Search results

This study empirically examines the impact of some domestic as well as global factors such as trade openness (TO), money supply (MS), exchange rate, global oil prices (GOPs) and interest rate (IR) on inflation.

This study deploys a quantitative method considering 30 years of data (1991–2020) from four South Asian countries, namely, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. To determine the potential impact of different factors on inflation, this study applies the panel analysis of the system generalized method of moments (SGMM).

This study empirically finds that TO, MS, exchange rate and GOPs have a positive impact on inflation, while IR and the structural adjustment program (SAP) have a negative impact on inflation. Out of the various determinants considered in this study, TO, exchange rate and the SAP are insignificant, while the rest of the variables are significant and consistent with previous studies.

This study informs policymakers about maintaining price stability and fostering economic growth in South Asian nations. It breaks new ground as the first empirical examination of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s SAP impact on inflation in the region.

This study tries to find out whether the SAP of the IMF is responsible for inflation in South Asian countries. It gives renewed attention to the causality of inflation from the perspective of countries receiving loans from donors, especially the IMF.

Identifying the flow regime is a prerequisite for accurately modeling two-phase flow. This paper aims to introduce a comprehensive data-driven workflow for flow regime identification.

A numerical two-phase flow model was validated against experimental data and was used to generate dynamic pressure signals for three different flow regimes. First, four distinct methods were used for feature extraction: discrete wavelet transform (DWT), empirical mode decomposition, power spectral density and the time series analysis method. Kernel Fisher discriminant analysis (KFDA) was used to simultaneously perform dimensionality reduction and machine learning (ML) classification for each set of features. Finally, the Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) method was applied to make the workflow explainable.

The results highlighted that the DWT + KFDA method exhibited the highest testing and training accuracy at 95.2% and 88.8%, respectively. Results also include a virtual flow regime map to facilitate the visualization of features in two dimension. Finally, SHAP analysis showed that minimum and maximum values extracted at the fourth and second signal decomposition levels of DWT are the best flow-distinguishing features.

This workflow can be applied to opaque pipes fitted with pressure sensors to achieve flow assurance and automatic monitoring of two-phase flow occurring in many process industries.

This paper presents a novel flow regime identification method by fusing dynamic pressure measurements with ML techniques. The authors’ novel DWT + KFDA method demonstrates superior performance for flow regime identification with explainability.

The phenomenon of growth spillover occurs because of domestic shocks, global shocks and shocks to a foreign country or region, and these are transmitted through specific channels. This study investigates the strength of the economic linkages between Caribbean Community (CARICOM) economies and its main traditional partners, including the European Union (EU-27), and emerging trading partners, such as China, with a view to determining the presence and extent of spillover growth which results from the interdependence among these economies. The paper hypothesizes that the presence of these spillovers can be leveraged to chart the future for the region's integration in the global sphere.

Based on the existing theoretical and empirical literature, a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model was developed and employed to examine the strength of the economic linkages between CARICOM economies and its main trading partners, such as the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and the EU-27, alongside some of the non-traditional partners such as China. This method has been widely used by institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, to profile economic linkages between economies. To this end, the methodology was formulated based on the IMF Spillover Reports which were produced from 2011 to 2015.

The model suggests that positive spillovers are likely to occur from continued deepened integration with the US, EU-27 and the UK, as traditional trade partners, but that opportunities also exist from a deliberate deepening of relations with non-traditional trade partners, for example, China. This becomes even more apparent when CARICOM is separated into categories consisting of more developed countries (MDCs) and less developed countries (LDCs). In addition, from the perspective of any trading partner, such as those in the EU-27, this research is relevant and timely as it contributes to the landscape of literature, which can be utilized for the purpose of negotiating parameters of trade and integration arrangements.

This study adds to the literature on evaluating the direction for deepened integration of CARICOM economies, both with selected traditional and non-traditional trade partners as the region pilots recovery in a post-pandemic global space.

Policymakers can use the results of this study to leverage economic spillovers as a basis for determining which trade partners offer the most significant growth benefits as the region recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and it will also assist in steering regional integration. This result also implies that over time, the comparative advantage structure of CARICOM member countries' export profile should change to reflect the import profile of its trade partners. To this end, this study can be used to inform and better position the respective trade and industrial development policies of countries in the Caribbean region as they attempt to deepen integration regionally and internationally. From the perspective of the partner, traditional trading relationships such as those which exist with European countries, such as the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement, can be more deliberately utilized given the geographic benefits on offer with deepened relationships with economies in the Caribbean. Further, this research can also be a point of departure for future research.

This study is among the few empirical works that examine spillover effects as a strategy for rebuilding economic growth in the post-COVID 19 era. This study adds to the literature on evaluating the direction for deepened integration of CARICOM economies, both with selected traditional and non-traditional trade partners as the region navigates recovery in a post-pandemic global space.

