The motivations of the Arab Spring and hitherto unanswered questions about some of its dynamics inspired this paper, which focuses on how democracy, polity and autocracy affect financial development dynamics of depth, efficiency, activity and size in Africa; contingent on religious-domination,...

With the spectre of the Euro crisis looming substantially large and scaring potential monetary unions, this study is a short-run trip to embryonic African monetary zones to assess the Schumpeterian thesis for positive spillovers of financial services on growth. Causality analysis is performed...