Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of industrialization and urbanization on CO₂ emissions in 20 African countries for the period 1980 to 2013.

In order to correct for cross-sectional dependence, this study adopts the use of pooled mean group. Also, the study contributes to the literature by estimating the direct, indirect and total effects of industrialization and urbanization on carbon emission.

The results show that industrialization and urbanization directly increase environmental degradation. Interestingly, industrialization and urbanization were also found to reduce environmental degradation through their indirect effects on per capita income. In general, the authors conclude that the indirect effect of industrialization will overcrowd the direct effect, and this will lead to a decline in the overall effect of industrialization on carbon emission. Also, the positive direct effect of urbanization outweighs the negative indirect effect, thus the overall effect of urbanization will endanger carbon emission in the long run.

The existing studies on emission, industrialization and urbanization have typically been biased toward Africa. This present study filled this gap. The choice of African countries is based on the notion that the continent is desirous of expanding her industrialization level. This has coincidentally led to the increase in urbanization growth rate as well as income level of former rural dwellers. The second contribution of this study is the “effects decomposition” into direct, indirect and total effects. This is to reveal some inherent information that might be missing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of institutions in the financial development-output growth volatility nexus. It provides new channels through which financial development can dampen the output growth volatilities of the countries under investigation.

A comprehensive data set for 71 countries covering the period from 1996 to 2012 and the System GMM approach were used. The choice of the methodology is to deal with endogeneity issues such as measurement errors, reverse causality among other issues.

A number of findings were emanated from the empirical analysis. First, the estimates provided evidence of the volatility-reducing effect of financial development. Second, institutions do not have the same reducing influence on output growth volatility. Third, the interaction of financial development and institutions showed that the output volatility reduction arising from financial development is enhanced in the presence of improved institutions.

The policy implications derived from this study are in twofolds: first, it is important for policymakers to formulate policies that would ensure and enhance the development of the financial sectors, since its importance in minimizing output volatility has been established. Second, institutional quality should be developed so as to further enhance the growth volatility-reducing influence of financial development. Particularly, institutions should be improved along the multiple dimensions captured in the analysis.

To the best knowledge, the novelty of this study to the literature is the introduction of institutions, which is hypothesized to increase the dampening effects of financial development in output growth volatility.