Sub Saharan Africa faces a deepening fiscal growth dilemma. Public debt has risen sharply, while weak revenue mobilization, rising debt service costs and persistent governance constraints limit governments’ ability to convert borrowing into productive investment. Although public borrowing can finance infrastructure, human capital and crisis response, its growth benefits depend on the fiscal and institutional systems through which resources are mobilized, allocated and monitored. This study examines the relationship between fiscal policy composition, institutional quality and GDP per capita growth in 42 Sub Saharan African countries over 2000–2024. The findings show that public debt is negatively associated with growth, while the nonlinear specification confirms that the growth penalty intensifies at higher debt levels, consistent with debt overhang arguments. Revenue mobilization becomes growth enhancing once endogeneity is addressed, whereas government expenditure is negatively associated with growth in the dynamic specification, reflecting expenditure-composition and efficiency constraints. Institutional quality emerges as one of the most consistent growth-enhancing factors. The study concludes that debt sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa should be assessed through fiscal and institutional conditions, not debt ratios alone.
Few countries have both conventional and Islamic banks, making it difficult to obtain data on individual households’ financial behavior. Therefore, this study uses original survey data collected in Malaysia from 2021 to 2024 to examine household financial inclusion in conventional and Islamic banks, and to clarify similarities and differences. First, households are more likely to open bank accounts in conventional banks with geographically distributed branches. In the case of Islamic banks, religious reasons are more important than geographical distribution of branches as a motivation for opening an account. Second, households that rely solely on Islamic banks, which may not have bank accounts in countries with only conventional banks, tend to have more financial assets and a higher rate of homeownership than households with no bank accounts. Third, the dual banking system promotes overall financial inclusion through conventional banks targeting middle-income households and Islamic banks targeting low-income households.
In rural development, livelihood diversification is crucial for enhancing resilience and economic stability among marginalized communities. Justifiably, most existing research assumes diversification as inherently beneficial, leading to improved income, while overlooking the tradeoffs between activity profitability and household welfare. Grounded in the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework, we analyse the impact of input subsidies on livelihood diversification in northeastern Zimbabwe using a random sample of 408 households. We further investigate the relationship between diversification and household income to determine whether available opportunities are high-return, choice-driven, or low-return, necessity-driven. Our findings reveal that while input subsidies promote diversification, an inverse U-shaped relationship exists between diversification and total income, indicating an optimal level of diversification. Beyond this threshold, excessive diversification is linked to distress-driven coping through low-return survival activities, resulting in lower income outcomes. The study identifies key capital assets, including tertiary education, livestock, irrigation, contract farming, and formal credit, as crucial for high-return diversification. However, these assets are concentrated among non-vulnerable groups. We advocate for expanding irrigation infrastructure and leveraging contract farming in the tobacco and horticultural sectors to promote inclusion. The findings highlight the need for a paradigm shift in agricultural and livelihood support frameworks to empower marginalized households.
This study focuses on the gendered dynamics within Vietnam's forage seed system, examining how cultural norms, resource access, and market participation influence women's involvement in forage production and adoption. Despite the crucial role women play in agricultural activities, including livestock management and forage cropping, their contributions are often marginalized due to deeply ingrained social and cultural norms. These norms limit women’s access to resources, decision-making power, and participation in key areas such as seed purchasing, breeding and commercialization. The study highlights the challenges women face, including limited access to capital and technology, and the sociocultural barriers that restrict their involvement in formal seed markets, pushing them toward informal systems that hinder the adoption of improved forage varieties. Moreover, our research also identifies pathways for empowerment, particularly through the adoption of labor-efficient forage technologies that reduce physical labor and time and improve productivity. International organizations and government projects play a critical role in promoting gender-responsive approaches and empowering women through inclusive agricultural models. The study underscores the importance of addressing structural inequalities and providing targeted interventions, such as flexible training programs and inclusive market strategies, to enhance women’s inclusion in the forage seed system, strengthen their agency in decision-making, and ultimately contribute to their empowerment.
This article examines how collaborative governance shapes food security policy in Indonesia within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), situating the analysis in the wider context of global food insecurity, climate change, and local institutional fragility. Using a qualitative case study based on policy documents, statistics, and interviews with key stakeholders, the study shows that Indonesia’s food security policy is increasingly aligned with SDG 2, yet its effectiveness depends on adaptive collaboration across governance levels. The findings reveal the enabling role of facilitative leadership, integrated digital data systems, and community-based organizations in bridging national commitments with grassroots realities, while persistent challenges emerge from fragmented governance, weak local capacity, and inconsistent policy implementation. Beyond the Indonesian case, the study offers lessons for achieving the SDGs in Asia-Pacific, particularly by highlighting the importance of institutional design, cross-sectoral engagement, and adaptive coordination as strategies to balance national priorities with local contexts. These insights provide both theoretical contributions to the literature on collaborative governance and practical guidance for policymakers facing similar governance and development challenges across the region.
