Simulating the Impacts of Rural Social Cash Transfers and Farmer's Subsidies in Malawi and Ghana
A considerable body of experimental economics research examines the impacts of cash transfer programmes. In many developing countries, though, cash transfers are relatively minor compared to other transfer mechanisms in terms of their claim on public resources. In Malawi, fertilizer subsidies dwarf cash transfers, while next door in Zambia, the government pays farmers prices well above market levels for their maize. Yet no study to our knowledge has attempted to compare the full impact of social cash transfers and other kinds of transfers on rural incomes and welfare in low-income countries. (?)
A simulation impact evaluation of rural income transfers in Malawi and Ghana
We use a disaggregated rural economy-wide modelling framework to simulate and compare the impacts of an input subsidy, cash transfer, and output price support on production and welfare in rural Malawi and Ghana. Household groups in the models are defined by their eligibility for current transfers. Simulations are calibrated to official government spending. No intervention appears as unequivocally superior. The impacts and efficiency of each transfer mechanism are shaped by the structure of the economy, market conditions, and programme design.
Application design of a sun-tracking system
As a very good renewable energy, solar energy gets a lot of countries' concerns. How to improve the efficiency of solar panel is now a hot topic and sun tracking is one of the solutions. In this paper, a servo tracking system using dSPACE DS1104 R&D controller board is designed to improve solar collection efficiency. It combines electro-optical tracking and sun trajectory tracking, and can keep solar panels perpendicular to the sun during daylight hours. In order to reduce the amount of computation, a T-S fuzzy system based sun trajectory tracking is proposed. Because of the seamless connection between dSPACE and MATLAB/Simulink, the development cycle time is short. Experimental results show that the system can track the sun precisely and has higher efficiency.