Budgeting for development: Lessons from 2013 capital budget implementation in Nigeria
April 2017
Adopting the descriptive approach, this study examined the performance of 2013 capital budget in Nigeria in line with attainment of the transformation agenda in the country. The findings suggest that the level of capital budget implementation is insufficient to foster the desired development. This poor performance is attributable to inadequacy in the budget implementation plans, non-release or late release of budgeted...
Exports and economic growth in Togo
March 2017
The pursuit of high and sustained economic growth is one of the major concerns of States, especially those in the process of developing their economic development. Thus, in the pursuit of economic growth, several studies have often been conducted on a number of macroeconomic policies for the determination of sources of growth. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of exports on the growth of the Togolese...
Bank efficiency and stock returns
February 2017
Increased competition and globalization have made it imperative for banks to achieve high efficiency in order to generate required returns. This paper investigates the relationship between bank efficiency estimates, derived from both Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and share prices of banks listed on the Ghana stock exchange. The results give an indication that changes in cost and...
Causality between economic growth and changes of the real exchange rate in Côte d'Ivoire
January 2017
This study aims to analyze the relationship between changes in the real effective exchange rate and economic growth in Côte d'Ivoire. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and the Toda-Yamamoto causality test were used. The data cover the period 1980 to 2012. The results conclude the existence of a long-term relationship between economic growth and variation in the real effective exchange rate and...
Petroleum resources and Nigeria’s poverty profile
December 2016
Nigeria as one of the oil producing and resource rich nations in sub-Sahara Africa, with her considerable contribution to the world total oil output still maintained high level of poverty among her teeming population. The present development in the oil industry has demanded for an empirical investigation into why despite the endowed petroleum resources, the Nigeria’s poverty level has not positively improved. The...
Can Cameroon become an emerging economy by the year 2035? Projections from univariate time series analysis
December 2016
Cameroon is among the African countries aspiring to become an emerging economy by the year 2035. Therefore, projecting into the future by policy makers in order to know the right course of action is imperative. The objective of this study is to identify a good forecasting model that can predict Cameroon’s future economic growth rate and to ascertain whether policy makers could maintain a steady and sustainable...
Factors affecting U.S. current account deficit: An empirical evidence
November 2016
The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of the major macroeconomic indicators on U.S. current account deficit. Using the quarterly data from January 1973 to April 2013, this study attempts to examine whether those factors are truly the cause of massive current account deficit in the United States. We have considered a range of variables such as inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate, and the gross...
Entrepreneurial distance: A novel evaluation tool of entrepreneurial intention
November 2016
Entrepreneurship and new business creation drive economic growth and employment generation. In this study we have developed a new way to evaluate entrepreneurial intention by looking at the respondents’ opinion towards entrepreneurs and their own self-reported abilities. We have coined this methodology as the entrepreneurial distance. This study is based in an international sample of 264 respondents gathered...
The pricing of illiquidity risk on emerging stock exchange markets: A portfolio panel data analysis
October 2016
The main purpose of this paper is to examine the main role of liquidity in stock pricing on African emerging stock markets. The study applies portfolios panel data analysis to modify and adapt the existing estimation process. Using three different procedures, six portfolios have been constructed base on the 32 most active stocks on the so called BRVM; the measures of liquidity considered are the turnover and the...
Macroeconomic variables and stock market performance of emerging countries
August 2016
This article seeks to fill the gap of severe data limitations on the link between macroeconomic variables and stock market performance. A panel data of 41 emerging countries for the period 1996 to 2011 was used to estimate the results. The model used by Sangmi and Mubasher (2013) was adopted and modified to determine the effect of macroeconomic variables on stock market capitalization. The four techniques to investigate...
Semi-Markovian credit risk modeling for consumer loans: Evidence from Kenya
August 2016
Based on simulations of implied values for credit worthiness over a period of 5 years for 1000 consumers, the study shows robustness of the Semi-Markovian models in forecasting Probabilities of Default and Loss Given Default for a portfolio of consumer loans. The study models credit risk as a reliability problem on the basis of which we generate credit risk indicators and quantify prospective capital holding based on...
Bank lending behavior and economy financing in CEMAC countries: Should we grease the wheel?
July 2016
For the proponents of the “greasing the wheel” position, in the context of market imperfections, corruption helps in alleviating distortions in the credit market, facilitates access to bank credit and promotes the financing of the economy. The aim of this paper was to interrogate the impact of corruption on bank lending behavior in CEMAC countries, not only ranked among the most corrupt economies in the...
Empirical evidence on capital structure determinants in Nigeria
July 2016
The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirical evidence on capital structure determinants in Nigeria. This research has been performed using a sample of 50 companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange from 2001 to 2010. The relationship between the short-term and long-term debt and four explanatory variables were observed. The results of the cross-sectional OLS regression revealed that the static trade-off...
