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...

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,...

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...

Purpose- In this study, we test the so-called 'Quiet Life Hypothesis' (QLH) which postulates that banks with market power are less efficient. Design/methodology/approach- We employ instrumental variable Ordinary Least Squares, Fixed Effects, Tobit and Logistic regressions. The empirical evidence...

Purpose - The study extends the debate on finance versus institutions in the promotion of investment documented by Acemoglu and Johnson (2005), Ali (2013) and Asongu (2014). We assess the effects of various components of governance on private investment, notably: political, economic and...

This study complements existing literature by investigating how investment-driven finance affects inequality in Africa. The empirical evidence is based on restricted and unrestricted Two-Stage Least Squares and a pre-crisis periodicity (1980-2002). Inequality is measured with estimated household...

This study examines conditional financial development from information sharing in 53 African countries for the period 2004-2011, using contemporary and non-contemporary quantile regressions (QR) which enable the assessment of the effect of information sharing throughout the conditional...

This study investigates the relationship between social trust and intelligence. The extreme bound analysis of Levine and Renelt is employed to directly assess the strength of the nexus. The findings confirm the positive and robust nexus between social trust and intelligence. We have contributed...

This study investigates the role of information sharing offices and its association with market power in the African banking industry. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks from 42 countries for the period 2001-2011. Five simultaneity-robust estimation techniques are employed,...

This study investigates the role of information sharing offices (public credit registries and private credit bureaus) in reducing market power for financial access in the African banking industry. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks from 42 countries for the period 2001-2011....