Search results

The relationship between terrorism and foreign direct investment (FDI) has stimulated research curiosity given its effects on lives lost, injuries, property damaged, and the psychological aftereffects, which to a very large extent impact economic growth and development. The realization of the magnitude of its influence on bilateral economic ties engineered the study, which examined the impact of terrorism on FDI in Nigeria. The data for this study were sourced from Global Terrorism Index (GTI), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database, International Country Risk Guide (ICRG)’s Quality of Governance (QoG) database, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Bulletin, and World Bank Development Indicators (WDI) using autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach as described by Pesaran et al. (2001). From the results obtained, military expenditure, episode(s) of ethnic violence, and terrorist attacks have all been noted to have negative and significant impacts on FDI in Nigeria. The implication is that the reduction in FDI observed in the data is attributed to terrorism. Therefore, governments should overhaul the security apparatus so as to quell the menace of terrorists. This will go a long way to create a conducive environment for FDI to thrive, which will create more jobs for the growth and development of the Nigerian economy.

Nigeria has been ravaged by terrorist activities which has made the country unsafe for Nigerians and foreign investors. The motivation of this study arises from the dearth of research applying quantitative empirics to the determinants of terrorism in a specific country. To achieve this goal, vector autoregressive (VAR) model was applied using data from Global Terrorism Database (GTD), International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) data, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data, and Transparency International. Stata 13 software was used for estimation. The results show that ethnic violence, absence of good governance, presence of corruption, and rises in military expenditure are part of the causes of terrorism in Nigeria. It is, therefore, recommended that internal security should be maintained to minimize the occurrence of ethnic violence and ethnoreligious biases (sentiments) in the discussion of issues concerning Nigeria. Also, politicians should stop the proliferation of arms, as this will cease the violent reactions before and after elections. Finding lasting solutions to corruption using constitutional means will improve the quality of governance, which will improve the welfare state of the people and reduce restiveness.

The greatest challenge facing most economies today is how to grow their economies and reduce over-dependence on imports in the midst of increasing integration of world economies. Addressing this challenge seems to be difficult despite all efforts by policymakers at different times to salvage the situation, the problem persists as evident in the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Eurozone crisis of 2012 which were generally viewed as a glaring illustration of limitless pursuit of economic integration and governance failure at the expense of carefulness, prudence, due diligence, and regulation. It also reflects the lack of proper coordination and lack of proper economic integration facing most emerging market economies of the world. Against this background, this study focuses on the reexamination of the impact of trade openness (TOP) and financial openness (FOP) on economic growth in emerging market economies. The direct and interaction effect of the both openness variables on economic growth in these markets is investigated using data from 2000 to 2017 adopted from World Development indicators of the World Bank. Over 30 emerging market economies covering Asia, Latin America, and Europe are included in the study. For empirical analysis, the study uses one measure of FOP: de facto (total capital flow) variables following Aizenman and Noy (2009) and a measure of TOP as total trade–GDP ratio. The study applies the Dynamic Panel Approach, that is, the Arellano–Bond GMM estimation technique and Granger Causality Test to address the objectives. The results of this study show that TOP has a positive and significant impact on all the countries studied, whereas FOP has positive but no significant impact on economic growth of these countries, implying that these countries have not harnessed the benefit of financial liberalization and integration. It is recommended that the emerging market economies should open not only their economies to trade but also open their economies to finance so as to reap the benefits of FOP and integration.

This study empirically examines the impact of rural roads on consumption of households in Ethiopia.

Both descriptive statistics and econometric techniques are used to address the aforementioned objective. Specifically, quantile regression, fixed- and random-effect models are used to understand the impact of rural road quality on welfare.

The econometric analysis revealed that improving the quality of rural roads and/or creating access to all-weather roads raises households' average real consumption per capita by as much as 10%. The other transport indicator – mode of transport – also has a positive effect on real consumption per capita. The result indicated that real consumption per capita for households using the traditional mode of transport would increase by as much as 7% compared to those using foot as a major mode of transport. However, the fixed quantile estimation result revealed that rural road access has a positive and significant effect on consumption per capita only for the 0.8th and 0.9th percentiles, indicating that the access to roads is not pro-poor.

Improving rural roads to a level of all-weather road standards and provision of agricultural transport facilities should be strategic priorities.

This study provides empirical evidence pertinent to the effect rural mobility has on the consumption of households as well as the pro-poorness of such investments in rural settings.

This paper aims to provide an introductory overview and selected annotated bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy across all library types.

It introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2014.

It provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this study provide answers to the following research questions: Whether and to what extent money laundering affects the achievability and the trend of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?; Does the influence of money laundering on the SDGs’ achievement differ from developing to developed countries?; How does the influence of money laundering vary among the 17 SDGs?

The paper’s analysis involves two key parts. In the first part, the authors perform a multivariate analysis to examine the influence of money laundering on the achievement of SDGs, and then in the second part, the authors make use of an ordered probit regression model to investigate the impact of money laundering on the trend of attaining each SDG.

Using a sample of 98 developed and developing countries, the regression results from multivariate analysis estimates show that money laundering has a strong inhibiting effect on the achievement of almost all the SDGs in the whole sample of countries and the sub-sample of developing countries, whereas no significant effect is observed for developed countries. However, for the SDG trends, the ordered probit estimates reveal that the harmful effect of money laundering occurs for all countries regardless their development level. In addition, perhaps surprisingly, the results from both the approaches yield also evidence advocating that money laundering activities might be associated with positive externalities on production and consumption. In fact, money laundering is found to have a significant positive influence on the achievement and the trend of SDG12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production). Overall, this study’s findings do have interesting policy implications, especially for developing countries. In these countries, prioritising the formulation and implementation of sound anti-money laundering policies is a necessary requirement for their progress towards achieving the SDGs.

The long-standing tradition of previous empirical studies examining the nexus between money laundering and sustainable development concentrates mainly on the economic dimension of sustainability (i.e. economic growth). However, little is known about the consequences of money laundering activities on the environment and the societies. Consequently, this study seeks to fill this gap by assessing the influence of money laundering on the achievement of the economic, environmental and social goals of sustainable development. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first integrated study to analyse the potential repercussions of money laundering on the SDGs’ achievement.

Given the growing concern about employees' well-being, numerous researchers have investigated the causes and effects of occupational stress. However, a review study on identifying existing research topics and gaps is still deficient in the extant literature. To fill this gap, this review study aims to present a bibliometric and science mapping approach to review the state-of-the-art journal articles published on occupational stress in the construction industry.

A three-fold comprehensive review approach consisting of bibliometric review, scientometric analysis and in-depth qualitative discussion was employed to review 80 journal articles in Scopus.

Through qualitative discussions, mainstream research topics were summarized, research gaps were identified and future research directions were proposed as follows: versatile stressors and stress model; an extended subgroup of factors in safety behavior; adaptation of multiple biosensors and bio-feedbacks; evaluation and comparison of organizational stress interventions; and incorporation of artificial intelligence and smart technologies into occupational stress management in construction.

The findings of this review study present a well-rounded framework to identify the research gaps in this field to advance research in the academic community and enhance employees' well-being in construction.