The determinants of interest rate spread: Empirical evidence from the Central African economic and monetary community
July 2016
In spite of the reforms undertook during the 1980s and 1990s in favour of financial deepening, the spread between the lending rate and the deposit rate is still high in the member countries of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CAEMC). Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of banking spread in those countries. In that vein, the study employs two-step regression proposed by Ho...
Poverty incidence in Nigeria: Does financial deepening matter?
July 2016
Economic policies in every nation strive to attain basic macroeconomic goals, one of which is poverty reduction. The paper examines empirically whether or not financial deepening has played a significant role in poverty alleviation effort in Nigeria for the period 1990 to 2013. Utilizing both quantitative and descriptive analyses, the paper estimated three models in which poverty rates for the rural areas, urban areas...
Growth and corruption in Arab countries: What type of relationship connects them?
June 2016
This study aims to investigate the relationship between corruption and growth in the context of the Arab world. By controlling the different variables that affect growth, the study tries to focus on how corruption could have affected growth and in which way. The literature leans towards corruption having a negative impact on growth and development, however such view is not pervasive as there are some arguments...
Impact of external debt on the productive efficiency in Togo economy
May 2016
The objective of this study is to measure the productive efficiency of the external debt of the Togo economy. To do this, the technique of stochastic production frontier used by Drine and Nabi was used to assess the contribution of different factors, especially external debt to the productivity performance over the period from 1980 to 2012. The study results confirm the non-linear effect of external indebtedness on...
Towards sustainable financing models for micro-hydro plants in Sub-Saharan African countries: A theoretical review
March 2016
Micro-hydro plants (MHPs) have been identified as a proven and promising opportunity to alleviate energy poverty in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the absence of “lowest-cost, long-term financing models” is found to be one of the major barriers to wide-spread adoption of this technology in the region. This paper presents a review of the factors underlying this absence and using the van Egmond...
Effects of selected socio-economic factors and elections spending on aggregate savings (total deposits) in Ghana
February 2016
Savings as a tool for domestic capital accumulation in developing countries has come under serious consideration in economic and financial development. However, savings in Ghana is characterized by very low tendencies, irregular trend and unenthusiastic attitudes of citizens towards it at the micro and macro levels. This study examined the effect of economic factors, election spending and health financing scheme on...
Benefit-cost analysis for sustainable water management in Beijing
January 2016
Since 2000, large numbers of water reuse systems have been constructed to solve the water scarcity in Beijing. However, the operations of these systems are not well as expected. The paper will conduct an analysis of economic and social impacts of water reuse systems in Beijing. The aim is to find out whether the systems have positive economic and social impacts or not. If the systems bring negative economic and social...
Savings, investment and economic growth in Lesotho: An empirical analysis
October 2015
This paper empirically examines the relationship among saving, investment and economic growth in Lesotho for the period 1970 to 2012, with a view to contributing to the body of literature on this topic and informing economic policy design in Lesotho. Using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration and vector error correction model (VECM) based Granger causality test; the paper finds...
Effects of credit constraints on the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises in Cameroon
September 2015
This paper assesses the determinants and effects of credit constraints on the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Cameroon. Use is made of the Cameroon enterprise survey data collected by the World Bank in 2009 and an endogenous switching regression model. Results show that interest rates, size of enterprise, size of loan, size of collateral, maturity of loans and legal status of enterprises are...
Modelling extreme volatility in the daily exchange rates of the Kenya shilling against the U.S. dollar
September 2015
This study used extreme value theory to establish if the volatility witnessed in the exchange rate of the Kenya Shilling against the U.S. dollar in the period 1999 to 2013 could have been predicted and also determine if the long-term stability in the exchange rate was violated in the period. The peak over threshold model is applied to the tail of the volatility process of exchange rate returns of the Kenya Shilling...
Banking sector reforms and output growth of manufacturing sector in Nigeria (1970-2011)
August 2015
The study investigated empirically the effect of banking sector reforms on the output of manufacturing sector in the Nigerian economy between 1970 and 2011 with a view to examining the extent of the impact of banking sector reforms on the manufacturing sector. The study employed annual secondary time series data from 1970-2011, sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria’s statistical bulletin and annual report and...
A model for evaluating recreation benefits with reference dependent preference
August 2015
In environmental valuation studies, it is commonly assumed that a utility arises from an absolute amount of environmental quality. This criterion, called absolute evaluation, is used in methods including the travel cost method and the contingent valuation method. Studies in experimental economics, however, have indicated that an individual’s criterion depends on reference dependent preference (RDP)—a...
The export-diversifying effect of foreign direct investment in the CEMAC Region
July 2015
This study aimed at investigating the export-diversifying effect of Foreign Direct Investment on the economies of the CEMAC sub region – notably, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. This was achieved empirically by using a Generalized Linear Model estimation technique implemented using the logit link function and the Gaussian distribution family to take care of the...
