scholarly journals Can financial development influence economic growth: The sub-Saharan analysis?

Author(s):  
Thobeka Ncanywa ◽  
Karabo Mabusela

Orientation: Financial sector development in a vast majority of sub-Saharan African countries has the potential to reduce the volatility of growth.Research purpose: This article is aimed at determining the influence of financial development on economic growth in selected sub-Saharan African countries.Motivation for the study: In most of the sub-Saharan countries, financial sectors are among the world’s least developed, and the absence of deep, efficient financial markets puts major constraints on economic growth.Research approach/design and method: This article employed panel autoregressive and distributive lag model to determine the relationship between financial development and economic growth.Main findings: The results indicated that there exists a short- and a long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth in the selected countries. In the long run, bank credit to the private sector and liquid liabilities have a positive influence on economic growth, with gross domestic savings exhibiting a negative influence.Practical/managerial implications: This article makes recommendations that as financial stability, both globally and within countries, generates jobs and improves productivity, more effort should be made in ensuring an effective and sound developed financial sector system.Contribution/value-add: The financial-economic growth nexus indicate that a well-functioning financial market development can promote economic growth. However, some controversies exist as some evidence indicated that a negative or positive financial development–growth nexus exists, so there was a need to find out what is the sub-Saharan case. Furthermore, there was a need to find development regulatory and macroeconomic policies that enhance growth.

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Songul Kakilli Acaravci ◽  
Ilhan Ozturk ◽  
Ali Acaravci

In this paper we review the literature on the finance-growth nexus and investigate the causality between financial development and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1975-2005. Using panel co-integration and panel GMM estimation for causality, the results of the panel co-integration analysis provide evidence of no long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth. The empirical findings in the paper show a bi-directional causal relationship between the growth of real GDP per capita and the domestic credit provided by the banking sector for the panels of 24 Sub-Saharan African countries. The findings imply that African countries can accelerate their economic growth by improving their financial systems and vice versa.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashenafi Beyene Fanta ◽  
Daniel Makina

This paper examines the finance growth link of two low-income Sub-Saharan African economies – Ethiopia and Kenya – which have different financial systems but are located in the same region. Unlike previous studies, we account for the role of non-bank financial intermediaries and formally model the effect of structural breaks caused by policy and market-induced economic events. We used the Vector Autoregressive model (VAR), conducted impulse response analysis and examined variance decomposition. We find that neither the level of financial intermediary development nor the level of stock market development explains economic growth in Kenya. For Ethiopia, which has no stock market, intermediary development is found to be driven by economic growth. Three important inferences can be made from these findings. First, the often reported positive link between finance and growth might be caused by the aggregation of countries at different stages of economic growth and financial development. Second, country-specific economic situations  and episodes are important in studying the relationship between financial development and economic growth. Third, there is the possibility that the econometric model employed to test the finance growth link plays a role in the empirical result, as we note that prior studies did not introduce control variables.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
Haruna M. Aliero ◽  
Muftau Olaiya Olarinde

This study investigates the effects of institution and macroeconomic policy on economic growth in Africa, using panel Cointegration technique to analysed data obtained from a panel  of 50 African Countries covering a period of 25years (1990-2014). The results confirm that declining growth rate in Africa is due to poor management of macroeconomic policies. A weak turning point is also confirmed to exist for government size in the short run; in the long run it becomes more pronounce. The Wald restrictions tests of causality ascertain that institutions lead economic growth performance in the short run, while poor economic growth performance impaired the capacity required in building strong institutions which in turn stunts growth in the long run. Therefore, African leaders should tilt their expenditure in favour of human capital development and strong institution, ensure intra-regional trade and adopt private sector led – economic growth strategy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1192-1210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muazu Ibrahim

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the interactive effect of human capital in financial development–economic growth nexus. Relative to the quantity-based measure of enrolment rates, the main aim was to determine how quality of human capital proxied by pupil–teacher ratio influences the relationship between domestic financial sector development and overall economic growth. Design/methodology/approach Data are obtained from the World Development Indicators of the World Bank for 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1980–2014. The analyses were conducted using the system generalised method of moments within the endogenous growth framework while controlling for country-specific and time effects. The author also follows Papke and Wooldridge procedure in examining the long-run estimates of the variables of interest. Findings The key finding is that, while both human capital and financial development unconditionally promotes growth in both the short and long run, results from the interactive terms suggest that, irrespective of the measure of finance, financial sector development largely spurs growth on the back of quality human capital. This finding is also confirmed by the marginal and net effects where the interactive effect of pupil–teacher ratio and indicators of finance are consistently huge relative to the enrolment. Statistically, the results are robust to model specification. Practical implications While it is laudable for SSA countries to increase access to education, it is equally more crucial to increase the supply of teachers at the same time improving on the limited teaching and learning materials. Indeed, there are efforts to develop rather low levels of the financial sector owing to its unconditional growth effects. Beyond the direct benefit of finance, however, higher growth effect of finance is conditioned on the quality level of human capital. The outcome of this study should therefore reignite the recognition of the complementarity role of human capital and finance in economic growth process. Originality/value The study makes significant contributions to existing finance–growth literature in so many ways: first, the auhor extend the literature by empirically examining how different measures of human capital shape the finance–economic growth nexus. Through this the author is able to bring a different perspective in the literature highlighting the role of countries’ human capital stock in mediating the impact of financial deepening on economic growth. Second, the author makes a more systematic attempt to evaluate the relative importance of finance and human capital in growth process while controlling for several ancillary variables.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 368-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javaid Ahmad Dar ◽  
Mohammad Asif