This paper aims to obtain a recent estimate of the cost of precautionary foreign reserve accumulation that emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) had to endure to protect themselves against the risks of financial globalization. In addition, the study estimates the cost of excess reserves in emerging market economies (EMEs) using various reserve adequacy indicators that reflect potential sources of foreign exchange drains and vulnerability in EMEs' balance of payments.

This paper begins by explaining the accumulation of foreign reserves in EMDEs as a self-protection strategy against the risks of financial globalization. Next, it sheds light on the different types of economic costs of foreign reserve accumulation. Finally, it estimates the cost of foreign reserve accumulation in EMEs during the period (1990–2018) and in EMDEs during the period (1990–2015) due to data availability.

Results indicate that the cost of accumulating foreign reserves as a self-protection strategy in EMDEs and EMEs' was huge compared to their development financing needs. Applying various reserve adequacy measures demonstrates that many of the EMEs were holding inadequate precautionary reserves in 2018. Actually, this reflects the significant increase in external short term debt that many of the EMEs have witnessed since the eruption of the global financial crisis (2008). Thus increasing reserves in EMEs with weak reserve buffers and higher external debt is critical as they are more vulnerable to external shocks and capital flow reversals. Also given the estimated huge costs of accumulating foreign reserves, EMDEs should accompany it by other complementary self-protection policies and liquidity management policies to free up resources for productive investment.

The study contributes to the literature by estimating the cost of precautionary foreign reserve accumulation imposed on EMDEs during an extended period of time that covers a decade after the onset of the global financial crisis. Also to the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that estimates the cost of excess reserves in EMEs using various reserve adequacy indicators including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assessing reserve adequacy (ARA) approach.

The purpose of this study is to construct a new index to assess the impact of an energy price shock on macroeconomic indicators of India. This paper also shows a comparative analysis of the constructed index along with pre-existing World Bank and International Monetary Fund indices on energy.

This paper uses three vector autoregressions and compute the long-term impact of the indices on the considered macroeconomic variables through impulse response functions.

This paper finds that an energy price shock has a detrimental impact on the macroeconomic indicators of India in the long run. This study also finds that the constructed index acts as a relatively more sensitive index in comparison to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank indices, which is bespoke to a developing economy case. This sensitivity is ascribed to dynamic weighting for a different basket of energy components, which are more pertinent to an Indian context.

The novelty of this research lies in the construction of a new index and its comparison to the existing ones. This study justifies why a developing economy would require a different measure of energy as opposed to the existing indices.

This study investigates information flow of market constituents and global indices at multi-frequencies.

The study’s findings were obtained using the Improved Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (I-CEEMDAN)-based cluster analysis executed for Rényi effective transfer entropy (RETE).

The authors find that significant negative information flows among sustainability equities (SEs) and conventional equities (CEs) at most multi-frequencies, which exacerbates diversification benefits. The information flows are mostly bi-directional, highlighting the importance of stock markets' constituents and their global indices in portfolio construction.

The authors advocate that both SE and CE markets are mostly heterogeneous, revealing some levels of markets inefficiencies.

The empirical literature on CEs is replete with several dynamics, revealing their returns behaviour for diversification purposes, leaving very little to know about the returns behaviour of SE. Wherein, an avalanche of several initiatives on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) enjoin firms to operate socially responsible, but investors need to have a clear reason to remain sustainable into the foreseeable future period. Accordingly, the humble desire of investors is the formation of a well-diversified portfolio and would highly demand stocks to the extent that they form a reliable portfolio, especially, amid SEs and/or CEs.

本研究擬審查多頻率的及為市場成份的信息流和全球指數。

研究人員使用基於改良完全集合經驗模態分解自適應噪聲(Improved Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise)的聚類分析法,取得Rényi有效轉移熵,藉此得到研究結果。

我們發現、於大部份多頻率,在持續性股票和傳統股票間有顯著的負信息流動,這會增加多樣化的益處。這些信息流大部份是雙向的,這強調了股票市場成份及其全球指數在構建投資組合上的重要性。

我們認為持續性股票市場和傳統股票市場大多為異質市場,這顯示了市場的低效率,而且這低效率的程度頗大。

關於傳統股票的實證性文獻裡是充滿了變革動力的,這顯示了它們以多樣化為目的的回報行為。這使我們對關於持續性股票的回報行為、認識變得實在太少了。於此,大量的企業社會責任的新措施不斷提醒各公司、要本著企業社會責任的理念去營運;但投資者需清晰明白他們為何需在可見的將來保持可持續性。因此,他們卑微的願望是一個較好的多樣化投資組合得以形成,故此他們高度要求股票要有組成可靠投資組合的性質和能力,特別是在持續性股票和/或傳統股票當中。

In this paper we examine the validity of the J-curve hypothesis in four Southeast Asian economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand) over the 1980–2017 period.

