online system was designed for data collection using a questionnaire. This allowed for a wider audience to participate, but it also prevented the participants' identities from being revealed because they were not in contact with the researchers. IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used to analyze the data. Every student's response was examined, and the analysis was used to categorize the responses. Results reveal intriguing patterns in the participants’ perceptions of entrepreneurship. Doubt about oneself when starting a business is strongly correlated with pessimism about success, which implies a lack of faith in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, although there is a desire for entrepreneurial fulfilment, developing business concepts is difficult and presents a significant barrier. A major contribution of this paper is that it responds to the call by National Development Plan (NDP) (2030) of South Africa, which seeks ways to increase inclusivity, improve equity, and diversity in mainstream economy.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the economic consequences of building fires in relation to the GDP of the City of Tshwane. Specifically, the research investigates the economic impact from the victim’s perspective on the cost of building fires. Design/ methodology/ approach – a quantitative research methodology was used where a standard questionnaire was distributed to 300 research participants identified from the City of Tshwane emergency services database system. Findings – The economic cost of building fires in the City of Tshwane has been determined to be 0, 16% of the GDP. Originality/value: This paper gives account of the victims’ perspective about their experience of fire. No other literature is known to have given such account.