Human capital investment has a crucial role in economic growth, and as such, it has been regarded... more Human capital investment has a crucial role in economic growth, and as such, it has been regarded as a significant aspect of government spending. The Gini index score reported an average of 41.6 percent in 2018, which is higher than the generally recognized perfect equality Gini index of 20%, suggesting that Kenya has been suffering from high income disparity. There has been a widespread belief that income inequality and human capital investment are mutually exclusive. The theoretical and empirical approaches in the literature provide mixed findings on the relationship. From 1990 to 2019, this study examined the effect of human capital investment on income inequality in Kenya while adjusting for interest rates and GDP per capita. The study adopted a causal research design to determine if a cause-and-effect association between the variables occurs. The time series data were subjected to diagnostic tests to ensure the presumptions of ordinary least squares held. Health expenditure was...
International Journal of Environment and Climate Change
Globally, green gram is a significant legume particularly in Arid and Semiarid Lands (ASALs), as ... more Globally, green gram is a significant legume particularly in Arid and Semiarid Lands (ASALs), as a source of food, income, and soil enhancement. Despite this importance, green gram yield in Tharaka South Sub County is still too low at 560 kg/ha far below the crop’s estimated national potential of 1500 kg/ha and compares unfavorably with the global and national average of 730 kg/ha and 670 kg/ha, respectively. Green gram production is primarily rain-fed and variability in rainfall and temperature affects the ideal conditions favourable for the crop growth. This study aimed at quantifying the effect of rainfall and temperature variability, separately and jointly on green gram yield in Tharaka South Sub County, Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya for the period 2002-2021. Secondary data on seasonal rainfall, temperature, and green gram yield was collected from the Meteorological Services and County Department of Agriculture. Data was analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods by use o...
European Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
Exchange rate volatility has received much attention in economic research especially with the adv... more Exchange rate volatility has received much attention in economic research especially with the advent of floating exchange regimes. The volatile nature of exchange rate is generally perceived as having negative affect on international trade. However, the theoretical and empirical perspective are mixed on the nature of the relationship. This study aimed at examining analyzing the moderating effect of foreign exchange reserves on the relationship between foreign exchange rate volatility and international trade in Kenya. The study used error correction model in the analysis of the time series data for the study period which spanned between 1966-2018. Results show that controlling for inflation rate, interest rate and gross domestic product, foreign exchange reserves had a positive and statistically significant moderating effect at 5% significant level on the relationship between foreign exchange rate volatility and international trade with R2 of 0.9557. The study recommends maintaining ...
Price instability has been a major concern in most economies. Kenya's commodity markets have ... more Price instability has been a major concern in most economies. Kenya's commodity markets have been characterized by high price volatility affecting investment and consumer behaviour due to uncertainty on future prices. Therefore, precise forecasting models can help consumers plan for their expenditure and government policymakers formulate price control measures. Due to the seasonality of Kenya's food and beverage price indices, the current study postulates that the Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model can best be the best fit model for the data. The study used secondary data on Kenya's monthly food and beverage prices index from January 1991 to February 2020 to examine the predictive ability of the possible SARIMA models based on the minimisation of the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). A first-order differenced SARIMA (1,1,1) (0,1,1)12 minimized these model evaluation criteria (AIC = 1818.15, BIC =183...
European Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, 2022
The aim of this paper was to apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical regression... more The aim of this paper was to apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical regression model on Kenyan Macroeconomic variables. The study adopted a mixed research design (descriptive and correlational research designs). The 18 macroeconomic variables data were extracted from Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and World Bank for the period 1970 to 2019. The R software was utilized to conduct all the data analysis. Principal Component Analysis was used to reduce the dimensionality of the data, where the original data set matrix was reduced to Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues. A hierarchical regression model was fitted on the extracted components, and R2 was used to determine whether the components were a good fit for predicting economic growth. The results from the study showed that the first component explained 73.605 % of the overall Variance and was highly correlated with 15 original variables. Additionally, the second principal component described approximately 10.03% of t...
European Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, 2021
Price stability is the primary monetary policy objective in any economy since it protects the int... more Price stability is the primary monetary policy objective in any economy since it protects the interests of both consumers and producers. As a result, forecasting is a common practice and a vital aspect of monetary policymaking. Future predictions guide monetary and fiscal policy tools that that be used to stabilize commodity prices. As a result, developing an accurate and precise forecasting model is critical. The current study fitted and forecasted the food and beverages price index (FBPI) in Kenya using seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) models. Unlike other ARIMA models like the autoregressive (AR), Moving Average (MA), and non-seasonal ARMA models, the SARIMA model accounts for the seasonal component in a given time series data better forecasts. The study relied on secondary data obtained from the KNBS website on monthly food and beverage price index in Kenya from January 1991 to February 2020. R-statistical software was used to analyze the data. The para...
Kenya’s overall economic and social development is highly dependent on the growth and development... more Kenya’s overall economic and social development is highly dependent on the growth and development of the agriculture sector. Tea as a leading cash crop has made significant contribution to the economy. Tea exports increased by nearly 30 percent in 2010 reaching 441 tonnes valued at USD 1.3 billion. However the tea industry is faced with myriad challenges that threaten its survival if immediate intervention measures are not put in place. The tea industry is challenged by high cost of labour, farm inputs, energy/fuel, numerous taxes and levies. This study aimed at determining the impact of the cost reduction strategies initiated by various tea factories in Embu County. A total of 18 managers, 40 employees and 225 tea growers were sampled from the targeted population. Data from the respondents was collected through structured questionnaires. Data collected was analyzed descriptively using frequencies and percentages. The study found that the factories employed cost reduction measures. Some of measures were acknowledged to be applicable at 100%. These were strategies like staffing, technology and energy sources. The results further indicated that considering equal period of time before and after 2006 (when cost reduction strategies were introduced), the results obtained statistically showed that the amount of tea processed was not correlated with cost reduction strategies. This is because the quantity of tea decreased from 191,258,695 kilograms to 189,880,652 kilograms. The rate of annual returns for the farmers increased from a mean of 67.47% to 72.6% which implied that cost reduction measures had a correlation with the annual returns.
Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology, 2012
This paper examines two different methodologies to a classification problem of higher education l... more This paper examines two different methodologies to a classification problem of higher education loan applicants. The paper looks into the allocations made by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) relative to the economic status of the applicant. In this article, we modeled Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) loan application data from three public universities to determine whether the loan was allocated based on the needs of the respective applicants. The data was classified into two natural categories of those not allocated the loan (0) and those allocated the loan (1). This paper classified further to consider the amounts awarded by the HELB. This was possible since we observed that HELB loans were awarded in distinct categories (Kshs 0, Kshs 35,000, Kshs 40,000, Kshs 45,000, Kshs 50,000), Kshs 55,000 Kshs 60,000). In this study, we used ordinal logistic regression and multiple binary logistic regressions in classifying the applicants into the identified categories. The models...
European Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, 2022
Time series modeling and forecasting techniques serve as gauging tools to understand the time-rel... more Time series modeling and forecasting techniques serve as gauging tools to understand the time-related properties of a given time series and its future course. Most financial and economic time series data do not meet the restrictive assumptions of normality, linearity, and stationarity of the observed data, limiting the application of classical models without data transformation. As non-parametric methods, Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) is data-adaptive; hence do not necessarily consider these restrictive assumptions as in classical methods. The current study employed a longitudinal research design to evaluate how SSA fist Kenya’s monthly industrial inputs price index from January 1992 to April 2022. Since 2018, reducing the costs of industrial inputs has been one of Kenya’s manufacturing agendas to level the playing field and foster Kenya’s manufacturing sector. It was expected that Kenya’s Manufacturing Value Added hit a tune of 22% by 2022. The study results showed that the SSA ...
Journal of Statistical and Econometric Methods, 2014
Results from Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) indicate that there are schools that have ... more Results from Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) indicate that there are schools that have had an upward trend in performance while others have continued to show a decline. This paper seeks to find out the principal components, in terms of subjects, that contribute to this performance. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a data reduction procedure was applied to assess the performance of the national examination at the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination (KCSE) level for the last three years. The schools were purposively selected from Nyanza, Nairobi, Rift Valley and Eastern provinces. Secondary data from KNEC was used and analyzed using SPSS software. The PCA brought out the component loadings and the correlation structure between the different subjects; as a result one component was extracted. The results provided evidence that all the subjects are highly correlated and the first component having the highest variance. This principal component emerged to be English lan...
