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This paper investigates the moderating role of institutional quality in the relationship between public education financing and educational quality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This paper uses a two-step system generalised method of moments (GMM) to investigate the dynamic relationships among the variables using data from the World Bank covering the periods 2002–2020 for 46 SSA countries.

The results show that institutional quality moderates the effect of public education financing on educational quality at SSA’s primary, secondary and tertiary levels. This finding shows that improved institutional quality enhances the effectiveness of public educational investments.

The findings of this study imply that policymakers seeking to enhance educational quality must not only increase educational investments but also institute measures to improve institutional quality.

Prior studies fail to examine the moderating role of institutional quality in the nexus between public education financing and educational quality. This study analyses the role of institutional quality in the public education financing–educational quality nexus in SSA. The findings of this study contribute to improving the return on public education financing in SSA.

This study explored how institutional quality influences the relationship between military spending and education in Africa.

This study used data from 43 African countries spanning the years 2000–2021. Two estimation methods were employed to address various issues: Fixed Effects with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors and the Two-Step System Generalised Method of Moments. The Fixed Effects with Driscoll-Kraay standard error method was used to obtain reliable standard errors and inferences from the estimated coefficients of the fixed effects model. Meanwhile, the problem of endogeneity between military spending and education was addressed using the Two-Step System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM).

The results indicated that military spending negatively impacts both the quality and quantity of education. However, both institutional quality and the interaction term (institutional quality*military spending) have positive effects on both measures of education, suggesting that better institutional quality mitigates the negative effect of military spending on education outcomes.

This study shows that institutional quality dampens the negative effect of military spending on education, especially the quality of education. Hence, African countries should prioritize strengthening their institutions to ensure optimal allocation and utilization of government funds for the benefit of their citizens.

This is the first study to examine the moderating role of institutional quality in the relationship between military spending and education, focusing on both the quantity and quality of education.

The paper aims at addressing the following research questions: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency? And which pillars of institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

By specifying a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method where GHG emissions are considered as the bad output and the GDP is referred as the desirable one, the work computes the environmental efficiency into the appraisal of a production function for the European countries over three decades.

According to the countries' performance, the findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries. In this environmental context, the role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries.

This article attempts to analyze the role of different dimensions of institutional quality in different European countries' performance – in terms of mitigating GHGs (undesirable output) – while trying to raise their economic performance through their GDP (desirable output).

1. The paper aims at addressing the following research question: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

2. We adopt a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method, considering 40 European economies over a 30-year time interval.

3. The findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries.

4. The role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries, while the performance decreases for the low middle-income countries.

The paper aims at addressing the following research question: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

We adopt a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method, considering 40 European economies over a 30-year time interval.

The findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries.

The role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries, while the performance decreases for the low middle-income countries.

This study examines how institutional quality influences variability in financial development among economies in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Empirical estimations verifying various relationships are performed using the limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimation technique.

The results suggest that institutional quality enhances the pace of financial development among economies in the sub-region all things being equal. In a further micro-level analysis where components of institutional quality index are examined separately, the study’s results suggest that effective governance, regulatory quality, rule of law and accountability tend to have a significant positive impact on financial sector development.

Findings of the study suggest that policies geared towards improving governance and regulatory institutions can augment development of the financial sector among economies in SSA; governments and policymakers are therefore encouraged to resource noted institutions to play effective roles for the development of the financial sector.

Compared to related studies, this study reorients existing paradigm, which emphasizes the role of governance and institutional variables in the economic growth discourse. The authors’ empirical inquiry rather focuses on how governance and institutional structures influence regional financial development dynamics. Specifically, this study differs from most macro-level studies found in literature because it examines the impact of hitherto unexamined governance and institutional variables on financial development among economies in SSA.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how institutional governance and business environment affect countries’ competitiveness and their relative importance.

In this paper, the authors analyze how institutional governance and business environment affect countries’ competitiveness, their relative importance and what are the implications for Brazil. The authors have collected data from 131 countries related to the institutional governance, business environment and competitiveness of these countries. For the analysis of the mentioned influences, the technique of partial least squares structural equations modeling is used.

Results indicate that the main role in countries’ competitiveness is played by the quality of institutional governance. The quality of the business environment reinforces the positive effect of the quality of institutional governance on countries’ competitiveness (mediation effect). Brazil has poor governance quality indicators when compared to high-middle income countries, especially regarding government effectiveness, political stability and control of corruption.

The study provides a better understanding of the relative importance of governance quality and business environment quality for countries’ competitiveness. One limitation of this study is that the research was restricted to data related to the year 2019.

For strategists and decision-makers, understanding these effects on countries’ competitiveness and their relative importance is fundamental to understanding what makes their companies internationally competitive.

The presence and appreciation of institutional governance quality need to be cultivated in society.

Instead of using the original diamond model, which presents circular relationships, the authors have used the business environment construct, composed of elements of the diamond model to test the relationships between the quality of institutional governance, competitiveness and the business environment.

This paper investigates the impact of institutional factors on financial deepening and its implications on bank credit in Africa.

