Interest rate reforms,financial deepening and economic growth in Cameroon: an empirical investigation

The impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening and growth in Cameroon is examined. We employ five proxies of financial deepening against deposit rate, a proxy for interest rate reforms. The impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening is sensitive to the proxy used for financial deepening. The impact is almost negative and significant for all the indicators, except for the ratio of broad money to Gross Domestic Product, where it is positive and significant in the first lag. This means that financial repression helps improve broad money and hinders the development of the other indicators of financial development in Cameroon.     

Interest rate reforms,financial deepening and economic growth in Tanzania: a dynamic linkage

In this paper we examine the dynamic relationship between interest rate reforms and economic growth in Tanzania using two tests. In the first test, we examine the impact of interest rate reforms on financial deepening using a financial deepening model. In the second test, we examine whether the financial deepening, which results from interest rate reforms, Granger‐causes economic growth – using a trivariate model. The empirical findings of our results reveal that there is a significant positive relationship between interest rate reforms and economic growth in Tanzania. However, the results fail to find any support for finance‐led growth.     

Financial integration,capital market development and economic performance: Empirical evidence from Botswana

A substantial body of literature suggests that financial market development plays a significant role in economic growth through fostering savings mobilization, easing risk management, promoting technological transfer and reducing information and transaction costs. However, the effect of financial integration on growth remains an empirically controversial topic. This paper explores the impact of financial integration on economic growth in Botswana over the period 1974–2009. We do not find a direct, robust and statistically significant association between financial integration and economic growth in Botswana. However, our results show that financial integration is positively and significantly correlated with financial development in the Botswana economy. Although the relationship between financial integration and growth initially is, at best, weak, we believe this is not to say that financial integration does not promote economic growth, as it could do so indirectly through fostering financial development. Policy-wise, we observe that institutional quality, lower level of government spending and a stable macroeconomic environment are important determinants of both financial development and long-term economic growth. Thus, the Botswana government should continue strengthening and developing its capital market to international standards so as to attract both local and foreign investors and encourage foreign investment in the non-mining sectors. The government should ensure that financial reforms are coordinated, law enforcement authorities are strengthened and property rights are protected to reduce investment risks.     

Does democracy facilitate economic growth or does economic growth facilitate democracy? An empirical study of Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the relationship between democracy and economic growth in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. As our proxy for democracy we first use the democracy index constructed by Freedom House and then check the sensitivity of our findings using, as an alternative proxy for democracy, the Legislative Index of Electoral Competitiveness (LIEC). We find support for the Lipset hypothesis - in the long run, real GDP Granger causes democracy and an increase in GDP results in an improvement in democracy - in Botswana and Niger with both datasets, for Chad with the Freedom House data only and for Cote d'Ivoire and Gabon with the LIEC data only. Support for the compatibility hypothesis - in the long run democracy Granger causes real income and an increase in democracy has a positive effect on real income - is found for Botswana with the Freedom House data and for Madagascar, Rwanda, South Africa and Swaziland with the LIEC data. Support for the conflict hypothesis - in the long run democracy Granger causes real income and an increase in democracy has a negative effect on real income - is found for Gabon with the Freedom House data and Sierra Leone with the LIEC data.     

Financialization and the macroeconomy. Theory and empirical evidence

This paper sheds light on the macroeconomic impact of financialization in the banking sector. We develop a new stock-flow consistent model, which reveals that excessive leverage increases financial fragility, lowers wages, and slows down real sector investment and GDP growth. Using a panel of 29 high income countries, we then construct indicators of banking financialization and investigate the impact of the latter on the wage share, gross capital formation and GDP growth, using a Bayesian structural VAR framework, as well as a set of fixed effect regressions. Our results highlight that financialization has had a detrimental impact on real sector growth. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results to propose reforms to the international financial system.     

