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Conventional knowledge of market volatility represents that two proximate financial markets operated in the same country would display a similar pattern in their time-varying volatility. In this paper, we propose that the heterogeneity in financial policy orientation of stock markets creates significant inter-market differences in terms of the volatility of stock returns, even if they are culturally and geographically linked to each other. For the empirical investigation of our proposition, the volatility data from two major stock exchanges in the Middle East, the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) are used. Both the ADX and DFM stock exchanges operate in the same country, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The ADX is based in Abu Dhabi, the administrative capital, while the DFM is based in Dubai, the commercial and business hub of the UAE. They were both established in the year 2000, and their operational headquarters are located about 150 km from each other. This paper uses a multivariate GARCH model, in particular a diagonal VECH GARCH (1, 1) model to estimate volatility measures for stock returns between ADX-listed and DFM-listed stocks. The paper finds that the stock returns are significantly less volatile in the ADX compared to those in the DFM suggesting that the volatility transmission is incomplete between these two neighboring financial markets. This difference in volatility can potentially be attributed to the relatively conservative financial policies adopted by the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi compared to the more market-oriented economic policies of Dubai, the country's financial and commercial hub. Our findings have considerable implications for portfolio managers in ascertaining risk premiums when allocating investments across the two stock exchanges. For instance, this disparity in volatility should be taken into account by investors and policymakers when designing risk management strategies because it suggests that investors in the DFM may be exposed to higher levels of risk and uncertainty compared to their counterparts in the ADX. Investors operating in the DFM may require more robust risk management strategies, such as asset diversification and hedging, compared to their ASX counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a Competitive Leverage model, and apply it to analyze the impact of tariffs on the attitudes of domestic import-competing firms, especially regarding their disincentives to maintain a Competitive Stance against foreign competitors in the domestic market. We propose that tariffs are a disincentive to the pursuit and maintenance of production efficiency in firms and industries. When countries implement tariff protection for their domestic firms, the most common excuse sounds reasonable, except that it is also economically flawed. While the short-run impacts of such a measure might seem plausible, its long-term effects appear to be less than favorable, and may, in fact, turn out to be damaging to the economy. The paper applies the competitive leverage concept in a unique way to highlight how tariffs distort the output levels of domestic firms, and gives an empirical analysis of the model, using USA data to verify the predictions of the model. Particularly, we develop a Cournot-competition type Competitive Leverage model, and use it to examine the role played by tariffs as a disincentive to a typical firm's pursuit and maintenance of production efficiency. The competitive leverage model is formulated and applied to verify the effects of tariff protection from the typical domestic firm's strategic interaction standpoint. We further apply crosssectional data to carry out an empirical analysis of the model, to verify how tariffs impact the domestic firm's output and pricing decisions. Our findings would enable us to contribute to the debate about the need to remove protective tariffs, on the grounds that tariffs do not only enable domestic firms to operate inefficiently, but also tends to distort the output and pricing outcomes that would otherwise have been realized in the free market. The results from the study are used to propose some major policy implications of imposing tariff protection, among which are that there is need for implementation of more deliberately sustained Research and development program on the part of domestic firms in the economy, to enable them withstand vigorous competition in a free-trade world. Also, since protective tariffs significantly increase firms' profit rates, which in turn enables them to unduly earn and accumulate economic rents that amount to inefficiencies and distortions in free-market prices and quantities outcomes, governments should always resist any pressures from big businesses to impose protective tariffs against competition from international rivals. Yet a clear public policy implication from this paper is that, at the macro level, as the results suggest that a government policy that aims at protecting domestic firms through imposition of tariffs may have an adverse effect on the firms' competitive stance in the industry, a practical message is for the government to impose only a moderate tariff at the most, if it must, especially as it relates to agricultural products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we document how the thinness of the labor market leads to managers in smaller towns becoming more generalist in their careers. Drawing upon the literature on the economics of agglomeration we propose that high quality managerial talent and a wider range of jobs will be more concentrated in larger cities relative to smaller towns, thereby creating relatively thinner markets for managerial talent in smaller towns. Due to this spatial sorting of talent, compared to firms in larger cities, firms located in smaller towns will have limited access to a pool of high-ability, high-fit candidates and will be more likely to recruit individuals that do not have relevant job experience in the area of interest (low fit) despite having high ability. They will thus require a change in functional areas of these individuals. From the workers' perspective, due to a lower concentration of jobs in smaller towns workers will have a narrower range of jobs to choose from than in larger cities. Many workers will be less likely to match with jobs that perfectly align with their prior experience. To remain employed, such workers will need to functionally diversify. Using the quasi-random assignment feature in the context of Indian Administrative Services (IAS), we disentangle inherent quality differences between individuals from their locational preferences, which enables us to move closer to a causal inference on the influence of geography on the likelihood of change in functional area and becoming a generalist. By examining the career trajectories of 4,244 officers from IAS, we find support for our argument. The key contributions of this paper are to provide novel evidence on how labor market differences arising from locations is an antecedent to functional diversification, and to provide evidence on explanatory mechanisms. Our finding that the careers of individuals are also likely to differ by geography adds to the literature on human capital development, and agglomeration economies, which has documented other ways that labor markets differ by geography such as productivity, innovation, wages, and industry concentration. Last, our paper has policy implications as it implies that opportunities for career progression, such as being able to change functional areas, could act as a demand side factor that triggers mobility to smaller towns for individuals with high general human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy implications of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) 2016, which was enacted in India as part of banking sector reforms. The study aims to answer the question: Has the policy helped banks enhance their asset quality, stability, and performance?" To determine the effect of IBC on these research variables, we used a difference-in-difference (DID) regression technique. We collected a sample of 924 bank year observations for three categories of banks -- public, private and foreign ownership banks for the period during 2010 to 2021. We first analysed the ownership-wise impact of IBC on asset quality, stability and performance. Then, we further investigated the policy's implications by dividing banks into unhealthy and healthy categories based on their Z scores. In our findings, bank stability and asset quality for three ownership banks (private, public and foreign banks) is significantly different from each other. For overall sample observations, the relationship between asset quality and banks stability is negative and significant. This suggests that a deterioration in asset quality leads to less change in bank stability, i.e. the result confirms banks' loan evergreening problem during the reform period. The results estimating the impact of IBC on stability of public sector banks was insufficient, except for risk capital. Our findings show that public sector banks have tightened their lending standards in anticipation of potential asset quality deterioration. However, our analysis of the IBC's impact on unhealthy banks' asset quality, stability and performance did not align with the policy's objectives. While the IBC policy in itself is passing through several changes in recent, the study's results can aid policymakers in better assessing the impact of banking policies in India and can be used a reference for future policy formulation. A few related areas where the study results will aid to help are insolvency resolution, developing liquidation and cross-board insolvency framework. This paper is the first effort to estimate the impact of IBC separately on asset quality, bank stability, and performance of banks in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature on health inequalities often overlooks the nuanced dynamics, particularly among vulnerable children with chronic diseases and disabilities and fails to consider regional disparities within countries like South Africa. This paper asserts the necessity for a more granular analysis in South Africa, recognizing the varied health outcomes for children across different economic segments and geographical settings. Specifically, the health trajectories for children differ markedly between rural formal areas, regions under traditional authorities, formal urban areas, and informal urban settlements. Addressing the generalizations common in prior research, this study takes a precise, regionally focused approach to socio-economic-driven disparities in chronic illness or disability. It distinguishes between rural formal areas, traditional authority areas, formal urban areas, and informal urban areas, unveiling the intricate layers of health disparities. Using data from the National Income Dynamics Study, concentration indices, and the Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition method, the paper analyzed health inequality trends from 2008 to 2017. The results uncover significant inequalities, with alarming trends, particularly among children with chronic illnesses and disabilities in traditional authority regions and informal urban environments. The paper's evidence shows that rural formal areas have experienced a decline in health disparities as opposed to the deepening divide in traditional authority-led regions. The urban analysis reveals a split: while formal urban settings often favour the wealthier, informal urban areas indicate a shift towards lower socioeconomic brackets. The decomposition analysis highlights the evolving socioeconomic elements influencing each region over time. These insights emphasize the urgent necessity for geographically tailored policy interventions. By understanding the distinct socioeconomic landscapes across various regions, we can formulate policies that resonate with each area's specific realities and challenges. Such targeted strategies are essential in reducing health inequalities and enhancing the life quality of children with chronic health conditions and disabilities, playing a critical role in South Africa's journey toward comprehensive health equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely held that smart contracts on a blockchain possess several unique properties, including immutability, disintermediation, and enhanced security, that can be advantageous to organizations. In particular, having these properties can enable smart contracts to benefit human resources departments in a number of ways, including applicant verification, tracking employee skills and tasks, and facilitating compensation. However, it is also reported that effectively implementing smart contracts involves a number of challenges to HR managers. To address these challenges, it would be valuable to establish criteria to help HR managers employ smart contracts successfully. The purpose of this paper is to develop a set of such criteria. The paper first provides an overview of the nature of blockchain and smart contracts and then, based on a review of relevant literature, describes how implementation of blockchain-enabled smart contracts in an HR department may benefit an organization by producing transaction cost savings through expediting processes, enhancing security, and reducing intermediaries. The paper then focuses on various challenges that have been identified in the literature to the successful use of smart contracts. These include issues regarding smart contract integrity, immutability, and security, as well as potential problems associated with a variety of legal issues. Synthesizing this information, the paper develops a set of best practice guidelines to help HR managers determine whether and how to employ smart contracts successfully for HR-related processes. The guidelines emphasize the importance of initial understanding and testing of planned smart contracts, protecting security by ensuring that only permissioned people can access smart contract data, and guaranteeing the integrity of smart contracts by paying very close attention to the translation of natural to programming language and establishing robust reviews of programmed contracts. Policy implications of the guidelines include the importance of HR departments ensuring that all employees who are involved in implementing the technology have a good understanding of the nature and capabilities of smart contracts, that robust methods be implemented to guarantee that the contracts are correctly programmed, and that