1,721,791 research outputs found
Tourism management for financial access in Sub-Saharan Africa: inequality thresholds
Get PDFThe study provides insights into how tourism can be managed to improve financial access in sub-Saharan Africa. The empirical evidence is based on the generalised method of moments. To make this assessment, inequality dynamics (i.e. the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index and Palma ratio) are interacted with tourism (tourism receipts and tourists’ arrivals) to establish inequality levels that should not be exceeded in order for tourism to promote financial access in the sampled countries. From the findings, inequality levels that should not be exceeded for tourism to promote financial access are provided: (i) 0.666 of the Atkinson index and 5.000 of the Palma ratio for tourism receipts to promote financial access and (ii) for tourist arrivals to enhance financial access, 0.586, 0.721 and 6.597 respectively, of the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index, and the Palma ratio. Policy implications are discussed
Fighting corruption when existing corruption-control levels count: what do wealth-effects tell us in Africa?
No full textWhy are some nations more effective at battling corruption than others? Are there different determinants in the fight against corruption across developing nations? Do income-levels matter in the fight against corruption when existing corruption-control levels also matter? In other words, how does the wealth of nations matter in the fight against corruption when corruption is assessed throughout the conditional distribution of corruption-control from countries with low initial levels of corruption-control to those with high initial levels of corruption-control. To investigate these concerns we examine the determinants of corruption-control throughout the conditional distribution of the fight against corruption. The following broad findings are established: (1) Population growth is a tool in the fight against corruption in Low income countries. (2) Democracy increases corruption-control in Middle income countries. As a policy implication, blanket corruption-control strategies are unlikely to succeed equally across countries with different income levels and political will in the fight against corruption. Thus to be effective, anti-corruption policies should be contingent on the prevailing levels of corruption-control and income-bracket
Finance and democracy in Africa
No full textThis paper focuses on how political regimes affect financial developments in Africa and the role of dominant religion, income levels and colonial legacies in this regard. The findings indicate that authoritarian regimes have a higher propensity to effect policies that favour the development of financial intermediary depth, activity and size. Democracy has important effects on the degree of competition for public offices but is less significant in influencing policies related to promoting financial development when compared with autocracies. Once democracy is initiated, it should be accelerated (to edge out the appeals of authoritarian regimes) to reap the benefits of level and time hypotheses in financial development
The role of ICT in modulating the effect of education and lifelong learning on income inequality and economic growth in Africa
Get PDFThis study assesses the role of ICT in modulating the impact of education and lifelong learning on income inequality and economic growth. It focuses on a sample of 48 African countries from 2004 to 2014. The empirical evidence is based on the generalised method of moments (GMM). The following findings are established. First, mobile phone and internet each interact with primary school education to decrease income inequality. Second, all ICT indicators interact with secondary school education to exert a negative impact on the Gini index. Third, fixed broadband distinctly interacts with primary school education and lifelong learning to have a positive effect on economic growth. Fourth, ICT indicators do not significantly influence inequality and economic growth through tertiary school education and lifelong learning. These main findings are further substantiated. Policy implications are discussed.Economic
The impact of tourism development on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
Get PDFThis study examines the dynamic impact of tourism development on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using the Generalised Method of Moments and data covering the period from 2002 to 2018. The increasingly important role of tourism and the limelight the tourism sector has been enjoying of late, on the one hand, and the lack of sufficient coverage of tourism-growth nexus studies in Africa in general and in SSA in particular, motivated this study. Unlike most of the known panel data-based studies on tourism development and economic growth, this study has split the sub-Saharan African countries into low-income and middle-income sub-Saharan African countries. The results of the study show that tourism expenditure negatively affects economic growth while tourism receipts have the opposite effect in SSA. The findings are robust to the low-income sub-sample while only the effect of tourism expenditure is robust in the middle-income sub-sample.Economic
Welfare Spending and Quality of Growth in Developing Countries: Evidence from Hopefuls, Contenders and Best Performers
