Financing Renewable Energy Projects in Major Emerging Market Economies: Evidence in the Perspective of Sustainable Economic Development

This research paper aims to explore the role of FDI inflows and stock market development on the promotion of renewable energy consumption. Furthermore, study investigates the effect of renewable energy consumption on CO₂ emissions and economic output across a panel of Brazil, China, India, and South Africa. Study utilizes annual data from 1990 to 2012 and employs various robust panel econometric techniques. The findings confirm that both FDI inflows and stock market development play an important role in promoting renewable energy consumption. The results also reveal that renewable energy consumption helps to mitigate the growth of CO₂ emissions and promotes economic development.     

Weather Index Drought Insurance: An Ex Ante Evaluation for Millet Growers in Niger

In the Sudano-Sahelian region, which includes South Niger, the inter-annual variability of the rainy season is high and irrigation is limited. As a consequence, bad rainy seasons have a massive impact on crop yield and regularly result in food crises. Traditional insurance policies based on crop damage assessment are not available because of asymmetric information and high transaction costs compared to the value of production. We assess the risk mitigation capacity of an alternative form of insurance which has been implemented at a large scale in India since 2003: insurance based on a weather index. We compare the efficiency of various weather indices to increase the expected utility of a representative risk-averse farmer. We show the importance of using plot-level yield data rather than village averages, which bias results due to the presence of idiosyncratic shocks. We also illustrate the need for out-of-sample estimations in order to avoid overfitting. Even with the appropriate index and assuming substantial risk aversion, we find a limited gain of implementing insurance, which roughly corresponds to, or slightly exceeds, the cost observed in India for implementing such insurance policies. However, when we separately treat the plots with and without fertilisers separately, we see that the benefit of insurance is slightly higher in the former case. This suggests that insurance policies may slightly increase the use of risk-increasing inputs such as fertilisers and improved cultivars, and hence improve average yields, which remain very low in the region.     

The dynamic impact of bilateral trade linkages on stock market correlations of Australia and China

This article aims to examine the long-run equilibrium relationship between bilateral trade linkages and stock market correlations of Australia and China using quarterly data from 1993 to 2015. Further, this study explores the impact of trade intensity on stock market correlations using OLS, Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) models. The empirical results confirm that there is a significant long-run relationship among the variables. In addition, our results, based on OLS, DOLS and FMOLS, show that increasing trade intensity between Australia and China has a significant and positive impact on their stock market correlations. The Global Financial Crisis also contributed for their stock market interdependence. Our results therefore suggest that the bilateral trade relations between Australia and China have brought their stock markets together over time. The findings of this study offer significant policy and practical implications. The policymakers need to be aware of the economic changes in those countries as they will immediately reflect on their stock market performance and relationship. Similarly, the global investors need to be aware of the fact that the diversification opportunities between Australia and China have considerably declined over time as their markets became more interdependent in the recent past.     

The Role of Property Rights in the Relationship between Capital Flows and Economic Growth in SSA: Do Natural Resources Endowment and Country Income Level Matter?

This paper studies the role played by the quality of property rights in the linkages of international capital flows into sub‐Saharan African (SSA) economies. Using panel data of 36 SSA countries over the period 1996–2015 and the ARDL procedure with the Pooled Mean Group regression method appropriate for non‐stationary panel data estimation, we account for the joint effects of property rights quality and openness to foreign capital flows on economic growth. We uncover the existence of a property rights quality threshold beyond which property rights either amplifies the spillovers effects or attenuates the negative effect of capital flows on economic growth. For instance, it takes a level of property rights of at least 60 to have a positive long‐term impact of capital flows on economic growth in natural resource‐poor African countries. The quality of property rights matters more to obtain spillover effects of capital flows on growth in natural resource‐poor countries than in their peer natural resource‐rich countries. Finally, with regard to the countries' income levels, capital flows have significant long‐term spillovers effects on economic growth in advanced African economies than in their low‐income peers.     

Does Aid Effectiveness Differ per Political Ideologies?

Despite the extensive empirical literature on aid effectiveness, existing studies have not addressed directly how political ideology affects the use of foreign aid in the recipient country. This study, therefore, uses a unique dataset of 12 democratic countries in Africa to investigate the impact of political ideologies on aid effectiveness. Our results indicate that each political party uses aid differently in peruse of their political, ideological orientation. Further analyses suggest that rightist capitalist parties are likely to use aid to improve the private sector environment. Leftist socialist on the other hand, use aid effectively on pro-poor projects such as short-term poverty reduction, mass education and health services. Our additional analysis on the lines of colonialisation shows that the difference in the use of aid by political parties is much stronger in French colonies than Britain colonies. The study provides insight on how the recipient government are likely to use foreign aid.     

Organizational Learning Capability: Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Study in the Context of Official Development Aid Project Teams

Although several studies have investigated Organizational Learning Capability (OLC), the question of its operationalization remains open. We review the OLC concept, analyze its relationship to Organizational Learning (OL), and assess the validity of its operationalization through three models (formative, reflexive, mixed). While part of the literature states that OLC has five dimensions (experimentation, risk taking, dialogue, interaction with stakeholders, and participation in decision making), our exploratory study of 41 Official Development Aid projects suggests the existence of an important sixth dimension for OLC: autonomy vis‐à‐vis the national supervisor. The theoretical and practical implications of this finding are then discussed. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Partisan political connections,ethnic tribalism,and firm performance

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper investigates the impact of partisan political connections and ethnic tribalism on firm performance in a hyper-partisan political...     

Effects of remittances on food security in sub-Saharan Africa

The objective of this research was to analyze the effects of remittances on food security in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while assessing the role of governance. The analyses covered a panel of 26 SSA countries over the period from 2002 to 2017. Based on the double least squares method, two main results were obtained. On the one hand, remittances have a positive effect on overall food security and on each of its dimensions in SSA. On the other hand, this positive effect of remittances on food security and its dimensions is increasingly important when the quality of governance improves.