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University, industry and government relationships, known under the Triple Helix, have been studied under various aspects. The West African region and countries have been analysed with mutual information and transmission power, two information theory-based indicators. The purpose of this paper is to portray the landscape of West African Triple Helix innovation systems using three main game theory indicators (core, Shapley value and nucleolus) with the objective to measure the synergy within the selected innovation systems.

The collaboration between university, industry and government is modelled as a three-person coalitional game. Bibliographical data of selected countries were collected from Web of Science and organised according to collaboration patterns between the three actors. The characteristic functions of the games were computed, the cores plotted, the Shapley values and the nucleoli computed.

Either university or government has more power to create and lead to synergy; government shows solidarity towards university and industry in most of countries; and they are joined in their efforts by industry in two countries. The core exists in all the countries meaning that all the selected innovation systems present synergy; however, the extent is limited and varies over countries.

Innovation includes all research products; however, this study focuses on publications only.

Synergy within a Triple Helix innovation system is studied up to now with information theory indicators. The paper portrays the landscape of West African Triple Helix innovation systems using three main game theory indicators: the core, the Shapley value and the nucleolus and gives a new way to study university, industry and government relationships.

This paper aims to apply the debt sustainability framework using various ratios to review the current state of sovereign debt of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries.

Debt sustainability framework using various ratios (which include the present value approach, Country Policy and Institutional Assessment debt policy assessment ranking and solvency ratio of external debt) for the period 2010 and 2017 were used for the analysis to determine external debt sustainability and solvency of ECOWAS members.

The findings indicate that most ECOWAS countries are already turning at the unsustainable debt path and may renege in their debt obligations, thus creating a vicious cycle of external borrowing that could lead to capital flight.

This paper offers the empirical evidence to identify which of the ECOWAS countries are already at the threshold of external debt stress, and in the likelihood to renege on their debt obligations.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which adaptation projects have incorporated ecosystem services, as well as their redesigning options. The projects selected are listed under National Adaptation Programme of Action in West African region.

A desktop survey approach was used to review 168 projects from 13 countries across West Africa. The projects were categorized and analyzed according to their adaptation goal, thematic focus, their implementation duration and level of investment.

The adaptation initiatives are dominated by actions in the agricultural sector accounting for 32 per cent of the total. Further, they were characterized by small grants consideration with 63 per cent falling under US$1m budget, short-term implementation duration with 46 per cent having three years’ execution period. A large portion of projects (55 per cent) mentioned directly one or more ecosystem services, with provisioning services being referred to in 50 per cent of the cases.

Adaptation projects with ecosystem services components are more sustainable and beneficial to the community. Hence, more consideration of nature benefits during project design, more financial consideration and localizing of the projects to realize the global adaptation goal should be considered.

This paper examines the impact of regional and non-regional trade on economic growth using annual data from Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member countries for the period 2007 to 2017.

Trade data were decomposed into regional (trade among ECOWAS Member States) and non-regional (trade between ECOWAS Member States and the rest of the world). We used the dynamic system GMM to estimate the models and introduced exchange rate, unemployment rate, population growth and gross capital formation as controlled variables.

The results revealed that the estimated coefficient of ECOWAS regional trade is statistically significant and positive in predicting growth, while the non-regional trade coefficient is negative and not statistically significant in predicting growth. Other predictors of growth introduced into the model as controlled variables, such as exchange rate, unemployment rate, population growth and gross capital formation, displayed mixed results. More importantly, population growth, unemployment and exchange rate depreciation hurt economic growth, while gross capital formation promotes economic growth.

The findings provide strong support in favour of the Krugman (1991) hypothesis that regional trade agreements (RTAs) are a better alternative to global trade.

Our decision to disaggregate ECOWAS trade is unique and influenced largely by the objective of the study, which is to establish the type of ECOWAS trade that is a good predictor of growth. The evidence from our findings support the theory that RTAs are a better catalyst to economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal inflation targets for an appropriate exchange rate policy in 15 major oil exporting countries in Sub-Saharan African (SSA).

Dynamic heterogeneous panel threshold techniques are used via threshold-effect test and threshold regression. This procedure is achieved through a grid search and bootstrapping replications method to stimulate the asymptotic distribution of the likelihood ratio test of the null hypothesis on no-threshold as against the alternative hypothesis. The p-values validate the threshold estimates.

Findings revealed that the optimal inflation target has a turning point and its impact on the real exchange rate is up to a threshold level of 14.47 per cent. Furthermore, the inflation rate above the threshold level overwhelmingly revealed its effect on real exchange regimes.

It would have been a good idea to investigate optimal inflation targets for all African countries but due to inadequate data the selection criteria was narrowed to oil-exporting countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Inflation targeting beyond the threshold level would have serious implications on the monetary policy.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to look at optimal inflation targets for 15 major oil exporting countries in general and SSA countries in particular. The findings provide a critical analysis of an inflation regime for a typical oil-producing country that oil exports being their source of revenue.

The present study investigates the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) and governance quality on carbon emissions in the Economics Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

To achieve the objective of this research, panel data for dependent and explanatory variables over the period 2005–2016, collected in the World Development Indicators (WDI) database and World Governance Indicators (WGI), are analyzed using the generalized method of moments (GMM). Also, the panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) method is applied to the four segments of the overall sample to analyze the stability of the results.

The findings of this study are: (1) FDI inflows have a negative effect on carbon emissions in ECOWAS and (2) The interaction between FDI inflows and governance quality have a negative effect on carbon emissions. These results show the decreasing of environmental damage by increasing institutional quality. However, the estimation results on the country subsamples show similar and non-similar aspects.

