This study investigates the legitimacy of the relatively high interest rates charged by those microfinance institutions (MFIs) which have been transformed into regulated commercial banks using information garnered from a panel of 1232 MFIs from 107 developing countries. Results show that...

This study compares the responsiveness of microcredit interest rates to age, scale of lending and organisational charter. It uses an unbalanced panel of 300 MFIs from 107 developing countries from 2005 to 2015. Three key trends emerge from the results of a 2SLS regression. First, the adoption of...

There is a growing body of evidence that interest rate spreads in Africa are higher for big ba nks compared to small banks. One concern is that big banks might be using their market power to charge higher lending rates as they become larger, more efficient, and unchallenged. In contra st,...

The policy debate has been shifting from the finance-growth nexus to the finance-inequality relationship. In the transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there has been an urgent policy challenge of putting some structure on recent advances in...

Given that challenges facing sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries on the issue of socioeconomic development have been identified as critical to strengthening the inherent link between governance and socioeconomic conditions, this study examines the interconnections between governance and SSA...

This study examines the effects of the historical prevalence of infectious diseases on contemporary gender equality. Previous studies reveal the persistence of the effects of historical diseases on innovation, through the channel of culture. Drawing on the Parasite-Stress Theory, we propose a...

The paper assesses the interconnections between FDI and human capital development in Nigeria over the period 1981-2018. The analysis is carried out with the use of both non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and linear ARDL bounds test approach to cointegration, and VECM Granger...

This paper forwards the view that some aspects of African culture enhance economic development on the continent while other aspects tend to constrain development. By drawing on the extant literature on culture and development, the paper discusses the manner in which economic activities are...

We test the hypotheses that fundamental characteristics in regional proximity, landlockedness, religious-domination, legal origin, and income levels affect cross-country differences in the persistence in political terror and political instability in 163 countries for the period 2010 to 2015. The...

This study examines how increasing ICT penetration in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) can contribute towards environmental sustainability by decreasing CO2 emissions. The empirical evidence is based the Generalised Method of Moments and forty-four countries for the period 2000-2012. ICT is measured...