ABSTRACT Private investment, employment and social welfare are key socio-economic development policy variables of many a developing nation. Over the two decades (1990-2009) that this study covered, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has experienced interesting dynamics in private investment, employment and social welfare. Key among them is a dwindling public sector investment and a marginal increase in private investment coupled with an increase in employment which is mostly driven by a surge in female...
ABSTRACT The study seeks to analyse the effect of leverage on bank financial performance and provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of foreign and domestic banks in Ghana with regards to the debt component of their capital structure over a ten year period. Secondary data was collected from the annual reports and financial statements of twenty-four (24) banks between 2006 and 2015. Parameter sensitivity analysis is carried out to test the difference between the performance of foreign and...
ABSTRACT The main rationale for this study is to investigate the effect of market timing, capital structure and performance of listed firms in Africa. The thesis employs various econometric models to analyse the unbalanced panel data collected from 16 African countries from 2007-2017. Annual financial reports from Africa listed firms, covering 11- years including the period the study started was obtained from Bureau Van Dijk (ORBIS) database, and the macro data was also obtained from the WDI ...
ABSTRACT Investment is a very important activity in the life of every income earner. It basically entails setting aside part of one’s income into an investment vehicle to yield returns in a form of reserving and or increasing the value of the initial amount invested. Treasury bills are one of the avenues for investing by income earners since it yields guaranteed returns over various time periods/durations. This study investigates whether there are behavioral factors influencing the demand f...
ABSTRACT This study aims at establishing the role that inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and institutions played in the industrialisation process of 40 sub-Saharan African countries, over the period of 1996 through 2015. The study used a fixed effect method (FEM) of estimation for the analysis of data which was sourced from the world development indicators (WDI) database of the world bank and the world governance indicators (WGI) database, also of the world bank. The findings of the stud...
ABSTRACT Ghana’s achievements in advancing education and health have been remarkable. Conversely, World Bank Human Capital Report has ranked Ghana as the last but one country on harmonized test scores of children from basic to secondary school in the World. Premature births, infections and complications during and after pregnancy and maternal deaths also remain high and infrastructure challenges persist in the power sector as well as the quality of services received by Ghanaians. The study ...
ABSTRACT This thesis examines the relationship between financial sector development and international trade in Africa. Specifically, the study investigates (i) the direct and indirect effects of finance on trade via economic growth (ii) threshold effects of finance–trade nexus mediated by the levels of finance as well as (iii) sectoral effects and transmission channels of finance on international trade. It employs standard approaches namely the generalized method of moments (GMM), threshold...
ABSTRACT Purpose – This research is to identify the determinants of credit risk of banks in Africa and examine the impact of credit risk on banks’ lending rates and banks’ stability. Design/methodology/approach – This study considers 197 banks across 29 countries in Africa over the period 2008-2012. Africa was divided into three income brackets according to the 2010 World Bank classification. A large sample of 197 banks was used in order to have enough banks in each income bracket. Sa...
ABSTRACT According to the 2018 Banking Sector Report, the financial sector crises were attributed to two main causes which are bad corporate governance practices on the path of the board and senior management persons, and high non-performing loans (NPLs) due to equally high default rate. Despite the reforms by the central bank to sanitise the banking sector, Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) hit a new record as it shot up from GH¢7.1bn as at end of April 2017 to GH¢8.63bn in April 2018. The Credi...
ABSTRACT The research is geared towards identifying the factors of trade credits amongst listed firms in Ghana. The data used was in panel form from twenty (20) non-financial firms that are listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange between 2006 and 2012 to examine the drivers of trade credits. The three panel regression models used - Pooled Panel Corrected Least Squares model, Random Effects Model and Prais-Winsten Model - produced results which suggested that size and leverage were the two main de...
ABSTRACT This research focuses on auditors’ perceptions about internal controls in the public sector, how it affects the work of auditors in terms of audit reviews and the extent to which reliance is placed on internal controls. The qualitative case study approach was employed in order to gain a deeper understanding auditors’ construct of internal controls within the public sector context. Furthermore, purposive sampling technique was applied in this study and thematic analysis was used t...
ABSTRACT Financial intermediation has been the main activity and source of revenue for banks worldwide. However, when it takes the form of liquidity transformation, banks must exercise caution since this could affect their liquidity and solvency levels. On the basis of this, the study investigates the extent to which banks in Ghana transform liquidity and the influence (if any) of liquidity transformation on bank solvency. This study takes into account 20 banks in Ghana and spans for 10 year...
ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of revenue diversification and cross border banking on bank risk and return. Using a panel dataset of 320 banks across 29 African countries between the period of 2002- 2013 and a new methodological approach, System Generalized Method of Moments estimators (System GMM), the results in this thesis provide the following empirical evidence: first cross border banking increases revenue diversification as banks tend to diversify their revenue as a resul...
ABSTRACT In the years preceding the global financial crisis which begun in the US in 2008, it was revealed that the US and several European countries had prolonged periods of low interest rates. Since the crisis, extant literature has established a strong causal relationship between monetary policy and risk-taking mainly in the countries that were most affected. We cannot discount the effect of exchange rate when examining monetary policy. This is because during the period many of the countri...
ABSTRACT Motivated by the need to analyse the factors behind portfolio inflows of developing countries, this study aims to investigate the determinants of portfolio inflows (PI) of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study uses a panel data on 17 SSA countries over the period, 2005-2013. Net portfolio equity inflows as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the dependant variable. The study employed a panel regression with domestic factors like market size, level of financial development,...