December 2012
Is it true that Good Institutions Alleviate the Resource Curse? A Re- assessment of Existing OLS Cross Country Evidence
The paper tests the hypothesis that the effect of resources on growth is conditional on the quality of institutions, by further building on Mehlum, Moene, and Torvik’s (2006b) influential work. Advances are made by re-testing the hypothesis, using: (a) a dataset of up to 53 countries over the period 1984-2003; and (b) a resource abundance indicator that focuses on non-renewable resources alone rather than the ones...
December 2012
Measuring the second economy in Zimbabwe
The second economy in Zimbabwe have grown from less than 10% of official GDP at independence in 1980 to an all-time higher share of 70 percent in 2008 before subsiding to a still higher percentage share of 52% by end of 2009. The existence of such a sizeable sector of unrecorded domestic and international economic transactions has several implications relevant for policy. First, it suggests that cconsiderable efforts...
December 2012
Determinants of Condom use in Botswana: An empirical Investigation of the Role of Gender
This article is largely motivated by the observation that gender imbalance have tended to aggravate females susceptibility to HIV infection as men used their dominance to dictate on issues of sexual activity with their female counterparts. The paper analyses factors influencing the use of condoms by both sexes and discovers that both males and females respond in similar fashion albeit at differing intensities to...
December 2012
Monetary Policy Shocks and Stock Returns Reactions: Evidence from Botswana
This paper applies standard vector autoregressions (VAR) technique to quarterly data for Botswana for the period 1993-2010 to investigate the impact of monetary policy shocks on stock returns. Monetary policy is measured by changes in the 91 day Bank of Botswana Certificates rate. Our results indicate that positive interest rate innovations are associated with increases, rather than decreases, in the aggregate stock...
December 2012
Dynamics of Governance, Investment and economic Growth in Nigeria
There is a general argument that, in all countries, the process of economic growth, governance and investment/capital formation is closely intertwined. The importance of the soundness and effectiveness of governance in attaining increased investment and sustained economic growth cannot be overemphasized. The specific objectives were to estimate the short-run dynamics as well as the error-correction mechanism of...
