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The purpose of this paper is to examine some factors that influence the intensity of fertilizer use in Malawi.

The study uses Engle-Granger, Engle-Yoo three steps and autoregressive distributed lags (ARDLs) approaches to examine the long-run and the short-run dynamics among the variables using annual data from 1961 to 2006.

The econometric results indicate that all the variables exert significance influence on the quantity of fertilizer demanded excluding population growth, while the results of the short-run model indicate that the responsiveness of fertilizer demand to all the variables is significant.

Although, this study has provided some helpful results in understanding the major factors responsible for low fertilizer consumption in the study but some time series data on important factors are lacking.

The work is different from already existing literature in Malawi. The authors included subsidy and real gross domestic product to account for the effect of macroeconomic shocks and policies, which has not been accounted for by other related empirical studies. Moreover, this study used ARDLs techniques that can overcome the problem of insufficiently long time series data which is a significant contribution to the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between industrial sector growth, inequalities and urban poverty reduction

The paper used static panel data analysis. However, the tests suggest that there are no state-specific effects; hence, the pooled panel regression techniques are used for the analysis.

The findings of the paper suggest that the industrial sector growth exert no significance on urban poverty while the urban wholesale and retail services growth is found to be substantially strong in reducing urban poverty. The results also indicate that there is no statistically significant evidence to conclude that higher incidence of urban poverty was due to the high degree of inequalities.

This paper has provided some helpful results in understanding the heterogeneous effects of sectoral components of growth of urban poverty in the presence of high income inequalities, but the limitation of this study is that there is no disaggregated poverty and growth data on different occupational activity.

There is a need to expand investment in the production and export manufacturing labor-intensive sectors; this will help increase the labor absorption rate of the industry and, thus, reduce poverty in the urban areas.

The paper improves on previous research on poverty in Nigeria by explicitly recognizing the effects of location and inequality.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the oil price pass‐through into consumer price inflation for a developing country: Malaysia. The focus is on whether aggregate consumer prices and different consumer price components or sub‐price indexes are related in different ways to oil price in the long run and in the short run.

The analysis adopts the Phillips curve framework augmented to include the oil price. In modeling, a proper consideration is given to the integration and cointegration properties of the variables under consideration. Moreover, the asymmetric effects of oil price changes are also examined.

The paper finds evidence for a long run relation or cointegration of the oil price with only the aggregate consumer price and food price indexes. Moreover, in the short run, the oil price changes have significant bearings on the consumer price inflation, the food price inflation, the rent, fuel and power price inflation and the transportation and communication price inflation. In addition, the short‐run asymmetry in the oil price – food price inflation is also evident. Finally, the authors observe the neutrality of the medical care and health price index to the oil price changes.

The result that the inflationary consequence of oil price hikes is likely to work mainly through the food prices has important implications on the effects of oil price changes on the poor and policy directions to contain inflation.

The paper contributes to existing literature that has a predominant focus on the inflationary effect of oil prices at the aggregate level by looking at the relations between oil price and disaggregated good prices in the long run, short run, or both.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to investigate the dynamic impact of board composition (board size, board independence and board diversity) on independent corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices (marketplace, environment, community and workplace). Second, it tends to examine the mutual effect of board composition and CSR practices on organizational returns (return on assets and Tobin’s Q) of 631 Malaysian PLCs listed on Bursa Malaysia during 2006-2017.

The dynamic model (system GMM) provided by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) is used for estimations that control for potential dynamic endogeneity, reverse causality, unobserved heterogeneity and simultaneity problems.

Findings reveal weak linkage between board composition and CSR practices where only board diversity is found to be positively linked to marketplace practices of CSR. Further, the mutual impact of board composition and CSR practices on organizational returns suggests board size be positive and board independence to be negative with Tobin’s Q. Board diversity is negative with ROA and positive with Tobin’s Q. Conversely, CSR practices indicate marketplace practices are positive and community practices are negative with Tobin’s Q, environment practices are insignificant with performance, whereas workplace practices are positive with ROA and negative with Tobin’s Q.

This research is practically considerable for Bursa Malaysia, Securities Commission Malaysia, policymakers, stakeholders, investors and managers. For academia, the theoretical linkages between agency theory, resource dependence theory, resource-based view and stakeholder theory are highlighted. Moreover, methodological underpinnings are also novel for academicians as well as for practitioners.

The paper uncovers multiple aspects: first, it elaborates the dynamic relationship between board composition and CSR practices; second, it examines the combined effect of board composition and CSR practices on company’s accounting and market gains; finally, the study controls for dynamic endogeneity that is the main econometric problem for CG-CSR-performance relationships.

The main objective of this article is to analyze the role of governance quality in influencing the economic growth of 22 selected Sub-Saharan African Countries.

The study applied the panel dynamic Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to analyze the data obtained from the World Bank database over the period from 2002 to 2020.

The overall finding indicated that the composite governance index has a positive significant effect on the economic growth of the countries; where a unit improvement in the aggregate governance index leads to a 3.05% increase in GDP. The disaggregated result has shown that corruption control and government effectiveness have a negative significant effect on growth performance, whereas, the rule of law and regulatory quality showed a positive significant effect. Political stability and voice and accountability have an insignificant effect on economic growth.

Due to data limitations, this study could not address the whole members of Sub Sahara African Countries and could not see the causal relationship.

The study suggested a strong commitment to the implementation of policy and reform measures on all governance factors. This may add to the need to devise participatory corruption control mechanisms; to closely look at the proper implementation of policies and reforms that constitute the government effectiveness factors, and properly implement the rule of law at all levels of the government with a strong commitment to realizing it so that citizens at all levels can have full confidence in and abide by the rules of society.

Even though there are some studies conducted using conventional methods of panel data analysis such as random effect or fixed effects, this empirical study used more advanced panel dynamic generalized moment of methods to examine the role of improvement in governance quality on economic growth.

This study is a pre-COVID-19 exposition of the existing situation about external debt-GDP relationship, incorporating corruption into the hypothesis, making South Africa the object of the study. The aim is to examine the causal relationship between corruption, economic growth and external debt, and in the end proffer solutions to the problems arising therefrom.

The study employed ARDL technique on time series data running from 1990 to 2019 with real gross domestic product as the dependent variable and external debt, external debt servicing, corruption, inflation and capital formation as regressors. Necessary tests that include unit root, cointegration, CUSUM and CUSUMSq, normality, serial correlation and heteroscedasticity were performed on the model.

The study shows that corruption, inflation and external debt servicing exert negative influences on economic growth while the effect of investment on growth was positive. External debt's effect in the short run was positive while its long-run effect on growth was negative. Among other things, the need to improve and strengthen public institutions in addition to targeting tax evaders and avoiders for increased government revenue were emphasized.

The study incorporates corruption into the country specific debt-GDP debate as against earlier studies that excluded corruption in their time series analysis or that were cross-country based. The authors also exposit the existing knowledge of the debt-GDP hypothesis before the outbreak of COVID 19 pandemic. This is expected to serve as a precursor to subsequent studies on the rising debt of South Africa during and after the pandemic.