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This paper aims to examine the dynamics of house prices in metropolitan cities in an emerging economy. The purpose of this study is to characterise the house price dynamics and the spatial heterogeneity in the dynamics.

The author explores spatial heterogeneity in house price dynamics, using data for 35 Indian cities with a million-plus population. The research methodology uses panel econometrics allowing for spatial heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and non-stationary data. The author tests for spatial differences and analyses the income elasticity of prices, the role of construction costs and lending to the real estate industry by commercial banks.

Long-term fundamentals drive the Indian housing markets, where wealth parameters are stronger than supply-side parameters such as construction costs or availability of financing for housing projects. The long-term elasticity of house prices to aggregate household deposits (wealth proxy) varies considerably across cities. However, the elasticity estimated at 0.39 is low. The highest coefficient is for Ludhiana (1.14), followed by Bhubaneswar (0.78). The short-term dynamics are robust and show spatial heterogeneity. Short-term momentum (lagged housing price changes) has a parameter value of 0.307. The momentum factor is the crucial dynamic in the short term. The second driver, the reversion rate to long-term equilibrium (estimated at −0.18), is higher than rates reported from developed markets.

This research applies to markets that require some home equity contributions from buyers of housing services.

Stakeholders can characterise stable housing markets based on long-term fundamental value and short-run house price dynamics. Because stable housing markets benefit all stakeholders, weak or non-existent mean reversion dynamics may prompt the intervention of policymakers. The role of urban planners, and local and regional governance, is essential to remove the bottlenecks from the demand side or supply side factors that can lead to runaway prices.

Existing literature is concerned about the risk of a housing bubble due to relaxed credit norms. To prevent housing market bubbles, some regulators require higher contributions from home buyers in the form of equity. The dynamics of house prices in markets with higher owner equity requirements vary from high-leverage markets. The influence of wealth effects is examined using novel data sets. This research, documents in an emerging market context, the observations cited in low-leverage developed markets such as Germany and Japan.

This paper aims to examine the level of economic efficiency and factors that influence economic efficiency among seed potato producers in South-western Uganda.

The paper analyses the economic efficiency of 499 informal and 137 formal seed producers using primary data collected through a structured questionnaire. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select the study sites and specific farmers. A one-step estimation procedure of normalized translog cost frontier and inefficiency model was employed to determine the level of economic efficiency and the influencing factors.

The results showed that mean economic efficiencies were 91.7 and 95.2% for informal and formal seed potato producers, respectively. Furthermore, results show significant differences between formal and informal seed potato producers in economic efficiency at a one percent level. Market information access, credit access, producers' capacity and experience increase the efficiency of informal while number of potato varieties, market information access and producers' experience increase economic efficiency for formal counterparts.

Most seed potato producers, especially the informal ones do not keep comprehensive records of their production and marketing activities. This required more probing as answers depended on memory recall.

Future research could explore panel data approach involving more cropping seasons with time variant economic efficiency and individual unobservable characteristics that may influence farmers' efficiency to validate the current findings.

The paper shows that there is more potential for seed potato producers to increase their economic efficiency given the available technology. This has a direct implication on the economy through increased investment in the production and promotion of high yielding seed potato varieties to meet the growing national demand for potatoes.

The paper bridges the gap in literature on economic efficiency among seed potato producers, specifically in applying the normalized translog cost frontier approach in estimating economic efficiency in the context of potato sub-sector in Uganda.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2021-0641

This study examines the impacts of the Ethiopian developmental state model on the competition, efficiency and profitability of banks.

The competition, efficiency and profitability of the Ethiopian bank are measured using Panzar Rose, data envelopment analysis and financial ratio. Fixed-effect panel regression methods are applied to test the direction and strength of association between the Ethiopian developmental state model and the competition, efficiency and profitability of the country's banks while controlling bank-specific market structure and macroeconomic factors.

The Ethiopian developmental state model embeds the state-directed financial system, which affects the banking industry using a range of credit allocation instruments. Of which, directed credit schemes, interest rate control and the lack of financial freedom reduce the competition and efficiency of banks. The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) advances to the government and the sale of Treasury bills to a captive market enhances banking competition while negatively affecting banking efficiency. Interest rate control and the lack of financial freedom lower banking profitability. Unexpectedly, directed credit schemes improve banking profitability.

As with any study, this one has limitations. The intra-period comparison of efficiency is based on balanced data. Future studies can use methods that can measure the efficiency of banks using unbalanced data. The computation of the yearly H-statistic is constrained by the small sample size. The use of high-frequency data for measuring competition can provide us with better insights into banking competition in Ethiopia. Furthermore, there are a number of methods for measuring banking competition, efficiency and profitability with different assumptions. Approaching the subject of this study by applying different methods will offer different insights.

The contributions of this study to practice are at two levels. First, at the policy level, it enhances our understanding of the impacts of developmental state model policies, as implemented in Ethiopia, on the banking industry and therefore provides suggestions to policymakers to reform the sector's policies. Second, it offers input to the management of banks regarding the factors that impact the industry.

The banking industry is often studied in the context of financial liberalisation. The originality of this study lies in investigating how the competition, efficiency and profitability of banks are affected when operating in the context of significant state interventions in the industry.

For close to two decades, the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) has been preparing to launch a second monetary union within the ECOWAS region. This study aims to determine the impact such a unionised monetary regime will have on financial stability as represented by the nonperforming loan ratios of Ghana in a counterfactual framework.