HR managers keep abreast of legislative environment related to legal issues that may affect their department’s use of smart contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unemployment remains a global challenge that requires additional ways of dealing with it. Therefore, the role of Reserve or Central Banks in reducing unemployment is of recent seeking more attention. This paper examines monetary policy shocks and unemployment nexus in the emerging market economies in Africa. The models of this study are designed within the panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) framework. The models majorly rely on the New Keynesian model. Given the nominal rigidities of the New Keynesian model, the monetary policy can therefore, serve as an important tool which can have a reasonable leverage on real variables. As claimed by Bernanke (2007) that the stance of monetary policy was appropriate to prevent deflation and high unemployment and as it has been empirically tested for developed economies, this paper provides a quantitative evaluation of an aspect of such statement in the context of emerging economies of Africa. We used annual data series on five emerging economies in Africa over the period 1991 to 2020, making 150 balanced panel data observations. The countries include, Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa. The selection was based on those African countries identified as emerging markets by various international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), James O'Neill, Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE), S&P Global Ratings, EM Bond Index, Dow Jones, Russell, Columbia University and Cornell University. The findings of the study revealed that unemployment falls for at most four periods in response to contractionary monetary policy shocks while the response dissipates afterwards. Individually, unemployment rate in Mauritius and Nigeria rose in response to contractionary monetary policy shocks while in South Africa, Egypt and Morocco, it falls in response to contractionary monetary policy shocks. By and large, the results seem to show credence to the effectiveness of monetary policy in each country to achieve desired macroeconomic targets. The main implication of the results is that, expansionary monetary and fiscal policy undertaken by policymakers of emerging economies in Africa can enhance the labor market to recover from the downturns recently experienced in these economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive literature has shown that women's employment contributes to increasing rates of household savings and economic growth. Likewise, evidence has been reported that in an economic integration scheme, such as that of Central America, the strong economic interdependence existing between countries, because of their relatively high trade flows of imports and exports, gives rise to the spread of economic developments occurring in a country. This paper investigates the extent to which the increase in female employment in the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) leads to the increase in growth rates in the other countries (Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama). For this purpose, principal components, which is a data compression methodology, is used. The variables that are included in the vector of principal components are the female-to-male employment ratios in the industrial sectors of the Northern Triangle countries. All data used in the analyses were taken from the World Bank's World Development Indicators. The first principal component of these variables explains 77 percent of the variance, and its decrease represents the deindustrialization of the respective countries. The second principal component accounts for 17 percent of the variance, and its increase represents the expansion of the service sector in the countries. The estimation of error correction equations showed that the first principal component of the female-to-male employment ratios of the industrial sector in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, exerted positive impacts on the economic growth rates of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, while the second principal component exerted negative impacts. The results also showed that the ratios of female to male industrial employment, as well as the first principal component, fell as tariffs on imports were reduced, reflecting a process of deindustrialization which has led to losses in economic growth, and a decrease in trade flows, and rising youth unemployment and increases of the underground economy with adverse impacts on productivity. Likewise, trends towards economic stagnation and rising unemployment have led to increases in irregular emigration and remittances. Another important result is that the process of deindustrialization, fueled by the extreme openness of economies, has generated a substantial increase in the homicide rate. In summary, the results show that female employment generates increases in the economic growth rate of the respective country and in the other member countries. However, this process of regional employment induction is undermined by the extreme openness of economies, which means that the main beneficiaries of the economic dynamism imparted by the increase in female employment may be the countries from which it is imported. In other words, "globalization" or "openness" frustrates national efforts at economic and social development. It should be noted that in the 1960s and 1970s, when the model of import substitution prevailed, the Central American economies grew at rates twice as high as those prevailing after the "reforms." The economic policy recommendations are based on the promotion of women's employment by increasing the levels of female schooling, the establishment of national networks of childcare centers, combating discrimination against women in the workplace, etc. Efforts to increase women's employment will be better developed if they are structured within the framework of a national/regional employment strategy, in which objectives and targets would be established for each country, and the actions to be carried out in the areas of obtaining resources, identifying, approving and supervising projects would be outlined, and the results goals would be established with the respective indicators to be achieved in the medium and long term. But it should be pointed out that these actions cannot yield the results sought in the current structure of extreme openness of economies, which makes it necessary to design and implement policies to achieve the reindustrialization and re-agriculturalization of the economies, seeking, in addition to increasing economic dynamism, the increase of quality employment, and the reduction of violence and irregular emigration, the achievement of self-sufficiency and sustained increases in the production of goods of special importance. The results of this work have shown that in efforts to reignite economic growth, women's employment and Central American economic integration can play important roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of monetary policy on economic growth in Tunisian. After a revolution or significant political changes, countries may reassess and adjust their economic policies, including monetary policy, to address new challenges and align with the evolving economic and political landscape. Central banks often play a crucial role in maintaining economic stability, and changes in leadership or government can lead to shifts in monetary policy objectives and strategies. Using an ARDL model applied to monthly data over the 2011/2021 period, the results revealed that money supply has a positive long-run impact on economic growth in Tunisian after revolution. On the other hand; other instruments such as the interest rate, exchange rate have a significant negative relationship with economic growth. In fact, when interest rates are high, it becomes more expensive to borrow money, so people and businesses are less likely to invest and spend. Findings also depict that increase in Domestic Credit to Private Sector hurts the economic growth. A negative effect on domestic credit could lead a central bank to consider lowering interest rates or implementing other measures to stimulate credit growth and support economic activity. Besides, inflation was shown to play an indirect role by increasing the impact of economic growth. Due to the effect of the revolution, the political instability and high international food and fuel prices negatively affected the domestic prices; Tunisia reached an inflation rate of 4.8% in 2021. Findings of the study have important implications that may discuss the need to adapt monetary policy to ensure economic stability in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution. This could involve addressing challenges such as inflation, exchange rate fluctuations, and overall economic uncertainty. There might be recommendations for adjustments to monetary policy tools and strategies. This could include changes in interest rates, currency management, and liquidity measures to support economic recovery and growth. The implications might involve collaboration between monetary authorities and the government to implement coordinated fiscal and monetary policies. This synergy is often necessary to address broader economic challenges and promote sustainable growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effects of the Brazilian Central Bank (BCB) credibility on the outcomes of its monetary policy. In this sense, we seek to characterize periods in which the central bank can be categorized as strong (high credibility) or weak (low credibility) through a VAR methodology with an endogenously estimated threshold parameter. The econometric model includes the credibility variable, which defines the regimes, along with the output gap, inflation, 12 months ahead inflation expectations, the policy interest rate, and a long-term interest rate. Our dataset spans from 2003 to 2022, with monthly data. The estimations suggest a significant threshold parameter at 1%, with a value of 1.75 percentage points. Thus, we highlight that the BCB operates in a low credibility regime when inflation expectations exceed the tolerance bands around the inflation target. In fact, this occurred in 19% of the considered sample, equivalent to 46 months. Despite the relatively low frequency of periods in which the Brazilian Central Bank operated in a low credibility context, such a regime should be diligently avoided, as our evidence demonstrates that this regime is associated with a substantial reduction in the effectiveness of monetary policy in the country. We show, for example, that with low credibility, the BCB practically loses the ability to affect productive activity and the dynamics of prices (inflation and inflation expectations). When examining the possible causes of the reduction in the effectiveness of monetary policy conditional on the credibility regimes, we show that this variable can affect the existing trade-off between output and inflation in the economy. In other words, our results suggest that credibility regimes can influence the observed inclinations in the country's Phillips curve. Specifically, we point out that in a low credibility regime, inflation shocks generate recessionary effects on output, and inflation becomes more responsive to increases in inflation expectations, thereby reducing the degree of price rigidity. In conclusion, monetary policy in Brazil has effects that systematically depend on the credibility regime in operation. Therefore, maintaining a high credibility regime should remain a priority for the BCB, as it facilitates the achievement of favorable outcomes, including meeting inflation targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing non-family CEOs in Chinese family firms has become a universal phenomenon. The existing research mainly focuses on the direct effect of non-family CEOs on corporate operation, but ignores the capital market influence despite stock price crash has a more serious damage for family firms due to their reputation concern. To fill this research gap, this paper shed light on the important but ignored capital market effect of non-family members by exploring the role of nonfamily CEOs on stock price crash risk. Based on 12,561 firm-year observations of listed family firms in China from 2004 to 2020, this study estimates using correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, entropy balancing matching, treatment effect model and granger causality test. The results show that family firms with non-family CEOs are negatively related with future stock price crash risk in Chinese family firms, and this relationship tends to be stronger when CEOs have more power. Further, to explore the effect mechanism, we isolate the formation of stock price crash risk into two stages: bad news generation and bad news disclosure, and find that non-family CEOs reduce bad news generation but have no impact on bad news disclosure. Additionally, nonfamily CEOs decrease stock price crash risk when governance mechanisms in family firms are weaker, industry environments are poorer and macroeconomic conditions are more positive. This study highlights the negative effect of non-family CEOs on stock price crash risk in Chinese family firms, firstly clarifies the effect mechanism based on the two stages of stock price crash formation and finds that CEO power strengthens the role of non-family CEOs in lowering stock price crash risk in family firms, which differs from previous studies. Finding of this study also have important implications for the managers and investors of family firms. Family firms are expected to increase the introduction of non-family members and strengthen supervision to formalize governance structure. Meanwhile, investors should also consider the ability and experience of top management teams in family firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the dynamics of foreign exchange rates is of paramount importance to economic policy makers for developing countries like India that depend on foreign exchange to meet a large part of their import obligations. This paper uses the concepts of entropy to study the regularity/irregularity of the returns from the Indian Foreign exchange (forex) markets particularly during periods of economic instability. We use the Approximate Entropy and Sample Entropy statistics which measure the level of repeatability in the data are used to quantify the randomness in the forex returns for four major currencies namely the US Dollar, the British