The existing literature on the relationship between financial inclusion (FI) and inflation rate (IR) in developing economies suffers from three main limitations: general reliance on aggregate FI measures that fail to isolate the effects of specific FI dimensions, limited attention to endogeneity, and mixed empirical findings regarding the direction of the relationship. To address these gaps, this study uses the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach to scrutinize the specific relationship between usage of banking services (UBS) -proxied by a composite of outstanding deposits and loans from commercial banks as a percentage of GDP- and IR using 2004–2021 data from 10 low and lower-middle-income Sub-Saharan African countries. The findings reveal a positive association between UBS and IR, consistent with the Keynesian Demand-Pull Inflation hypothesis, which postulates that expanded banking services can exert upward pressure on prices by creating excess aggregate demand. Theoretical contributions, policy implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed.
This study examines whether foreign direct investment (FDI) conditions the effect of urbanisation on multidimensional poverty in Vietnam. Using balanced panel data for 63 provinces from 2016 to 2023, we estimate fixed-effects models with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE), feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), and two-step system GMM. The dependent variable is the official provincial multidimensional poverty rate published by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam. The results show that urbanisation significantly reduces multidimensional poverty. However, the interaction between lagged urbanisation and lagged FDI is positive and statistically significant, indicating that higher FDI intensity weakens the poverty-reducing effect of urbanisation. At average FDI levels, urbanisation still lowers multidimensional poverty, but the magnitude of this effect declines as provinces become more dependent on foreign investment. The main findings remain robust across PCSE and FGLS specifications and are qualitatively confirmed by the dynamic system GMM estimates. Overall, the study shows that the welfare gains of urban growth depend not only on the pace of urbanisation but also on how foreign investment is embedded in local development.
This study examines the impact of Aid for Trade (AfT) on green product exports across 126 recipient countries over the period 2002–2021. The empirical analysis employs fixed-effects estimations as the baseline approach and system GMM estimations for robustness checks. The results reveal a positive relationship between AfT and various dimensions of green exports, including total export value, the number of exported products and partners, and the average export value per product and per partner. Further analysis shows that AfT components contribute unevenly to green export expansion, with aid directed toward productive capacity building and trade-related infrastructure playing a particularly important role. The findings also indicate that AfT provided by Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors is more effective than aid from non-DAC donors. These results suggest that prioritizing support for productive capacity and trade-related infrastructure can enhance green export performance in developing countries. Moreover, greater knowledge sharing and policy coordination between DAC and non-DAC donors could improve the design and implementation of AfT initiatives supporting the development of green export sectors.
This study examines the relationship between financial development and income inequality using data from 21 SSA countries over the period 1994–2016. The SSA region is home to some of the countries with the highest levels of income inequality worldwide. The main objective of the study is to test the validity of the Financial Kuznets Curve hypothesis in these countries. The analysis employs a wide range of robust panel-data techniques, including the dynamic OLS, fully modified OLS, and Driscoll–Kraay estimators, to investigate this relationship. Furthermore, the study divides the sampled countries into three groups: low-income, middle-income, and all SSA countries. The study also uses three proxies for financial development. Overall, the study finds no strong evidence in support of the Financial Kuznets Curve hypothesis in SSA. Instead, the results indicate that a U-shaped relationship is more prominent. These results show that at the initial stages, income inequality in SSA tends to decrease as financial development increases, but thereafter it increases once countries reach a certain threshold. As the financial sector in SSA develops, it disproportionately benefits the rich, who have greater access to financial services such as loans and investment opportunities, which ultimately increases the gap between the rich and the poor.
This study highlights the nexus among green finance (GF), technological innovation (TI), renewable energy consumption (REC), and sustainable agriculture (AGR) in Asia over the period 2000–2022. The analysis applies dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) for empirical estimation and employs generalized method of moments (GMM) models to verify robustness. We find that GF, TI, REC, and foreign direct investment (FDI) positively affect AGR, whereas institutional quality (IQ) negatively affects AGR. Moreover, we find that IQ interacts positively with GF and FDI, whilst negatively with TI, in explaining AGR. Based on our results, we propose several policy recommendations to promote sustainable agricultural growth. Governments should adopt policies that encourage green investment, specifically through tax reductions and preferential interest rates for high-tech farm projects, renewable energy initiatives, and organic production. Policies for developing green financial instruments, such as green bonds and green credit for farmers and agribusinesses, also need to be strengthened. Besides, governments should expand preferential financial support packages to incentivize farmers to invest in digital technologies and clean energy for agricultural production. Strengthening international cooperation to attract green infrastructure projects in agriculture should be prioritized to achieve sustainable agricultural development across the Asian region.
