The study examined the effect of credit risk on loan growth in the banking system in Kenya using panel data constituting 40 commercial banks over the period 2009 to 2018. The study employed a dynamic panel data approach to analyze both aggregated banking sector and bank-tier level models be... Read More

The paper revisits the dynamic relationship between trade openness and carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions for member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) over the period 1960-2014. Our approach for SADC is uniquely different from others. For the SADC region, we find ... Read More

Understanding individual risk taking is an important topic in Africa, as access to financial institutions and social security is scarce, and where markets and government policies largely fail to understand investment decisions of poor households. Data on risk attitudes in Africa is limited ... Read More

Cocoa and gold are the major drivers of Ghana’s economic growth and hence these two sectors have been identified by potential investors as the best options for portfolio allocation. This paper assessed the best investments options between the cocoa and gold sectors with in a fluctuating wor... Read More

Capital chases higher returns, and African countries continuously strive to implement effective policies to attract more Foreign Direct Investments (FDI). Against this backdrop, we explore the relationship between interest rates and FDI inflows in Africa and how exchange rates and unemploym... Read More

Women-owned SMEs (WO-SMEs) have become an integral part of economic growth in emerging markets. However, extant literature suggests that they are not performing as best as their male counterparts; thus, the need for researchers to give them special attention. Multiple factors are cited as ... Read More

This study examines the international tourism-foreign direct investment (FDI) nexus in Africa. To do this, it investigates the causal relationship between international tourism and FDI in a panel dataset of 43 African countries for the period 1995-2016. Using the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012... Read More

Death and disability are two forms of health shocks that have been underexplored in the literature, despite having a devastating effect on human wellbeing. This paper examines the economic consequences of death and disability on household wellbeing in Nigeria. This investigation employs a ... Read More

Literature on the impact of financial services on economic wellbeing has largely relied on findings from randomised control trials. Given the scarcity of such trials, this has led to gaps in the sector’s understanding of financial inclusion as a development tool, hence a lack of consensus o... Read More

Utilising data covering the period 2001-2016 from 45 African countries, this study investigated the impact of bank competition/or concentration on access to finance. The two-step system, Generalised Methods of Moment (GMM) analysis, found that low competition, as proxied by the Lerner Index... Read More

As an American Peace Corps Volunteer, I went straight out of college to work with rural credit unions in Cameroon in the mid-1980s. The experience changed my life, giving me both insights into life and further questions to pursue. Cameroon turned me into an anthropologist. Read More

The political determinants of public indebtedness in developing countries is still generating a lot of interest among academics and policy makers. This paper investigates whether elections influence the public debt dynamics relying on data from 51 African countries spanning 1990 to 2015. Th... Read More

Keynesian economics postulates that increased government spending can stimulate growth and national economic transformation under conditions of deficient aggregate demand. This theoretical position is contrary to the orthodox neoclassical view which prioritises austerity. By this mainstream... Read More

Capital account liberalization (CAL) is the removal of restrictions on capital accounts to allow for the free movement of capital across countries. It has been suggested that CAL can lead to exchange rate appreciation by promoting an influx of capital flows. Evidence of this remains wanting... Read More