There is a new wave of external borrowing by African governments on private sovereign bond markets. The findings in this paper indicate that African economies pay higher-than-normal coupon rates on these markets; observed risk measures like agency ratings and debt to GDP ratios do not explain...

The paper examines the source of financial market fragmentation in sub-Saharan Africa in the framework of institutional economics. Based on fieldwork data from Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania, it analyses financial risk management, the transaction costs for loan screening and monitoring,...