Get PDFThe transition from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has shifted the policy debate from growth to 'quality of growth' (QG). The April 2015 World Bank publication on MDGs extreme poverty targets has revealed that poverty has been decreasing in all regions of the world with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We explore a new dataset on QG by the IMF and classify 93 developing countries for the period 1990-2011 in terms of Hopefuls, Contenders and Best Performers. Preliminary findings reveal that 31 of the 33 countries in the Hopefuls category are in SSA. We build on stylized facts depicting the contradiction between high-growth and poor social welfare, and assess the determinants of education and health spending on the QG using quantile regressions to articulate least and best QG performers. The following findings are established. First, on average, the effect of health (education) is decreasingly (increasingly) positive from Hopefuls to Best Performers. Second, on within categories: (1) health spending has positive threshold effects with decreasing magnitude among Hopefuls (0.10th to 0.30th quantiles) and Contenders (0.40th to 0.60th quantile), and positive effects with increasing magnitude among Best Performers (0.10th to 0.90th quantile) and (2) education spending has positive inverted U-shaped effects among Hopefuls and Contenders and positive U-shaped effects among Best Performers. Policy implications are discussed
On the dynamic effects of foreign aid on corruption
Get PDFWe assemble more pieces on the puzzle of the aid-corruption nexus. In essence, we extend the debate on the effect of foreign aid on corruption by providing evidence on dynamic effects of wealth, legal origin, religious-domination, regional proximity, openness to sea, natural resources and politico-economic stability. The empirical evidence from dynamic panel GMM estimation is based on 53 African countries for the period 1996-2010. The findings show that the positive effect of foreign aid on corruption is most significant in: Middle-income, French civil-law, Christian-dominated, non-oil exporting and landlocked countries. Moreover, there is also some scanty evidence of foreign aid increasing corruption-control in Lower Middle income and Not-landlocked countries. Justifications for the dynamics are discussed
Real Effective Exchange Rate Imbalances and Macroeconomic Adjustments: evidence from the CEMAC zone
Get PDFWe assess the behavior of real effective exchange rates (REERs) of members of the CEMAC zone with respect to their long-term equilibrium paths. A reduced form of the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate (FEER) model is estimated and associated misalignments are derived for the period 1980 to 2009. Our findings suggest that for majority of countries, macroeconomic fundamentals have the expected associations with the exchange rate fluctuations. The analysis also reveals that, only the REER adjustments of Cameroon and Gabon are significant in restoring the long-term equilibrium in event of a shock. The Cameroonian economic fundamentals of terms of trade, government expenditure and openness have different long-term relations with the REER in comparison to those of other member states. Ultimately, there is no need for an adjustment in the level of the peg based on the present quantitative analysis of REER paths
The questionable economics of development assistance in Africa: hot-fresh evidence, 1996-2010
Get PDFThis paper assesses the aid-development nexus in 52 African countries using updated data (1996-2010) and a new indicator of human development (adjusted for inequality). The effects of Total Net Official Development Assistance (NODA), NODA from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and NODA from Multilateral donors on economic prosperity (at national and per capita levels) are also examined. The findings broadly indicate that development assistance is detrimental to GDP growth, GDP per capita growth and inequality adjusted human development. The magnitude of negativity (which is consistent across specifications and development dynamics) is highest for NODA from Multilateral donors, followed by NODA from DAC countries. Given concerns on the achievement of the MDGs, the relevance of these results point to the deficiency of foreign aid as a sustainable cure to poverty in Africa. Though the stated intents or purposes of aid are socio-economic, the actual impact from the findings negates this. It is a momentous epoque to solve the second tragedy of foreign aid; it is high time economists and policy makers start rethinking the models and theories on which foreign aid is based. In the meantime, it is up to people who care about the poor to hold aid agencies accountable for piecemeal results. Policy implications and caveats are discussed
Addressing a root cause of Sub Saharan Africa's poverty tragedy: Horizons for post-2015 common capital flight policies
Get PDFAn April 2015 World Bank report on attainment of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) extreme poverty target has revealed that extreme poverty has been decreasing in all regions of the world with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), in spite of the sub-region enjoying more than two decades of growth resurgence. This study builds on a critic of Piketty's 'capital in the 21st century' and recent methodological innovations on reverse Solow-Swan to review empirics on the adoption of common policy initiatives against a cause of extreme poverty in SSA: capital flight. The richness of the dataset enables the derivation of 14 fundamental characteristics of African capital flight based on income-levels, legal origins, natural resources, political stability, regional proximity and religious domination. The main finding reveals that regardless of fundamental characteristic, from a projection date of 2010, a genuine timeframe for harmonizing policies is between 2016 and 2023. In other words, the beginning of the psot-2015 agenda on sustainable development goals coincides with the timeframe for common capital flight policies
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