Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the empirical effect of competition on cost and profit efficiency in the South African non-life insurance market in a three-stage analysis. Design/methodology/approach Using annual firm level data on 80 non-life insurance companies from 2007 to...

Purpose The degree and impact of competitiveness in the banking sector is of great importance as this has great impact on the financial system and the wider economy. A question of interest here is, does competition in the commercial banking sector boost or hamper economic growth. The purpose of...

This paper examines whether commodity prices can be used as signal for informing macroeconomic policy in South Africa using the new approach for testing Granger causality developed by <link rid="b13">Toda and Yamamoto (1995</link>). Evidence of causality from average gold price to interest rate, money, exchange rate...

This paper seeks to empirically identify the determinants of the capital structure of listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange during the most recent six-year period. Ordinary Least Square model is used to estimate the regression equation. The results indicate that, total debt constitutes more...

Extreme events in financial markets are central issues in finance and particularly in risk management and financial regulation. Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall emerged as standard tools for measuring market risk. However, no consensus has yet been reach as to the best method to implement...

The paper examines the relationship between interest rates and stock market returns for seven African countries. Cointegration tests indicate a long-run relationship between interest rate and stock prices for Kenya and South Africa. The short-run dynamic Vector Error Correction Model Granger...

This paper investigates the random walk behaviour of stock returns on four African stock markets taking into account the thin-trading effect. Worthy noting is the way returns are calculated using trade-to-trade approach and adjusted to account for the thin-trading effect. The adjustment was done...

Financing has been identified as a dominant constraint to Ghanaian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study explores the determinants of bank financing and debt among Ghanaian SMEs. A panel regression model estimates the relation between the determinants and the bank-debt ratio. The...

The study explored the determinants of small and medium-sized nontraditional exporters’ choice of type of finance (formal or informal). The empirical results revealed a negative relationship between age and formal finance, suggesting that newer firms depend more on formal finance and less on...