Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to assess the role of renewable energy as a means of promoting women's economic participation and improving their health by mitigating climate vulnerability.


Design/methodology/approach
To shed light on this relationship, the authors assess the capacity of renewable energy to reduce the negative impact of climate vulnerability on women's economic empowerment and health, using the generalized method of moments estimator for 36 African countries over the period 1990–2021.


Findings
The empirical results show that climate vulnerability reduces economic empowerment and climate vulnerability increases child mortality. These results are mitigated by the use of renewable energy. The use of renewable energy mitigates the negative impact of climate vulnerability on women's economic empowerment. Renewable energy use also reduces the pressure of climate vulnerability on child mortality. In addition, the authors take into account regional heterogeneities and find distinct effects. The results remain stable after further robustness testing.


Originality/value
Renewable energy thresholds are provided at which climate vulnerability no longer reduces women's socio-economic well-being.

The study assesses the role of governance in modulating the effect of oil wealth on wealth inequality in 45 countries in the world. The empirical evidence is based on Pooled Ordinary Least Squares and the Generalised Method of Moments. The findings show that oil rents unconditionally increase wealth inequality while govenance dyanmics (in terms of rule of law, corruption-control, government effectiveness, regulatory quality) moderate oil rents for an overall net negative effect on wealth inequality. Good governance thresholds at which the unconditional effect of oil rents on the wealth inequality changes from positive to negative are computed and discussed. It follows that while governance is a necessary condition for improving the redistributive effects of oil wealth, it becomes a sufficient condition for net positive improvements in wealth distribution only when some critical levels of good governance have been reached. Other policy implications are discussed.

In line with the SDG 10 and Aspiration 1 of Africa's Agenda 2063, this study examines whether: (i) the remarkable inflow of Chinese FDI to Africa matters for bridging the continent's marked income inequality gap, (ii) Africa's institutional fabric is effective in propelling Chinese FDI towards the equalisation of incomes in Africa, and (iii) there exist relevant threshold levels required for the various governance dynamics to cause Chinese FDI to equalise incomes in Africa. Our results, which are based on the dynamic GMM estimator for the period 1996 – 2020, reveal that though: (1) Chinese FDI contributes to equitable income distribution in Africa, the effect is weak, and (2) Africa's institutional fabric matters for propelling Chinese FDI towards the equalisation of incomes across the continent, governance mechanisms for ensuring political stability, low corruption, and voice and accountability are keys. Finally, critical masses required for these three key governance dynamics to propel Chinese FDI to reduce income inequality are 0.8, 0.5 and 0.1, respectively. Policy recommendations are provided in the end.

Achieving sustainable development has been the dream of every society across the globe especially sequel to the dawn of the industrial revolution. Thus, understanding the fundamental determinants of the socio-politico-economic development of every economy is of prime importance for investors, policymakers, development agencies and the society at large. It is in this light that this study sought to empirically examine the key factors that explain the socioeconomic development patterns in Africa. The Instrumental Variable Two Stage Least Squares (IV-2SLS) estimation technique is adopted for a panel of 38 African countries over the 1996-2019 period. The empirical findings reveal that financial development and human capital are development enhancing in Africa while external financial inflows are detrimental to economic development. In addition, when other specific macroeconomic and structural variables were introduced in the model, the results show that institutional quality through governance, natural resources abundance, and industrialisation all explain both the social and economic development dynamics. These results were specific to income group, export structures and level of development. Moreover, salient policy implications are discussed.

In line with the SDG 10 and Aspiration 1 of Africa's Agenda 2063, this study examines whether: (i) the remarkable inflow of Chinese FDI to Africa matters for bridging the continent's marked income inequality gap, (ii) Africa's institutional fabric is effective in propelling Chinese FDI towards the equalisation of incomes in Africa, and (iii) there exist relevant threshold levels required for the various governance dynamics to cause Chinese FDI to equalise incomes in Africa. Our results, which are based on the dynamic GMM estimator for the period 1996 - 2020, reveal that though: (1) Chinese FDI contributes to equitable income distribution in Africa, the effect is weak, and (2) Africa's institutional fabric matters for propelling Chinese FDI towards the equalisation of incomes across the continent, governance mechanisms for ensuring political stability, low corruption, and voice and accountability are keys. Finally, critical masses required for these three key governance dynamics to propel Chinese FDI to reduce income inequality are 0.8, 0.5 and 0.1, respectively. These critical masses are thresholds at which governance is a necessary but no longer a sufficient condition to complement Chinese FDI in order to mitigate income inequality. Hence, at the attendant thresholds, complementary policies are worthwhile. Policy recommendations are provided in the end.

This paper investigates the role of institutional infrastructures in the financial inclusion-growth nexus for a panel of twenty countries in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA).Employing the System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), the following insightful outcomes are established. First, while there is an unrestricted positive impact of physical access to ATMs and ICT measures of financial inclusion on SSA's growth but only the former was found significant. Second, the four institutional components via economic, political, institutional and general governances were also found to be growth-spurring. Lastly, countries with low levels of real per capita income are matching up with other countries with high levels of real income per capita. The empirical evidence of some negative net effects and insignificant marginal impacts are indication that imperfections in the financial markets are sometimes employed to the disadvantage of the poor. On the whole, we established positive effects on growth for the most part. The positive effects are evident because the governance indicators compliment financial inclusion in reducing pecuniary constraints hindering credit access and allocation to the poor that deteriorate growth.