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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.

The literature on sustainable development reveals that the financial sector and the real sector should maintain a coherent association in the long run. Thus, like that in a country-level significance, the relevance of the investigations of the interrelationships between the financial sector’s development and the growth and development of the states within a country is also required to be done. This chapter tries to examine the interrelationships between two sets of variables, bank credit and state output, and bank credit and human development, for the pre-reform and post-reform periods. Using the appropriate time series econometric analysis, the study finds no long-run relationships between credit and NSDP during the pre-reform period but it has observed a number of states where such stable relations hold during the post-reform period. Again, there are mixed results between the two in the Granger causality analysis during both the periods. There are the states like AP, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala and WB where developments in the financial sector influence the growth of the real sector, while the reverse causality, that is, from the real sector to the financial sectors works in case of Assam, Haryana, MP and Maharashtra. Bidirectional causality between the two is observed in the states like TN, WB, etc. Further, the study finds very small number of states where credit and human development are interlinked in the long run. However, in the short run, the financial sector makes influences to the human development in case of the states like Bihar, Odisha and TN.

The development of the Russian banking sector was subject to numerous criticisms and pessimistic forecasts in the recent years. The observers pointed out the low ability of the Russian banking sector to provide financial intermediation in the economy and thus to perform the key functions which society expects from the banking sector – mobilization of savings and financing investments in the real sector of the economy. The study seeks to explain above-mentioned features from institutional, economic, and political perspective on the basis of the existing knowledge of the nature of transition banking.

This paper presents new evidence of the relationship between financial market development (banking sector) and economic growth for a set of seven Middle East and North African economies over the period 1965–2002. We find evidence that in six of the seven countries, banking-sector development Granger causes increases in economic growth. However, in three of those six countries, economic growth also Granger causes banking development. Our co-integration analysis reveals that there is a stable long-run equilibrium relationship between banking-sector development and economic growth for all our countries. However, based on vector error-correction models, there is limited evidence that banking-sector development boosts economic growth in the short run.

The financial system plays an essential role in facilitating the intermediation process for economic growth. Policymakers stress on achieving a well-developed and regulated financial system to achieve economic development and resiliency. Using data from the State of Qatar, this paper aims to examine the impact of financial development indicator on economic growth; the impact of financial development indicator on hydrocarbon and nonhydrocarbon sector; the impact of Islamic banking on hydrocarbon and nonhydrocarbon economic growth.

The research uses quarterly data from 2007 to 2019 and adopts autoregressive distributed lag cointegration techniques to test the long- and short-run dynamic relationship between various measures of financial development and economic growth.

The results present evidence of long-term cointegration between overall financial development indicator and economic growth. Furthermore, the authors document the existence of long-term relationship between financial development and nonhydrocarbon sector. However, there is a lack of evidence on the long-run relationship between financial development and the hydrocarbon sector. Notwithstanding, Islamic banking contributes to overall economic development, as well as to the nonhydrocarbon sector.

This paper offers policymakers with insights to evaluate measures to diversify the economy. It also assists decision-makers in promoting Islamic finance, particularly to the banking sector as a vital contributor to economic growth.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to evaluate financial development and economic growth for the case of Qatar in light of recent developments in Islamic finance.

This paper aims to analyse economic growth in Africa focussing on the role of digitalization and financial sector development.

The authors employ country-level data from 36 African countries over the period 2000–2020 and used fixed effect, random effect and the Hausman–Taylor estimation techniques.

The study, first finds that, digitalization propels financial sector development in Africa. Building on this, the study further finds that, digitalization conditioned on financial sector development at best does not promote economic growth in Africa. However, results of the net effects suggest that digitalization, overall, improve economic growth in Africa.

In the current environment of a sluggish global economy, digitalization can play an important role in assisting policymakers to spur economic growth. This has attracted the attention of many researchers in the developed world. However, little is done about the subject matter in Africa.

The findings of this paper are novel in the African sub-region with important policy implications.

This study examines the causal and dynamic link between financial inclusion and migrant remittances in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study employed a panel vector autoregressive (VAR) framework to examine the dynamic relationship between financial inclusion and migrant remittances in sub-Saharan Africa.