Inflation and financial deepening

Financial deepening is defined as increases in the ratio of a country's financial assets to its GDP. Financial asset accumulation simultaneously provides credit to finance real asset accumulation for the development process. The equilibrium long-run ratio of financial assets to GDP may be expressed as a simple relationship of a country's financial savings ratio and its growth rate. The present paper incorporates the effects of inflation on financial deepening. Inflation necessarily entails capital losses on all existing financial asset holdings. It is shown that unless more monetary saving is forthcoming to offset such inflation-induced capital losses, inflation will operate to reduce drastically the degree of financial deepening which a country can obtain. The process is illustrated with respect to the Korean economy.     

Financial deepening and income inequality: Is there any financial Kuznets curve in China? The political economy analysis

The interconnectedness of financial deepening and income inequality has been a highly controversial discussion which has not been concluded despite many empirical and theoretical studies up to date. One of the basic building blocks for many research designs is the reliance upon the Kuznets inverted U-shaped curve which postulates that in the first phase of economic growth income inequality increases, peaks and then decreases to a tolerable level in the later phase after a certain income level had been attained. The role of financial deepening in financing economic growth is an indispensable and necessary condition enabling us to easily draw an analogy between financial deepening and income inequality in a financial version of the Kuznets curve. In spite of 30 years of economic and financial reforms in China, which represents a fairly young history of economic growth and development, there are many indicators that Chinese experience significantly deviates from the presupposed inverted U-shaped curve trajectory and its final equalizing effect. This paper relies on financial deepening data measured by monetary aggregate M2/GDP and domestic banking credit/GDP ratios in its claim that they significantly correlate with rising income inequality. The author’s intention consists not in claiming that financial deepening per se causes income inequality, but provides a political economy analysis of the specific institutional and power configuration which leads to their positive relationship. This configuration is determined by the prevailing banking model, the hukou system, financial repression and the decentralized authoritarian system. On the other hand, the absence of inequality-narrowing institutitons further aggravate the problem. All the aforementioned factors are geared at avoiding mechanical and spurious claims that financial deepening increases or decreases income inequality across countries. A historical institutionalism approach to explain China’s path related to the Kuznets curve prediction shows the central validity of open and inclusive institutions in generating inequality-narrowing benefits of financial deepening.     

利率市场化视角下的货币政策风险承担渠道问题研究*

利率市场化进程的深入可能会对我国货币政策传导、金融稳定等产生不可忽视的影响。基于此,本文研究了利率市场化对货币政策风险承担渠道的影响。结果表明：（1）我国存在货币政策风险承担渠道,且从利率市场化间接度量的维度来看,在考虑以直接效应来衡量的贷款利率市场化之后,银行的实际风险承担水平上升;但是在考虑以价格约束效应来衡量的存款利率市场化之后,其效果并不明显。（2）从利率市场化直接度量的方法来看,直接引入虚拟变量的研究发现贷款利率市场化会使得货币政策对银行风险承担水平的影响变得明显;进一步从利率市场化综合度量的维度,引入整体的利率市场化指数的方法则发现,随着利率市场化进程的深入,银行的实际风险承担水平会上升。（3）利率市场化对货币政策风险承担渠道的影响在不同类型银行间存在差异。     

Impact of domestic financial liberalization on economic growth in Pakistan

This paper attempts to investigate the domestic components of the financial liberalization process in Pakistan and develops an index of domestic financial liberalization capturing the important dimensions of reform process. Employing the multivariate co-integration technique and error-correction mechanism, the results indicate a positive impact of the index on economic growth in the long run, while its short run impact is found to be negative. Empirical findings highlight the importance of further financial deepening and financial intermediation, in a conducive environment, that are essential components to successfully implement reforms for growth stimulation.     

