Review of Development Finance最新文献

Emerging African financial markets have been recently put forward as an interesting and profitable alternative to diversify risk for international investors. At the same time, they became more integrated with developed financial markets, so that, despite claims that Africa would be sheltered by outside shocks because at the margin of the globalization process, they have been hit by the 2008–09 crisis. This paper analyses the relationships among mature financial markets (US and UK), China, some South Saharan African emerging markets (Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa) and two North African countries (Egypt and Tunisia) over the period 2005–2012, focusing on the role of financial markets’ volatility. We study, with the help of a Multiplicative Error fully inter-dependent model (MEM), the dynamics of the financial market volatility (risk), and the interactions with other markets. We present impulse-response functions with a time dependent profile to describe how a volatility shock from one market may propagate to other markets, increasing the fragility of African infant financial markets. Finally, we summarise the role of different markets in propagating risk in the area using a synthetic index (Volatility Spillover Balance) that distinguishes between volatility “creators” and “absorbers”. Our results show that South Africa and US shocks significantly affect African financial markets, and China has recently become more interconnected. Furthermore, while US, Kenya and Tunisia are “net creators” of volatility spillovers, South Africa and China turn out to be net “absorbers”.

African bond markets have been steadily growing in recent years, but nonetheless remain undeveloped. African countries would benefit from greater access to financing and deeper financial markets. This paper compiles a unique set of data on government securities and corporate bond markets in Africa. It then applies an econometric model to analyze the key determinants of African government securities market and corporate bond market capitalization. Government securities market capitalization is directly related to better institutions and interest rate volatility, and inversely related to smaller fiscal deficits, higher interest rate spreads, exchange rate volatility, and current and capital account openness. Corporate bond market capitalization is directly linked to economic size, the level of development of the economy and financial markets, better institutions, and interest rate volatility, and inversely related to higher interest rate spreads and current account openness. Policy implications follow.

This paper adopts a vulnerability perspective to look into some of the key developmental issues that have been raised in discussions following the global financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009. We contend that country vulnerability, defined as probability of shocks × (exposure − resilience), matters for future growth and poverty reduction. However, different ways of dealing with vulnerability all have specific advantages as well as downsides. First, coping with the aftermath of shocks can be painful and is inherently backward-looking. Second, prevention by reducing exposure is typically a long-term process. Third, increasing resilience through self-insurance often carries high opportunity costs. And fourth, market insurance and hedging may be politically sensitive and is largely unavailable to countries that need it most. Hence we argue for a multi-layered ‘therapy’, combining different approaches with attention to the short and long term, mindful of country specifics and with roles to play for both developing countries themselves and international actors. A tentative exploration of how vulnerability has been dealt with before and during the crisis suggests that, in some areas, important progress has been made. Nevertheless, and particularly for low-income countries, there is still a long way to go.

The argument that aid can bolster growth and poverty reduction only in a conducive policy environment has generated attention on some conditions of the economic, political and institutional context in the recipient country which can allow aid to contribute to pro-poor growth. This has clear implications in terms of aid allocation.

This paper tries to contribute to such discussion by proposing a combined framework to address the aid-growth-poverty-governance nexus. Results show that aid is more effective – both for poverty reduction and for growth – when its allocation is inspired by a poverty-focused perspective and, to a certain extent, by a conducive environment in the recipient country.

A review of aid allocation over the past thirty years supports the criticism that this does not seem to be inspired by poverty-reducing aims, but it reveals as well how this has remarkably changed.

It is highlighted how both donors’ poverty-focused aid allocation and recipients’ proper aid utilization are necessary to improve aid effectiveness. At the same time it is considered how the ongoing changes of the poverty landscape will require some changes of the aid architecture.

This paper studies the differential impact on IPO firm listing prospectus length from increasing proportions of foreign directors from civil as opposed to common law societies and social elites. Using a unique hand-collected and comprehensive sample of 165 IPO firms from across 18 African countries the evidence suggests that increasing proportions of directors from civil code law countries is associated with shorter prospectuses while the opposite is true for their common law counterparts. Furthermore increasing proportions of directors drawn from elevated social positions in indigenous society is related to increasing prospectus length in North Africa while being insignificant in SSA.

Group micro-lending has been used successfully in some parts of the world to expand the reach of microcredit programs. However, our study shows that microfinance institutions in Kenya prefer individual lending which is associated with higher default rates compared to group lending. The study also shows that high interest rates increase the odds of client delinquency while loan size is inversely related to delinquency. Given these findings, policymakers need to work for stability in the macro-environment to ensure interest rates charged by microfinance institutions (MFIs) remain stable and affordable. Alternatively, MFIs can develop a graduated scale for charging interest rates in which credit is extended to groups at first to hedge the firm against repayment risk; following this, the firm identifies individuals within the groups whose credit risk has improved and issue progressive individual loans to them. Such individual loans would fetch higher returns in form of interest for MFI and boost their outreach, reduce delinquency, and enhance self-sufficiency.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief because the author, Muhamed Zulkhibri, has plagiarized in its entirety an article that has already been published in 2009 by Fadzlan Sufian [International Journal of Commerce and Management, Vol. 19 Iss: 3, (2009) pp. 222–232, http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10569210910987994. The co-author, Fadzlan Sufian, was contacted by the Editor-in-chief and he claims that he was not aware that his co-author submitted the article to Review of Development Finance.

This article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the business regulatory factors that influence investment in a selection of 29 emerging market economies. Both theoretical and empirical literature on the effect of the regulatory environment on investment is reviewed. A panel data analysis over the period 2003–2007 reveals that investment is influenced by secure property rights and the degree of business entry regulation. The results carry important policy implications for improving the investment climate of emerging market economies.

We first illustrate that emerging markets (EMs) face a shortage of financial assets, with financial assets not growing as rapidly as domestic savings. An estimation to quantify the asset shortage in EMs for 1995–2008 is then undertaken. A theoretical model is developed to explain why asset shortages occur. We then econometrically estimate the causes of asset shortages, and conclude with policy implications.