This study models nonperforming loan ratios as dependent on the monetary policy rate and the business cycle. The study then used historical data to estimate the parameters of the nonperforming loan ratio response function using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The estimated parameters are further used to estimate the impact of several counterfactual unionised monetary policy rates on the nonperforming loan ratios and its volatility of Ghana. As robustness check, the Least Absolute Shrinkage Selection Operator (LASSO) regression is also used to estimate the nonperforming loan ratios response function and to predict nonperforming loans under the counterfactual unionised monetary policy rates.

The results of the counterfactual study reveals that the apparent cost of monetary unification is much less than supposed with a monetary union likely to dampen volatility in non-performing loans in Ghana. As such, the WAMZ members should increase the pace towards monetary unification.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by explicitly modelling nonperforming loan ratios as dependent on monetary policy and the business cycle. The study also settles the debate on the financial stability cost of a monetary union due to the nonalignment of business cycles and economic structures.

This paper aims to reexamine the relationship between financial openness and financial development in Ghana.

The study applied maximum likelihood estimation and autoregressive distributed lag approach and tested Granger causality using quarterly data from 1990:1 to 2020:4.

This study revealed a long-run equilibrium relationship between financial openness and development, indicating that financial openness is a critical factor in Ghana’s financial development. Therefore, the study recommends with caution that policies aimed at promoting financial openness could be an effective way to encourage sustainable financial development in Ghana, as financial openness alone may not bring the desired outcome.

The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence of the link between financial openness and financial sector development in Ghana. Future research could delve deeper into the mechanisms through which financial openness affects financial development, exploring potential channels and transmission mechanisms.

The findings suggest that policymakers, particularly the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Ghana, should prioritize policies aimed at promoting financial openness. This includes continued efforts toward financial liberalization and creating an environment conducive to domestic and international financial transactions. Moreover, policies aimed at increasing trade openness, boosting real GDP and maintaining moderate real interest rates are essential for fostering financial sector development.

Enhancing financial sector development can have significant implications for society, including increased access to financial services, improved economic opportunities and enhanced overall economic stability. By promoting financial openness and development, policymakers would contribute to poverty reduction, job creation and overall socio-economic development. The study bridges the gap between theory and practice by providing empirical evidence supporting the theoretical proposition that financial openness stimulates financial sector development.

This study fills a crucial gap in the literature on the effects of financial openness on Ghana’s financial sector development. It focuses on Ghana, which liberalized its financial sector in 1988 as part of the overall economic reforms in 1983, and this justifies the starting point of this paper in 1990, as there are no adequate data before 1990. The study uses principal component analysis to construct an index that measures financial development. The study considers the recent financial crises in Ghana in 2017 and underscores the importance of understanding the link between financial openness and financial development, which becomes useful for policymakers and researchers studying financial system development in sub-Saharan Africa which includes Ghana.

In this paper, we aim to provide an extensive analysis to understand how various factors influence electricity prices in competitive markets, focusing on the day-ahead electricity market in Romania.

Our study period began in January 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, and continued for several months after the onset of the war in Ukraine. During this time, we also consider other challenges like reduced market competitiveness, droughts and water scarcity. Our initial dataset comprises diverse variables: prices of essential energy sources (like gas and oil), Danube River water levels (indicating hydrological conditions), economic indicators (such as inflation and interest rates), total energy consumption and production in Romania and a breakdown of energy generation by source (coal, gas, hydro, oil, nuclear and renewable energy sources) from various data sources. Additionally, we included carbon certificate prices and data on electricity import, export and other related variables. This dataset was collected via application programming interface (API) and web scraping, and then synchronized by date and hour.

We discover that the competitiveness significantly affected electricity prices in Romania. Furthermore, our study of electricity price trends and their determinants revealed indicators of economic health in 2019 and 2020. However, from 2021 onwards, signs of a potential economic crisis began to emerge, characterized by changes in the normal relationships between prices and quantities, among other factors. Thus, our analysis suggests that electricity prices could serve as a predictive index for economic crises. Overall, the Granger causality findings from 2019 to 2022 offer valuable insights into the factors driving energy market dynamics in Romania, highlighting the importance of economic policies, fuel costs and environmental regulations in shaping these dynamics.

We combine principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dataset’s dimensionality. Following this, we use continuous wavelet transform (CWT) to explore frequency-domain relationships between electricity price and quantity in the day-ahead market (DAM) and the components derived from PCA. Our research also delves into the competitiveness level in the DAM from January 2019 to August 2022, analyzing the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI).

In this chapter, the author considers a three-sector general equilibrium model in the context of a developing nation to find out the impact of an increase in foreign capital inflow on the welfare level of the nation. Comparative static analysis reveals that an increase in the inflow of foreign capital causes redistribution across the factors of production and a reallocation of resources, reflected through the change in output. Moreover, the author considers the case of technology transfer and proves that an increase in foreign capital inflow makes the country better off in terms of social welfare even if the foreign capital is fully repatriated. Hence, this work shows that in the absence of any trade distortion, a partial investment liberalisation causes a welfare gain for a small open economy.

This study aims to examine the impact of some real variables such as real effective exchange rates, real mortgage rates, real money supply, real construction cost index and housing sales on the real housing prices.

This study uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model in the monthly period of 2010:1–2021:10.

The real effective exchange rate has a positive and symmetric effect. The decreasing effect of negative changes in real money supply on real housing prices is higher than the increasing effect of positive changes. Only positive changes in the real construction cost index have an increasing and statistically significant effect on real house prices, while only negative changes in housing sales have a small negative sign and a small increasing effect on housing prices. The fact that the positive and negative changes in real mortgage rates are negative and positive, respectively, indicates that both have a reducing effect on real housing prices.

This study suggests the first NARDL model that investigates the asymmetric effects on real housing prices instead of nominal housing prices for Turkey. In addition, the study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to examine the effects of the five real variables on real housing prices.