pound, the EURO and the Japanese Yen with respect to the Indian Rupee from the time period 2006 to 2021. These statistics are chosen as they are both statistical measures for assessing the randomness or regularity of time series data and enable researchers to objectively evaluate the degree of randomness present in the returns series and understand the crucial underlying patters or behaviors. In this research we look at two periods of major financial upheavals, the subprime crisis also known as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) during 2006-2007 and the recent Covid-19 pandemic during 2020-2021. Our empirical results overwhelmingly confirm our working hypothesis that regularity in the returns of the major Indian foreign exchange rates increases during times of financial crisis. This is evidenced by a decrease in the values of the sample entropy and approximate entropy before and after/during the financial crisis period for the majority of the exchange rates. Our empirical results also show that Sample Entropy is a better measure of regularity than Approximate Entropy for the Indian forex rates which is in agreement with the theoretical predictions. Understanding the returns from foreign exchange rates during financial crises has important policy implications for various stakeholders, including market participants, policymakers, and regulators. It enables them to formulate better risk management and hedging strategies. It also helps policy makers in crisis management and contingency planning and safeguard the stability of the financial system. Exchange rate movements are interconnected across global markets, and crises often have cross-border implications. Collaborating on crisis management strategies across countries can help foster stability in international markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have used various datasets and methodologies to analyze the relationship between bilateral trade and income convergence among trading partners. However, most studies have not paid attention to the effect that income levels and nature of bilateral trade have on the speed of income convergence. In this paper, we argue that the income levels of trading partners and the nature of bilateral trade play important role in the relationship between bilateral trade and international income convergence. To account for the effect of income levels of trading partners, this paper presents an approach that explicitly accounts for bilateral trade among high-income (OECD) countries, bilateral trade between high-income and low-income (SSA) countries, and bilateral trade among low-income (SSA) countries. We also used total trade data for 25 OECD countries and 30 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2018 to avoid the potential bias for selecting certain countries based on arbitrary percentage of trade relationship. We used the 2SLS estimations technique to avoid endogeneity problems due to the nature of the dataset. The paper finds that the bilateral trade-income convergence relationship for OECD to SSA is the strongest. This result throws light on the claim that the nature of bilateral trade between high-income and low-income countries promotes one directional knowledge spillover from high-income to low-income countries which enables low-income countries to adopt new technologies and grow faster than their high-income counterparts. Also, bilateral trade among OECD countries, which mostly comprises of differentiated products, promotes descent income convergence among them. However, bilateral trade among SSA countries has the least effect on income convergence. Findings of the study have important implications for bilateral trade among low-income countries and between low income and high income countries. First, if SSA countries want to develop and catch up with their rich counterparts, they should continue to promote free trade with high income countries by dismantling remaining protection policies. Second, the African Continental Free Trade Area's (AfCFTA) efforts to boost the manufacturing sector through industrialization is in the right direction to promote the production of more differentiated products in Africa which will create growth in income for member countries as they trade more. Finally, there is the need for SSA countries to increase investment rates and improve human capital accumulation to enable them to accelerate the adoption of new technologies and grow faster than their high-income counterparts, while bridging the income gap between them through trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacturing sector plays a strategic role as a major contributor to economic growth and development. However, the harsh business environment in Nigeria has constrained learning and capability building in the Nigerian manufacturing sector. The present state of the manufacturing sector underscores the need for firm-level learning and strategic policy actions. This paper utilized data from the Enterprise Survey Panel covering the periods 2007, 2009, and 2014/2015 to investigate firm learning and productivity in the Nigerian manufacturing sector. Case study illustrations were also undertaken to further provide insights into the links between learning variables and the productivity of selected firms in the sector. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics; dynamic panel model (DPM) via ordinary least squares (OLS) and General Method of Moments (GMM) techniques. The results of the estimation show there is a positive and significant relationship between export participation lagged by one period (t-1) and the current firm performance. A one-period lag of the learning variables, namely: skills and training increased the productivity of firms. The case study illustrations revealed that major learning capabilities include customer feedback; through employees, staff training/seminars/workshops, and supplier feedback. The paper provides evidence to conjecture that the STI mode of learning, which involves formal research and development (R&D) in firms is not deep enough, and that domestic firms have less productivity relative to firms with some proportion of foreign ownership. Also, some of the constraints to learning and productivity are an unstable regulatory environment, poor infrastructure and high cost of doing business. The paper recommends both formal and informal modes/mechanisms of learning are important to ensure improved productivity of manufacturing firms in Nigeria Also, learning opportunities may differ within and across manufacturing subsectors. Industry regulators or agencies should organize to provide a forum for firms and relevant stakeholders to regularly interact on learning experiences to learn from each other and collaborate to address obstacles to productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates export spillovers from foreign direct investment on the exporting activities of domestic manufacturing firms in Kenya. Specifically, the paper aims at identifying the transmission channels through which foreign direct investment affects the export propensity and export intensity decisions of domestically-owned firms. The study also examines the importance of firm-level heterogeneity on the occurrence and behavior of spillover channels. The study uses a panel data set for manufacturing firms in Kenya, obtained from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, conducted in three waves covering the period 2007-2018. Employing the Double-Hurdle model approach, and using the maximum likelihood estimation technique, we empirically demonstrate the relevance and significance of distinguishing three channels for intra-industry (horizontal) spillovers -- demonstration effects, information effects and competition effects channels and one channel for vertical spillovers, that is, backward linkage channel. Findings of this study shows that domestically-owned firms in Kenya experience significant positive export spillovers on their export participation decisions through the demonstration effects channel and significant negative spillovers via the competition effects channel. The findings also show significant positive export spillover effects on the export intensity decisions of domestically-owned firms via information and competition effects channels and significant negative export spillover effects via the backward linkages channel. The results further provide evidence that firms belonging to industries with low technological levels were unable to absorb spillover benefits from foreign presence via the demonstration effects channel. The results also indicate that small and medium firms were unable to reap export spillovers benefits via information effects and backward linkage channels. The findings have important policy implications for managers of firms and policymakers in Kenya and other developing countries. To enhance export-related spillover benefits, domestic firms need to enhance their absorptive capacities by upgrading their technical capacities and improving quality standards. Governments should facilitate the exchange of information on investor needs, their capacities and skills requirements, thus bridging information gaps between domestic suppliers and foreign investors in addition to supporting domestic market linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The labor force constitutes a paramount factor of production in the realm of business operations. In the past, China’s abundant labor force significantly boosted productivity for firms. However, as the demographic dividend gradually wanes, concerns have arisen regarding a scarcity of labor force, exacerbating worries about rising labor costs. Therefore, focusing on enhancing firms’ labor investment efficiency becomes pivotal. Using a sample of A-stock listed firms in China from 2013 to 2020, we examine the impact of customer concentration on the labor investment efficiency of supplier firms. Prior literature provides mixed results regarding the effect of concentrated customers. They can act as a governance mechanism for reducing agency problems, thus, increasing investment efficiency. Conversely, agency problems are aggravated in suppliers with concentrated customers, consequently, reducing investment efficiency. Our results suggest that customer concentration reduces labor investment efficiency, and this effect is more pronounced when customers possess high bargaining power. Additionally, the mechanism analysis reveal that customer concentration leads to less accurate information disclosure, higher operating risk, and an incentive to “empire building”, reducing labor investment efficiency. The cross-sectional analysis reveals that customer concentration results in both over- and under-investment in labor, thereby reducing investment efficiency. In addition, we employ augmented models to rule out the possibility of a U-shaped relationship between customer concentration and labor investment efficiency. Furthermore, we adopt the instrumental variables approach as well as a two-stage regression model to address potential endogeneity concerns and mitigate the omitted variable concern. Our results hold after the robustness tests and endogeneity tests. The findings of this paper imply that firms should strategically diversify their customer bases, thereby reducing their reliance on a few large customers. Simultaneously, governments should actively encourage firms to broaden their customer base. It can help enhance labor investment efficiency by spreading the risks associated with customer concentration. Moreover, it is crucial to acknowledge that substantial customer bargaining power can negatively impact supplier firms. Thus, policymakers should promote antitrust regulations and fair trade practices to mitigate the high bargaining power of large customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture plays a vital role in driving economic output and employment in SubSaharan African (SSA) countries. Despite some progress, agricultural productivity in SSA still lags behind other regions. Limited access to finance remains a significant impediment to improving agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates the effect of financial proximity on agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan African countries. The study primarily employs the system GMM estimator, chosen to address the endogeneity issue typical in macro panel data. This method is also wellsuited to our study because it accommodates a high number of cross-sections relative to the number of periods within each cross-section. Additionally, the IV-2SLS method is employed to check the robustness of the findings. The study uses an unbalanced panel for the 36 African countries with data for the period 2004-2019. Our findings show that increasing the financial proximity favors agricultural productivity in SSA countries. Specifically, the number of commercial bank branches (CBB) and the number of automated teller machines (ATM) per 100 000 adults, as indicators of financial proximity, have positive and significant effects on agricultural value added per worker in SSA. Additionally, our findings show that rainfall, arable land, and institutional quality are robust determinants of agricultural productivity. The positive effects of the number of CBB and the number of ATM are even more pronounced on agricultural productivity when coupled with strong institutional quality. Our findings suggest that improving financial services' accessibility in rural areas, coupled with enhanced institutional quality, regular rainfall, ample arable land, and increased access to water and land, are pivotal steps for achieving sustainable enhancements in labor productivity. This, in turn, leads to increased returns through value-added growth and expanded employment in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty remains a serious problem in Nigeria; women are among those mostly affected and are often deprived in many ways. This paper uses the multidimensional approach to examine poverty levels among women in Ibadan South West Local Government Area, Oyo State. Primary data was obtained from a sample of 393 women across the population density areas on socio-economic characteristics and poverty indicators (health, education and standard of living). The Alkire-Foster multidimensional approach was used to estimate the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) for the sampled women. The weights assigned to these poverty dimensions were generated using the multiple correspondence analysis. The MPI for each woman were categorized as abject poor (deprived in at least two dimensions), moderate poor (deprived