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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of financial inclusion (FI) on control of corruption in selected African countries.

The study employs secondary data spanning over a period of 2005–2016. These data are sourced from IMF's International Financial Statistics, World Bank Development Indicators, Global Financial Development Database, Transparency International and International Country Risk Guide. The author uses Sarma (2008) approach to construct the FI index for 13 countries in Africa. The author applies random effect, robust least square and instrumental variable (IV) estimations to examine the impact of FI on control of corruption in Africa.

The author finds that financial inclusion improves the control of corruption. The author tests for possible FI threshold to avoid the case of extreme FI in Africa. The results show that there is a threshold level if reached, FI would have negative impacts in the control of corruption. This may likely happen mainly due to weak institutions in Africa. The results are robust to alternative proxy for control of corruption and various alternative estimation techniques.

The finding indicates that FI can serve as part of toolkits for reducing corruption in Africa.

This study stresses the important role of FI in the economic system. It is the first paper that empirically suggests the role of FI in controlling corruption in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of monetary policy on the lending behaviour of commercial banks in Zambia using bank-level data.

Dynamic panel data econometric analysis is used to uncover the evidence of monetary transmission mechanism in Zambian banking industry. Other specifications are used as robustness checks.

Contrary to received evidence, the authors find that the bank lending channel in Zambia operates mainly through large banks. The effect of monetary policy on medium-sized banks is moderate while it is virtually non-existent for smaller banks. Furthermore, the data does not show evidence of relationship lending for smaller banks.

Overall, the findings of this investigation suggest that price signals, rather than quantity aggregates, matter the most in the transmission of monetary policy in Zambia. The results therefore lend support to the central bank’s recent shift in monetary policy framework from using monetary aggregates to interest rate targeting as a means to strengthen effectiveness of monetary policy.