Search results

In this chapter, we investigate the interactions between governance quality and economic development. More specifically, we analyze how the institutions through which state authority is exercised influence the level of economic development. In that respect, governance could be considered as a quasi-factor of production which affects the country's economic growth and development, an issue that lies in the heart of institutional economics. The effect of governance on economic development is mainly played out via two channels. Namely, the quality of democracy, distinguished in political rights and civil liberties, and the level of corruption, associated with the exercise of state authority. Good governance is in principle associated with a high quality of democracy and a low level of corruption. Both generate positive effects on the level of economic growth and development, mainly due to their impact on state effectiveness and private and public investment. At the same time, there also exists an inverse causality: the level of economic development affects positively the quality of democracy and negatively the level of corruption which in turn tend to improve the quality of democracy. These coexistent mechanisms are associated with crucial policy issues which are largely neglected by the traditional theory of economic growth.

Outlines previous research on the capital asset pricing model and its extensions; and fluctuations in the Greek economy and capital market between 1980 and 1992. Develops a mathematical, multi‐factor, risk‐return model and applies it to Greek data for this period, split into two sub‐periods: 1980‐1986 and 1986‐1992. Identifies and discusses the m ost important macrovariables influencing security returns for both periods. Concludes that the model does capture the features of a changing economic environment and links risk premia to macroeconomic factors, although it lacks intertemporal stability.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of inclusive human development and military expenditure in modulating the effect of terrorism on governance.

It is based on 53 African countries for the period 1998–2012 and interactive generalised method of moments is employed. Six governance indicators from the World Bank and two terrorism variables are used, namely, domestic and transnational terrorism dynamics.

The following main findings are established. There is a negative net effect on governance (regulation quality and corruption-control) when inclusive human development is used to reduce terrorism. There is a positive net impact on governance (voice and accountability and rule of law) when military expenditure is used to reduce domestic terrorism.

The authors have complemented the sparse literature on the use of policy variables to mitigate the effect of policy syndromes on macroeconomic outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to present theoretical and empirical arguments for the role of mobile telephony in promoting good governance in 47 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2000–2012.

The empirical inquiry uses an endogeneity-robust GMM approach with forward orthogonal deviations to analyze the linkage between mobile phone usage and the variation in three broad governance categories – political, economic and institutional.

Three key findings are established: first, in terms of individual governance indicators, mobile phones consistently stimulated good governance by the same magnitude, with the exception of the effect on the regulation component of economic governance. Second, when indicators are combined, the effect of mobile phones on general governance is three times higher than that on the institutional governance category. Third, countries with lower levels of governance indicators are catching-up with their counterparts with more advanced dynamics.

The study makes both theoretical and empirical contributions by highlighting the importance of various combinations of governance indicators and their responsiveness to mobile phone usage.

This study aims to assess the effect of globalisation on governance in 51 African countries for the period 1996-2011.

Ten bundled and unbundled governance indicators and four globalisation variables are used. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments.

Firstly, on political governance, while only social globalisation improves political stability, only economic globalisation does not increase voice and accountability and political governance. Secondly, with regard to economic governance: only economic globalisation significantly promotes regulation quality; social globalisation and general globalisation significantly advance government effectiveness; and economic globalisation and general globalisation significantly promote economic governance. Thirdly, with respect to institutional governance, while only social globalisation improves corruption-control, the effects of globalisation dynamics on the rule of law and institutional governance are not significant. Fourthly, the impacts of social globalisation and general globalisation are positive on general governance.

It follows that political governance is driven by voice and accountability compared to political stability; economic governance is promoted by both regulation quality and government effectiveness from specific globalisation angles; and globalisation does not improve institutional governance for the most part.

Governance variables are bundled and unbundled to reflect evolving conceptions and definitions of governance. Theoretical contributions and policy implications are discussed.

Education as a weapon in the fight against conflict and violence remains widely debated in policy and academic circles. Against the background of growing political instability in Africa and the central role of the knowledge economy in twenty-first century development, this paper provides three contributions to existing literature. The purpose of this paper is to assess how political stability/non-violence is linked to the incremental, synergy and lifelong learning effects of education.

The authors define lifelong learning as the combined knowledge acquired during primary, secondary and tertiary education. Principal component analysis is used to reduce the dimensions of educational and political indicators. An endogeneity robust dynamic system Generalized Methods of Moments is used for the estimations.