in one dimension) and non-poor (not deprived in any dimension). The mean age of the women was 30.8±6.7 years. One-third of the respondents were mostly artisans (30.0%) and traders (26.5%), and 52.2% had completed secondary education. About 23.0% of women were deprived in education, 61.0% in health and 70.4% in standard of living. Based on location, the study indicated that the women in the medium and high density areas are mostly deprived in the different dimensions of poverty. When the poverty cut off K= 1, poverty incidence is 94% and 51.7% of the women were multidimensional poor as against 28% poverty incidence and 19.6% poor women when k=3 using the Alkire-Foster Multidimensional methodology. This implies that when women are deprived in at least one dimension; 51.7% are multidimensional poor. More than half of the respondents (51.0%) were categorized as moderately poor, 26.0% were abject poor while 23.2% were non-poor. This study revealed high poverty levels among women in Ibadan South West Local Government Area. Deprivation in standard of living and health in the three areas could be improved upon through the concerted effort of the government with appropriate ministries by initiating more productive and empowerment programs to improve their purchasing power and disseminating educative information that will improve their nutritional status through health talks to reduce the level of multidimensional poverty in urban locations respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deepening financial integration is important for developing economies especially in Africa, that accounts for less than 2% of the world’s market capitalization. Financial integration facilitates risk sharing, aids the formation of larger markets which is beneficial to the firms and smoothens consumption inter-temporally. Financial integration will be enhanced through a well-developed financial sector that is all-inclusive of the economic agents in access to financial services at a low cost and at the most convenient time. The access to funds in an integrated market is further determined by the extent of financial knowledge acquired by the economic agents with respect to basic numeracy, interest compounding, understanding inflation and risk diversification. This paper examines the effect of increasing access to financial services and the level of knowledge of financial products on the financial integration of West African Monetary Zone. The ratio of total capital flows to GDP and interest rates on public debt were used in measuring financial integration while the measures of financial inclusion include the number of commercial bank branches, number of ATM machines available, Savings, number of account holders and credit to private sector. Data covering the period 1980 – 2020 were employed. Unit root test using Levin, Lin and chu t-test method and Im, et al statistics methods were employed while the cointegration test was conducted using the Wald t-test before the panel autoregressive distributed lag model estimation technique was used to estimate the models. The unit root test results revealed that three out of the ten variables were stationary at level whiles others were stationary at first difference. The Wald cointegration test shows that the two equations are cointegrated. The results from the study show that increasing the number of bank branches; the number of account holders; savings; credit to private sector and improvement in the level of financial knowledge with respect to financial services deepen financial integration of the West African Monetary Zone. The policy implication of the paper is that each economy’s monetary authority and financial service providers must continue to advocate and institutionalise programmes that will deepen access to and knowledge of financial services, this will improve the extent of financial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important part of corporate value, risk-taking has always been the focus of scholars. The existing research mainly focuses on the impact of corporate shareholders and managers' personal characteristics on corporate risk-taking, and few scholars study it from the perspective of regional environment. Based on the sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2020, this paper empirically tests the impact of regional investment preferences on corporate risk-taking by using multiple regression methods; Then, the instrumental variables and propensity matching methods are used to test whether the main regression results have changed; Furthermore, this paper explores the mechanism of regional investment preference to reduce the level of corporate risk-taking; Finally, the impact of industry intensity and policy uncertainty on the main regression results will be tested in an expanded way. The research results show that the stronger the investment preference of the region where the company is located, the lower the company's risk-taking. After a series of robustness tests such as instrumental variable method and propensity score matching method, the main regression results of this paper remain unchanged. The mechanism test shows that regional investment preference can reduce managers' overconfidence and improve the quality of internal control, thereby reducing the level of corporate risk-taking. Further research shows that fierce industry competition and policy uncertainty can enhance the impact of regional investment preferences on corporate risk-taking. The research results not only enrich the research on the factors affecting enterprise risk-taking, but also deepen the theoretical understanding of the impact of the regional environment on corporate governance, which has certain reference significance for further improving corporate governance, optimizing corporate risk-taking and enhancing corporate value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is undoubtedly accurate that there is a lack of parity in the WTO dispute system. Although the system has been lauded as being a rule-based adjudication system, developing country members and least-developed countries (LDCs) have to go to great lengths to protect their interests against a formidable trade partner. Remarkably, a few of them have successfully turned the tables with clever approaches in trade disputes against more resourceful and powerful members of the WTO. This paper adopts an exploratory qualitative research method using an in-depth analysis of six case studies of trade disputes between economies classified as "weak" against economies classified as "strong" members of the WTO. A total of 391 cases that were filed between 1995 and 2021 were first examined. Subsequently, out of 100 cases where developing countries participated in the WTO litigation as complainants, a total of 10 cases in which "the weak" member prevailed. Six cases were chosen because they explicitly illustrate how the "weak" WTO members harness their resources and unique winning tactics to overcome the "strong" WTO members' ample supply of resources and aggressive tactics. The paper shows that governance effectiveness, influential alliances, public-private partnerships, government-NGO collaboration, engagement of academics and experts, effective use of the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL) coupled with effective leadership and clear plans were crucial for weak members' successful legal challenge at the WTO. These findings present promising tactics that WTO members could use to prevail in their trade disputes against a "stronger" WTO member. They should, at best, inspire "weak" members to overcome their hesitance to use the WTO judicial process to protect their interests either as parties or marginally as third parties. Indeed, the developing country members and LDCs have a variety of tools they can put to work when filing a dispute to help maximize the benefits and lower litigation costs. Chief among them is the AWCL. Our case analysis shows that ACWL's low cost has relatively attenuated "weak" members' legal and financial stakes associated with a trade dispute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although both central and state governments in India took the decisions to impose hard paternalistic policies of lockdown/shutdown to manage the spread of COVID-19, new cases were rising even after the first and second waves. Reverse migration, lack of social distancing, and failure to adhere to appropriate covid behavior are attributed as the leading cause of COVID-19 spread. The policy measures like 'Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana,' financial assistance, and series of lockdowns and shutdowns by the government of India have not significantly controlledthe spread of disease owing to a lack of understanding of individual's reaction to the pandemic and their reactive behavior. This paper used daily COVID-19 positive cases data to show the overall picture of COVID-19 in India. It used the explorative method to review articles related to behavioral biases involved in the decision-making process of migrant workers and individuals during the pandemic. The paper's findings show that different behavioral biases like base rate neglect, herd behavior, anchoring effect, availability bias are responsible for creating chaos, trauma, and anxiety among the migrant workers and leading to reverse migration in India. Despite knowing that COVID-19 is a fatal disease, some individuals' reaction to it was casual mainly because of hyperbolic discounting bias, optimism bias, overconfidence bias, confirmation bias, status quo bias, and loss aversion. Taking behavioral economics lessons, the paper suggests different nudging techniques for guiding people to maintain social distancing during this pandemic. Nudging has been proved to be an inexpensive tool in bringing desired behavioral changes in health economics. The paper concludes that nudging techniques can influence human behavior to control the spread of the disease. In the end, it gives direction for future work in this area to explore how behavioral economics can help policymakers to tackle the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important macro-economic issue of developed and developing countries is how best to decompose an economic time series into permanent (trend) and transitory (cycle) components. The issue is vital in empirical macroeconomics since, among other things, it relates to how one can estimate the output gap-the deviation of an economy's output from its potential or trend output. This paper considers how well the unobserved components model and the Hodrick Prescott (HP) filter decomposes real gross domestic product (GDP) in a small island developing state, the state of Barbados. The correlated unobserved components model for Barbados studied in the Agbeyegbe (2020) is modified to allow a second-order Markov trend. The effect of this modification is to make it possible to recover the HP trend as a particular case. The paper then compares several methods useful for trend decomposition of real GDP in Barbados. The competing methods are variants of two widely used trend-cycle decompositions of GDP that give markedly different estimates. Namely, methods based on the unobserved components model (UC) and the HP filter. The correlated unobserved components model produces smaller output gaps in amplitude, whereas the HP filter generates significant and persistent cycles. More specifically, the methods are: (i) the HP filter; (ii) an augmented HP filter (HP-AR), that allows for cyclical components to be serially correlated, introduced by Grant and Chan (2017b); (iii) the correlated unobserved components model (UCUR), without a break; (iv) the correlated unobserved components model (UCUR-t), with a break at time t; and (v) a correlated unobserved components model that allows for a second-order Markov trend process UCUR-2M. The result shows that for Barbados, with data covering the period 1967-2017, the correlated unobserved components model that allows for a break in trend fits the data better than the HP specification. These results are significant from a policy perspective. Knowing the correct duration of the business cycle is essential to providing appropriate recommendations; the result argues against the use of HP-filter in analyzing Barbados' business cycle. The result also finds that for Barbados, it is empirically important to correlate permanent and transitory shocks. By ignoring this correlation, researchers risk providing a misleading analysis of how the Barbadian economy works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most fundamental yet unresolved health policy issues is whether public expenditure on healthcare leads to improved health outcomes. Given that health reflects one of the critical aspects of human capital, having implications for economic growth and other development goals, there has been enormous advocacy towards investing significantly in the health systems across the countries to improve the overall health status. However, the effect of public spending on health outcomes remains inconclusive. The present paper analyses the impact of public health spending on mortality probability, taking into account the role of governance while treating public spending as an endogenous variable. The study uses individual level data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) Round 5 and a few state-level characteristics. For estimation purpose, it uses a two-level mixed effect model to capture the benefit incidence of public spending on Individual mortality probability. The findings reveal that public spending has a significant but differential impact on mortality across the Indian States, whereas the quality of governance is found to be a mediator. Given a level of public spending, States with better government effectiveness and rule of law can translate public health spending more effectively in reducing mortality at the individual level. The study also found heterogeneous mortality status across gender, location of stay, wealth status, and age groups with a differential impact of public spending across gender, wealth, and age groups. The variation in average distance of mortality probability level in each state from the overall mean mortality probability indicates that the states are very different in terms of health challenges that they are facing. The policy options call for state-specific health interventions to reduce the mortality rather than onesize-fits-all health policies. There needs to more unconditional grants/transfers from the Union Government to the States so that states will be able to tailor policy responses to address the unique challenges