This paper looks into the allocations made by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) relative to... more This paper looks into the allocations made by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) relative to the economic status of the student. In this paper, we modelled HELB loan application data from three public universities to determine whether the loan was allocated based on the needs of the respective applicants. The data was classified to consider the amounts awarded by the HELB. This was possible since we observed that HELB loans were awarded in distinct categories (Kshs 35,000, Kshs 40,000, Kshs 45,000, Kshs 50,000, Kshs 55,000, and Kshs 60,000). In this paper, we used multinomial logistic regression in classifying the applicants into the identified categories. The models were
Modelling and forecasting the Kenyan economy is a vital concern. In this paper, the annual gross ... more Modelling and forecasting the Kenyan economy is a vital concern. In this paper, the annual gross domestic product (GDP) is forecasted using autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA) so as to determine the most efficient and adequate model for analyzing the Kenyan GDP. The study employed the Box-Jenkins (1976) methodology that involves stages of identification, estimation, diagnostic checking, and forecasting of a univariate time series. An exploratory research design was adopted for a sample of 51 observations. The annual data was obtained from the World Bank national
The Author investigates the operating conditions required for optimal production of potato tuber ... more The Author investigates the operating conditions required for optimal production of potato tuber yield in Kenya. This will help potato farmers to safe extra cost of input in potato farming. The potato production process was optimized by the application of factorial design 23 and response surface methodology. The combined effects of water, Nitrogen and Phosphorus mineral nutrients were investigated and optimized using response surface methodology. It was found that the optimum production conditions for the potato tuber yield were 70.04% irrigation water, 124.75Kg/Ha of Nitrogen supplied as urea and 191.04Kg/Ha phosphorus supplied as triple super phosphate. At the optimum condition one can reach to a potato tuber yield of 19.36Kg/plot of 1.8meters by 2.25 meters. Increased productivity of potatoes can improve the livelihood of smallholder potato farmers in Kenya and safe the farmers extra cost of input. Finally, i hope that the approach applied in this study of potatoes can be useful ...
Human capital investment has a crucial role in economic growth, and as such, it has been regarded... more Human capital investment has a crucial role in economic growth, and as such, it has been regarded as a significant aspect of government spending. The Gini index score reported an average of 41.6 percent in 2018, which is higher than the generally recognized perfect equality Gini index of 20%, suggesting that Kenya has been suffering from high income disparity. There has been a widespread belief that income inequality and human capital investment are mutually exclusive. The theoretical and empirical approaches in the literature provide mixed findings on the relationship. From 1990 to 2019, this study examined the effect of human capital investment on income inequality in Kenya while adjusting for interest rates and GDP per capita. The study adopted a causal research design to determine if a cause-and-effect association between the variables occurs. The time series data were subjected to diagnostic tests to ensure the presumptions of ordinary least squares held. Health expenditure was...
International Journal of Environment and Climate Change
Globally, green gram is a significant legume particularly in Arid and Semiarid Lands (ASALs), as ... more Globally, green gram is a significant legume particularly in Arid and Semiarid Lands (ASALs), as a source of food, income, and soil enhancement. Despite this importance, green gram yield in Tharaka South Sub County is still too low at 560 kg/ha far below the crop’s estimated national potential of 1500 kg/ha and compares unfavorably with the global and national average of 730 kg/ha and 670 kg/ha, respectively. Green gram production is primarily rain-fed and variability in rainfall and temperature affects the ideal conditions favourable for the crop growth. This study aimed at quantifying the effect of rainfall and temperature variability, separately and jointly on green gram yield in Tharaka South Sub County, Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya for the period 2002-2021. Secondary data on seasonal rainfall, temperature, and green gram yield was collected from the Meteorological Services and County Department of Agriculture. Data was analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods by use o...
European Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
Exchange rate volatility has received much attention in economic research especially with the adv... more Exchange rate volatility has received much attention in economic research especially with the advent of floating exchange regimes. The volatile nature of exchange rate is generally perceived as having negative affect on international trade. However, the theoretical and empirical perspective are mixed on the nature of the relationship. This study aimed at examining analyzing the moderating effect of foreign exchange reserves on the relationship between foreign exchange rate volatility and international trade in Kenya. The study used error correction model in the analysis of the time series data for the study period which spanned between 1966-2018. Results show that controlling for inflation rate, interest rate and gross domestic product, foreign exchange reserves had a positive and statistically significant moderating effect at 5% significant level on the relationship between foreign exchange rate volatility and international trade with R2 of 0.9557. The study recommends maintaining ...
