Using a new panel dataset for banks in eight West African countries, we explore the factors that exacerbate or alleviate excess liquidity, and the factors that promote or retard the rate of growth of banks' assets. Loan default rates in the region are high, and variations in the rate impact on...

Using a new panel dataset for banks in eight West African countries, we explore the factors that exacerbate or alleviate excess liquidity, and the factors that promote or retard the rate of growth of banks’ assets. Loan default rates in the region are high, and variations in the rate impact on...

We present a theoretical model of moral hazard and adverse selection in an imperfectly competitive loans market that is suitable for application to Africa. The model allows for variation in both the level of contract enforcement (depending on the quality of governance) and the degree of market...

We show that previous results suggesting that government ownership of banks is associated with lower long run growth rates are not robust to adding more 'fundamental' determinants of economic growth. We also present new cross-country evidence for 1995-2007 which suggests that, if anything,...

We introduce infrastructure as a cost-reducing technology in Romer's (1987) model of endogenous growth. We show that infrastructure can promote specialization and long-run growth, even though its reflects on the latter is non-monotonic, reflecting its resource costs. We provide evidence using...

This paper re-examines the question of causality between financial development and economic growth. We argue that recent results obtained from cross-section country studies are not able to address this issue satisfactorily. Drawing on the distinction between "bank-based" and...

Utilizing the latest panel cointegration methods we provide new empirical evidence from 18 countries that suggests that the link between finance and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is ‘broken'. Specifically, our findings suggest that banking system development in this region follows economic...