The political economy of climate change
July 2015
This article debates institutional proposals given to address climate change which is not attacking basic socioeconomic determinants but only impacts such as emissions of greenhouse gases (GHE). Getting to the bottom of the problem requires moving beyond mere energy transition to renewable energy, which is necessary. But they are insufficient to ensure the preservation of life on earth and the social order. These...
Population growth and gender time distribution in a small-open growth model
June 2015
This study proposes an endogenous population economic growth model with gender time distribution between work, children fostering and leisure. It deals with nonlinear dynamic interdependence between the birth rate, the mortality rate, the population, wealth accumulation, and time distribution. We model the production side and wealth accumulation on the basis of the Solow model. The population dynamics is influenced by...
Portfolio balance approach: An empirical testing
June 2015
Exchange rate plays vital role in an economy and thus has gained much attention in the literature. The purpose of the study is to test the portfolio balance approach which proposes that money supply and bonds of a country impact its exchange rate. For this purpose, Augmented Dickey Fuller and Phillips Perron test have been applied on the quarterly data from 2001 to 2010 to test the stationarity of the data. Auto...
Optimizing the monthly crude oil price forecasting accuracy via bagging ensemble models
May 2015
The study investigates the accuracy of bagging ensemble models (i.e., bagged artificial neural networks (BANN) and bagged regression trees (BRT)) in monthly crude oil price forecasting. Two ensemble models are obtained by coupling bagging and two simple machine learning models (i.e., artificial neural networks (ANN) and classification and regression trees (CART)) and results are compared with those of the single ANN and...
Human resource development as a correlate of performance of the banking industry in Ogun State, Nigeria
May 2015
The study examined human resource development as a correlate of performance of the banking industry in Ogun State. Primary and secondary data were used in the study. Primary data were collected from the sampled commercial banks’ staff in Abeokuta metropolis while secondary data were sourced from published 2012 and 2013 Financial Statements of commercial banks. Data were analysed using Ordinary Least Squares and...
Stochastic simulation analysis of sustainable public debt in Zimbabwe
May 2015
This paper applies dynamic stochastic simulation methods to assess sustainable public debt management policies in Zimbabwe. The methodology applied involves estimating a fiscal reaction function and using it to simulate public debt path using a stochastic approach and historical information on drivers of public debt accumulation and their volatility. The results from the baseline scenario show that Zimbabwe’s...
Real exchange rate assessment in Egypt: Equilibrium and misalignments
April 2015
The underlying study focuses on assessing the real exchange rate in Egypt during the period 1999-2012. In particular, the paper estimates the Real Exchange Rate (RER) misalignments in Egypt during the period under investigation. This is implemented through carrying out two main steps: first, the observed real exchange rate is calculated. Then, the Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate (ERER) is estimated using three different...
Economic growth and environmental degradation in Ethiopia: An environmental Kuznets curve analysis approach
April 2015
This study aimed to study the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation in Ethiopia by questioning the existence of environmental Kuznets Curve. The study uses time series data from 1969/70 to 2010/2011 in a VECM analysis approach. The finding indicates existence of EKC hypothesis in Ethiopia. Like any agrarian country economic growth in Ethiopia inevitably contribute for environmental...
The role of foreign aid in reducing poverty: Time series evidence from Ethiopia
March 2015
Driven by recent shifts in international financial flows towards poverty reduction and the concentration of previous studies on aid economic growth relationships, this study took a new metric to investigate aid’s effectiveness, that is poverty reduction. Based on this objective, the study employed multivariate cointegration analysis to a time series data from Ethiopia over the period 1975-2010. The empirical...
Mean-Gini portfolio selection: Forecasting VaR using GARCH models in Moroccan financial market
March 2015
This paper focuses on Mean-Gini (MG) method for optimum portfolio selection. The MG framework, introduced by Shalit and Yitzhaki, is an attractive alternative as it is consistent with stochastic dominance rules regardless of the probability distributions of asset returns. Therefore, a MG framework is similar to a corresponding Mean-Variance (MV) framework in that it also uses two summary statistics-the mean and a...
Relative consequences due to absence of corporate governance in nationalized and private commercial banks in Bangladesh
February 2015
This study produces weak and ineffective corporate governance practices in both state owned and privately owned commercial banks in Bangladesh. The paper presents key aspects requiring reforms: the role, constitution and accountability of board, risk management, and transparency. To analyze the corporate governance practices of the private commercial banks (PCBs) and State owned commercial (SCBs), this study focused on...
The effect of FDI on economic growth and the importance of host country characteristics
February 2015
In spite of a large increase in FDI inflows to developing countries, the effect of FDI flows on economic growth remains confusing. The recent contribution of modern economic growth theories in general predicts that FDI can be the main catalyst of economic growth in the receiving countries. Empirical studies, however, produce ambiguous results, and suggest that the growth effects of FDI are conditional on the host...