Price instability has been a major concern in most economies. Kenya's commodity markets have ... more Price instability has been a major concern in most economies. Kenya's commodity markets have been characterized by high price volatility affecting investment and consumer behaviour due to uncertainty on future prices. Therefore, precise forecasting models can help consumers plan for their expenditure and government policymakers formulate price control measures. Due to the seasonality of Kenya's food and beverage price indices, the current study postulates that the Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) model can best be the best fit model for the data. The study used secondary data on Kenya's monthly food and beverage prices index from January 1991 to February 2020 to examine the predictive ability of the possible SARIMA models based on the minimisation of the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). A first-order differenced SARIMA (1,1,1) (0,1,1)12 minimized these model evaluation criteria (AIC = 1818.15, BIC =183...
European Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, 2022
The aim of this paper was to apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical regression... more The aim of this paper was to apply Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical regression model on Kenyan Macroeconomic variables. The study adopted a mixed research design (descriptive and correlational research designs). The 18 macroeconomic variables data were extracted from Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and World Bank for the period 1970 to 2019. The R software was utilized to conduct all the data analysis. Principal Component Analysis was used to reduce the dimensionality of the data, where the original data set matrix was reduced to Eigenvectors and Eigenvalues. A hierarchical regression model was fitted on the extracted components, and R2 was used to determine whether the components were a good fit for predicting economic growth. The results from the study showed that the first component explained 73.605 % of the overall Variance and was highly correlated with 15 original variables. Additionally, the second principal component described approximately 10.03% of t...
European Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, 2021
Price stability is the primary monetary policy objective in any economy since it protects the int... more Price stability is the primary monetary policy objective in any economy since it protects the interests of both consumers and producers. As a result, forecasting is a common practice and a vital aspect of monetary policymaking. Future predictions guide monetary and fiscal policy tools that that be used to stabilize commodity prices. As a result, developing an accurate and precise forecasting model is critical. The current study fitted and forecasted the food and beverages price index (FBPI) in Kenya using seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) models. Unlike other ARIMA models like the autoregressive (AR), Moving Average (MA), and non-seasonal ARMA models, the SARIMA model accounts for the seasonal component in a given time series data better forecasts. The study relied on secondary data obtained from the KNBS website on monthly food and beverage price index in Kenya from January 1991 to February 2020. R-statistical software was used to analyze the data. The para...
Kenya’s overall economic and social development is highly dependent on the growth and development... more Kenya’s overall economic and social development is highly dependent on the growth and development of the agriculture sector. Tea as a leading cash crop has made significant contribution to the economy. Tea exports increased by nearly 30 percent in 2010 reaching 441 tonnes valued at USD 1.3 billion. However the tea industry is faced with myriad challenges that threaten its survival if immediate intervention measures are not put in place. The tea industry is challenged by high cost of labour, farm inputs, energy/fuel, numerous taxes and levies. This study aimed at determining the impact of the cost reduction strategies initiated by various tea factories in Embu County. A total of 18 managers, 40 employees and 225 tea growers were sampled from the targeted population. Data from the respondents was collected through structured questionnaires. Data collected was analyzed descriptively using frequencies and percentages. The study found that the factories employed cost reduction measures. Some of measures were acknowledged to be applicable at 100%. These were strategies like staffing, technology and energy sources. The results further indicated that considering equal period of time before and after 2006 (when cost reduction strategies were introduced), the results obtained statistically showed that the amount of tea processed was not correlated with cost reduction strategies. This is because the quantity of tea decreased from 191,258,695 kilograms to 189,880,652 kilograms. The rate of annual returns for the farmers increased from a mean of 67.47% to 72.6% which implied that cost reduction measures had a correlation with the annual returns.