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run effect of financial sector development, energy use and economic growth on carbon emissions for Turkey, in presence of possible regime shifts over a period of 1960-2013. Design/methodology/approach Along with the conventional unit root tests, Zivot-Andrews unit root test with structural break has been employed to check the stationarity of variables. The cointegrating relationship between variables is investigated by using the autoregressive distributed lag bounds test and Hatemi-J threshold cointegration test. Findings The results confirm a cointegrating relationship between the variables. The long-run relationship between the variables has gone through two endogenous structural breaks in 1976 and 1986. Development of financial sector improves environmental quality whereas energy use and economic growth degrade it. The results challenge the validity of environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Turkish economy. Research limitations/implications The study uses domestic credit to private sector as a proxy for development of financial sector. The model can be improved by constructing an index of financial development instead of using a single determinant as a proxy for financial development. Practical implications The study may pave the way for policy makers to capture important environmental pollutants in better way and develop effective and efficient energy and economic policies. This may make significant contribution to curbing CO2 emissions while sustaining economic growth. Originality/value This is the only study to examine long-run impact of financial sector development on carbon emissions, using the threshold cointegration approach. Hence, the study is a gentle request to reduce the possible omitted variable econometric estimation bias and fill the gap in the existing literature.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sovia Dewi ◽  
M. Shabri Abd. Majid ◽  
Salina Kassim ◽  

Abstract Although the poverty rate in Indonesia has been declining in the last several years, the rate of poverty decline is slowing down. In order to achieve its poverty reduction target within the stipulated time period, the government has stepped up efforts to enhance the contribution of the financial sector towards poverty reduction. This study aims to empirically explore the interlinkages between financial sector development and poverty reduction in Indonesia. Focusing on annual data covering the period from 1980 to 2015, the study adopts the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration approach to examine the long-run relationship between the variables. The study found that there is a long-run relationship between financial development, economic growth, and poverty reduction in Indonesia. It also documented a unidirectional causality running from the financial sector to poverty reduction and a bidirectional causality between economic growth and poverty reduction. Therefore, policies to ensure the conducive growth of the financial sector would go a long way in promoting the economy, creating employment opportunities, and consequently accelerating poverty eradication


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fisayo Fagbemi ◽  
John Oluwasegun Ajibike

In view of the indispensable role of financial sector in both emerging and developing economies, there has been a notable spotlight on the financial sector development over the years in most African countries. Nonetheless, there are only a few studies on this topical issue, particularly for Nigeria. Hence, this study examines the long – run and short – run dynamic relationship between institutional quality and financial development in Nigeria over the period of 1984 – 2015 using Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test approach to cointegration. Using two different indicators (Private credit and M2) of financial development, the results consistently show that institutional factors do not have significant effect on financial development in the long – run as well as in the short – run. Furthermore, the empirical evidence indicates that regulatory quality and governance system (institutions) do not necessarily contribute to financial development in a feeble institutional environment, specifically in Nigeria. Thus, our findings suggest that whilst weak institutions could increase the risk of limiting the functioning of financial system, good governance and strong institutions are the essential ingredient of financial development in Nigeria. As a consequence, policies aimed at strengthening the quality of institutions and governance should form the major policy thrust of government (policy makers). These could help improving financial sector development in Nigeria.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-111
Author(s):  
Ayad Hicham ◽  
Belmokaddem Mostefa ◽  
Sari Hassoun Salah Eddin

AbstractSince the previous periods, poverty reduction has been a big concern for many countries especially in developing countries like Algeria; in this paper, we shall explore the causal relationship between poverty reduction, economic growth and financial development in Algeria during the period of 1970-2017, the aim of this research is to answer the question which sector causes the poverty reduction: real sector or financial sector? Therefore, we employed the modern frequency domain causality presented by Breitung and Candelon (2006) with a comparison with the time domain causality under Lutkepohl (2006) procedure, the results suggest that there is unidirectional causality running from the real sector (economic growth) to poverty rates in the short and long run terms, also, we found that there is an unidirectional causality running from the financial sector to poverty rates only in the long run term, while another causality running from poverty rates to the financial sector but in the short run term. This article aims at contributing to enlarge the literature review by utilizing the frequency domain causality in the field of poverty studies because of its effectiveness to test the causalities in different frequencies.


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