Dr Sara le Roux

The study investigates the role of governance (i.e., ‘voice & accountability’, political stability/no violence, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, corruption-control and the rule of law) in the incidence of short-term debt services on infrastructure development in the perspective of telecommunication infrastructure and access to electricity. The focus of the study is on 52 African countries for the period 2002-2021. The generalized method of moments is employed as estimation strategy and the following findings are established. Debt service has a negative unconditional effect on access to electricity and telecommunication infrastructure. Governance dynamics moderate the negative effect of debt service on infrastructure dynamics. Effective moderation is from regulatory quality and corruption-control for access to electricity and from government effectiveness, regulatory quality, corruption-control and rule of law, for telecommunication infrastructure. Policy implications are discussed.The study investigates the role of governance (i.e., ‘voice & accountability’, political stability/no violence, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, corruption-control and the rule of law) in the incidence of short-term debt services on infrastructure development in the perspective of telecommunication infrastructure and access to electricity. The focus of the study is on 52 African countries for the period 2002-2021. The generalized method of moments is employed as estimation strategy and the following findings are established. Debt service has a negative unconditional effect on access to electricity and telecommunication infrastructure. Governance dynamics moderate the negative effect of debt service on infrastructure dynamics. Effective moderation is from regulatory quality and corruption-control for access to electricity and from government effectiveness, regulatory quality, corruption-control and rule of law, for telecommunication infrastructure. Policy implications are discussed.

This study investigates the role of mobile money innovations in the incidence of income inequality on poverty and severity of poverty in 42 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980 to 2019. Mobile money innovations are understood as the mobile used to send money and the mobile used to pay bills online while income inequality is measured with the Gini index. Poverty is measured as the poverty headcount ratio while the severity of poverty is generated as the squared of the poverty gap index. The empirical evidence is based on interactive Quantile regressions. The following main findings are established. (i) Income inequality unconditionally reduces poverty and the severity of poverty though the significance is not throughout the conditional distributions of poverty and the severity of poverty. (ii) Mobile money innovations significantly moderate the positive incidence of income inequality on poverty and the severity of poverty in some quantiles. (iii) Positive net effects are apparent exclusively in the poverty regressions. (iv) Given the negative conditional effects, policy thresholds or minimum mobile money innovation levels needed to completely nullify the positive incidence of income inequality on poverty are provided: 27.666 (% age 15+) and 24.000 (% age 15+) of the mobile used to send money in the 50th and 75th quantiles, respectively and 16.272 (% age 15+) and 13.666 (% age 15+) of the mobile used to pay bills online in the 10th and 50th quantiles, respectively. Policy implications are discussed with respect of SDG1 on poverty reduction and SDG10 on inequality mitigation.  

The study examines how mobile money innovations transform unemployed women to self-employed women. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions focusing on data in 44 countries from sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004 to 2018. The hypothesis that mobile money innovations transform female unemployment to female self-employment is tested. Eight mobile money innovation dynamics presented in four categories are employed.

Three main common findings are apparent from interactions between female unemployment, eight mobile money innovation dynamics and female self-employment: (i) the investigated hypothesis is valid exclusively at the top quantiles of female self-employment; (ii) the net effects are consistently negative and (iii) the corresponding conditional or interactive effects upon which the net effects are based are consistently positive. This is an indication that critical masses at which money innovation innovations have an overall positive net effect on female self-employment are apparent. The corresponding mobile money innovation policy thresholds at which the net effects on female self-employment change from negative to positive are provided. Policy implications are discussed. 

This study examines the relationship between Geopolitical Risks (GPR) and Travel and Leisure (T&L) stocks. The scope of this study is based on six emerging countries. Analyses are done using a non-parametric causality-in-quantile approach, whose advantages include: (i) robustness to misspecification errors; (ii) simultaneously examine causality in mean and variance. We find that GPR is weakly related to the T&L stock for both Indonesia and South Korea. However, significant relationships ensue for India, China, Malaysia, and Israel. It is also observed that GPR can better predict the volatility of T&L stock compared to stock returns. These results are robust to alternative measures of GPR.

This study examines complementarities between inclusive development, military expenditure and political stability in the fight against terrorism in 53 African countries for the period 1998-2012. Hence the policy variables employed in the study are inclusive development, military expenditure and political stability. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) with forward orthogonal deviations. The paper reports three main findings. Firstly, military expenditure and inclusive development are substitutes and not complements. Secondly, it is more relevant to use political stability as a complement of inclusive development than to use inclusive development as a complement of political stability. Thirdly, it can be broadly established that military expenditure and political stability are complementary. In the light of the sequencing, complementarity and substitutability, when the three policy variables are viewed within the same framework, it is more feasible to first pursue political stability and then complement it with military expenditure and inclusive development.