Journal of Agricultural Science and Technology, 2012
This paper examines two different methodologies to a classification problem of higher education l... more This paper examines two different methodologies to a classification problem of higher education loan applicants. The paper looks into the allocations made by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) relative to the economic status of the applicant. In this article, we modeled Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) loan application data from three public universities to determine whether the loan was allocated based on the needs of the respective applicants. The data was classified into two natural categories of those not allocated the loan (0) and those allocated the loan (1). This paper classified further to consider the amounts awarded by the HELB. This was possible since we observed that HELB loans were awarded in distinct categories (Kshs 0, Kshs 35,000, Kshs 40,000, Kshs 45,000, Kshs 50,000), Kshs 55,000 Kshs 60,000). In this study, we used ordinal logistic regression and multiple binary logistic regressions in classifying the applicants into the identified categories. The models...
European Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, 2022
Time series modeling and forecasting techniques serve as gauging tools to understand the time-rel... more Time series modeling and forecasting techniques serve as gauging tools to understand the time-related properties of a given time series and its future course. Most financial and economic time series data do not meet the restrictive assumptions of normality, linearity, and stationarity of the observed data, limiting the application of classical models without data transformation. As non-parametric methods, Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) is data-adaptive; hence do not necessarily consider these restrictive assumptions as in classical methods. The current study employed a longitudinal research design to evaluate how SSA fist Kenya’s monthly industrial inputs price index from January 1992 to April 2022. Since 2018, reducing the costs of industrial inputs has been one of Kenya’s manufacturing agendas to level the playing field and foster Kenya’s manufacturing sector. It was expected that Kenya’s Manufacturing Value Added hit a tune of 22% by 2022. The study results showed that the SSA ...
Journal of Statistical and Econometric Methods, 2014
Results from Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) indicate that there are schools that have ... more Results from Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) indicate that there are schools that have had an upward trend in performance while others have continued to show a decline. This paper seeks to find out the principal components, in terms of subjects, that contribute to this performance. Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a data reduction procedure was applied to assess the performance of the national examination at the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination (KCSE) level for the last three years. The schools were purposively selected from Nyanza, Nairobi, Rift Valley and Eastern provinces. Secondary data from KNEC was used and analyzed using SPSS software. The PCA brought out the component loadings and the correlation structure between the different subjects; as a result one component was extracted. The results provided evidence that all the subjects are highly correlated and the first component having the highest variance. This principal component emerged to be English lan...
This paper looks into the allocations made by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) relative to... more This paper looks into the allocations made by the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) relative to the economic status of the student. In this paper, we modelled HELB loan application data from three public universities to determine whether the loan was allocated based on the needs of the respective applicants. The data was classified to consider the amounts awarded by the HELB. This was possible since we observed that HELB loans were awarded in distinct categories (Kshs 35,000, Kshs 40,000, Kshs 45,000, Kshs 50,000, Kshs 55,000, and Kshs 60,000). In this paper, we used multinomial logistic regression in classifying the applicants into the identified categories. The models were
Modelling and forecasting the Kenyan economy is a vital concern. In this paper, the annual gross ... more Modelling and forecasting the Kenyan economy is a vital concern. In this paper, the annual gross domestic product (GDP) is forecasted using autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA) so as to determine the most efficient and adequate model for analyzing the Kenyan GDP. The study employed the Box-Jenkins (1976) methodology that involves stages of identification, estimation, diagnostic checking, and forecasting of a univariate time series. An exploratory research design was adopted for a sample of 51 observations. The annual data was obtained from the World Bank national
The Author investigates the operating conditions required for optimal production of potato tuber ... more The Author investigates the operating conditions required for optimal production of potato tuber yield in Kenya. This will help potato farmers to safe extra cost of input in potato farming. The potato production process was optimized by the application of factorial design 23 and response surface methodology. The combined effects of water, Nitrogen and Phosphorus mineral nutrients were investigated and optimized using response surface methodology. It was found that the optimum production conditions for the potato tuber yield were 70.04% irrigation water, 124.75Kg/Ha of Nitrogen supplied as urea and 191.04Kg/Ha phosphorus supplied as triple super phosphate. At the optimum condition one can reach to a potato tuber yield of 19.36Kg/plot of 1.8meters by 2.25 meters. Increased productivity of potatoes can improve the livelihood of smallholder potato farmers in Kenya and safe the farmers extra cost of input. Finally, i hope that the approach applied in this study of potatoes can be useful ...
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