Serving as drivers of local innovation, makerspaces in Africa are bridging the gap between theoretical education and practical, hands-on problem-solving by providing opportunities to empower human capital, boost entrepreneurship in local economies, and promote community-centred solutions to local problems. In light of increasing pressure from policymakers and funders for evidence demonstrating community impact, establishing a shared framework of key performance indicators against which African makerspaces can measure success has become increasingly critical. Using an inductive process, a qualitative study was conducted with makerspaces in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. This enabled the identification of a set of empirically-derived impact indicators, which can be used as a framework for measuring the success of their spaces, programs, and services. This paper provides an outline of the research process and capacity-building activities, and the resulting indicator framework for measuring impact in African makerspaces.
This study analyzes the impact of participation in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on financial inclusion across 135 countries from 2007 to 2021. Using an Ordinary Least Squares Interrupted Time Series Analysis (OLS-ITSA), the findings show that BRI participation significantly improves access to financial infrastructure, particularly through increased Automated Teller Machines (ATM) penetration in low- and middle-income countries. However, a decline in life insurance usage and slight increases in borrowing, deposits, and Small Medium Enterprises (SME) lending suggest persistent gaps in broader financial participation and a continued household preference for liquidity. Foreign direct investment (FDI) under the BRI primarily supports traditional financial infrastructure, with limited spillovers into digital finance and SME financing. The outcomes of financial inclusion are also affected by macroeconomic variables such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, inflation, and internet penetration. The findings demonstrate how infrastructure investments can alter financial accessibility and align with institutional theory and innovation diffusion models. The study concludes that realizing the full financial inclusion potential of the BRI requires complementary reforms, particularly in digital and institutional finance.
Growing disparities in asset ownership and capital accumulation have raised concerns about the role of wealth inequality in shaping long-term development, particularly in low-income countries. Although the inequality–growth nexus has been widely studied, most research relies on income-based measures and restrictive parametric models, leading to inconclusive findings. This paper focuses instead on net wealth inequality and applies a two-step semiparametric estimation strategy using panel data for 121 low-income countries from 1995 to 2019. First, we estimate a nonparametric auxiliary regression to construct an adjusted inequality index purged of growth-related endogeneity. Second, we flexibly estimate its impact on economic growth through a semiparametric fixed-effects model. The results reveal a robust inverted U-shaped relationship: moderate inequality stimulates growth, while excessive concentration reduces it. These findings remain consistent across multiple robustness checks and highlight the importance of maintaining inequality within sustainable bounds to support inclusive development.
This paper explores how institutional quality relates to subjective well-being in Latin America, a region often described by a ‘well-being paradox’: relatively high life satisfaction despite modest incomes and persistent governance problems. We test whether countries with stronger institutions report higher average life satisfaction and whether year-to-year changes in institutional quality are linked to contemporaneous changes in well-being. Combining individual survey data with country-year governance indicators, we estimate a multilevel within-between random-intercept model that separates long-run cross-country differences from short-run within-country dynamics. Results indicate that well-being is higher where Government Effectiveness and Rule of Law are stronger, and where Voice and Accountability and Political Stability provide a secure and participatory political environment. In contrast, short-term fluctuations in governance show limited effects, consistent with institutional persistence and slow adaptation. Education is a key moderator: more educated individuals display a stronger link between institutional quality and life satisfaction, with the association more consistent for within-country variation than for cross-country differences. Overall, the findings suggest that human capital improves citizens’ ability to perceive and respond to institutional quality, and that joint improvements in governance and education can yield sizable welfare gains.
Despite the critical role of gender and poverty in shaping household food security, only few studies have systematically distinguished the causes of food insecurity based on the intersection of gender and socioeconomic status. This study addresses this gap by examining gender-related risks of food insecurity among farming households in rural Indonesia. Specifically, it investigates differences in food insecurity between female- and male-headed households in the agricultural sector and identifies the socioeconomic determinants of food insecurity for each group, incorporating the influence of regency-level social protection expenditure. The analysis combines microdata from the 2022 National Socioeconomic Survey with fiscal data from the Ministry of Finance on social spending, applying an ordered probit model to capture household food insecurity across four ordered categories, ranging from food secure to severely food insecure. The findings reveal that female-headed households face a significantly higher likelihood of food insecurity than male-headed households across all socioeconomic strata, including poor/vulnerable and middle-to-upper-class groups. Key determinants that mitigate food insecurity include access to productive resources, education, employment, and government social assistance, while demographic and household characteristics such as age, disability, household size, and energy poverty, exacerbate vulnerability.