The paper employs different panel econometric models to examine the heterogeneity of 50 African countries from 2000 to 2019. The estimators include panel corrected standard errors, system generalized method of moments, quantile and threshold regressions.

The results show that rule of law, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, voice and accountability, control of corruption and political stability significantly influence financial deepening in Africa. However, government effectiveness has a higher effect on middle- and high-income countries, while other indicators have a high impact on low-income countries. All institutional indicators have stronger effects, almost double, at higher financial depth levels than for countries with lower levels. Government effectiveness and regulatory quality impact financial deepening more for countries with strong institutions than weak ones. Thus, the relationship between institutional qualities and credit provided by banks is non-monotonic.

The findings suggest that strengthening appropriate institutional factors based on country heterogeneity may effectively stimulate debt financing in Africa, the primary source of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs.

The novelty of this paper is that previous studies did not sufficiently scrutinize the heterogeneity of the structure of African economies – i.e. differences in institution, credit and income levels.

The authors examine the joint effect of the country-wide legal institutions and product market competition on stock crash risk in a large sample of international firms.

In the study, the authors examine whether the country-level institutional factors affect product market competition's impact on stock crash risk. Specifically, the authors characterize country-wide institutional quality with individual governance indices developed in earlier studies and also adopt the worldwide board reforms as a proxy for the change in firms' governance environment.

The authors find that strong institutions mitigate the positive relationship between product market competition and stock crash risk in the international setting. In addition, the authors find that institutional quality moderates the effect of product market competition on stock crash risk via the information channel, i.e. although firms in competitive industries manage and report earnings more aggressively, strong institutions or board reforms, curtail managers' incentive to do so.

The authors’ findings lend support to the dark side of product market competition with a broader sample from 35 countries. In light of this, when earlier studies consider firms from competitive (concentrated) industries as having less (more) severe agency problems, future studies should consider the agency costs associated with product market competition for both the US firms and non-US firms. Furthermore, when it is debatable that regulators are self-interested, captured, uninformed and thus the regulations and institutions may not be fully effective as a result, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of institutions in ex ante mitigating agency conflicts associated with product market competition.

The main purpose of this research is to examine the impact of institutional quality and sectoral employment on environmental degradation in developing countries. This paper also re-examined the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis and estimated the long run impact of explanatory variables on CO₂ emissions.

In this paper, the balanced panel data for the period 2002–2016 was used based on data availability and applied two-step SYS-GMM estimators.

The results showed that institutional quality such as government effectiveness (GE) and the rule of law (RL) reduce CO₂ emissions and promote environmental quality in developing countries. Interestingly, the authors found new evidence that employment in agriculture and industry has a positive impact on pollution, while employment in the service sector was negatively associated with CO₂ emissions, and the validity of the EKC hypothesis was confirmed. In addition, the research suggests that strong institutional frameworks and their effective implementation are the most important panacea and should be treated as a top priority to counteract environmental degradation and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This is the first study to examine the short run and long run effects of institutional quality and sectoral employment on environmental degradation using the balanced panel data for a large sample of developing countries. This paper also used a special technique of Driscoll and Kraay standard error approach to confirm the robustness results and showed the different roles of sectoral employment on environmental quality.

This paper aims to discuss the main characteristics of the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region's capital inflows volatility. It also examines the effect of institutional quality and information availability on capital inflows volatility in selected MENA countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia) in the period 1996–2017.

The study's assessments are based on the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) and globalization indices. It also employs an updated data set of balance of payments indicators released by the International Monetary Fund. Moreover, the study uses econometric panel modeling of random effect model, with Driscoll-Kraay robust standard error, to analyze the relationship between capital inflows volatility, institutional quality and information availability.

The paper finds that both institutional quality and information availability are in an inverse relationship with the total capital inflows volatility in the MENA region. However, the findings vary across the different components of total capital inflows. For example, the volatility of foreign direct investment (FDI) declines, like total capital flows, as the two factors improve. However, the volatility of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) is negatively related to institutional quality but does not have any significant relationship with information availability. While the volatility of foreign other investments (FOI) decreases with the availability of information, but does not have any significant relationship with institutional quality.

This paper expands the limited literature regarding the determinants of capital inflows volatility. Furthermore, it is the first study that investigates the effect of institutional quality and information availability on capital inflows volatility in the MENA region.

This study aims to analyse the efficiency effects of institutional distance on Chinese outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa.

The study utilised the true fixed-effect stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model. Data from 2003 to 2016 (14 years) were acquired from 42 targeted African countries, which are included in the analysis.

The results reveal that FDI flow efficiency can be maximised with a high institutional distance between China and African countries. Contrariwise, comparable institutional distance, measured by the rule of law, regulatory quality and government effectiveness between the host and home countries, reflected a significant positive impact for Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDIs), indicating Chinese MNEs can invest directly in a country with comparable institutional characteristics.

There have been limited exceptional studies that assessed the effect of institutional distance between emerging countries. However, none of these studies investigated the effect of institutional distance between China and Africa at a national level. Using the advantage of the SFA model, this study assesses the efficiency effects of institutional distance between the host and home country.