The Risk-Taking Behaviour of Tunisian Banks in the Post-Revolution Era: A Panel ARDL-PMG Approach

This study investigates the long-term determinants of capital buffers and risk-taking adjustment by focusing on a sample of listed Tunisian commercial banks. This research uses hand-collected semi-annual data. The panel autoregressive distributed lags technique is used to control for unit root processes and to check for long-term determinants of capital and risk-taking adjustment. The empirical findings prove the existence of a moral hazard and procyclical behaviour of Tunisian banks in response to capital requirements. However, some results indicate that capital standards are still an important prudential tool for ensuring the robustness of Tunisian banks. There have been no previous studies focusing on this issue in the context of the Tunisian banking system in the turbulent post-revolution era. This paper innovates by assuming that a set of bank-specific, macroeconomic and regulatory variables exert a long-term rather than a short-term influence on capital buffers and risk-taking. The research does not consider a possible long-term simultaneous relationship between capital and risk-taking. The sample could be extended if data were available. Tunisian banks are advised to diversify their sources of revenues and to thoroughly revise their business models in order to become less dependent on revenues from traditional intermediation activities and to reduce the procyclicality of the banking system.

Examining the Impact of Movements of the Commodity Price on the Value of the Baltic Dry Index during Covid19 Pandemic

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is one of the most well-known indices, as it is perceived as a leading indicator of economic activity. Reductions in the movement of people, commodities, and capital in the conditions of economic crises, such as the one in 2008 and 2009, as well as the current economic crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, were affected by the reduction of economic activities. It is interesting to point out that the analysis of the basic trend of the BDI movements in the period before the economic crisis shows that the index fell to near record lows just before the derivatives and credit crisis hit stocks full force. This is a clear signal that the index can be used as a tool for stock market forecasting. The paper aims to examine whether the changes in these raw materials affect the changes in the value of BDI. For these purposes in the paper was use GMM and 2SLS estimator. The results show that different raw materials have a different impact on the value of the BDI, which indicates that based on individual movements value of raw materials which composes the BDI cannot forecast its movement.

Analysis of the Effect of Private Healthcare Financing on Poverty in Nigeria: Evidence from Edo State

Poverty is one of the problems that challenge economies in Africa. Though it is a complex phenomenon which requires efforts by different experts to reduce or eliminate, conventional wisdom posits that “health is wealth”. Health status is a component of human capital development which plays a fundamental role in the poverty and well-being of individuals and national economies. Paradoxically the cost of accessing quality healthcare is an important contributor to income poverty among low income households. Thus adequate healthcare financing mechanisms (public and private) are required to attain quality health outcomes. This study therefore investigates the adequacy or otherwise of the current means of private health care financing in Edo state of Nigeria and it employed the survey method and multinomial logistic regression technique. Results revealed that the dominant means of private health care financing in Edo state is “out of pocket” payments which has negative effect on the income of households. It therefore recommends the introduction of a more effective collective healthcare financing mechanism to mitigate the financial burden associated with out-of-pocket spending. Also funding should be provided for research and development of locally manufactured drugs with high local content to enhance the availability and affordability of effective drugs.

Energy – Growth Nexus- A Case of South Asian Countries

The relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is a hot issue in today's society. This paper aims to empirically verify the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. This article analyzes the relation of energy consumption with the economic growth taking the case of South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) along with the macroeconomic determinants that affect the total economic growth – FDI growth, CPI rate and population growth in order to avoid omitted variable bias and misleading results. The time span of this study covers the period of 1980–2019. To examine the significant relation of these determinants and impact of energy consumption on economic growth, In-pooled regression, Fixed-effects, Bidirectional fixed effect, Random-effects, and GLS estimation regression model are used. The estimated results show a positive correlation of energy consumption and all other economic determinants with economic growth except CPI, where there is a negative correlation founded.