faced by the respective states. At the same time, states need to adopt outputbased conditions with greater flexibility to deliver services and greater accountability to improve transparency, governance quality, and implementation capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic costs of tobacco use are substantial particularly in developing countries. While much has been written on healthcare costs from tobacco use related diseases, little is known on the macro-economic impacts of tobacco-related productivity loss. The objective of the current research is to understand the macroeconomic burden of tobacco use in developing countries. Using World Bank's development indicators database for 44 low-and lower-middle-income countries, most of which are African, this paper assesses the relationship between tobacco consumption and economic growth. Specifically, using the fixed effect regression approach, we examined whether tobacco prevalence affects long-run growth rate in the real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. We adopted an empirical framework from the growth literature by including the national tobacco prevalence rate as one of the determinants of long-run growth in the real GDP per capita. The tobacco prevalence rate varies across countries ranging from 5% in Ethiopia to almost 50% in Myanmar. The prevalence rate is much higher among males than females in almost all countries, with Myanmar males having above 70%. The regression results indicate the existence of a statistically significant negative relationship between the prevalence of tobacco and economic growth after controlling for other determinants of growth, including the initial level of GDP per capita, gross fixed capital formation, trade, resource revenues, institutional quality, a human capital indicator, and infrastructure capacity. A 1% increase in the total tobacco prevalence rate reduces the economic growth rate by almost 2%, all else equal. These findings are robust even after running separate models for male and female tobacco prevalence rates. The results on the other determinants of growth are consistent with the previous empirical studies on economic growth in the context of developing countries. The findings of this study provide additional support to the existing body of empirical economic research on the role of better health, as a form of human capital, in increasing economic output. Thus, actively targeting tobacco control interventions, both in and outside of the workplace, can likely improve workers' productivity and hence economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's pharmaceutical sector has been one of the largest manufacturers of generic drugs globally. During the pandemic, most countries were dependent on imports of generic drugs from India. However, India has been relying on resources from China for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) which are the raw material for preparing generic drugs. We considered, in our analysis, branded product groups of Paracetamol and Amoxicillin due to their extensive use in the treatment of COVID-19. From a thorough market analysis of both the drugs, we conclude that firms have a monopoly over their brands but compete within the same product group and operate in their respective market under varying prices within certain bandwidths which resembles the feature of monopolistic competitive market. We have introduced compensating function a la Helpman (1981) in the pharmaceutical goods market with the assumption that an 'ideal product' exists among the pharmaceutical goods. Given the framework, this paper explores a general equilibrium model set in a monopolistic competitive product market for branded drugs. We concluded through our propositions that expanding the pharmaceutical sector will increase the employment of unskilled labor under no capacity constraint. We will observe an increase in wages of unskilled labor only under full employment conditions wherein we would observe that the expansion of pharmaceutical good will increase wages in the unskilled labor market. However we obtain an intriguing result wherein we obtain that despite instances of limiting trade dependence on China through implementation of policies like 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' and 'profit linked incentive schemes', yet to maintain the status quo in the global market for generic drugs, India's dependence on China would increase, owing to API imports due to the pandemic crisis. While India can grab the opportunity in the form of increased demand for pharmaceutical goods to increase the employment level of the economy but this improvement in welfare is also dependent on the degree of dependency of API India has on China. The Indian government has recognized the same through the incorporation of 'Covid-Suraksha' and PLI schemes to minimize import dependency, and accelerate the development of APIs and the production of indigenous drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ensuring food security for the population is important for the quality of human capital to promote economic growth. Moreover, micro-credit can affect food security of the population, and the effect depends on the context; that is to say, being specific to countries and even regions within the same country. This paper investigates the role of micro-credit in attaining food security in Benin. The study makes use of the survey data from the 2017 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) of Benin. Two indicators, namely food consumption categories (poor, limit and acceptable) and food security classes (severe food insecurity, moderate food insecurity, limit food security and food security) are used to capture household food security. Owing to the ordered nature of the different categories of these two indicators, and the fact that access to micro-credit is not random and may be subject to selection bias (unobservable factors may affect financial inclusion), the paper relies on an extended ordered probit regression. In addition, the same type of model is used to investigate the effect of food purchase financing by micro-credit on food security. The findings show the endogenous nature of access to micro-credit, suggesting that the unobservable factors that increase the probability of having access to micro-credit reduce food consumption and increase food security. Moreover, the findings indicate that access to micro-credit has a positive effect on the food consumption categories, but the effect is negative on food security classes. For instance, access to micro-credit increases the likelihood of the household to have an acceptable food consumption and decreases that to have a limited food consumption and also that of a poor food consumption. In addition, using micro-credit for food purchases has a positive effect on food consumption categories and has no significant effect on food security. These findings suggest that policy-makers could intensify policies to improve access to micro-credit. In addition, ways in which households can stop diverting or reorienting micro-credit, as this sometimes negatively affects their food consumption category (poor) and their food security class (severity) could be examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of social norms in forming aspirations is very important in developing countries where the women are mainly confined within the household. This has created a lack of demand for education among adolescent girls and a tendency to marry early. While governments have tried to remove gender disparity by increasing educational infrastructure for girls, it is well acknowledged that changing the sticky mindset is much more difficult and designing policies for this is a huge challenge. This paper tries to address this issue and estimates the impact of a celebrated conditional cash transfer (CCT), named Kanyashree Prakalpa (KP), on the aspirations of adolescent girls in West Bengal, India. KP, the conditional cash transfer scheme in West Bengal, India offers INR 25,000 (equivalent to US$330) to all girls who continue their education and remain unmarried till their 18th birthday. The study involves the use of both quantitative (like propensity score matching) and qualitative methods to establish that the CCT, through financial inclusion of adolescent girls, created a significant improvement in their aspiration scores. On the basis of a primary survey on 1050 households situated in three selected districts of the state, the study compares the aspiration scores of beneficiaries of the scheme, with those not availing the program after propensity score matching between the treatment and control groups. The study shows that the CCT, which was intended to prevent underage marriage and dropout among adolescent girls between thirteen to eighteen actually managed to change their mindset and enabled them to dream beyond marriage and envisage a future where they would be studying or working at the age of twenty five. The qualitative analysis complemented the quantitative results and found that KP eased the internal constraints of the adolescent girls through giving them access to their very own money in their bank account and this helped them to dream big. This paper, unlike other impact evaluations of CCTs, traces the impact of a aptly designed economic instrument of CCT on the mindsets of beneficiaries rather than economic outcomes. Though the pathway is essentially economic, it succeeded in assuaging a profound social and cultural barrier, thus offering new windows for policy makers in any developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the global vector autoregressive (GVAR) modelling approach to study (1) the effects of negative output shocks on Bangladesh's following trading partners on Bangladesh's economy: the United States, China, Eurozone, India and Saudi Arabia (2) positive global oil price shocks. To represent Bangladesh's macroeconomics, the GVAR model contains four key macroeconomic variables as endogenous variables. They are (1) real gross domestic product (GDP), (2) real exchange rate, (3) short-term interest rates, and (4) inflation. The specified GVAR model is estimated using quarterly data from 32 countries/regions from 1993Q4 to 2016Q4. The findings of this paper are consistent with theoretical predictions that external shocks can and will be transmitted to an open economy operating under a fixed or managed floating exchange rate system. For example, quantitatively, if the real output of Bangladesh's trading partners' falls by 1%, its output will fall by 0.39%, while the inflation rate of Bangladesh's trading partners' rises by 1%, and Bangladesh's inflation rate will increase by 1.38%. Although the negative output shock of the US economy will not significantly affect the Bangladeshi economy, the negative output shock of the Chinese economy will have a negative and significant effect on the Bangladeshi economy. The negative output shock on the US economy has caused the real exchange rate of Bangladesh's currency to appreciate and raised its short-term interest rate, although it is not statistically significant. Contrarily, a negative output shock to China or other economies devalues the real exchange rate of the Bangladeshi currency, although it is not statistically significant. However, Bangladesh's interest rates have not responded to negative output shocks from its trading partners (except the United States and Saudi Arabia), and they are not statistically significant. One policy implication of Bangladesh's inflation being overly sensitive to external inflation shocks is that Bangladesh can and should make its currency exchange rate more flexible to protect its economy from external price shocks. Unexpectedly, the external oil price shock did not seem to have a significant impact on the Bangladeshi economy. One explanation is that the impact of foreign inflation on Bangladesh's economy may have reflected the impact of oil prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several arguments have been raised about the tripartite relationship between capital inflows, trade openness and economic growth; and most especially on their role as economic stimulators. Despite the above, the role of capital inflows in the development process cannot be overemphasized since they ensure enhancement of technology transfer, efficiency and improvement in the quality of factor inputs. As alternative to aids and FDI, many West African countries embraced trade liberalisation policy with the belief that trade openness has the potential of enhancing economic growth by increasing the variety of intermediate inputs as well as the size of the domestic market. It is upon this premise that the current paper examines the individual, interactive and threshold effects of aid, FDI and trade openness on economic growth by employing panel autoregressive distributed lag (PARDL) and mean group (MG) estimation techniques on 14 West African countries using datasets from 1980 through 2018. The PARDL is adopted because of its dynamic nature and ability to obtain both short and long-term effects, while mean group technique records the uniqueness of individual West Africa countries and examine their degrees of sensitivity to regional characteristics. The results revealed that long run relationship was observed and aid, FDI and trade openness positively enhanced output growth. Second, the interactive effect of aid, trade openness and FDI was negative, but strengthens the individual effects in the long run period. Third, an average financial flows threshold of 8.3 percent is required to spur output growth to equilibrium. Fourth, MG estimation affirms that it is only in Senegal that the coefficients of these financial flow variables were sensitive to regional characteristics. These are the major contributions to knowledge. Thus, the paper recommends the need to embrace medium-and long-term policy framework which focuses on channelling funds from aid towards infrastructural and human development in order to accelerate future output growth. More so, regional representatives should concentrate efforts towards shifting their exports from primary to secondary and tertiary products so as to increase the value of trade transactions to members. Lastly, regional macroeconomic policies aimed at improving economic integration and regional sensitivity among members should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stability of commercial banks operating in the MENA region is still questionable even though they have faced a drastic favorable change after 2008. Most of bank's regulatory capital are controlled by corrupted governmental