With financial globalization, investors can gain from diversification if returns from financial markets are stable and not correlated. However with volatility spillovers, increase in cross-market correlations exist as a real-effect and are not taken into account for asset allocation and...

The business of this study is to investigate the role of openness in bank efficiency with respect to income levels. From a panel of 29 low and middle income African countries with data spanning from 1987 to 2008, we provide evidence that, openness (trade and financial) breeds less bank...

A previous analysis of the impact of formal institutions on the knowledge economy of 22 Middle-Eastern and Sub-Sahara African countries during the 1996-2010 time period concluded that formal institutions were necessary, but inadequate, determinants of the knowledge economy. To extend that study,...

Purpose–The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of monetary policy on economic activity using a plethora of hitherto unemployed financial dynamics in inflation-chaotic African countries for the period of 1987-2010.Although in developed economies, changes in monetary policy affect...

The employment of financial development indicators without due consideration to country/regional specific financial development realities remains an issue of substantial policy relevance. Financial depth in the perspective of money supply is not equal to liquid liabilities in every development...

Despite over three decades of Liberalisation policies in Africa, income-inequality has stayed persistently high. Using updated panel data of 26 African countries spanning the period 1996-2010, this study examines the effect of liberalisation policies with particular focus on financial, trade,...

Using Kauffman, Kraay, and Mastruzzi governance indicators, this article analyzes the impact of formal institutions on the knowledge economy- by assessing how the enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) through good governance mechanisms affects the knowledge economy. The article also...

The paper extends Breggren et al. (2008, EE) on ‘trust and growth: a shaky relationship” by incorporating recent developments in the trust-growth literature and using a robust methodological underpinning that accounts for the presence of outliers. The empirical evidence is based on 63...

This paper focuses on how political regimes affect financial developments in Africa and the role of dominant religion, income levels and colonial legacies in this regard. The findings indicate that authoritarian regimes have a higher propensity to effect policies that favour the development of...

The proliferation of technology to produce pirated software has prompted key questions in policy decision making on how to tackle the situation. The paper will employ Dynamic panel Generalized Methods of Moments and Two Stage Least Squares to address this. IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights)...