Theses

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A long essay or dissertation or thesis involving personal research, written by postgraduates of University of Ghana for a university degree.

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Subject: search.filters.subject.AfricaSubject: search.filters.subject.Economic Growth

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    Bank Market Power, Financial Innovation and Economic Growth in Africa
    (University Of Ghana, 2018-07) Idun, A.A.
    This thesis has four empirical papers. The first paper examines the determinants of bank market power in Africa. The second paper contains analyses of how financial development and financial innovation lead to economic growth convergence between African countries and the world’s technological leader. The second paper also analyzes whether financial innovation lead to economic growth in six sub-regions in Africa. The third paper examines whether bank market with power promote financial innovation that in turn leads economic growth in Africa. The last examines the nexus between bank market power and economic growth using country-level data. The paper also explores how institutional quality factors influence the mechanisms through which banks with market power influence economic growth. Finally, the last paper analyzes how the level of bank market power interact with sub-regional integration to induce economic growth across six sub-regions in Africa. The period of the study spans from 2002 to 2015 and the study includes 44 African countries. The study employs the first difference GMM model to achieve the above objectives. However, in order to analyze finance-growth convergence, the study employs the robust least squares estimation procedure on an averaged cross-sectional data. The results show that bank concentration, bank efficiency, and foreign ownership have negative influence on the level of bank market power. On the other hand, the level of bank stability induces bank market power positively. Moreover, the interaction between: bank concentration and efficiency; bank concentration and access to credits; bank stability and access to credit and foreign bank ownership and access to credits have strong positive effects on the level of bank market power. The results also show that financial development lead to economic growth convergence provided other policy measures are present. Similarly, the study found that the level of financial innovation does not lead to economic growth for the overall sample and the sample below the median level of financial innovation. Finally, the study reports that bank with market power employ screening processes that induce economic growth in Africa. However, the adoption of ATMs by the banks does not induce economic growth which indicates that in the absence of ATMs banks with market power can still channel funds into productive sectors to induce growth. The study therefore provides information on how the banking system development can induce financial innovation toward economic growth in Africa. The results also show that the level of bank market power in Africa induces economic growth. In addition, institutional quality improvement induces positive economic growth and improves the degree at which bank market power affect economic growth. The influence of institutional quality on economic growth however, vary depending on specific institutional factors even when we differentiated the effect of the level of bank market power. In West Africa, banks with market power induce economic growth but the less competitive nature in the banking environment of the other sub-regions does not induce economic growth.
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    Threshold Analysis of Public Debt on Economic Growth in Africa: CS-ARDL and CS-DL Approach.
    (University Of Ghana, 2018-07) Allotey, D.
    The study aimed at estimating the threshold effects of public debt on economic growth within Africa using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL), Distributed Lag (DL), Cross-sectionally augmented ARDL, and the Cross-sectionally augmented CS-DL models. The study also looked at the long-run effects of increasing public debt growth on economic growth. The study employed data from the Historical Public Debt Database (HPDD) and the International Financial Statistics (IFS) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) spanning from 1970 to 2015 for 38 African Countries with a minimum of 30 years of consistent data. Using the models above, the study finds the threshold after which public debt becomes detrimental to growth in Africa lies between 20 to 50 percent. Inflation was also used as a proxy for countries that print currency to finance the budget deficit to check its effect on growth. The model with inflation finds the threshold to be 20 percent for Africa. The study also finds that increasing public debt beyond the range of 50 to 80 percent adversely affects economic growth. The study also finds that there is an adverse effect of a persistent debt rise on economic growth within the region. The significant debt trajectory suggests that if a country should be on a downward debt trajectory, it can grow fast. Subsequently, the study also investigated the threshold effects of public debt within some of the Regional Economic Communities in Africa for comparison with the threshold for the continent. The estimation was done for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Common Markets for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). The study, however, did not find a significant debt threshold for ECOWAS which is possible due to limited data. The study finds the threshold between 10 to 50 percent for COMESA and between 40 and 100 percent with inflation present in the model.
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    Exports and Economic Growth: The Case of Ghana
    (University Of Ghana, 2015-07) Tetteh, C.; Fosu, A. K; Codjoe, E.; University Of Ghana, College of Humanities, School of Social Sciences,Department of Economics
    The study examined the impact of exports on economic growth in Ghana using annual data for the period 1980 to 2013. Applying popular time series econometric techniques of cointegration and vector error correction estimation, the study sought to explore long-run and short-run relationships between exports and gross domestic product (GDP). The Johansen‟s cointegration test revealed the existence of long-run relationships between real GDP, exports, gross capital formation and labour in Ghana. There was also evidence of bi-directional causality between exports and GDP growth using Granger causality test. The study found that in both the short-run and long-run, real exports and gross capital formation had positive impacts on real GDP. Labour had a negative effect on GDP in the long-run, but it was positively related to real GDP growth in its immediate past year of the short-run. All variables were statistically significant at the 5% significance level in the long-run. The speed of adjustment toward the long-run equilibrium was about 83.5 percent, suggesting that the adjustment is rather rapid. Based on the results, the study recommends that policy makers should focus on maintaining an open and export oriented policy in order to ensure growth in the economy and also to adequately promote economic growth for export expansion.