officials which led banks in this region to increase their risktaking behavior at the expense of stability. This paper examines the impact of regulatory capital, economic, institutional, and political factors on the stability of commercial banks that are operating in the MENA region. The data employed in this study is a pooled cross-section and time series data of 13 banking system in the MENA region: Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey covering the period of 2000 to 2017. A dynamic Generalized-Method-of-Moments (GMM) estimator was adopted and a two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression method was conducted to check for robustness. Relying on the results of Hausman test, a fixed effects model was used. The following variables have shown a significant and positive relationship with bank stability; the equity (CAP), the profitability (ROA), the growth (GDP), and the dummy Basel II (BAS2) variables. The positive impact of both capital and Basel II requirements on bank stability supports the regulatory hypothesis. Conversely, nonperforming loans and bank's size negatively affected the stability of the banking sector. Regarding the institutional factors, the quality of governmental regulations and political stability have shown a positive relationship with bank's stability while the other variables (corruption, establishing new prudential rules, and freedom in speech) failed to show a significant relationship. The findings of this paper confirmed the progression of the additional capital requirements for MENA region banks. Moreover, a close supervision should be applied on large banks that might have the tendency to increase their risk-taking behavior to overcome the cost of the additional required capital. In additional, our findings verified that economic growth and operating environment play a crucial role on the stability of the banking sector. Finally, the results confirm that institutionallinked factors are more important than country-related regulations in enhancing bank's stability due to the presence of a well-designed Basel framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sudden stop is the slowdown or cut-off of capital flows into an economy resulting in consumption and output collapses. Developing countries are known to experience this problem more frequently. The consensus in the literature is that these reversals are caused by poor economic management in these countries. While it is understandable that weak macroeconomic fundamentals lead to sudden stops, this paper shows that developing countries may face a sudden stop even when their macroeconomic indicators do not suggest one is imminent. A combination of certain factors can dry up funds for these countries: A unique borrower, borrowing at a significantly high level, pushing interest rates to the point where a developing country is not able to borrow due to credit rationing. The US has run a significant current account deficit over the last 30 years, borrowing far more than any other major economy. This paper analyzes the impact of the US deficits on developing countries that are trying to finance their projects. It provides regression results, then develops and simulates a theoretical model to investigate this. The Arellano-Bond dynamic paneldata regression results show that the US deficits are negatively associated with the current account deficits of the developing countries. The developing country loses its ability to borrow freely when the US's borrowing exogenously increases. The real business cycle model shows that this entry to the market causes a sudden stop-type effect even when the developing country is not experiencing any immediate problems in its economy. The simulation results show that the reduced borrowing opportunities for the current period and possibly future periods distort the production process and decrease welfare in developing countries. These results suggest that developing countries, when planning their projects and the related need for borrowing, need to be wary of these conditions in addition to their own situation. Moreover, when a sudden stop occurs, international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank should be cautious. They should examine whether the sudden stop was the result of poor planning and macroeconomic conditions or the result of an external factor such as the US increasing its borrowing to crowd out other borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Volatility is an essential parameter in risk management applications, and it can affect economic activity and public confidence. It is also a key parameter in several studies examining the link between the stock market, economic growth, and other financial variables. This paper seeks to broaden our understanding of volatility in a Small Island Developing State capital market by conducting a Bayesian model comparison of several volatility models for modeling stock returns on the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE). The paper uses a formal Bayesian model comparison methodology to compare seven generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) type models and seven stochastic volatility (SV) type models using the daily JSE index, All Items, from January 03, 2012, December 31, 2019, from the Jamaica Stock Exchange Database. The models include the standard models of GARCH(1,1) and SV with an AR(1) log-volatility process and models with jumps, volatility in mean, leverage effects, heavy-tailed distribution, and moving average innovations. The results reveal that SV models generally fit the data better than their GARCH counterparts. The heavy-tailed distributed innovations and the jump component substantially improve the performance of the basic GARCH and SV models. It also finds that allowing for the moving average component improves the fit of both GARCH and SV models. The result also indicates that volatility feedback is essential. There is also evidence of a significant inverse leverage effect. In total, the SV model with Student-t innovations is the best. The result presented has a potential value for academics, policymakers, and practitioners. For academics, the evidence of the dominance of the SV models over their GARCH counterparts would suggest that spillover studies involving Jamaica would gain from adopting the SV specification. The result presented also has a potential value for the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ). The BOJ can adopt the SV-t framework rather than a GARCH framework as a tool for gauging volatility in the JSE. Lastly, using the SV model to compute volatility would provide more accurate pricing and risk management results for practitioners, especially global fund managers who plan to include JSE stocks for asset allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acts of terrorism have increased markedly in recent decades. Social analyses have found terrorrelated events to be associated with nationwide increases in fear, panic, and uncertainty amongst individuals and businesses who play a major role in the stock market. The current paper intends to contribute to the established literature by quantitatively examining the impacts of terrorist attacks on financial market volatility by conducting an in-depth case study of the Sri Lankan stock market during and after the civil war (1986-2017). Sri Lanka serves as an excellent natural experiment for the current study due to the sustained length and severity of the terrorist attacks between 1983 and 2009. Five forms of terror variables: (i) cumulative number of deaths; (ii) cumulative number of victims injured; (iii) number of fatalities; (iv)number of injured, and (v) a terror dummy variable were utilized in modeling the stock market volatility. This paper uses autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (ARCH), and generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroscedastic (GARCH) methods to model the stock market volatility. The method is consistent with the assumption that the innovations from stock returns models contain a fixed unconditional variance, but the conditional variance varies. The findings of this paper suggest that terror attacks, in general, have exerted a significant effect on stock market volatility in Sri Lanka during the conflict period. Surprisingly, extrinsic factors of terror-related events such as the number of people injured or killed due to terrorist attacks were not found to be statistically significant jointly or separately in the conditional volatility equation, thus making it difficult to form a clear interaction among the variables. Investors seem to concern themselves more about the risk of instability which manifests as a result of terror-related events rather than the human cost of such events. The findings of this paper may be useful in improving the accuracy of future volatility prediction models. They could also be relevant in evaluating military sector projects that aim to boost investor confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important part of corporate value, risk-taking has always been the focus of scholars. The existing research mainly focuses on the impact of corporate shareholders and managers' personal characteristics on corporate risk-taking, and few scholars study it from the perspective of regional environment. Based on the sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2020, this paper empirically tests the impact of regional investment preferences on corporate risk-taking by using multiple regression methods; Then, the instrumental variables and propensity matching methods are used to test whether the main regression results have changed; Furthermore, this paper explores the mechanism of regional investment preference to reduce the level of corporate risk-taking; Finally, the impact of industry intensity and policy uncertainty on the main regression results will be tested in an expanded way. The research results show that the stronger the investment preference of the region where the company is located, the lower the company's risk-taking. After a series of robustness tests such as instrumental variable method and propensity score matching method, the main regression results of this paper remain unchanged. The mechanism test shows that regional investment preference can reduce managers' overconfidence and improve the quality of internal control, thereby reducing the level of corporate risk-taking. Further research shows that fierce industry competition and policy uncertainty can enhance the impact of regional investment preferences on corporate risk-taking. The research results not only enrich the research on the factors affecting enterprise risk-taking, but also deepen the theoretical understanding of the impact of the regional environment on corporate governance, which has certain reference significance for further improving corporate governance, optimizing corporate risk-taking and enhancing corporate value. JEL Classifications: G34, M14, O16 Keywords: Investment preference, Risk-taking, Overconfidence, Internal control, Corresponding Author's Email Address: Email: 810353126@qq.com, INTRODUCTION Risk-taking is an important link in the company's investment decision-making. It refers to the behavior tendency of the company to choose high-risk investment projects on the basis of weighing [...]

The literature on fertility has proposed various factors that could affect fertility, and various fertility models have been developed, including the endogenous fertility framework. These analyses are often conducted based on observations from the developed, and mostly Western, world. Since developing countries could differ along economic and cultural lines, the adequacy of these models for developing countries is unclear. This paper studies the determinants of fertility in a panel of 150 developing and developed nations using annual date between 1985-2013. To conduct the analyses, I use instrumental variables to account for the potential bi-directional causality between fertility and female labor force participation as well as the Arellano-Bond estimator. The paper finds clear differences between these two groups. Income per capita and female labor-force participation positively affect fertility of the developed countries, but they do not have robust effects on fertility in the developing world. On the other hand, the mortality rate is very significant for explaining fertility in developing countries. In particular, higher mortality rates lead to higher total fertility rates. This paper, thus, suggests that standard models of endogenous fertility that are centered around female labor supply may be ill-suited to explain fertility in developing countries and that the mortality rate remains key determinant of fertility for this group. A possible explanation for this result is that the typical economic considerations that people in developed countries make with respect to fertility are not, in general, equally relevant for developing nations. As such, more adequate models of fertility should be designed to explain the behavior of fertility in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to electricity accelerates the pace of social and economic development of a country in addition to boosting the overall living standard of people. Ensuring universal access to electricity remains a challenge in Bangladesh because the households outside electricity coverage are often poor and/or reside in remote or rural areas. This paper empirically examines the causal impact of rural electrification on the household welfare of life-line or lowest-tier electricity consumers of rural Bangladesh who are mainly lower-income households group. We use the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) 2018 household survey data, collected from villages with and without access to electricity. The sample consists of 511 electrified and 325 non-electrified households as well as covers all eight divisions of the country to account for geographical variations. We employ a recently developed quasi-experiment econometric method, namely the Covariate Balancing Propensity Score (CBPS) method, which simultaneously optimizes covariate balance and estimates propensity scores as well as account for non-random selection of treatment households (electrified households). The analysis indicates the robust impact of rural electrification on economic and educational outcomes for the lowest-tier electricity consumers of rural Bangladesh. Electrification contributes to 81% (about 2.10 liter/month) reduction of kerosene consumption per household per month. Considering this reduction, we find that the