{"title":"Decomposing the impact of financial openness on finance and income inequality: principle vs. outcome-based approaches from Africa","authors":"Biruk Birhanu Ashenafi, Yan Dong","doi":"10.1007/s10644-024-09638-5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper investigates the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality. We use two approaches to capture financial openness for a panel dataset of 52 African countries from 1980–2019 and find that: (1) Principle-based financial openness policy negatively affects financial sector development and widens income inequality. In contrast, the outcome-based measures positively affect banking sector development and narrow income inequality. (2) Capital inflow to African countries is not merely pulled a vibrant macroeconomic fundamental. Only schooling and governance factors facilitate the impact of financial openness on financial sector development. (3) Adverse non-policy factors play an insignificant role in moderating the impact of financial openness. This implies that the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality is weak in countries experiencing a banking crisis or passing through a lengthy conflict. Our finding is consistent with the institutional quality theory, which claims robust institutions are needed. We underline that countries should take caution in implementing principle-based reforms. Particularly, there is an alternative policy path for African countries to optimize the benefit by pursuing outcome-based financial openness measures.</p>","PeriodicalId":46127,"journal":{"name":"Economic Change and Restructuring","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Economic Change and Restructuring","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-024-09638-5","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality. We use two approaches to capture financial openness for a panel dataset of 52 African countries from 1980–2019 and find that: (1) Principle-based financial openness policy negatively affects financial sector development and widens income inequality. In contrast, the outcome-based measures positively affect banking sector development and narrow income inequality. (2) Capital inflow to African countries is not merely pulled a vibrant macroeconomic fundamental. Only schooling and governance factors facilitate the impact of financial openness on financial sector development. (3) Adverse non-policy factors play an insignificant role in moderating the impact of financial openness. This implies that the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality is weak in countries experiencing a banking crisis or passing through a lengthy conflict. Our finding is consistent with the institutional quality theory, which claims robust institutions are needed. We underline that countries should take caution in implementing principle-based reforms. Particularly, there is an alternative policy path for African countries to optimize the benefit by pursuing outcome-based financial openness measures.
期刊介绍：
Economic Change and Restructuring has been accepted for SSCI and will get its first Impact Factor in 2020!Since the early 1990s fundamental changes in the world economy, under the auspices of increasing globalisation, have taken place
On one hand, the disappearance of the centrally planned economies and the progressive formation of market-oriented economies, have brought about countless systematic changes, where new economic structures, institutions, competences and skills involve complex processes, changes which are still underway and which necessitate adaptation and restructuring to form competitive market economies.
On the other hand, many developing economies are making great strides as regards economic reform and liberalisation, and are emerging as new global players. They show an innovative capacity to position themselves in the global economy and to compete with industrialised countries, which are generally believed to be witnessing the rapid erosion of their established positions. These developments are accompanied by the exacerbation of the world competition.
Both processes involve transition and the emerging economies, in searching for a new role and scope for public policies and for a new balance between public and private partnership, seem to currently be converging, especially with respect to the policies needed to create appropriate and effective market institutions and integrated reform policies, and to increase the standards of the population''s education levels.
Thus, liberalisation and development policies, in attempting to strike a difficult balance between social and environmental needs, must be integrated more coherently. This complexity calls for new analytical and empirical approaches that can explain these new phenomena, which often go beyond the over-simplified facts and conventional ''wisdom'' that emerged at the start of the transition in the early 1990s.
Economic Change and Restructuring (formerly ''Economics of Planning''), by keeping abreast of developments affecting both transitional and emerging economies, is aimed to attract original empirical and policy analysis contributions that are focused on various issues, including macroeconomic analysis, fiscal issues, finance and banking, industrial and trade development, and regional and local development issues.
The journal aspires to publish cutting edge research and to serve as a forum for economists and policymakers working in these fields.Officially cited as: Econ Change Restruct
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