Economic Notes最新文献

In recent literature, various social implications arising from the COVID-19 pandemic have been extensively deliberated upon. In this study, we introduce an ordinal random effects model designed to explore the changes in individual perceived happiness during periods of lockdown. We delve into the impact of diverse factors such as social and family relationships, spirituality, religiosity, and trust in institutions, alongside a range of demographic and economic variables. Our data set comprises responses from 1212 individuals in the United States gathered between March and April 2020. The findings reveal an anticipated decline in overall happiness during the COVID-19 crisis, particularly noticeable within specific demographic and behavioural segments: social connections, trust, and religiosity exhibit nuanced variations, contingent upon the level of spirituality and the specific institutions under consideration.

Financial inclusion universally remains one of the critical means to end poverty in the world, especially Africa, where the level of poverty is high. It has however been argued that financial inclusion equally has the tendency to destabilize the financial system, thwarting the poverty reduction efforts, which necessitates the interrogation of the relationship between the variables. This study therefore investigates how financial stability mediates the financial inclusion and poverty reduction relationship in Africa. Using the panel Autoregressive Distributive Lag model, covering a period of 2004–2020, the study found that financial inclusion is positively related to financial stability in both short and long-run, with education, Gross National Income per capita (GNI) and domestic credit to private sector, contributing to financial stability, and trade openness negatively related to financial stability in the long-run. The study further established that financial stability is positively related to household consumption expenditure as such leads to poverty reduction with trade openness, government expenditure, GNI, education, domestic credit to private sector, and institutional quality contributing significantly to poverty reduction. This confirms the mediating role financial stability plays in enhancing the impact of financial inclusion on poverty reduction in Africa and must therefore be given the necessary attention, through proper regulatory mechanisms.

This paper aims at extracting a common factor from major carbon pricing which is interpreted as an effective carbon pricing or a shadow pricing. For this purpose, we use a dynamic factor model for which the unobserved common factors and idiosyncratic noises are potentially nonstationary processes. The two-step Kalman smoother procedure is used to estimate the model. We found (i) that the extracted common factor (i.e., the effective carbon pricing) exhibits very low values which range from 2.05 to 16.1 USD per ton, and more importantly, (ii) this factor does not cointegrate with the market prices. This last result highlights a total lack of integration of carbon markets.

The effect of currency volatility on investments in Africa continues to dominate the headlines, especially in the recent period of global crisis and heightened geopolitical tensions. This paper tackles the dynamic relationship between stock returns and exchange rates in nine emerging and frontier African markets. The study departs from the usual VAR and GARCH models and employs a tool that accounts for time–frequency co-movements and lead/lag relationships between exchange rates and stock returns in Africa. The bivariate wavelet technique applied to daily data from 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2022 established a profound negative co-movement between stock returns and exchange rates, especially in the medium to long-term frequencies. With exchange rates dominantly playing a leading role, it presents a case for policy consideration toward currency stability. We employed the partial wavelet approach to determine how stock returns and exchange rates related during the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic and found negative co-movements within the short-term frequency, revealing that investors preferred the short-term horizon in times of crisis. However, when the covariate (COVID-19) was controlled or suppressed, we discovered the health pandemic failed to drive both stock returns and exchange rates.

Using a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, we evaluate the effect of UKSSE Trading scheme 2015—launch of stock trading by UK social stock exchange (UKSSE) for social enterprises (SEs) that became its members, on the productivity of UKSSE member-firms (treated group) as compared to nonmembers (control group) for the 2008–2014 and the 2015–2018 periods, before and post the implementation of the UKSSE trading scheme 2015. Our findings suggest significant positive impact of UKSSE trading scheme opening on the productivity of all SEs (treated group) for 2 years and SEs-SMEs (treated group) for 3 years, respectively, following the launch of this trading scheme, compared to the control groups. Thus, the UKSSE, through its trading scheme 2015, accomplished its role as a means to improve the performance of its members, measured by productivity.