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This paper aims to investigate the long-run impact of selected foreign capital inflows, including aid, remittances, foreign direct investment (FDI), trade and debt, on the economic growth of 21 low-income countries in the Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) region, during the period 1990–2018.

To obtain this objective and for robust analysis, a parametric approach, which was dynamic ordinary least squares, and a non-parametric technique, which was fully modified ordinary least squares, were used.

The results of both models confirmed that, in the long run, trade and aid affected the growth rate of the per capita income in these countries in a positive way. However, external debt seemed to have an adverse influence on such growth.

First, this is the initial study that has addressed this matter across a homogenous group of countries in the SSA region. Second, while most of the previous studies regarding capital inflows into the SSA region have focused on the impact of only one or two aspects of such foreign capital inflows on growth, the present study, instead, examined the impact of five types of foreign capital inflows (aid, remittances, FDI, trade and debt).

The purpose of this paper is to extend the gravity model to examine the role of infrastructure (including human capital (HC)), macroeconomic policies, the institutional quality and the colonial regimes on intra-African trade during the period 1990-2013. The results show that the basic gravity variables have substantial influence on the bilateral trade in the continent. Most interestingly, whilst internal conflicts appear to have harmful and significant impacts on the flow of such trade, HC, the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the British colonial regime appear as encouraging factors. The results of the study imply that devoting more resources to HC and creating a favourable investment environment should come as a top priority in current efforts to facilitate Africa’s economic regionalism.

The paper employs Tobit technique on a semi-log extended form for the gravity model.

The results show that the basic gravity variables have substantial influence on the bilateral trade in the continent. Most interestingly, whilst internal conflicts appear to have harmful and significant impacts on the flow of such trade; HC, the flow of FDI and the British colonial regime come out as encouraging factors.

The results provided can be useful to design policies oriented to facilities intra-trade between African economies. So far, this is the first study that incorporates the soft type of infrastructures, colonization and institutional quality in the investigation of the factors that can influence intra-Africa trade.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the presence of the Dutch disease hypothesis through examining the remittance-growth nexus using annual data for Sudan covering the period 1977-2015. The paper seeks to answer the following critical questions: what is the impact of remittance on Sudanese economy? How exchange rate influences the impact of remittance on growth? To what extent the impact of remittance on growth differs between the short and long run.

The paper employs the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) technique because of its several advantages.

The ARDL results show evidence against the existence of such a hypothesis. More specifically, the results show that over time, due to the structured nature of the economy, remittances may affect economic growth negatively through several mechanisms including the depreciation rather than the appreciation of the exchange rate.

After 2011 and the secession of South Sudan, Sudan lost more than 80 per cent of foreign exchange revenues which reflected in the sharp gap between the official rate and the parallel exchange rate equal to 150 per cent. To lessening this gap, the attention was given to expatriates to encourage them to transfer their remittances through official channels. Since remittance and exchange rate mechanism may affect growth positively or negatively, no study addressed this possibility. This is the first empirical study in this matter that considers both the temporary and the permanent impacts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of migrant workers on the output growth of 15 sub-industries of the manufacturing sector in Malaysia during the period 1990–2008. The paper seeks to answer the following critical questions: what is the impact of migrant workers on the output growth of the manufacturing sector, the leading sector of Malaysian economy? It is possible that migrant workers with different skill levels may have different impacts on output growth of such sector?

The paper employs three econometric techniques: mean group, dynamic fixed effect and the pooled mean group on extended form for Cobb–Douglas production function.

The overall findings suggest that due to the inflow of low skills of migrant workers, output growth in the manufacturing sectors is likely to witnesses a marginal decline in the long run.

The present study complements previous studies by providing a quantitative assessment of the impact of migrant workers on output growth in the manufacturing sector in Malaysia, which is not attempted in extant literature. More importantly, the analysis considers the probability that migrant workers with different skill levels may have different impacts on the growth of output in the manufacturing sector.