This study examines the impact of aid-for-trade on decomposed total factor productivity, utilizing a panel of 54 aid recipient countries from 2003 to 2019. The study decomposes total factor productivity into technical progress and technical efficiency change by applying the stochastic frontier approach. Then, the study regresses decomposed productivity components on various measures of aid for trade. Empirical results indicate that aid-for-trade enhances productivity, although the total amount of aid itself does not have a significant impact on it. Regarding productivity components, cumulative aid-for-trade increases both technical progress and technical efficiency change, although yearly aid-for-trade increases only technical progress. Among aid-for-trade types, aid for supporting trade-related infrastructure and aid for building productive capacity boost technical progress. The results support the presumption that aid-for-trade promotes economic development by enhancing trade openness. The novelty of this study lies in revealing the link between aid-for-trade and the decomposed productivity components. In this regard, the study suggests that aid-for-trade enhances productivity growth through technical progress in the short run, which is transmitted to other countries through technical efficiency change in the long run.
This paper investigates how ethnic group affiliation and institutional quality jointly shape individual corruption experiences across 33 African countries, using Afrobarometer Round 8 survey data and a probit modelling framework. While existing literature recognises the link between ethnic fragmentation and corruption, limited attention has been paid to how institutional quality conditions this relationship. The findings demonstrate that members of influential ethnic groups are less likely to encounter corruption in weak institutional environments, where extortive practices disproportionately target less powerful groups. However, as institutional quality—measured via rule of law—improves, this pattern reverses: influential groups show a higher likelihood of collusive corruption, exploiting enhanced institutional structures for strategic cooperation and illicit gain. A threshold analysis reveals a regime shift at the average level of institutional quality. Robustness checks using multilevel mixed-effects logistic models confirm these dynamics. The results underscore the importance of considering ethnic power asymmetries when designing governance and anti-corruption reforms.
As Gulf countries—particularly Qatar—transition from state-led economies to diversified and market-driven systems, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a key mechanism for sustainable development. This study draws on 36 semi-structured interviews in Qatar and secondary analysis of Singapore’s CSR frameworks to compare two contrasting governance models. Qatar’s state-led approach ensures policy alignment with General Secretariat for Development Planning 2030 but limits private-sector innovation, whereas Singapore’s market-oriented model fosters flexibility and entrepreneurship but risks uneven social outcomes. Integrating Institutional, Stakeholder, and Resource-Dependence theories with the Shared Value approach, the paper proposes a hybrid CSR governance model suited to post-rentier contexts. This model balances state coordination and corporate autonomy through accreditation systems, digital transparency, independent audits, and incentive-based accountability. Theoretically, it advances CSR governance scholarship by showing how legitimacy and innovation can co-evolve. Practically, it offers a roadmap for Gulf states to transform CSR from a compliance obligation into a strategic catalyst for inclusive and sustainable development.
This study analyzes threshold effects in the relationship between Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and international trade in 50 emerging markets from 2010 to 2023 using Panel Threshold Vector Error Correction Models. It identifies an institutional quality threshold at 0.647, above which FDI and trade show stronger long-term relationships and faster adjustment speeds. Countries with higher institutional quality converge to equilibrium 2.3 times faster and have less regime persistence. These findings suggest that improvements in institutional quality above this threshold significantly enhance FDI-trade integration, offering clear targets for policy interventions in emerging markets.
Growing evidence highlights the gender-transformative potential of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions, which can shape gender equality and social inclusion alongside and through improvements in WASH practices, service delivery, and governance. This paper presents results from a quasi-experimental evaluation of the gender-transformative impacts of WASH interventions in the districts of Dailekh and Sarlahi in Nepal between 2020 and 2022. This timeframe also overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation utilized propensity-score-matching and difference-in-difference techniques with the 16-theme water, sanitation, and hygiene – gender equality measure (WASH-GEM) to differentiate results between women and men of varying levels of program involvement. Average scores increased in 10 of the 16 themes for men, while decreasing in 10 themes for women; suggesting that men experienced greater improvements in gendered outcomes. Nonetheless, active participation in the program led to higher benefits or mitigated negative impacts in 15 themes, and women had better outcomes than men in 13 of these. These results suggest that active participation in the program had a positive net benefit for women participants, mitigating the negative gender impacts of the pandemic. This study illustrates the value of gender-transformative WASH programming as a pathway not only to improved WASH but also advancing equality.
