The main purpose of this paper is to construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for South Africa. The analysis extracts the index by applying two alternative approaches (principal component analysis and Kalman filter), which identify an unobservable common factor from a group of external and...

This paper identifies and describes key features of Caribbean business cycles during the period 1963-2003. In particular, the chronologies in the Caribbean classical cycle (expansions and contractions in the level of output) and growth cycle (periods of above-trend and below-trend rates of...

This paper investigates empirically the sources of aggregate output growth and the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) in Niger between 1963 and 2003. A growth accounting analysis indicates that the erosion in output per capita over the sample period is due to the negative growth of...

Will Ghana’s oil production from 2011 accelerate progress toward middle-income status, or will it retard gains in living standards through a possible "resource curse"? This paper examines the likelihood of "resource curse" effects, drawing on a dataset of 150 low and middle income...

The turmoil in the sovereign debt markets in Europe has raised concerns on the usefulness of sovereign credit default swaps and government bond yields in periods of distress. In addressing this issue, we introduce a novel nonlinear approach for the analysis of non-stationary multivariate data...

Purpose - This paper introduces previously missing financial components (efficiency, activity and size) in the assessment of the finance-investment nexus. Design/Methodology/Approach - VAR models in the perspectives of VECM and short-run Granger causality are employed. Usage of optimally...

The digital economy is an alternative to the traditional economy, an area of the future on which investment and R&D efforts are focused both by European forums and by Member States, which have understood the importance of the domain with the onset of the pandemic crisis. The aim of the research...

Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) abolished the Ottoman Empire in 1922 by overthrowing the last sultan Mehmet VI Vahdettin and established the Republic of Turkey as a secular state on 29 October 1923. After Atatürk’s death on 10 November 1938, the Turkish Armed Forces has safeguarded his principles...

Public welfare policies in developing countries have a Rawlsian perspective; they seek to uplift the poor, the poorest of the poor in particular. Policies to enable the poor to catch up with the rich are generally two-fold, viz., inclusive growth, and redistributive (transfer) programmes. This...