We employ the linear autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) model that captures the dynamic relationships between the variables and additionally use the nonlinear ARDL model that considers the asymmetric effects of the real exchange rate changes.

The estimated models were diagnostically sound, and the variables were found to be cointegrated. However, with the exception of Malaysia, the short- and long-run relationships did not attest to the presence of the J-curve effect. The trade flows were affected asymmetrically in Malaysia and the Philippines, suggesting the appropriateness of nonlinear ARDL in these countries.

The previous research tended to examine the effects of the real exchange rate changes on the agricultural trade balance and specifically the J-curve effect (deterioration of the trade balance followed by its improvement) in the developed economies and rarely in the developing ones. In this paper, we address this omission.

Due to their particular nature, virtual assets (VA) are vulnerable to financial crimes such as money laundering and if the appropriate legal mechanisms are not established, this may result in the financial collapse of various economies. To this effect, best practices and standards have been published by some international organisations such as the Financial Action Task Force and IMF which are now domesticated in the national laws of several countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the anti-money laundering (AML) legislative framework in the context of VA in three countries, namely, Mauritius, Japan and South Africa.

To achieve the research objective, the Mauritian AML laws in the context of VA were compared with the corresponding laws of some other countries, namely, Japan and South Africa. As such, a qualitative research method was adopted. In particular, the black letter approach was used to examine the relevant laws of these countries. A comparative analysis was conducted concerning the relevance of AML laws for each country when dealing with VA with the view of suggesting recommendations for Mauritian stakeholders to adopt to enhance the existing AML legal and regulatory framework.

The comparative study conducted has revealed that there are both similarities and divergences among the AML framework of the three countries further to which this research recommends that the Mauritian laws must be amended concerning the duration of information storage on VA, the definition of VA, advertisement by VA service providers and the electronic submission of annual reports. The Mauritian regulatory bodies also need to play a more active role in their joint collaboration to monitor suspicious VA transactions to combat money laundering.

At present, this study will be among the first academic writings on the efficiency of AML laws in the context of VA in Mauritius and also, because existing literature is quite scarce on assessing the adequacy of AML legislation in developing countries, this research aims at filling in the gap in literature. This study is carried out with the aim of combining a large amount of empirical, theoretical and factual information that can be of use to various stakeholders and not only to academics.

This paper explores the implications of financial inclusion and financial development for the conduct of monetary policy in achieving price stability and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The paper employs the system-generalized methods of moment (GMM) estimation technique using panel data spanning 2004 to 2019 and sourced from Databases of (International Monetary Fund's) IMF's Financial Access Survey (FAS), IMF's International Financial Statistics (IFS), World Bank's Global Financial Development Database (GFDD) and World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

The authors find that financial inclusion has a double-edge effect in SSA. That is, it increases economic growth and lowers inflation in SSA. Furthermore, the results show that a simultaneous increase in financial inclusion and financial development have restrictive effects on economic growth. On the evidence provided, the authors conclude that financial inclusion is an important predictor of economic growth and the conduct of monetary policy in the sub-region.

This paper expands and contributes to the frontier of knowledge how financial inclusion is important for the conduct of monetary policy by monetary authorities in achieving its intended objectives in SSA. The paper highlights the need for ongoing enhancement of financial inclusion of many governments in the sub-region to achieving high economic growth and price stability. Thus, there is the need for policy makers to ensure that a more stringent, effective and appropriate policies and measures are put in place to enhance financial inclusion while taking into consideration the extent of financial development in SSA.

This paper assesses the impact of tax reforms on tax revenue mobilisation in Ghana.

The autoregressive distributed lag model together with dynamic ordinary least squares and fully modified least squares techniques were employed on a time-series data spanning from 1980–2018. Exploiting data from IMFs monitoring of fund arrangements database, an index of tax reforms is constructed as a function of the number of successfully implemented tax-related reforms and policy measures per year over the study period.

Having established the presence of co-integration between tax revenue and its determinants, this paper finds strong evidence that tax-related reforms exert positive and significant impact on tax revenue generation in Ghana. Among other covariates, the results show that the tax base (real GDP), public debt and education (human capital index) significantly boosts tax revenue in the long run.

The success of tax reforms in boosting revenue mobilisation has been examined in light of the buoyancy and elasticity of the tax system in Ghana, albeit with little emphasis on the extent to which tax reforms contribute to tax revenue mobilisation from econometric perspective. This paper fills this gap in the literature by analysing the impact of tax reforms on tax revenue mobilisation in Ghana. As a recommendation, well-designed and implemented tax reforms and policies aimed at increasing the tax base, education and effective utilisation of funds from public debt promise to be instrumental in boosting tax revenue in Ghana.