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This chapter offers an empirical examination of the impact of World Governance indicators (WGIs) on stock market development. The understanding is based on the premise of institutional economics that strong institutional governance, in terms of laws and regulations, results in positive developments in financial institutions.

The data which covers the years 1996–2016, include all world countries where a stock market operates. The authors use standard statistical tools that include Johansen co-integration test, linearity, normality tests, and regression analysis, together with discriminant analysis as a robustness check.

The empirical findings show that (a) a negative association exists between Voice and Accountability and stock market development, (b) a positive association exists between each of Political Stability, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption, and stock market development for most World’s regions stock markets, (c) both Voice and Accountability and Political Stability indicators are the major influential indicators for the stock market development across world stock markets.

This chapter offers quantitative evidence about the benefits of strong institutional governance to stock market development. In addition, the chapter offers significant guidelines to policymakers regarding the institutional factors that can be enhanced to promote stock market development.

This chapter looks at the relationship between governance and economic development in selected Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries. This chapter outlines the concept of good governance in Islamic faith and episteme and provides some empirical evidence on the governance development nexus in the literature. It also describes the state of governance in OIC countries through descriptive statistics on some indicators. It looks at the relationship between governance and economic development. In contrast, it explores the relationship between governance and economic growth. The results highlight the need for reforms in the quality of institutions, establishing rule of law, emphasising on governance in the policy agenda and bringing strong accountability mechanisms.

This study aims to investigate the impact of governance indices (especially control of corruption) on economic growth in some selected Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries with a view to making policy recommendations. Specifically, the study attempts to assess whether either governance reforms (especially those relating to control of corruption) or simultaneous policy reforms could have any impact on the growth of the sample SSA countries.

The governance indicators used in this study were drawn from the PRS Group and the Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2002-2009, while the real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth data were obtained from the World Bank database. The study covered 47 SSA countries, and it adopted the panel data framework, the fixed effect, the random effect and the maximum likelihood estimation techniques for the analyses.

The study found that political stability and regulatory quality indicators have growth-enhancing features, as they impact on economic growth in the region significantly, while government effectiveness impacts negatively on economic growth in the region. Despite, several anti-corruption policies in the region, the impact of corruption control on economic growth is not very obvious. The study also found that simultaneous implementation of the voice and accountability and the rule of law indicators has more positive impact on economic growth in the region. Both policies are complementary, and, hence, can be pursued simultaneously.

The results suggest that reform efforts that aim at enhancing accountability, regulatory quality, political stability and the rule of law have more growth-enhancing features and, thus, should be given more priority over reform efforts that singly address the issue of control of corruption due to the endemic, systemic and ubiquitous nature of corruption in the region.

The study suggests that reform efforts that aim at enhancing accountability, regulatory quality and rule of law have more growth-enhancing features and, therefore, should be given more priority.

Many previous studies attempted to examine the impact of corruption on economies, but this paper tries to assess the effect of corruption control and other governance indices on economic growth in the most vulnerable region of the world, the SSA. Besides, the study adopts the panel data framework which makes it possible to allow for differences in the form of unobservable individual country effects.

Social media creates a public sphere, which functions as the third wheel of governance. This study aims to examine the relationship between Facebook penetration and the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators.

First, a Pearson correlation was estimated between Facebook penetration and governance indicators. Second, ordinary least squares analysis was used to examine a variety of additional economic and population factors, including Facebook penetration. In both instances, the colinearity of the variables is examined.

The findings indicate that there is no conclusive correlation between Facebook penetration and governance; however, the opposite is true for developing, emerging and least developed countries, though the relationship is not uniform across regions. In addition, per capita gross domestic product and population dynamics, specifically the proportion of the population aged 15–64, have a significant impact on governance measures. The colinearity of the variables suggests that governance is a broad concept, and that the direct correlation between Facebook penetration and governance may be misleading.

Future research should incorporate panel data from other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Reddit, to better understand temporal factors and the relationship between social media penetration and governance.

This paper opens up new avenue for investigation on the impact of social media on governance.

This paper can contribute to the complexity of social media as means for voice and accountability. In addition, the paper mentions how social media can be used more neutrally to ensure exposure to diverse perspectives.

The growing importance of the internet and the popularity of social networking websites are generating a great deal of scholarly attention. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is almost no literature that links Facebook penetration and governance. This paper intends to fill this void.

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between public health spending and health outcome using time series data in Nigeria over the period 1980 to 2017, taking into account the role of governance by assessing how the quality of governance directly affects health status and indirectly as a mediator for the effectiveness of public health spending.

Using the Hausman statistical tests to check for the existence of endogeneity, the proper method for estimating the model for this study is the two-stage least square regression model. The two-stage least squares regression model addresses the problem of endogeneity using instrumental variables. The mediating role of governance on the effectiveness of public health spending on health was considered by an interaction of governance indicators with public health spending.