Financial reforms and credit growth in Nigeria: empirical insights from ARDL and ECM techniques

In the last 37 years, Nigeria has undergone several stages of financial reforms with different impacts on the economy. This paper analyses the impact of these financial reforms on credit growth in Nigeria using annual data from 1980 to 2016. The research work hinges on the theoretical underpinning of McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis on the relevance of financial reforms in a lagging economy. Analysing the data with autoregressive distributed lag error correction representation and bounds testing techniques, we find evidence supporting this hypothesis, and specifically that at higher real interest rates there is increased financial intermediation evidenced by credit growth. Other findings are that in the long-run, financial system deposits, inflation rate and per capita GDP are strong asymmetrical predictors of credit growth and real interest rates (the financial reform indicator), while the short-run relationships are indicator-specific. We further show that a long-run cointegration relationship exists between domestic credit and other covariates and likewise between the real interest rate and its regressors.     

Macroeconomic effects of structural reforms and fiscal consolidations: Trade-offs and complementarities

This paper studies the impact of product and labour market structural reforms and the effects of their joint implementation with alternative debt consolidation strategies. The set-up is a dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated for the Greek economy. The results show that structural reforms produce important long-run GDP gains that materialize earlier, the faster the reforms are implemented. When implemented jointly with fiscal consolidations, structural reforms may amplify the short-run costs of fiscal tightening. The GDP dynamics depend on the fiscal instrument used for public debt consolidation. In the long run, however, there are complementarity gains irrespective of the fiscal instrument used.     

Does financialization retard growth? Time series and cross-sectional evidence

Although financial development is essential for economic development, excessive financialization of the economy is believed to exert a negative effect on output growth. In this article, empirical evidence is presented on the relation between economic growth and financialization as measured by the ratio of credit to GDP and the ratio of publicly traded shares to GDP. The empirical results are based on annual time series data for six country groups as well as cross-sectional data covering a large number of countries. The model is initially specified with unobserved components and estimated in a time-varying parametric framework to account for missing variables. Thereafter, the issue of linear versus quadratic specifications is examined. The results are robust with respect to model specification, estimation method, data type and variable definition, showing in general that financialization has a negative impact on growth. Some evidence is also presented to support the notion of the financial Kuznets curve.     

The impact of regulatory measures on commercial bank interest rates: A micro analysis of the Barbados case

This study estimates the impact on commercial banks' interest-rate behavior of the more pervasive regulatory measures adopted by the Central Bank of Barbados. The results indicate that the cash ratio, the stipulated government securities ratio, and the savings deposit rate floor significantly impacted the loan rate for every bank. Generally, the deposit rate for any given bank has been responsive to fewer policy variables than the loan rate. The loan rates, though generally responsive to all policy variables other than the bank rate, have exhibited very low elasticities. The results indicated that the ceiling on the average lending rate, when it existed, depressed loan rates by less than 1 percent on average. This is largely attributable to the Central Bank's policy of adjusting the ceiling in line with market trends.     

Effects of financial liberalization on financial market development and economic performance of the SSA region: An empirical assessment

This study investigates the role of financial liberalization in promoting financial deepening and economic growth in Sub-Saharan African countries (SSA). We apply the more efficient system GMM estimator in dynamic panel data that combines first difference and original level specification to deal with the problems of weak instruments. Our dataset covers 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period of 1981–2009.Additionally, the paper sought to examine both the direct and indirect impacts of financial liberalization policies on economic growth and financial deepening using a much more comprehensive and recent financial liberalization dataset. The econometric results suggest that, on average, financial liberalization is negatively associated with income growth in SSA region. Our findings provide support for the skeptical empirical view of financial liberalization in emerging markets, which show that liberalization, by itself, might be associated with lower economic growth through leading to destabilization, stimulating domestic capital flight and increasing the risk of financial fragility. However, the research finds that financial liberalization does indeed impact positively on financial deepening and resource mobilization in SSA region, after controlling for key macroeconomic factors such as institutional quality, fiscal imbalances and inflation. In fact the study reports a stronger reforms effect for countries that have stronger legal institutions, protection of property rights and higher human capital. Policy-wise, the study finds that institutional and human capital factors are important in explaining growth and financial development; therefore, it is necessary for SSA governments to promote a stronger and more transparent institutional development as we move forward.     