This study suggests that policymakers in the ECOWAS countries should strengthen their environmental policies while encouraging FDI flows to be environmentally friendly.

The subject has rarely been explored in West Africa, with gaps such as the lack of use of institutional variables. This study contributes to the literature by drawing on previous work to examine the role of good governance on FDI and the CO2 emission relationship in the ECOWAS, which have received little attention. However, this research differs from previous work by subdividing the overall sample into four groups to test the stability of the results.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate whether nighttime luminosity sourced from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program-Operational Linescan System satellite sensors is a suitable proxy for measuring poverty in Africa.

Our study performs wavelet coherence analysis to investigate the time-frequency synchronization between the nightlight data and “income-to-wealth” ratio for 39 African countries between 1992 and 2012.

All-in-all, the authors find that approximately a third of African countries produce positive synchronizations between nighttime data and “income-to-wealth” ratio and hence conclude that most African countries are not at liberty to use nighttime data to proxy conventional poverty statistics.

In differing from previous studies, the authors examine the suitability of nightlight intensity as a proxy of poverty for individual African countries using much more rigorous analysis.

The purpose of the paper is to examine macroeconomic and institutional factors that influence capital flows to low-income sub-Saharan African (SSAn) countries. It analyzes capital flows in a disaggregated manner: foreign divert investment, portfolio equity and portfolio debt. There is a gap in the empirical literature in examining the factors that are important for various types of capital flows to low-income SSAn countries. Low-income SSAn countries attract very low levels of foreign investment compared to other developing economies in the SSAn region and other developing economies and this paper attempts to make a contribution in this area.

This paper examines data on capital flows and that of various push and pull factors. Trends and dynamics of capital inflows and their macroeconomic and institutional drivers are analyzed for low-income sub-Saharan African countries. Such an analysis has not been fully explored for low-income SSAn countries.

Capital inflows to low-income sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have increased sevenfold since the 1990s, dominated by foreign direct investment (FDI). They overtook official development assistance and aid in the 2010s. Mozambique and Ethiopia attract the largest size of FDI compared to other low-income SSAn economies, with natural resources as key factors in the former. The largest share of FDI to low-income SSAn countries comes from other SSAn countries, mostly South Africa and Mauritius. Among macroeconomic push factors, capital inflows are more closely related to commodity prices, while the volatility index and global liquidity are also important. Among macroeconomic pull factors, trade openness and economic growth appear more closely related to capital inflows. The surge in capital inflows in the 2000s also followed the implementation of several regional trade and investment agreements in the region. The improvement in internal conflict in the 1990s and mid-2000s seems to have helped support the increase in capital inflows during that period. This institutional quality variable appears to more closely track capital inflows compared to other institutional quality indicators. There were also improvements in the investment profile, law and order, and government stability in the 1990s to early 2000s when capital inflows picked up.

This study focuses on low-income SSAn countries, which are less studied in the empirical literature and that face immense developmental needs that require foreign and domestic capital.

Findings of this paper can shed light to policy makers on the factors that are most important to help the region attract capital inflows and areas where further improvement is needed in the macroeconomic and institutional environment.

There is a gap in the empirical literature in examining the factors that are important for attracting capital flows to low-income SSAn countries. To our knowledge, this study may be the first to explore dynamics of capital flows against institional quality for low-income SSAn countries at a disaggregated level.

This paper aims to examine the distributional channel of monetary policy (MP) and evaluate how financial development (FD) affects the transmission mechanism from MP to income inequality.

The empirical investigation is implemented for 32 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2017, with the aid of vector autoregressions and a dynamic panel data model.

This study shows that MP has a significant impact on income inequality and the financial system plays an important role by dampening the dis-equalising effects of MP shocks. Both MP and FD directly exert redistributive effects. However, the financial system appears to wield the greatest impact and contribute more to the inequality dynamics.

The policy-relevant conclusion is that the financial system is crucial for the monetary transmission mechanism and the effects of MP actions. As the economy develops financially, it may require less movement in the policy position to achieve the desired policy outcome. Also, macroeconomic stabilisation policies may not be distributionally neutral and may have a role to play in averting longer-term increases in inequality.

Contrary to previous studies, this study indicates MP by the structural shocks to purge the MP stance of the issues of endogenous and anticipatory actions. A distinctive finding of this paper is that cross-country differences in monetary regimes and income explain a significant variation in the distributional impacts of monetary policy. Notwithstanding, the evidence shows that the strength of the transmission is more dependent on FD than the nature of the policy regime.

Early evidence suggests that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused a sharp deterioration in fiscal accounts worldwide. This paper empirically assesses the fiscal impact of previous pandemics and epidemics.

Using a large sample of 170 countries from 2000 to 2018, this study relies on Jordà's (2005) local projection method to trace pandemics' short- to medium-term dynamic impact on several fiscal aggregates.

This paper shows that (qualitatively) similar responses to those observed more recently with COVID-19 have characterized the effects of previous pandemics. While the fiscal effect has been economically and statistically significant and persistent, it varies; pandemics affect government expenditures more strongly than revenues in advanced economies, while the converse applies to developing countries. The author also finds that asymmetric responses depend on whether a country is characterized as a chronic fiscal surplus or deficit type. Another factor that generates an asymmetric fiscal response is the prevailing phase of the business cycle the economy was in when the pandemic shock hits.

This paper's findings provide a lower bound to what the current COVID-19 pandemic will inflict on countries’ fiscal situation. That said, the set of pandemics and epidemics used in this paper are geographically more concentrated and did not affect all countries in such a systemic and synchronized manner as did COVID-19 more recently.

This is the first paper to explore the fiscal side of this type of health-related shocks, as most of the literature has focused on the more traditional macroeconomic effects.