The results showed that public health spending had no significant effect on health outcome except when interacted with governance quality. The interaction of government health spending with governance effectiveness as well as that for control of corruption improved health by inducing a fall in maternal deaths, whereas government health expenditure interacted with rule of law raised maternal mortality. Public health spending interacted with regulatory quality improved life expectancy while that for political stability with public health spending induced a fall in life expectancy, poor maternal and infant health. Political stability and the control of corruption had direct influence on maternal health.

Given the predominance of public health spending in promoting access to health care and population health status for developing economies, the effectiveness of such spending should be top priority in policy makers’ agenda. This again is important because for developing economies, government revenue is generated from a small tax base due to their highly informal nature. To improve health status from public intervention in the health sector, there is indeed need for improvement in the overall state of governance in Nigeria.

This paper is one of the few country case studies which uses time series data to examine the role of governance on the efficacy of public health spending with extension of findings to maternal health and covering more measures of governance quality. The results fundamentally illuminate the importance of governance in fostering development in health and consequently enhancing economic development and growth.

This paper aims to explore how the role of the perception of good public governance reduces tax evasion (TE). Besides, this study investigates whether the nexus of public governance and TE differs between developed and developing economies.

Apart from the ordinary least squares (OLS) model, this study uses the linear mixed modeling technique. The World Governance Indicators and the multiple causes estimation (MIMIC) method are used to measure public governance. The shadow economy is used as a proxy for TE.

The results show that people's perceptions of public governance and the quality of government institutions are core elements that influence tax-evasion behavior. Besides, the rule of law (RoL) and political stability (PS) significantly impact tax-evasion behavior in developing countries. Nevertheless, the RoL, the control of corruption and PS are the most critical tax-evasion determinants among public governance indicators for developed countries. Regulatory quality shows a substantial positive relationship with TE in developed but not developing countries.

This paper provides a guide for policymakers on reducing tax-evasion behavior by paying more attention to maintaining the RoL and PS and fighting corruption. Additionally, this study highlights the importance of people's perceptions of the government's pursuit of the above policy-related improvements, which, in turn, affect their tax behavior.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the role of people's perceptions of improvements in public governance and how this can reduce TE behavior in developed and developing economies. Unlike prior studies, this study used the linear mixed model method, which is more advantageous than OLS and produces robust estimators.

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.

Amongst the major concerns of sub-Sahara Africa are the rising external debt and poor performances in governance. This paper aims to lend a voice to the relevance of governance on the relationship between external debt and economic growth in selected five sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

Using available data from the World Governance and Development Indicators, between 1996 and 2016, the study uses the fully-modified OLS technique after establishing the absence of unit root and existence of long-run relationship amongst the variables of the model.

The findings confirm a non-linear relationship between external debt and economic with a positive net effect of $5.05 increase in economic performance for a US$ rise in external debt. While the index of governance depicts a negative association with economic growth, the indicators show mixed results. The interaction effect of external debt and governance on economic performance explain that improved governance quality reduces its negative effect on economic performance by US$1.288 (with a total effect of –4.180 + 1.288*EXDBT); it equally enhances the (net) positive impact of external debt by US$1.288 (with a total effect 5.05 + 1.288*IQ).

The governments of the selected countries are, therefore, advised to seek other means of financing their expenditure while curbing financial mismanagement and its long-term impacts on growth. Also, governance infrastructures should be improved to restore both domestic and foreign investors’ confidence so that more private capitals may be attracted in lieu of excessive borrowings.

The research is the first to comprehensively examine the nexus between external debt, governance and economic growth in the selected countries, given their external debt position in SSA. This includes examining the impacts of each of the governance indicators and the comprehensive index of governance on growth. Furthermore, the study adds to the literature by examining the interaction effects of external debt and governance on economic growth of these countries. This gives both the partial and total estimates of the effects of external debt and governance on economic growth in the countries under consideration.

Momentum returns are considered an anomaly in the finance literature as their existence cannot be fully explained under the asset pricing paradigm. This study attempts to shed more light on this anomaly by investigating the determinants of momentum returns.

The panel data technique is applied to the sample of 40 countries worldwide from 1996 to 2018. The authors use the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) model to estimate the coefficient of World Governance Indicators (WGI), whereas the fixed effect model is used to determine the coefficient for corporate governance indicators (CGIs). The choice of PCSE estimation methods is guided by the fact that WGI variables are subjected to serial correlation, heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence problems while CGI variables are not. Furthermore, a composite WGI index is constructed using principal component analysis (PCA).

Regression analysis shows a negative and significant relationship between WGI index and momentum returns. The negative coefficient value of WGI supports the prediction of the overreaction hypothesis, which postulates a lower behavioral bias in the market with high governance quality. Breaking down of the WGI by their six indicators reveals that four of the indicators (control over corruption, government effectiveness, stability and avoidance of violence) are negative statistically significant with momentum returns while two indicators are not significant. As for CGIs, only one (strength of investor protection) of the four tested indicators is negative and significantly related to momentum returns.

The study fills the gap in economic literature by highlighting the association between governance quality at the country (WGI) and firm level (CGI) on stock momentum returns.