African Development Review-Revue Africaine De Developpement最新文献

This paper investigates the impact of financial openness on financial sector development and income inequality. We use the de jure and de facto measures of financial openness across 78 countries from 1980 to 2019. By employing a system generalized method of moments (GMM) with 5-year averaged data and a novel push and pull modeling framework, we obtain three key results. First, the de jure measure of financial openness exacerbates income inequality and is sensitive to banking crises and conflict intensity. Second, the de facto measure spurs stock value traded in emerging market economies (EMEs) and declines domestic credit in Africa. Third, the interaction between de facto measures with schooling and governance factors affects financial sector development and income inequality. We highlighted that the mere usage of the de jure measure and their interaction is incorrect. The key implication is that valuable information about the real impact of openness can be obtained from the de facto measures and their interaction with favorable macroeconomic fundamentals, governance factors, and adverse nonpolicy factors.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative influence of bilateral and multilateral concessional debts on public investment in 32 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1985–2020. Dynamic panel autoregressive distributed lag models comprising the mean group, pooled mean group and dynamic fixed effect estimators were employed in our model estimations. The results revealed that bilateral and multilateral concessional debts had a long-run positive and significant effect on public investment. The findings indicated that a 1% change in bilateral and multilateral concessional debt was associated with 8.6 and 11.3% increases in public investment, respectively. While the short-run influence of bilateral concessional debts was significantly positive, multilateral concessional debts had a short-run positive but insignificant effect on public investment. It is discovered that institutional quality is associated with declines in public investment. The contingency analysis shows that institutional quality explains a lot about how well bilateral and multilateral concessional debts drive public investment. The evidence suggests that poor institutional quality is more likely to undermine the effectiveness of bilateral concessional debts on productive investment than multilateral concessional debts.

Financial inclusion remains at the heart of governments concerns. By creating favorable conditions for access to a diversified range of adapted financial products and services at affordable costs for the populations, financial inclusion generates important opportunities that could lead to increased tax revenue mobilization. This paper analyzes the effects of financial inclusion on tax revenue mobilization, using panel data from West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries over the period 2006–2019. The findings suggest that financial inclusion positively and significantly influences government's tax revenue. Moreover, by looking at the effects of disaggregated financial inclusion dimensions (access, use, and affordability) on various components of tax revenue, we find that the estimated coefficients on the subcomponents of financial inclusion are statistically significant. Results also indicate that the magnitude of effect of financial inclusion is higher on indirect taxes compared to direct tax revenues. This research recommends that policy-makers should prioritize financial inclusion in their policies and development agenda through National Financial Inclusion Strategies (NFIS) because it can increase countries' resource mobilization and help them to build fiscal resilience.

The poor development of road infrastructure is one of the main obstacles to economic activity and therefore to employment in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using cross-sectional data from 31 SSA countries, this study examines, from a gender perspective, the effect of access to paved roads on youth unemployment in rural areas in the region. The seemingly unrelated bivariate probit framework has been adopted in analysing the data. This approach is used for addressing the possible endogeneity bias that occurs when the dependent variable and regressor are both endogenous and binary. The major finding of this study reveals that access to paved roads in rural areas reduces the probability that young people will face unemployment. The aforementioned is more pronounced for young women than for young men. Moreover, the greater the proximity to the road increases, the greater its reducing effect on the probability of young people being unemployed. It is therefore important that the development of road infrastructure in rural areas be at the centre of public policies to address youth unemployment in SSA countries. This will significantly increase women's empowerment, through their participation in the labour market, and the full economic participation of young people.

Although credit availability is essential for economic growth, the information asymmetry problem inhibits the credit creation function of financial institutions. Among other means, information-sharing offices (ISOs) have been established, including private credit bureaus and public credit registries to provide information on the financial characteristics of citizens to reduce information asymmetry. From this background, this study used an explanatory research design with a longitudinal (panel) data approach to assess whether the coverage of information by ISOs affects sectorial and overall economic growth among sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries using the system generalized method of moments technique on data from 2005 to 2019. The results highlight that information coverage by ISOs enhances sectorial and overall economic growth by solving the information asymmetry problem. From the findings, governments in SSA countries are encouraged to support public credit registries to effectively perform their mandate while providing incentives to attract investments in private credit bureaus since they contribute to economic growth.