The authors establish three main findings. First, education is a useful weapon in the fight against political instability. Second, there is an incremental effect of education in the transition from secondary to tertiary schools. Third, lifelong learning also has positive and synergy effects. This means that the impact of lifelong learning is higher than the combined independent effects of various educational levels. The empirical evidence is based on 53 African countries for the period 1996-2010.

A plethora of policy implications are discussed, inter alia: how the drive towards increasing the knowledge economy through lifelong learning can be an effective tool in the fight against violence and political insurgency in Africa.

As the continent is nursing knowledge economy ambitions, the paper is original in investigating the determinants of political stability/non-violence from three dimensions of education attainment: the incremental, the lifelong learning and a synergy effect.

This paper aims to investigate the economic, political or sociocultural determinants of corruption in Tunisia.

To better understand the main determinants of corruption in Tunisia. This study uses The Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) model, which allows us to include a large number of explanatory variables and for a shorter period.

The results show that economic freedom is the most important variable of corruption in Tunisia. In second place comes the subsidies granted by the government, which is one of the best shelters of corruption in Tunisia through their use for purposes different from those already allocated to them. Third, this paper finds the high unemployment rate, which, in turn, is getting worse even nowadays. The other three factors considered as causal but of lesser importance are public expenditures, the human development index (HDI) and education. Education, the HDI and the unemployment rate are all socio-economic factors that promote corruption.

The realization of this study will lead to triple net contributions. The first is to introduce explicitly and simultaneously political, social and economic determinants of corruption in developing countries. Second, unlike previous studies based on the simple and generalized regression model, the present research uses another novel and highly developed estimation method. More precisely, this study uses the BMA model, on the set of annual data for a period of 1998–2018. The third contribution of this research resides in the choice of the sample.

This study aims to examine anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) following government legislation, specifically the UK Bribery Act, 2010, through focusing on the UK extractive industry.

This study uses content analysis for data analysis with an ACD checklist developed to capture ACD in annual reports during the period 2003–2019.

The study found an increase in ACD following 2010, with companies answering ACD questions and addressing categories that they previously ignored.

Most of the previous studies have examined voluntary ACD; this study contributes to the literature by applying an index developed from government regulation to investigate the difference that regulation can make to disclosure. Hence, this study provides evidence of how, from an institutional perspective, legislation plays an important role in facilitating and endorsing anti-corruption reporting.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of globalization and its multiple dimensions on human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The study extends the Poe and Tate (1994) model, which enumerates the various determinants of human rights. Ordered probit estimation is used to estimate the impact of globalization and its dimensions. For the purpose of empirical analysis, the period has been divided into three phases: short, medium and long term. This helps in understanding how the impact of the different dimensions of globalization has evolved over a period of time. Furthermore, analysis has been carried out to detect causality between human rights and globalization.

As per the results, overall globalization and social dimension of globalization do have a positive impact on human rights in long and medium term and, also, Granger-cause human rights. The political dimension of globalization has a positive relation with human rights, though there exists no causality between the two. On the other hand, the economic dimension of globalization fails to have a statistically significant impact on human rights. Impact of the social dimension of globalization dominates that of other dimensions of globalization.

This is one of the few studies that examine, in an empirical fashion, the impact of globalization on human rights in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms’ characteristics related to globalization affect their perception on corruption and actual experiences in bribery. It focuses on two indicators of globalization, namely, foreign ownership and export, and confines the scope to developing economies.

This analysis uses firm-level data with observation over 60,000 collected from 94 developing economies. The paper employs the probit model to examine how firm characteristics related to globalization affect corruption perception (CP) and incidence.

The empirical results reveal that for foreign-invested companies, there is a substantial discrepancy between the perceived corruption and the actual. Although they are involved in bribery as frequently as, or less frequently than local firms, they have greater CPs. Exporting firms are more frequently solicited for bribes, but the effect disappears when time spent for government contact is controlled for. Consequently, foreign investment partly contributes to the corruption control, but the export orientation of firms rather aggravates corruption due to regulative environments in developing economies.

This study provides policy implications that the corruption control through globalization requires streamlining of administration procedure related to foreign investment or trade and, thus, shortening time to deal with public officials. In addition, governments need to emphasize the importance of foreign investment and prevent unethical practices mediated by local partners.

The greatest novelty of this paper lies in using firm level data instead of country level unlike most of the literature. Moreover, the authors focus on firms only in developing economies. As well, unlike most studies using only perception indicators as the proxy of corruption, this paper considers both CPs and actual incidence, and compares each other.