Effect of climate change on food crop production and vulnerability assessment in Oyo State
January 2015
The study assessed household vulnerability to climate change and its effect on yam and cassava production in Oyo state, Nigeria. Primary and secondary data were used for the study. Data on yam and cassava yield between 1990 and 2009 were obtained from the Oyo State Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) while data on climate variables between 1976 and 2010 were obtained from the Nigeria Institute of Meteorology,...
Green banking in India
January 2015
Environmentalism is a social movement that shows the concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the state of the environment. This has now become a constant concern in every industry and it is no wonder that the banking industry also caught the ‘green’ fever. To circumvent the global warming trap, the impulse of ‘going green’ is running faster than expected amongst all the big...
Trade policy, fiscal constraint and their impact on education in the long run
December 2014
Many studies have evaluated the impact of trade liberalisation in South Africa. Our study proposes to evaluate the consequences of trade liberalisation when fiscal constraints and budget discipline lead government to reallocate the fiscal adjustment induced. More precisely, we will focus on the consequences on the education system and the consequences of students’ performances at school in long run. To evaluate...
Dividend announcement on share prices in a bull and a bear market phase
December 2014
The information content of dividend hypothesis has been a controversial debate for a number of decades. This research therefore examines the validity of information content of dividend hypothesis and the reaction of share prices to dividend change announcements that contradict the market phase. That is, observing the reaction of the market to the announcements of dividend decrease (increase) when the market is in a bull...
Bounds testing approach to cointegration: An examination of the impact of foreign direct investment and trade on growth in Saudi Arabia, 1970-2010
November 2014
It is widely recognized that trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows are important factors in long-term economic growth. Trade openness enhances skills through the adoption of imported superior production technology and innovative processes, and thus exerts a positive and significant impact on economic growth. Similarly, FDI augments and stimulates domestic investment, enhances technology transfer, increases...
Comprehensive management of research budgets in agricultural research Institutes in China
November 2014
Over the years, increasing attention has been focused on the implementation rather than the preparation of research budgets in the agricultural research institutes in China. It resulted in unscientific and irrational budgeting of research funds. The practical implementation of research funds has also been adversely affected. After investigating three provincial-level institutes for agricultural research, we analyzed the...
The validity of the purchasing power parity in intermediate and flexible exchange rate regimes: Empirical evidence from Turkey
October 2014
The aim of this paper is to analyze empirically the validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for Turkey under intermediate and flexible exchange rate regimes. In this framework, the periods where intermediate (January 1994-February 2001) and flexible (March 2001-September 2012) exchange rate regimes implemented in Turkey were taken as a base. The estimation results show that foreign exchange rate regimes...
Savings, investment and economic growth in Ethiopia: Evidence from ARDL approach to co-integration and TYDL Granger-causality tests
October 2014
This paper examines the causal relationship among savings, investment and economic growth in Ethiopia using annual time series data from 1969/70-2010/11 in a multivariate framework. Results from the PP unit root test shows that all variables under consideration are I(1). Result from the ARDL Bounds Testing indicates that there exists co-integration among gross domestic savings, gross domestic investment, real gross...
Interdependency between monetary policy instruments and Indonesian economic growth
September 2014
The objective of this study is to analyze the interdependency between monetary policy instruments and Indonesian economic growth for the periods of 2000 to 2011. The monetary policy instruments are open market operation (OPT), reserve requirement (RR), and discount rate. For the analysis, this study employs Structural Vector Autoregression, and Impulse Response Function. The results of the analysis show that...
Poverty reduction through the ICT: Global system for mobile communication (GSM) perspective
September 2014
Poverty amid plenty is one of the greatest challenges confronting Nigerian economy. Government at all levels had initiated various forms of poverty reduction strategies in an attempt to reduce the incidence of poverty in Nigeria. Using data obtained through the administration of questionnaires on the operators of GSM purposively selected within the study area, the paper examined the extent to which evolution of GSM has...
The effects of financial reforms on consumption behaviour in Malawi
September 2014
The objective of the paper is to assess whether financial reforms have a statistically significant effect on Malawi consumption behaviour. More specifically, the paper examines the existence of Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) and assesses whether the reforms have affected consumption behaviour by reducing liquidity constraints using Instrumental Variable and Two Stage Least Squares (IV-TSLS) approach. The paper finds...
Exchange rate regimes and inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa
August 2014
The main argument in favor of a fixed exchange rate regime (ERR) is its ability to maintain lower inflation in the long run compared to a flexible ERR (Mundell, 1963; Fleming, 1962). This paper empirically tests whether the fixed ERR of the CFA franc currency union provides lower inflation to its members relative to inflation in the non-CFA Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. SSA countries are grouped by their exchange...
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