Hitherto financial drivers of human development have been unexplored by the UNDP. This paper assesses determinants of human development from financial dynamics of depth, efficiency, size and activity on data from 38 developing countries. While the importance of financial activity, size and depth...

This paper assesses if legal origin explains domestic, foreign, private and public investments through financial intermediary channels of depth, efficiency, activity and size. The findings show that legal origin matters in the finance-investment nexus, though its ability to explain aggregate...

Contrary to mainstream consensus on the dominance of English common law countries in investment prospects, this paper sets a new tone in the legal origins debate by providing empirical validity on the dominance of French civil-law countries in private investment. The assessment is based on 38...

This paper examines how domestic, foreign, private and public investments affect income-inequality through financial intermediary dynamics. With the exception of financial allocation efficiency, financial channels of depth and activity are good for the poor as they diminish estimated household...

Hitherto very few studies on the inequality-finance(investment) nexus have focused on the African continent owing to lack of relevant data. This paper integrates previously missing investment and financial components in the assessment of how finance affects pro-poor investment channels. Findings...

Recent distressing trends in climate change, population explosion and deforestation inspired this paper, which completes existing literature by providing empirical justification to hypothetical initiatives on the impact of population growth on forest sustainability in Africa. Using three...

This paper examines the big questions of African comparative politics. It assesses the interaction of three crucial components in the development of the continent: law, democracy and quality of government. Political regimes of democracy, polity and autocracy are instrumented with income-levels,...

Purpose - This paper assesses the incidence of political institutions on stock market performance dynamics in Africa. Design/methodology/approach - The estimation technique used is a Two-Stage-Least Squares Instrumental Variable methodology. Channels of democracy, polity and autocracy are...

This paper examines the effects of deforestation on the welfare of rural communities in the Congo Basin. Using moment conditions of agricultural and forest exploitations, findings indicate deforestation significantly improves welfare both at overall-rural and agricultural household per capita...

This paper focuses on how political regimes affect financial development in Africa, contingent on religious-domination, income-levels and colonial-legacies. The main findings are summarized as follows. Authoritarian regimes have a higher propensity to effect policies that favour the development...