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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that tend to influence credit union efficiency, specifically examining cost efficiency (CE) and technical efficiency.

Using a two-stage method, the authors first estimate CE using Tones’ SBM data envelopment analysis method and technical efficiency in a variable returns to scale setting during the period 2008–2014. The authors estimate a mixed-effects and two-limit Tobit regression to examine the effect of credit union specific characteristics, banking industry and macroeconomic conditions, on efficiency.

Credit unions’ CE averaged 38.9 percent compared to 54.4 percent for technical efficiency. The authors find that technical efficiency does not translate into CE and vice versa.

The authors suggest that when targeting CE, credit union managers would have to make technical efficiency a priority. A monopolized and inefficient banking sector does not challenge efficiency improvement in the credit unions industry.

This study employs data from a frontier market.

This paper examines the effect of financial self-efficacy and financial behaviour on financial well-being and ascertains whether financial well-being affects an individual's level of happiness in life. The authors also show the mediating role of financial behaviour in the relationship between self-efficacy and financial well-being.

The survey method of research was adopted using questionnaires as the principal means of data collection. The hypotheses of the study were tested on a rich data set from a sample of 210 parliamentarians in Ghana using the structural equation modelling technique.

The results show that individuals with high level of financial self-efficacy practise responsible financial behaviour and find financial behaviour to be a good predictor of financial well-being. The authors also find financial behaviour to mediate between financial self-efficacy and financial well-being and conclude that well-being impacts positively on happiness.

Findings of this study demonstrate that the financial well-being of an individual has important implications on the quality of life and an important way of improving well-being is to promote responsible financial behaviour.

This study employs the subjective measure of financial well-being in its analysis and also examines an outcome of financial well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the day of the week effect on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) by using the GSE all-share index from November 1990 to August 2012. The presence of the day of the week effect has been reported on several markets.

The study utilizes one-sample t-test, dummy variable regression, autoregressive and generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic models to investigate whether day of the week effect exist on the GSE.

The study reveals the presence of day of the week effect on the GSE, specifically, highest returns on Tuesday and lowest on Thursday. Monday, Wednesday and Friday also record significant positive returns, however, the significance returns is captured by a strong auto-regression in the returns. Therefore, investors may not have the opportunity to increase their returns by timing their investments. Further, the significance of the anomalies is not robust across time since different sub periods with different trading days per week shows different results.

The study provides additional evidence on the day of the week effect by using utilizing frontier market data.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the governance practices of Ghanaian media institutions by comparing the governance practices of public media institutions to that of private media institutions.

The study adopts a comparative case study methodology by comparing the governance structures of public media institutions to that of the private media institutions. This is meant to ascertain whether public media institutions exhibit different or similar governance practices to that of private media institutions. The discussion is done in line with Taylor's nine principles of good governance.

The findings reveal that governance lapses are widespread reflected in board appointment to slate of other procedures that depart from Taylor's principles of good governance. It is also discovered that some of Taylor's principles are not present in the governance structures of these institutions. These raise serious questions about the going concern of these institutions in playing their role as the fourth arm of government in Ghana.

This is the first study of its kind in the sector, especially within Sub‐Saharan Africa

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate liquidity management of companies listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) with the aim of ascertaining the determinants of corporate liquidity holdings.

The paper adopts a dynamic panel model where a lagged dependable variable is introduced as an explanatory variable. Annual data from the annual reports and financial statements of the firms together with the GSE Factbook are used in the gathering of data spanning 1991‐2007. The Arrellano‐Bond estimator is used which incorporates the Sargan test for over identification.

Leverage is found to be not significant to Ghanaian‐listed firms' liquidity demand perhaps due to the developmental stage of the financial market. However, liquidity is found to be statistically significantly influenced by a target liquidity level, size of the firm, return on assets and net working capital.

This is the first of its kind in the country despite the numerous studies carried out on the GSE.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of macroeconomic factors on capital structure decisions of emerging firms.

A panel data covering a period from 1990 to 2006 for 34 emerging market countries were analyzed using the seemingly unrelated regression approach to mitigate the effects of multicollinearity and to test for the stability of parameter estimates across the countries.

The results largely suggest that the effect of macroeconomic factors on capital structure varies with capital structure measurement variable in most cases. Bank credit is significant in predicting capital structure choices of firms. The findings of the research also indicate a significantly negative relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and capital structure choices. Inflation on the other hand positively influences the choice of short‐term debt over equity. Stock market development is however insignificant in predicting capital structure decisions of firms and expectations of increasing interest rate positively influences firms to substitute long‐term debt for short‐term debt over equity. Most of the control variables namely asset tangibility, return on equity, return on assets and Tobin's Q were significant predictors of corporate financing. The results of the study generally supports existing literature on the impact of investment opportunity set, profitability, and stock market development, inflation, interest rate GDP per capita and bank credit on the capital structure decisions of firms.

The main value of this paper is to analyze the effect of macroeconomic factors on the capital structure decisions of firms using large dataset from emerging countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of natural resources on foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa. Decomposing the measures of natural resource, in terms of contribution to GDP (oil rent (OR), mineral rent (MR) and forest rents (FRs)) and export drive (fuel exports (FE) and minerals export), with the objective of obtaining quantitative estimates of their relationship with FDI, we considered the effect of regional or trade blocks on the continent and control for trade openness, financial market development and infrastructure.

Using annual panel data of 49 African countries over the period 1980-2011 and employing the system GMM estimation technique.

The authors show that after allowing for effect of trade or regional block formation, natural resources in its composite form (ORs, MRs, forest rents (FRs), FEs and minerals export) influences FDI in Africa. Quantitatively, we demonstrate that though natural resources (compositely) influences FDI, the different measures of natural resource differ significantly in terms of their marginal contribution in attracting FDI to the continent especially to different trade blocks. The authors provide that in the presence of certain type of natural resources, trade openness or banking sector credit expansion or infrastructural development is less desirable whilst regional or trade blocks strongly moderate the effect of financial market development and infrastructural development on FDI flow on the continent.

The authors employed a broad data set to provide evidence of the association between natural resources in its composite form and well as its various component and FDI to African after accounting for regional/trade blocks.

The purpose of the study is to examine the influence of corporate governance on the flow of firm-specific information in an emerging market.

Synchronicity is estimated under assumptions of contemporaneous and non-contemporaneous relationship between individual stock returns and the market return. Possible thin-trading effect is also corrected using the Dimson’s Beta approach to estimate synchronicity. In the main empirical model, both the Panel-Corrected Standard Errors and the Generalized Least Square estimations were used to provided robust evidence of governance influencing transparency.

Corporate governance was found to broadly influence the release of firm-specific information in a relatively opaque market through the information environment. However, no evidence in support of the “auditor-reputation effects” theory was found. As well, CEO duality does not create an individual powerful enough to reduce the monitoring role of boards. We further document the presence of noise trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange.

This study suggests that specific corporate mechanism practices have implications for stock selection in a relatively high information asymmetry Capital Market. Investors require transparency; hence, firms with governance mechanisms that elicit such transparency are likely to attract investors.

This study is the first to examine the relationship between governance and transparency while using stock return synchronicity as a proxy for transparency in an emerging Ghanaian Capital Market.