Purpose- This study investigates loan price and quantity effects of information sharing offices with ICT, in a panel of 162 banks consisting of 42 African countries for the period 2001-2011. Design/methodology/approach- The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks in 42 African countries for the period 2001-2011. Misspecification errors associated with endogenous variables and unobserved heterogeneity in financial access are addressed with. Generalised Method of Moments and Instrumental Quantile Regressions. Findings- Our findings uncover several major themes. First, ICT when integrated with the role of public credit registries significantly lowered the price of loans and raised the quantity of loans. Second, while the net effects from the interaction of ICT with private credit bureaus do not improve financial access, the corresponding marginal effects show that ICT could complement the characteristics of private credit bureaus to reduce loan prices and increase loan quantity, but only when certain thresholds of ICT are attained. We compute and discuss the policy implications of these ICT thresholds for banks with low, intermediate and high levels of financial access. Originality/value-This is one of the few studies to assess how the growing ICT can be leveraged in order to reduce information asymmetry in the banking industry with the ultimate aim of improving financial access in a continent where lack of access to finance is a critical policy syndrome.

Purpose. This study presents theoretical and empirical arguments for the role of mobile telephony in promoting good governance in 47 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2000-2012. Design/methodology/approach. The empirical inquiry uses an endogeneity-robust GMM approach with forward orthogonal deviations to analyse the linkage between mobile phone usage and the variation in three broad governance categories — political, economic and institutional. Findings. Three key findings are established: First, in terms of individual governance indicators, mobile phones consistently stimulated good governance by the same magnitude, with the exception of the effect on the regulation component of economic governance. Second, when indicators are combined, the effect of mobile phones on general governance is three times higher than that on the institutional governance category. Third, countries with

lower levels of governance indicators are catching-up with their counterparts with more advanced dynamics. Originality/value. The study makes both theoretical and empirical contributions by highlighting the importance of various combinations of governance indicators and their responsiveness to mobile phone usage. 

This paper attempts to study how individuals respond to the availability of an insurance that would safeguard their interests if a climate change catastrophe occurred. If such an insurance is available to them, do individuals insure themselves sufficiently? Further, the study investigates if information regarding the past occurrence of the catastrophic event leads to an increase in insurance subscriptions and/or the emergence of a lemons market. Finally, policy implications are investigated - Can an indirect intervention in the form of a “nudge” ensure a better outcome?

Motivated by a recent World Bank report on achieving of Millennium Development Goals which shows that poverty has been declining in all regions of the world with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), this study puts some empirical structure to theoretical and qualitative studies on the reconciliation of the Beijing Model with the Washington Consensus. It tests the hypothesis that compared to middle income countries, low income countries would achieve more inclusive development by focusing on economic governance as opposed to
political governance. The empirical evidence is based on interactive and non-interactive fixed effects regressions and 49 countries in SSA for the period 2000-2012. The findings confirm the investigated hypothesis. As the main policy implication, in order to address inclusive development challenges in the post-2015 development agenda in SSA, it would benefit low income countries in the sub-region to prioritise economic governance. Other theoretical and practical contributions are also discussed.

This paper studies the impact of ambiguity in the best-shot and weakest-link models of public good provision. The models are first analyzed theoretically. Then, we conduct experiments to study how ambiguity affects behavior in these games. We test whether subjects' perception of ambiguity differs between a local opponent and a foreign one. We find that an ambiguity-safe strategy is often chosen by subjects. This is compatible with the hypothesis that ambiguity aversion influences behavior in games. Subjects tend to choose contributions above (respectively, below) the Nash equilibrium in the best-shot (respectively, weakest-link) model.

We report an experimental test of the in‡uence of ambiguity on behaviour in a co-

ordination game. We study the behaviour of subjects in the presence of ambiguity and

attempt to determine whether they prefer to choose an ambiguity safe option. We …nd

that this strategy, which is not played in either Nash equilibrium or iterated dominance

equilibrium, is indeed chosen quite frequently. This provides evidence that ambiguity aver-

sion in‡uences behaviour in games. While the behaviour of the Row Player is consistent

with randomising between her strategies, the Column Player shows a marked preference

for avoiding ambiguity and choosing his ambiguity-safe strategy.

Many behaviours spread through contact with others. The extent to which people adopt observed behaviour can critically affect whether policymakers are successful when introducing new initiatives. In many situations, people can either make decisions based on their own intuitive signals or follow a social signal. Depending on the quality of the signals, one might be more informative than the other. This study aims to better understand how people use social information to learn in ambiguous situations, when both the private and the social signal are not perfectly informative. We conduct an experimental study that observes whether people are prone to imitate others in risky and ambiguous environments. We find that individuals do learn from social information and that this learning is robust and not significantly affected by ambiguity.