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This study examines whether knowledge causes economic growth in Africa's two leading economies, Nigeria and South Africa. Using the Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction approaches, the findings show cointegration among the variables. The speed of convergence of the variables to their long‐term mean values is relatively higher for South Africa than for Nigeria. In the short run, it is observed that knowledge unidirectionally Granger causes growth for Nigeria, whereas bidirectional causality is observed for South Africa. The higher correlation between knowledge and growth in South Africa reflects the success of greater investment in education. Nigeria must increase investment in education and modern infrastructure to converge to South Africa's growth trajectory. Moreover, for Nigeria, (1) knowledge unidirectionally Granger cause growth, (2) evidence of bidirectional causality flow is apparent between trade, the economic incentive, and growth, and (3) health unidirectionally Granger cause knowledge. As for South Africa (1) there is bidirectional causality between knowledge, trade openness, and growth, whereas investment and economic incentive, unidirectionally Granger causes growth, (2) investment, trade openness, and health unidirectionally Granger cause knowledge, and (3) economic incentive unidirectionally Granger cause trade openness. In conclusion, this paper argues that a transformed education system can provide the knowledge base essential for promoting and sustaining economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effects of aid grants on inclusive growth in 37 Sub‐Saharan African countries for the period 1984–2018. Grant aid is decomposed into aid grants and technical cooperation grants. Two inclusive growth indicators are used, namely gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth and unemployment rate. The dynamic panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach, which is employed comprises three different estimators; the pooled mean group (PMG); mean group (MG) and dynamic fixed effect (DFE). The Hausman diagnostics were used to assess the efficiency and consistency of the estimators. Based on the PMG estimator, our findings show that aid grants and technical cooperation grants exert a positive influence on GDP per capita growth in the long run. However, while the observed influence of aid grants is found to be significant, technical cooperation grants display insignificant effects. In the short run, however, the PMG estimates show that aid grants and technical cooperation grants have negative and insignificant effects on GDP per capita growth. On the other hand, results based on the DFE estimators reveal that neither of the aid grants has influenced the unemployment rate positively in the short run. However, whereas aid grants contribute significantly to the reduction of the unemployment rate in the long run, technical cooperation grants do not. This study complements the attendant literature by assessing how aid grants versus technical cooperation grants affect inclusive growth. The findings are relevant to international policy coordination for the attainment of sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study has: (a) analysed the economic impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic, (b) evaluated the effectiveness and relevance of different measures against the pandemic and (c) examined nexuses between the corresponding measures and economic outcomes. The study uses a sample of 186 countries divided into four main regions, notably: Asia‐Pacific and the Middle East, Europe, Africa and America. Thirty four preventing and mitigating measures against the Covid‐19 pandemic are classified into five main categories: lockdown, movement restrictions, governance and economic, social distancing, and public health measures. The empirical evidence is based on comparative difference in means tests and correlation analyses. The findings show how the effectiveness and consequences of the Covid‐19 measures are different across regions. In adopting the relevant policies to fight the ongoing pandemic, the comparative insights from the findings in the study are worthwhile. Inter alia: (a) from a holistic perspective, only European countries have favorably benefited from the Covid‐19 measures; (b) lockdown measures at the global level have not been significant in reducing the pandemic; (c) the restriction of movement measure has been relevant in curbing the spread in the American continent; (d) the enforcement of the social distancing measures has been productive in Europe and counter‐productive in Africa; (e) governance and economic measures have exclusively been relevant in Europe and (f) overall public health measures have not had the desired outcomes in flattening the infection curve probably because most of the underlying measures are awareness decisions or oriented toward people already infected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activities and violence of militants in the Niger Delta which saw the capacity for production of oil in Nigeria fall to an all‐time low resulted in federal government of Nigeria announcing the Presidential Amnesty Programme in return for peace in the region. We examine how the multinational oil companies corporate social responsibility impact on entrepreneurship development and job creations to absorb the youths. A total of 1,200 youths were sampled across the nine states of Niger Delta. Results from the use of estimated logit model reveal that general memorandum of understanding interventions are prevalent with communities with greater ownership creating room for better projects, sustainability and improved trust; yet the interventions failed to make significant impact on entrepreneurship development and job creations. Clearly, facilitating how youths get involved in skill acquisition and empowerment programmes would help them become entrepreneurs, improving their self‐assurance that they can prosper outside militancy activities and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We test the hypotheses that fundamental characteristics in regional proximity, landlockedness, religious‐domination, legal origin, and income levels affect cross‐country differences in the persistence in political terror and political instability in 163 countries for the period 2010–2015. The empirical evidence is based on generalised method of moments. The hypotheses are that the following are associated with comparatively higher levels of persistence in political terror and political instability: regions with predominantly low income countries (Hypothesis 1); landlockedness (Hypothesis 2); Christian‐orientation (Hypothesis 3); French civil law (Hypothesis 4); and Low income (Hypothesis 5). The tested hypotheses are largely invalid. Only Hypotheses 5 and 2 are robustly investigated in the light of concerns about instrument proliferation. Hypothesis 2 is valid for political terror but not for political instability while Hypothesis 5 is neither valid for political instability nor for political terror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent exacerbation of unemployment crisis in Nigeria stands to be a serious threat to both socio‐economic stability and progress of the country just as the report from the Bureau of Statistics shows that at least over 8.5 million people had no gainful employment at all as at the last quarter of the year 2017. It is on the above premise, that the present study explores the link between trade and unemployment for the case of Nigeria with the intention of exploring how the unemployment crisis has been impacted within the dynamics of the country's trade performance. The empirical evidence shows that the nation's terms of trade were insignificant to unemployment rate, while trade openness and domestic investment, on the other hand, have significant opposing impacts on unemployment in Nigeria over the period of the study. Further breakdowns from the empirical analysis also revealed that the Philips curves proposition is valid within the Nigerian economic context, while the evidences for the validity of Okun's law only exist in the short‐run scenario. Based on the empirical results, we recommend that concerted effort should be geared toward stimulating domestic investment by providing adequate financial and infrastructural facilities that will promote ease of doing business while utmost precautions are taken to ensure that unemployment crisis is not exacerbated when combating inflation in the economy in the wake of dynamic trade relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the nexus between tourism development and house prices in the Republic of Cyprus over the period spanning from 2005Q1 to 2016Q4. Tourism indicators vis‐à‐vis tourism arrivals along with other explanatory variables (the domestic credit, the land area per person, and the consumer price index) are employed in a multivariate autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)‐bound test model. The empirical results indicate a significant evidence of cointegration. Indicatively, an observed adjustment of about 44% from short‐run to long‐run implies that the model is not relatively slow to adjust to disequilibrium. Importantly, a percent increase in tourism arrivals is observed to cause a rise in house price by about 37%. Expectedly, it is statistically observed that as the land area per person decreases, it is accompanied by a hike in house price. Also, the impacts of domestic credit offered to private enterprises and the consumer price index are different from the results in previous studies. As a policy guide, the government of Cyprus and stakeholder in the tourism and housing sectors should outline a strategy that will ensure the social welfare of people such that housing availability is not hampered by tourism activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]