General Economics - Science topic

I would like to know more about this topic

I totally agree with the previous answers. When planning to conduct population survey you need a number of steps:

1. Endorsement of the study itself by some referent body

2. Endorsement and validation of the questionnaire. If you use an already validated questionnaire, then you need only endorsement.

3. Some sort of communication and coordination with key figures in the targeted population to facilitate the survey

4. Definitely you need an estimate of the sample size. For this, you use the formula suggested by Ishag Adam above. It is the simplest formula. From previous studies you need some estimation of P (the proportion of people with a characteristic you study. I do not know what information you gather in your survey but let me assume that one piece of data collected is proportion of smokers among adult males. Lets assume that previous studies put this proportion at .24, The sample size for your study can be calculated as:

Z squared*P(1-P) 1.96 *1.96 *0.24* 0.76

N=---------------------------------= ----------------------------------- = 280 adults at least

e squared 0.05 *0.05

If we assume there is one adult per family, then you need to visit at least 280 families

Note: The sample size will be much bigger of e is smaller, e.g.=0.02 for example N=1750

Not very accurate but in the absence of their non-availability  by statistical organisation of your country, they may be used. 

Hi Nguyen

1-cost-benefit analysis should help.

2-if you mean private sector then scores of them are already using it. Public sector is following suit. The objective function is to Max (raise funds) with Min (costs). Islamic finance has been shown to do that so it is growing at 2 digits at the time when the conventional has been experiencing another hiccup.

Regards

For the current year and country comparison, see

Hisrical data go back to 1999, see:

I guess you need to think about this issue in steps. Firstly, how do they access 'huge' debts when they lack financial expertise? And also a lack of own equity? Setting that aside, servicing large debts puts a strong emphasis on generating enough cash flow to service the capital and interest payments.  This reduces gross profit in absolute terms. But note that the tax system usually treats interest payments and payments to equity holders differently too.  But more importantly in SMEs, there is usually no divorce of ownership and control so traditional profit maximising or shareholder value maximising theories are weaker as the owners can pursue other objectives simultaneously subject to a survival and income constraint. Hope this helps? Cheers, Marc