Excess sensitivity and borrowing constraints: Evidence from Iranian households

In contrast to the findings of simple rational expectations permanent income hypothesis models, empirical studies show that income changes can help predict consumption change. This is dubbed as excess sensitivity in the macroeconomic literature. We use Iranian household data to investigate the excess sensitivity using civil servant status as a proxy for borrowing constraints. We observe that the excess sensitivity is different among different panels. Much less excess sensitivity is observed for government employees who have better access to finance due to the structure of the labour market and banking system in Iran. Our proxy variable to divide data, which is the working status of the head of the household, does not suffer from endogeneity problems evident in the previous literature. The results of this study indicate that the actual consumption profile of a constrained household is suboptimal and hence deepening financial access can decrease the welfare loss of this suboptimality.     

How does financial development influence the impact of remittances on growth volatility?

This paper empirically examines how financial development influences the impact of remittances on GDP growth volatility. This empirical study is conducted using the panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) approach. The results show that the impact of remittances on GDP growth volatility is nonlinear and changes over time and across countries in function of financial development. More precisely, a high level of financial development helps remittances to have a high stabilizing impact. Therefore, public authorities in remittance recipient countries might implement policies that promote the financial sector in order to allow a high stabilizing impact of remittances.     

Financial systems and economic growth in South Africa: a dynamic complementarity test

This study examines the relationship between banks, stock markets and economic growth in South Africa. The study attempts to answer one critical question: are stock markets and banks complementary to one another in the process of enhancing economic growth? The complementarity between the stock markets and banks is examined by including a set of interactive terms in a standard growth model, alongside bank development and stock market development proxies. In order to test the robustness of the results, three proxies of stock market development have been used, namely stock market capitalization, stock market traded value and stock market turnover – against the ratio of bank credit to the private sector, a proxy for bank-based financial development. The economic growth is, however, proxied by real GDP per capita. Using the ARDL-Bounds testing procedure, the study finds that the complementarity between stock market development and bank-based financial development is weak and sensitive to the proxy used to measure stock market development.     

Suffer the little children: Measuring the effects of parenthood on well-being worldwide

This paper investigates the relationship between parenthood and well-being in a large sample of individuals from 94 countries worldwide. We find that having children is negatively related to well-being. Conditioning on economic and socio-demographic characteristics can only partially help to explain this finding. We show that the negative effect of parenthood on well-being is explained by a large adverse impact on financial satisfaction, that dominates the positive impact on non-financial satisfaction. The results are robust to the use of alternative empirical specifications and to the inclusion of the reported ideal number of children as a proxy variable to account for the endogeneity of parenthood decisions.     

论我国商业银行金融风险预警指标体系

当今，我国金融体制改革日益深化，商业银行风险日趋增大，因此，建立健全商业银行金融风险预警机制已成为当务之急，所探讨的预警指标体系正是借鉴了国外的先进经验，并结合我国商业银行的实际业务而设计的，它共包含八大部分，涵盖了商业银行的主要经营业务，对于有效监控我国商业银行金融风险，提高其抵御风险的能力具有重要意义。     

Effects of remittances on financial inclusion gender gap in developing countries

Remittances have a wide range of benefits to households and the economy at large. Evidence show that women are the major recipients of remittances in developing countries, consequently this may have the potential of reducing the gender gap in economic outcomes. This study examines the impact of remittances on gender gap in financial inclusion in developing countries. The dataset for the study was built from multiple sources. Based on data availability, the study covers 102 developing countries for three years, namely 2011, 2014 and 2017. The study employs fixed effects instrumental variable technique using the economic conditions of the top five remittance sending countries (proxied by their GDP per capita and employment rate) as instruments. For robustness purpose different measurements of remittances are used in the analysis. Though the study does not provide evidence that remittances impact the overall inequality in access to financial services, the results show that remittances significantly reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion in developing countries. Based on these findings, the study makes appropriate policy recommendations.