The findings indicate that there is a reverse causality between financial inclusion and migrant remittances in sub-Saharan Africa.

The practical implications of these findings are that central governments and economic policymakers in sub-Saharan African countries should formulate and implement policies aimed at fostering financial inclusion if they are to attract more migrant remittances to promote economic growth and financial sector development. This suggests that these two variables are complementary and not contradictory. The results also suggest that central banks and other financial institutions can leverage the positive effect of financial inclusion of financial sector development to enhance the development of the financial sector instead of pursuing financial sector development as a policy objective. This means policies aimed at promoting financial inclusion will not impede or sacrifice migrant remittances, economic growth and financial sector development.

This paper is the first to construct a financial inclusion index to examine the link between financial inclusion and migrant remittances from the sub-Saharan Africa perspective

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-10-2019-0612/

The centrality of agricultural sector to the economy, particularly in developing countries, has drawn the attention of researchers to critically examine different factors determining the performance of the sector. Given that massive investment is required to ensure maximum productivity in the sector, one of the factors identified is the issue of financing. However, financing agricultural sector in a poor institutional environment can be depressing. In the light of this, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nexus between financial development and agricultural performance in Nigeria with a view to investigating the role of institutions.

The study employed annual data spanning the period from 1981 to 2016. Three indicators of financial development and five institutional variables were used. Besides, for robust analysis, the study also computed an aggregate measure of financial development and institutions using principal component method. Autoregressive distributed lag method of estimation was used to examine the short-run and long-run effects of financial development on agricultural performance in Nigeria.

The findings showed that financial development has a positive impact on agricultural performance in Nigeria. However, this positive impact is being undermined by institutional variables.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that examines the mediating role of institutional factors such as the rule of law, control of corruption, etc., in the financial development–agricultural performance nexus in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between inflation and the financial sector performance in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

The study analyzes the relationship between inflation and the financial sector performance for selected 22 Sub-Saharan countries from 1980 to 2013. The study used panel data and the dynamic panel generalized method of moments econometric method. The study concentrates on the link between inflation and the development of the banking sector.

The findings suggest that inflation does not promote financial sector development in SSA region while trade openness has a positive impact on the selected financial development indicators. Other variables that enhance financial development in SSA include government expenditure and good governance.

The main policy implication of the study is that in order for SSA countries to benefit from a deeper and more active financial sectors, the rates of inflation must be maintained low and be consistently under control. Also, for SSA region financial sectors to become deeper and more active it is crucial to develop stronger economic institutions including independent central banks and sound fiscal authorities.

The study differs from previous studies as it includes more (22) countries from SSA region while previous studies were either regional or country specific. The study also incorporates trade openness and the role of institutional quality in enhancing financial development. This differentiates the study from previous studies on the subject from the region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between economic development and financial sector development for 28 countries at different stages of their development. The authors specifically focus on the nature of causality during economic boom and tranquil cycles.

The study uses quarterly time series panels of 17 developed and 11 emerging countries, during 1993Q1-2014Q4 with each having three sub-panels – full sample, a period of the economic uptrend (UP), and period of the economic downtrend. The authors use a univariate analysis for initial screening followed by panel unit root test, panel co-integration and causality test proposed by Toda–Yamamoto to examine the causal relationship.

The principal results suggest that for developed economies, there is a causal flow from financial sector to real sector in line with the “supply-leading” hypothesis, whereas for emerging economies, it is from real sector to financial sector, in line with the “demand-following” hypothesis. This overall relationship is strong for both emerging and developed economies during economic boom or UP cycles, but becomes weak during economic downturns or tranquil periods.

This study is different from previous studies on this issue and contributes to the existing literature in a number of ways. First, the focus of this paper revolves around identification of differential patterns in causal flows between real and financial sectors for different economies, across different economic cycles. Second, to present a robust representation of financial sector, the authors consider both banking sector and stock market parameters as the proxy for financial sector development. Third, the authors address the “stock-flow problem” in the measurement of financial variables a typical criticism of some of the previous studies. Finally, the authors use a rich sample size comprising of about 2,500 quarterly observations for each variable, with about 1,500 observations from developed and 1,000 from emerging economies.