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This study examines the impact of trade facilitation and institutions on sustainable environment on a panel of 41 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2005–2014. Six composite indicators of trade facilitation (namely: export costs, import costs, export documents, import documents, export time, and import time) with a composite index (TFindex) are employed on four indicators of environmental sustainability (viz; natural resource depletion, net forest depletion, biocapacity, and ecological footprint of consumption) together with their combined index (Envindex) using the System Generalized Method of Moments. The following findings are established: first, the indicators of TF are significant and positively correlated with environmental sustainability (ES). Second, institutional quality dampens ES for the most part of the models. Third, the adverse effects of TF measures, institutional quality, and their interactive terms seem more severe from consumption angle than production, thus suggesting that the sources of environmental pollutants are more consumption oriented than production. What is more, Environmental Kuznets Curve Thesis finds a further empirical support. Going forward, the need for a well-harmonized trade facilitation procedure within a sound institutional environment, supported by a well-implemented national environmental protection law hold the promising key to addressing the prevailing environmental issues in the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been an increasing wave of globalization since the turn of the millennium. This study focuses on two by-products of globalization: dollarization and tourism. Empirical studies have ignored the possible relationship between dollarization and tourism. However, we hypothesize that a booming tourism industry will fuel increase in the usage and circulation of foreign currencies, thus increasing the level of dollarization. The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which the tourism industry exacerbates the dollarization process of selected Sub-sahara African (SSA) countries. Using Tobit regression, we found that tourism positively affects dollarization. Our results are robust to: (i) alternative measures of tourism; (ii) accounting for endogeneity and outlier effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uncovers the effect of income inequality on terrorism, delineated with four distinct markers: domestic, transnational, uncertain, and total, respectively, intermediated with the role of human capital, on a panel of 34 African countries, over the period 1980–2012. Thus, rather than presenting correlation analyses implied by exploratory analytics among these key variables of interest, this study further employs a zero-inflated negative binomial regression estimator due to the preponderance of zero values of the terrorism data. The following findings are consistently established. First, income inequality remains a substantive predictor of terrorism across the model specifications, with the exception of transnational terrorism. Second, human capital variables exert a positive first-order effect on both domestic and total terrorism. Third, the marginal impacts of interactions between human capital measures and income inequality indicators are negative at the higher levels of educational attainment. These findings remain robust in the presence of endogeneity concerns, time and country-specific effects, alternative estimators, and regional effects, respectively. On the policy front, eliminating the gaps in income inequality remains an effective policy antidote to quell the ember of angers and frustration that may aggravate into arm taking by the aggrieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study adds to the stock of existing literature on the supposed crises-inducing role of natural resource rents, by specifically linking same to political regime and growth of terrorist attacks for a panel of forty-nine (49) African economies for the period, 1980–2012. To avail room for more policy implications, four terrorism indicators, namely: domestic, international, uncertain, and total, are used on a negative binomial regression estimator due to the count nature of terrorism data. Our findings reveal the following: first, natural resource rents have unconditional effects on transnational and total terrorism. Second, political regimes equally exert unconditional impacts on domestic and total terrorism, with both democracy and autocracy mitigating the terror-inducing effects on the one hand, with anocracy acting as a magnifying apparatus on the other hand. Third, the interaction between natural resource rents and anocracy has negative marginal effects on both domestic and total terrorism measures. Fourth, the corresponding effects of interaction, however, turned positive for both domestic and total terrorism. Lastly, the considered conditioning variables equally received extensive empirical backings but not on an equal basis. Thus, understanding the terror context of natural resource rents and the dynamics of political regimes represent formidable counterterrorist measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article complements the extant literature on terrorism by paying particular attention to the influence of democracy on a panel of 49 African countries, over the period 1980–2012. For this broad objective to be achieved, terrorism is decomposed into four main categories, namely domestic, transnational, uncertain and total. Due to the count nature of terrorism data, the study employs a negative binomial regression estimator, in which the following key findings are established: (i) there is a mitigating role of democracy on measures of terrorism, with the exemption of transnational terrorism; (ii) there is existence of threshold values of democracy which must be attained in order to ascertain its mitigating role on terrorism; (iii) the importance of other covariates such as conflicts, population, surface areas and physical integrity rights are no less significant across the model specifications. These results have important policy implications. We also offer suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]