African Development Review-Revue Africaine De Developpement最新文献

This paper explores the influence of corporate governance on the profitability and credit risk of a sample of listed banks in Tunisia. The methodology involves two main steps. Firstly, principal component analysis is employed to construct a novel governance index, assessing the quality of both internal and external bank governance. This index takes into account the degree of compliance and application of directives and laws mandated by the Tunisian Central Bank regarding banking governance. In the second step, panel data analysis is conducted to scrutinize the impact of internal and external governance mechanisms on the profitability and risk of Tunisian banks. The results reveal that as the governance index increases, the profitability of banks improves in terms of return on assets and stock market performance. Additionally, a higher governance index is correlated with a reduction in credit risks, as indicated by lower instances of non-performing loans and an increased rate of coverage for classified debts. To enhance the robustness of our results, we calculate a standard governance score based on existing empirical literature. Furthermore, to account for potential endogeneity, we employ the two-step system generalized method of moments.

This paper examines the asymmetric link between carbon pricing and the comparative advantage in environmental goods exports in South Africa from 1995 to 2021. The non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model is utilized to investigate the effects of both minor and major positive and negative fluctuations in carbon taxes, technological innovation, and energy transition on comparative advantage. The results reveal that carbon taxes have an asymmetric effect on comparative advantage in both the short and long runs, with positive shocks exerting a greater beneficial influence than negative shocks. Specifically, it is found that a 1% reduction in carbon taxes corresponds to a 1.24% decline in the response variable, whereas a 1% increase in carbon taxes is associated with a 2.72% increase in comparative advantage in environmental goods exports, which is twice as large. The study also uncovers evidence of an asymmetric relationship between low-carbon technological innovation and comparative advantage in environmental goods exports. However, strong evidence of a long-run asymmetric linkage between the energy transition and comparative advantage is not established. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that a positive shift in energy transition is linked with a 0.32% rise in comparative advantage in environmental goods exports, whereas a negative shift in energy transition corresponds to a 0.11% decrease. The practical policy implications are also discussed.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has threatened global grain supplies as it reduces production and exports while increasing trade costs. While the overall share of Africa's trade with Ukraine and Russia is small, the concentration of imports in products such as wheat, other grains, and fertilizer is critical to food security. This paper investigates the long-term impacts of the conflict on grain imports and prices in Africa. We use a long-run general equilibrium trade model to study three scenarios that may evolve as a consequence of the conflict: (1) a heavily reduced Ukrainian production of wheat and other grains; (2) rising trade costs with Ukraine and Russia due to disrupted trade routes in the Black Sea and the sanctions against trading with Russia; and (3) an outright ban on Russian grain export. The model simulations show that the conflict severely affects grain imports, raising local prices for wheat and other grains, with especially strong effects in high import-dependent countries. That creates risks for food security in some African countries.

Illicit financial flows have been an issue of great concern over the past decades due to the challenge they present for economic development in Africa. Illicit financial flows undermine the productivity and growth of African economies as countries lose foreign exchange and tax revenues. Countries lose financial resources needed for development programs, hence undermining social service delivery and retarding poverty reduction. To effectively combat illicit financial flows, it is imperative to examine their determinants. This study seeks to examine the determinants of illicit capital movement in the China-Africa trade through the mechanisms of trade misinvoicing over the period 1990–2019. The IMF's Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) database is used to estimate trade misinvoicing. Estimates using mirror trade data indicate that both exports of Africa to China and imports from China to Africa are mainly underinvoiced. The net effect shows that trade misinvoicing in the China-Africa trade results in net illicit capital outflow for about 44% of countries in Africa. The results from panel data regressions indicate that tax evasion is one of the major factors behind misinvoicing in China-Africa trade. In addition, corruption control is found to reduce export underinvoicing, while political stability reduces both export overinvoicing and import overinvoicing. Export misinvoicing increases with the presence of natural resources in the exporting country. Other factors associated with trade misinvoicing in China-Africa trade include openness to trade, current account deficit, and real exchange rate. The study suggests ways to reduce trade misinvoicing in China-Africa trade.

Addressing the challenge of limited access to drinking water requires a comprehensive understanding of its underlying causes. This study aims to evaluate the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on access to basic services in Africa, focusing specifically on people's access to drinking water. Utilizing data from a panel of 51 countries spanning the period 2000–2020, we employed a two-step system generalized method of moments to estimate dynamic econometric models. Our analysis reveals a positive correlation between FDI inflows and improved access to drinking water. A one-percentage point increase in FDI inflows leads to a 0.026 percentage point rise in the proportion of people with access to drinking water. Notably, the effects vary between urban and rural areas, with marginal effects of 0.022 and 0.160, respectively. Furthermore, our findings indicate an inverse U-shaped relationship between FDI and access to drinking water in Africa, signifying that while access to drinking water improves with increasing FDI, the rate of improvement diminishes. The study recommends the judicious utilization of tax revenues from multinational enterprises to fund basic service infrastructures and advocates for measures aimed at attracting additional FDIs.

With the increasing education of women in developing countries, educational assortative mating has become a significant aspect in the marriage market, with educational assortative mating patterns likely to be dependent on marriage timing. Using pooled data from three recent waves of the Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys, the paper investigates the effect of marriage timing on educational assortative mating patterns in Cameroon. To achieve the objective, the study employed the Cox proportional hazard model and a control function version of multinomial Probit. Results show that delaying marriage is expected to decrease the likelihood of women engaging in low educationally homogamous marriages while increasing the probability of women entering high educationally homogamous and hypogamous marriages. Findings further depicted that over the period 2004–2018, the likelihood of women engaging in low educationally homogamous marriages decreased meanwhile the likelihood of women considering high educationally homogamous marriages and hypogamous marriages increased. The implications of these findings are in tandem with the wisdom that, programs encouraging the girl child to delay early marriages and stay longer in school can help women engage in high educationally homogamous marriages, empower women and thus improves their socioeconomic status.

This study explores the impact of oil shocks on the Moroccan economy using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. The DSGE simulations reveal that these shocks, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, led to a contraction in the output gap, consumption, investment, and savings, as well as increased inflation. These results highlight the vulnerability of the Moroccan economy to external shocks, particularly those linked to energy prices. They underline the need for Morocco to diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependence on oil imports. Furthermore, our results suggest that economic policies should focus on mitigating the effects of these shocks. Future research could seek to refine this model by incorporating other factors likely to influence the Moroccan economy, such as changes in global demand or specific government policies.

Aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 10, this study probes whether quality institutions matter in the drive towards reducing income inequality through human capital. An unbalanced panel data on the Gini index (measure of income inequality), human capital index and institutional quality index drawn across 83 Latin America and sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 2010 to 2019 is used. For the most part, the consensus is that the interaction of human capital and quality institutions significantly reduces income inequality. For context, inequality reduces by −7.810 and −21.30 points for the full and SSA samples. Other findings reveal that the interaction effect is consistently negative at upper quantiles. Evidence from the margin plots reveals that the effect of human capital on inequality improves as institutional quality is strengthened. The downward trend of the plot within the 95% confidence interval shows that institutional quality enhances the impact of human capital on income inequality for the full sample and in SSA. This is a novel contribution to the literature as it suggests that quality institutions matter in the drive towards reducing the menace of income inequality. Policy recommendations are discussed.