ABSTRACT 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 fina...
ABSTRACT The study investigated the effect of Capital structure on dividend payout of banks in Ghana. The main objective of the study was to measure the directional relationship between three capital structure variables. The Capital structure variables used were short-term financial leverages, total financial leverage, equity risk exposure and dividend pay-out was measured using the dividend payout ratio. The study design was casual and panel data. Annual data for all the capital structure va...
ABSTRACT This study reexamines the effect of shareholder activism, as a corporate governance mechanism, on firm performance. The owners of the firm (the shareholders) employ the managers (the agents) to manage the firm for them but this employment contract has the potential risk of adverse selection and moral hazard. Hence there is the need for the shareholders to be active and monitor the firm. This constitute shareholder activism. But the argument is whether shareholder activism improves ...
ABSTRACT The manufacturing firms under the SME sector has and continue to contribute significantly to the national GDP. One challenges faced with SME’s especially in the manufacturing industry is poor finance management coupled with poor working capital management. Firms can’t carry on with their business without working capital even though they have a healthy turnover. Therefore, Firm’s that lack the ability to identify significant working capital management practises will continue to ...
ABSTRACT The study sought to investigate the determinants of net interest margins of Microfinance Institutions (MFI’s) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) amidst the surge in commercialization and the drive towards sustainability. The study involved 144 microfinance institutions from 27 countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa forming an unbalanced panel from 2005 to 2013 drawn from the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) database. The study used the robust fixed effect technique and corrected for p...
ABSTRACT This study examines the determinants of universal banks’ loan portfolio size in Ghana using the system generalize method of moments (GMM) estimator. The study made use of data gathered from Universal banks from 2000 to 2011. It was discovered from the analysis of the study that the determinants of banks portfolio size of universal banks in Ghana are previous periods’ loan size, total investments of the banks, total deposits, credit risk, money supply and the foreign or local owne...
ABSTRACT The study sought to examine the impact of macroeconomic indicators on the capital structure decisions of firms and also the causal relationship between capital structure and profitability within the Ghanaian context. A panel data covering a period from 2000 to 2012 for 27 nonfinancial firms listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange were analysed using the Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) approach to mitigate endogeneity problems and more importantly to examine the causal relationship bet...
ABSTRACT This thesis is made up of three stand-alone empirical chapters that examine the relationship among financial inclusion, monetary policy, financial sector development and financial regulation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Chapter two presents an overview of financial inclusion, monetary policy, financial sector development and financial regulation in Sub-Sahara Africa. The overview show that Sub-Saharan Africa stock markets are comparatively young undercapitalized and they are not liquid. Ne...
ABSTRACT The sustainability of the Student Loan Scheme in Ghana has been the downside of its operations since it was first introduced in 1971. The one major determinant of a successfully scheme is its ability to recover loans disbursed. In recent times, numerous government initiatives have resulted in the decline of government support to the scheme managers of the Students Loan Trust Fund (SLTF). This has called for appropriate strategizing of recovery activities by the scheme Managers in ord...
ABSTRACT This study takes the finance-growth nexus further by looking at the direct and indirect impact of foreign banks on economic growth in Ghana. Using annual time series data from 1960 to 2013, the study examined the relationship between the share of foreign banks, bank competition and economic growth. The relationship between the share of foreign banks, bank competition and economic growth was established through the framework of endogenous growth model. In addition, the study employed...
ABSTRACT This study set out to examine the impact of financial inclusion in poverty reduction in SubSaharan Africa. Using a representative sample of 40 countries from the region covering a period from 2010 to 2014, the study examines the level of financial inclusion among the countries in the region. Sarma’s (2008) approach was used in computing the index of financial inclusion for the 40 countries in the study. The study also examines the factors that determine financial inclusion in Sub...
ABSTRACT The relationship between natural resource-richness and economic growth and development has been a focus of discussion for decades but recent debate was started in the 1990s. There has not been agreement as to how natural resources are vital to economic growth. This paper re-examines two main aspects of resource curse and growth literature, the first has to do with the measurement of natural resource endowment and economic growth while the second one has to do with the institutional...
ABSTRACT Agriculture is labour intensive and output produced depends to a great extent on the readiness and value of the working labour. It has been observed that health shocks decrease the productivity and potential investments into agriculture, and perpetuates poverty among smallholder farmers. It is argued that, Health Insurance coverage for smallholder farmers can go a long way to ameliorate the impact of heath shocks and smoothen investments for farmers. However, little is known about th...
ABSTRACT One of the most critical impediments MSMEs face is the access to finance. This is largely due to the problem of information asymmetry associated with MSMEs. Financing decision is a vital issue for every small business, as its absence often leads to bankruptcy and failure of the business. Extant literature suggests that business owners often finance their firms with different debt-equity ratios. A practical question could be asked as to what factors influence such financing decisions?...
ABSTRACT This paper examines the climate change effect on inclusive growth and the possible moderating role of adaptive capacity in climate change/inclusive growth in the long and short-run. The study employs temperature change anomalies (with 1951-1980 as the baseline climatological year) and CO2 emissions (metric ton per capita) as variables for climate change and a set of variables as indicators to measure inclusive growth. These set of indicators are adopted from the Asian Development Ban...