The illiquidity status of financial institutions widens up the financial stability gap, hence affecting other economic agents that depend on the financial sector. The objective of the study is to determine how the financial stability gap affects private investment in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Annual time series secondary data from 33 SSA countries for the period 2007–2018 was used. Using the general methods of moments (GMM) estimation technique, we found that the financial stability gap beyond 109.9% becomes detrimental to private sector investment while government effectiveness and investment by the government improve private investment. The study recommends that financial institutions undertake liquidity protection measures as a means of protecting the stability status, while SSA governments invest in the economy and provide the needed business environment for private sector investment.

Following a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) approach, this paper presents new evidence on the validity of international transmission of economic shocks from key trading partners as sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The GVAR model was estimated for 21 SSA countries grouped into three country classes—oil-rich, other-resources-rich and non-resource-based economies, to account for output shocks from crucial trading partner countries—United States, United Kingdom, China and Europe. Furthermore, the generalized forecast error variance decompositions results reveal that output shocks from key trading partners constitute significant contributors to changes in key macroeconomic indicators—real gross domestic product, inflation, exchange rate and short-term interest rate, in the SSA region. The generalized impulse response functions indicate that these economic shocks have more significant impacts on oil-rich countries than on other country groups. A key recommendation from this study is that SSA countries, especially the resource-rich economies, need to strengthen and diversify their economic structure, including the trade basket.

This paper investigates the direct and combined impacts of trade facilitation and information and communication technology (ICT) on bilateral flows of 25 sub-Saharan countries. For that purpose, we select time to export and import as specific trade facilitation indicators and broadband use to study ICT impacts. Our sample covers a total of 93 countries over the period 2004–2018. By preprocessing data analysis, we impute time costs missing values, an essential shortcoming of the available databases, to study trade facilitation over time. Lastly, we employ a gravity model and implement a Bonus Vetus Estimation. Our results show that broadband use exerts a positive and significant effect on trade, especially relevant for intra-African trade flows. Furthermore, the combined effects indicate that broadband also modulates the negative impacts of time to export and time to import in the case of intra-SSA countries' trade. The more significant result is found for time to export. Our results also confirm that time costs are not only particularly harmful to intra-African trade but also negatively impact trade flows from SSA countries to the rest of the world. These outcomes show the importance of coordinating trade facilitation and digital transformation policies, particularly those devoted to digitally transforming African customs.

This study assessed the link between ease of doing business (EBD) and investment among 11 selected countries in West Africa covering 2006–2020. The study used the fixed-effects estimator, the random-effects estimator, the augmented mean-group method, and the Half-Panel Jackknife Wald-type test. The study found a bidirectional relationship between the EBD and foreign direct investment (FDI) and a unidirectional relationship running from EBD to domestic investment. The findings further revealed that the EBD and national income have a strong influence in determining the level of domestic investment and FDI inflows, and that some indicators of EBD, such as the procedure for starting a business, access to credit facilities, tax, and security threats, discourage domestic investment and FDI inflows, in contrast to the influence of obtaining electricity and national income on investment. The study suggests that West African governments reduce taxes, ease the procedures and costs of starting a business and dealing with construction permits, and increase the availability of credit facilities at lower interest rates to promote investment in the region.

Using a panel data covering more than 100 countries worldwide, we have estimated a dynamic panel model to investigate the relationship between financial development and manufacturing industries’ growth. More specifically, we have estimated the effect that institutional quality might have in this relationship in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The results show that lower quality institutions in SSA are a hindrance to the role financial development plays in the growth of the manufacturing industrial sector, as compared with developed countries. These findings are robust when a quantile regression model is used. Furthermore, the results confirm that the relationship between per capita GDP and industrialization is nonlinear. Finally, in SSA, the abundance of natural resources has an adverse effect on the manufacturing industrial value added, providing more evidence for the Dutch disease hypothesis.