connection of electricity under life-line program contributes to about 0.24 million tons' reduction in CO2 emission at the national level in each year. The average treatment effect of electrification on weekly working hours of household earning members is found to be positive and significant--weekly working hours increase by about 2.21 hours. With regard to educational outcomes, time spent on evening studies by boys and girls increases by about 21 minutes and 18 minutes per day, respectively, due to electrification. Overall, the paper provides valuable insights regarding the benefits of rural electrification in a setting with low electricity consumption and justifies the case for continued subsidized electrification program for the lowest-tier electricity consumers in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reverse flows characterize a situation in which external inflows, such as remittances, are used to service external debt, finance capital flight, and/or accumulate foreign reserves. The existing literature on the impact of remittances in developing countries suggests that remittances are used for consumption and/or investment. However, the ultimate development effect of remittances will depend on how much of this external flow is absorbed domestically. If all remittances are not used for domestic consumption and/or investment, the residual amount will flow out of the country in the form of reverse flows. The objective of this paper is to identify the long run amount of reverse flows out of remittances in Jamaica, one of the largest recipient of remittances in the Caribbean. To examine the relationship between remittances and reverse flows in Jamaica, we estimate a net exports equation using the autoregressive distributed lag technique. We then calculate the marginal effect of remittance on reverse flows from the estimated remittance coefficient in the net exports equation. The dataset used in the paper covers the period 1976 to 2017. This determination is a first for Jamaica. The central finding is that, in the long run, approximately $0.24 of every dollar of remittances is used to finance reverse flows. Therefore, only 76 percent of any additional amount of remittances is domestically absorbed in the form of consumption and/or investment in Jamaica. These results suggest that the ultimate development impact of remittances will be overstated if reverse flows out of remittances are not taken into account. Our results echo earlier findings in the existing literature on reverse flows. The overarching policy implication of our finding is that policymakers should design growth policies of remittances after considering its reverse flow impact. Future research should focus on the reverse flow impacts of other external flows such as foreign aid. Further, future research should also identify reverse flows for other Caribbean countries. These findings are not only important for Jamaica but also have significance for other remittance-recipient developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical tourism is considered nowadays as a multi-billion industry which can promote a country's economic growth. Therefore, forecasting the scheduled tourism demand for medical services is of great importance for policy makers. Doing so, however, is not an easy task due to the following reasons: Data on medical tourism are (i) not easily accessible; (ii) not typically distinguished from tourists' non-scheduled (unintentional) use of a country's medical services; and (iii) usually not publicly available for long time periods. In this paper, we present a novel way to forecast tourism demand (intentional and unintentional) for medical services --a rough but informative proxy of medical tourism-- using limited data. To perform the analysis, we use data on the percentage of hospital discharges of non-residents for 17 European countries over the period 2008-2019 retrieved from Eurostat. Our methodological approach is based on a forecasting technique recently developed by Kyriazi, Thomakos and Guerard ; the adaptive learning forecasting. According to this method, MSE (Mean Squared Error)-performance enhancements can be achieved using any forecast as input --as long as that input is not a 'perfect' forecast-- by learning from past forecast errors. Within this context, even the most basic forecast, the no-change or naïve forecast, can be used as input to the adaptive learning procedure. Kyriazi, Thomakos and Guerard approach is very well suited to our research question because (i) the no-change forecast is a natural candidate in a short time series where models cannot be estimated with sufficient accuracy, (ii) the no-change forecast is obviously far from being the 'perfect' forecast, and (iii) the adaptive learning process can be initialized by the no-change forecast and then learn by its own past forecast errors. Our results show that adaptive learning forecasting leads to performance enhancements that range from the 5% to more than 20% relative to the no-change benchmark. This finding indicates the efficiency of the adaptive learning method in forecasting medical tourism demand; an important subcategory of tourism demand for which data are not easily accessible and freely available historical data are existing for short time periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is an exploratory attempt to assess the relationship between individuals' objective class position and subjective social positions in the South African hierarchy. While objective class dynamics have received much attention in South Africa, less is known about the subjective social position individuals place themselves. The study aims to make use of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) dataset and assess the relationship between objective and subjective class positions in South Africa. The results show considerable variation between objective and subjective class positions, with a strong middling tendency among all objective class groups in South Africa. The study also shows that this middling tendency has increased in the last decade in South Africa, predominantly due to individuals overestimating their social positions. With a large share of South Africans living close or below the poverty line, there is a clear biasedness of South Africans placing themselves in the middle of society, deviating from their lower objective position. The study further measures the variation between objective and subjective social positions to create a novel class scheme of inflated, deflated, and concordant class perceptions. These biased perceptions are then compared to socio-economic characteristics, showing that gender, race, and education are closely related to bias perceptions in South Africa. Furthermore, the increasing nature of high inequality and social unrest events in South Africa prompts the study also to assess the different social and political attitudes by varying objective and subjective class schemes. The results show that among the subjective class identification, individuals in higher perceived class positions tend to be less angered towards inequality, have lower redistribution preferences, and perceive a weaker conflict between the rich and the poor. These results confirm the impact perceived social positions and biased perceptions could have on social and political attitudes in South Africa. Attitudes that have been considered relevant in voting behavior and social policy formulation models. The results of the paper provides some vital information for policy makers on the dynamics behind subjective class and bias perceptions in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Asia, the home to around one-fourth of the world's total population, and the fastest-growing region of the world, achieved an annual average GDP growth rate of 6.6 percent in 2015-2019. During the same period, it also demonstrated a modest share of gross domestic savings and fixed capital formation to GDP. The region has also experienced a considerable success in improving its level of financial inclusion. Within a span of only six years, the number of adults having an account in a formal financial institution increased to 38 percentage points in 2017, though large heterogeneity across countries exists. Despite these economic and financial developments, around half of the world's multidimensionally poor people live in this region. The region is also relatively less inclusive than those of high-income countries, as it excluded 30 percent of its adult population from the formal financial system in 2017. To accelerate its ongoing economic development and poverty reduction, further improvement of the level of financial inclusion is a particular concern in South Asia. However, we know very little about factors influencing financial inclusion in this region. In this paper, we examine the determinants of financial inclusion in South Asia using the World Bank's Global Findex database for the year 2017. Our probit estimations show that being a male, richer, more educated, and older are associated with higher levels of formal account and formal saving. While age and education affect formal credit in a similar manner, we find no significant association between gender and income level with formal credit. We also investigate how individual characteristics are associated with the barriers to financial inclusion and find that women exclude themselves from financial inclusion because other family member might have an account. Documentation and having accounts by other family members are the main factors of financial exclusion of the younger people, while cost and religious reasons discourage older people from having a bank account. Finally, we compare the determinants of informal financial services with those of formal financial services. Our findings have certain policy implications to include financially excluded people, i.e. poor, less educated, youth, and women, into financial network vis-à-vis promoting financial inclusion in South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate between private and public education is a widely discussed issue in personal and policy forums globally. In Nepal, private schools have grown significantly due to the perceived advantages associated with them. This paper tests if there are significant differences in labor-market outcomes for individuals educated in private schools compared to those educated in public schools. Research Methodology and Data: We employ nationally representative household survey data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey (NLSS III), conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) Nepal in 2010/11, utilizing the Living Standards Measurement Survey (LMSS) methodology developed by the World Bank. We apply the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method to examine the relationship between educational attainment and four distinct measures of labor-market outcomes: labor force participation, employment status, job security, and wage income. Initially, we estimate these outcomes separately for individuals in private education and those in public education. Subsequently, we calculate and analyze whether the disparities in estimated values can be attributed to differences in education. Our findings reveal significant labor-market disparities between individuals participating in private education and those in public education. Those with private education display lower rates of labor force participation and reduced employment rates, suggesting fewer working hours. However, those employed within this group enjoy more secure salaried positions. Furthermore, private education is linked to higher wage incomes, primarily attributable to longer educational periods. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition demonstrates that most of these disparities are associated with variations in educational backgrounds. Consequently, the results highlight the role of segregated education in contributing to labor-market inequality, emphasizing the impact of private schools in exacerbating economic disparities in Nepal. The findings underscore the significance of educational attainment in ameliorating disparities between individuals educated in public and private schools. To address these issues, policymakers should concentrate on strategies aimed at increasing the duration of education for public school students, such as providing free, quality higher education. By narrowing the educational gap between private and public institutions, the nation can work towards diminishing wage and job security disparities, fostering a more equitable society. These findings also have relevance for countries grappling with similar socio-economic challenges, initiating essential policy discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The changing dynamics of tax revenue and its responses to domestic and external shocks play a pivotal role in the discussion of the sustainability of public finance in small developing economies. However, the empirical literature on the response of tax revenue to various shocks in developing economies in the Pacific is sparse. Despite several tax reforms over the last decade, the spending plans of the Fijian government since the 2017/2018 budget announcements have stimulated frequent public discussions regarding the sustainability of public debt. Against this background, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate the response of tax revenue in Fiji - a small developing island economy, to external and domestic shocks using historical annual data covering more than five decades. This study uses unit root tests that account for single and multiple endogenous structural breaks and finds that tax revenue in Fiji is a non-stationary process, I (1) with break dates coinciding with tax reforms, general elections, and political coups. The findings reveal that tax reforms and political developments are possible important sources of shocks to tax revenue and have important policy implications. First, shocks to tax revenue will have persistent effects, with the effects of adverse shocks being transmitted to other related variables and sectors of the Fijian economy. Second, historical values of tax revenue cannot be used to formulate forecasts of tax revenue and policymakers should consider other determinants of tax revenue (for example, the share of the agriculture sector, trade volume, political stability, education, life expectancy, infant mortality rates, age composition of the population, urbanization, inflation rate, and corruption) for forecasting purposes. The evidence of non-stationarity indicates that future studies on tax revenue need to carefully reflect on the modeling technique to avoid spurious regressions. Furthermore, our findings reveal that temporary fiscal measures will not have a permanent effect on tax revenue and sustainable revenue growth requires focusing on long-term (rather than short-sighted) reforms. Thus, our findings underscore the importance of evidence-based policy reforms to improve the resilience, efficiency, and sustainability of the tax system in Fiji to shelter it from future adverse shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the wage differentials that exist in the post-liberalized labor market in Pakistan. The increasing wage differential contradicts standard labor theories and models. The literature also confirms the existence of wage differentials across different labor markets both in industrialized and non-industrialized countries. The firms compensate the workers both on their observable and unobservable characteristics. The mincer equation used in its semi-logarithmic decomposed form to derive wage differentials. The weighted adjusted standard deviation technique is used for further decomposition of the level and regional variations in sectoral wage gaps, as suggested by Horrace and Oaxaca. The sectoral heterogeneity, skill characteristics and regional dispersions derived by using the micro labor force data sets spread over thirty years. The results confirm the existence of inter-industry wage differentials. However, the size varies across the regions, levels of education, and types of occupations. A substantial difference in the wage gap observed in firms both in the formal and informal sectors. The financial services firms pay higher than the average national wage followed by firms in utility services, the services sector, and the mining sector. The firms in the agricultural sector pay lower than the average national wage. The dispersion in wages has risen to the magnitude of almost 25 percent over the last three decades. Firms pay higher wages to high-skill workers, while industries requiring jobs with low skills pay lower wages. The wage differentials in various regions are attributable to the persistent and relative backwardness of provinces. The high-skilled occupations in general are likely to have more benefits than those involving low-skilled workers. Individual and household characteristics account for almost 50 percent of variation regardless of the sectoral affiliation. The increase in the minimum wage, with targeted social policies in educational attainment, increased participation of women, and provision of social services in the informal sector may reduce the gap in wage difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world has gone through various economic crises in the past century, and their effects have had varying implications on the economies of countries all over the world. In a bid to help stabilise economies all over the world, various measures have been put in place. Some of these measures include regulations and policies by the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and their agencies. The idea behind these measures is to ensure sustainable growth and development among member states and other countries of the world. Some of these policies include the privatization and liberalization policies of the Bretton Woods institutions as well as other policies bordering on such economic and social benefits for people all over the world. The Nigerian economy in our contemporary time can be described as passing through a rather 'volatile' phase with respect to interest rate, financial development and foreign capital inflow. Thus, this study investigated the impact of interest rate spread and financial development on foreign capital inflow in Nigeria. Several studies have been carried out using different methodologies, such as; co-integration equation, multivariate vector auto regressive (VAR) model and vector error correction technique. Each methodology used was in line with the objective of the research in question. However, to achieve its objective, this paper adopted the Classical Linear Regression Model. The results of the study showed that financial development has a positive impact on foreign capital inflow, while interest rate spread on the other hand, was also found to have a positive impact on foreign capital inflow. Other control variables such as market capitalization and treasury bills rate were also found to positively affect foreign capital inflow, while the all share index had a negative impact on foreign capital inflow. Some economists have opined that the Nigerian economy is currently going through a phase of recession. In order for large scale investments to be made within the country, there is a need for foreign participants to be attracted to the Nigerian economy and pull their resources, both financial and nonfinancial into the country (but, not without regulation). However, for these investors to have confidence to make investments in the Nigerian economy, there has to be a high degree of economic stability in the country. This can be supported by enacting and implementing policies that can enhance the quality of interest rates spread and financial development within the country. The policy implication here involves enhancing financial development through sound policies and adopting competitive interest rates, could increase the rate of foreign inflow into the economy. In view of this, it is also recommended that government policies should target interest rate competitiveness, financial and economic development as well as sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impacts is set to run havoc across economies in the world, throwing many into recession and possibly depression. The aim of this paper is to provide an overall understanding of the likely macroeconomic shocks of the pandemic on a diverse range of economic activities and indicators across economies. The paper covers implications to demand, supply, supply chain, trade, investment, price level, exchange rates, and financial stability and risk, growth, and international cooperation. The paper combines a unique theoretical impact mapping and supplements it with emerging evidence to develop the impacts’ likely progression and span. Furthermore, the paper uses a standard Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply (AD-AS) model of macroeconomics to explain the likely growth effects arising out of essential and nonessential goods markets and outlines necessary features policy responses should consider. Data and information to analyze the impacts are assimilated from different sources, including news and media publications, the OECD, and IHS Markit-CIPS. Assessments of this paper suggest that many economies are about to see a period of stagflation driven by demand and supply slump, increased unemployment, deflationary pressure, reduced trade flows, and disruptions in the supply chain, which may result in a recessionary period if not acted fast with innovative policy responses. As almost all economies are badly affected, a global growth recession is imminent if the pandemic continues. However, based on past experience of pandemics and epidemics and the current evidence, a U-shaped recovery pattern is the most optimistic possibility for most countries and the world economy. The paper could help policy-makers in understanding the pandemic’s broad-based impacts and policy needs to fight the imminent economic damage. Particularly, assessments with respect to the essential and non-essential goods markets could provide useful insights in designing appropriate policy responses to fight the pandemic. All considered, the paper calls for a collective and globalized response alongside standalone policy responses undertaken by individual economies. The assessments are broadly in line with the limited literature available on macroeconomic implications of CVODI-19 and could serve as a basis for advanced analysis on COVID-19 economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to estimate if credit access can discipline the borrower in terms of consumption of goods like tobacco and alcohol, using a large scale agricultural credit reform from India. While such evidence of disciplining behaviour exists for group lending and microfinance programs, there is very little known about this for more formal and large scale credit programs. This paper uses a triple difference identification strategy exploiting exogenous variation in the reach of the program generated by institutional features and coverage intensities. Essentially, the methodology relies on differences in mean outcomes between districts having more banking infrastructure and the ones having less number of banks, states that are politically aligned with the centre versus ones that are not and states that have high initial program penetration with states that are laggards in implementation. The idea is that in the absence of the actual policy variation, these triple differences would be statistically indistinguishable from zero. The paper relies on nationally representative household survey data from India for the analysis. The findings suggest that access to credit leads to a decline in consumption expenditure on temptation goods such as tobacco and other intoxicants but increases expenditure on necessary items such as food. While usually such results are explained by the presence of strict monitoring regimes in institutions such as microfinance, in our case because there is no clear monitoring regime, alternate explanations must be explored. Intuitively the results can be explained by lack of stress from peer pressures of repayment leading to reduced dependence on intoxicants. The paper contributes to the literature by providing novel evidence of reduced consumption of intoxicants with access to credit in a non-monitored environment. Major policy implications coming out of this study is that it may not always be necessary to have a strict regiment for monitoring of loan usage and repayments as it may be counterproductive. It may be far more efficient to have a more liberal credit program with simple norms for eligibility which will not only relax credit constraints but also lower stress levels of borrowers. Given the agricultural credit angle of the program under study, such policies may eventually be beneficial in lowering farmer suicides resulting from stress of repayments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to evaluate the impact of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (RoSCA) on household assets in Indonesia. RoSCA is locally known as arisan in Indonesia and has been around for many centuries as a special form of micro-savings institution that is informal and community based. However, there has not yet been adequate academic research on the economic implications of arisan participation, especially in terms of household wealth and welfare. That is what this paper intends to investigate. We use the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) data collected in 2000, 2007 and 2014, covering around 83 percent of Indonesia’s population. The data in particular provides longitudinal data of various household assets, along with demographic data of household heads including their arisan participation status. We divide the survey participants into two groups based on arisan participation from each period. Then we use the Difference in Difference (DiD) method in multiplicative form with robustness standard errors to evaluate the changes in household assets over time, using results from arisan participation between 2000 and 2007, and then 2000 and 2014, in two models. The estimated results show that participation in arisan has a significant positive impact over time on total household assets, including house and land assets and vehicles in both models with mixed impacts on other categories of assets such as appliances, furniture, poultries and jewellery. The impact on household savings is unsurprisingly negative alongside the asset accumulation. Interestingly, demographic variables such as gender, age and education of the household heads appear to have positive impacts on total household assets while the household’s location, i.e. urban or rural, has no significant impact. The results have several implications. The quantum of arisan funds received by the members could often be used for the purchase of household assets, e.g. land, houses and vehicles. The association could also regulate the households’ saving behaviour through peer monitoring. Furthermore, it would also enhance social capital and entrepreneurial activities across the community, which could be utilized by various development programs that are run by the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of human capital on economic growth in North African countries usinga threshold model applied to panel data over the 1985/2017 period. The results revealed the significant impact of the human capital threshold on economic growth, which reflects higher levels of financial development and high trade openness. For a long time, the economic growth in the North African countries has been based mainly based on traditional economic growth factors. On the other hand, the impact of school enrollment is also significant, which implies the existence of a nonlinear relationship. In fact, school enrollment was shown to play an indirect role by increasing the impact of financial development, foreign direct investment and trade openness on economic growth, which showed that higher levels of financial development creates new business opportunities and increases the performance and efficiency of their financial sectors by ameliorating their overall economic performance .To fill this research gap, the present paper showed that the trade openness is positively correlated with economic growth, which implies the importance of globalization and trade liberalization in the valuation of economic growth. The paper finds that the high level of human capital is considered as incentive for domestic companies to easily understand the technical configurations of the technologies adopted by foreign companies .These findings are expected to help policymakers to increase the literacy rate in these countries through the improvement of the educational system to ensure economic growth, it is necessary to orient the economic policies to encourage the accumulation of human capital and improve financial intermediation .Furthermore, our results indicated that the role of education is very important for the economic activity, innovation, social and even political changes and democratic transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]