Nicholas M Odhiambo

• PhD (Economics)
• Professor & Head: Macroeconomic Policy Analysis (MPA) Research Programme at University of South Africa

This study explores the inflation dynamics in Tanzania, analyzing the interaction of government policies, domestic factors, and external shock over the past five decades. While the existing literature has examined particular inflation dimensions, a holistic inflation picture is lacking, which this study aims to provide. Through rigorous documentati...

This study advances global understanding by introducing asymmetric structure and nonlinearity into the causality between economic complexity and natural resource wealth in resource-rich countries, using the case studies of Nigeria and South Africa covering 1970–2021. This approach reveals hidden causality in the nexus and gives more informed policy...

This study examines the nexus between ICT diffusion, financial development, industrialization, and economic growth using a novel panel VAR approach in the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. Different proxies were used to measure the aforementioned variables, diverging from the commonly used measures in prior literature. Based on panel...

Unlike earlier studies, this study explores the role of institutional quality in modifying the impact of natural resource wealth on economic complexity in resource-rich African countries. It also investigates the thresholds of institutional quality in the relationship between natural resource wealth and economic complexity from 1995 to 2021. This s...

Purpose This study assesses the relevance of foreign aid to the incidence of capital flight and unemployment in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Design/methodology/approach The study is for the period 1996–2018, and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions in order to assess the nexuses throughout the conditional dist...

Purpose: Increasing awareness of global warming consequences, together with the call for all countries to take responsibility for reducing their carbon footprint by moving to cleaner energy use motivated this study to examine the impact of financial sector development on renewable energy for Kenya. The study aims to answer the question, ‘Can financ...

Purpose The present study complements the extant studies by empirically assessing the relevance of monetary policy in moderating the effect of oil price and terms of trade (TOT) on economic performance in non-WAEMU countries for the period 2000–2021. Design/methodology/approach Monetary policy is proxied by real interest rate (RIR), real effective...

Research background The growing importance of information and communication technology (ICT) in every facet of life motivated this study to examine the association between ICT, financial development and economic growth. Purpose The purpose of the study is to establish if there is a causal relationship among ICT, financial development and economic...

In order to ensure that every individual has access to modern, affordable and dependable energy, countries prioritise reducing income inequality in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. There is currently a dearth of studies on how income disparity connects with access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). To contribute to kn...

This paper examines whether renewable energy has an asymmetric or symmetric impact on economic growth in Namibia for the period 1990 to 2020. The study was motivated by the growing importance of renewable energy in the economic growth process of many economies. Further, knowing whether this relationship is linear or not is crucial for policy formul...

The asymmetric impact of urbanisation on poverty reduction was examined for South Africa employing data from 1990 to 2022. The study was motivated by the need to establish the effects of positive and negative shocks on poverty reduction. The study used the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model (NARDL). The study is timely as it is conduct...

This study offers the first empirical attempt to examine the role of institutional quality in influencing the contribution of economic complexity to evading resource curses and reducing resource dependency in resource-rich countries. We analyze data from 20 resource-rich African countries covering the years 1995-2021, using fully modified ordinary...

This study examines the dynamic impact of transport infrastructure development on economic growth in South Africa using data from 1992 to 2021. The study was motivated by the potential of transport infrastructure as a driver of economic growth and the lack of conclusive results from the empirical studies undertaken on the subject to date. In additi...

Contrary to previous research, this study makes a unique contribution to the global discussion by incorporating asymmetric structure and nonlinearity into the analysis of how changes in natural resource wealth affect economic complexity. To achieve this objective, the study uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and a fully modified...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of urbanization on energy consumption in the case of South Africa. To empirically estimate this, the study employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach and annual time series data covering the period from 1983 to 2021. In this study, urbanization and energy consumption are measured t...

Purpose This study aims to contribute to the extant literature by assessing how microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect female entrepreneurship, contingent on female unemployment levels. Design/methodology/approach The study focuses on 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quant...

The present study contributes to the extant literature by assessing how microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect female entrepreneurship, contingent on female unemployment levels. The study focuses on 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for the period 2004 to 2018. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions, which put e...

The study assesses linkages between information technology, inequality and adult literacy in 57 developing countries for the period 2012-2016. Income inequality is measured with the Gini coefficient while six dynamics of information technology are taken on board, namely: use of virtual social network, internet access in schools, internet penetratio...

This study investigates how enhancing information and communication technology (ICT) affects female economic participation in sub-Saharan African nations. Three female economic participation indicators are used, namely female labor force participation, female unemployment and female employment rates. The engaged ICT variables are: fixed broadband s...

The principal objective of this special issue has been to put emphasis on high quality interdisciplinary research that is relevant in understanding how the new economy affects employment in Africa. The perspectives and findings provided are tailored to inspire students, inform researchers and guide policymakers on how unemployment in the African co...

Several variables influence income distributions both for developed and developing countries. Based on the submissions of extant evaluations, policymakers have implemented several policy guidelines to curtail widening income gaps. Unfortunately, the wave of income disparity, particularly in developing countries, remained un-tamed. Surprisingly, sch...

This study examines the long-run and short-run impact of GDP, urbanization, exports, agri- cultural activity, air travel, and electricity production on CO2 emissions in South Africa and Australia. Results from the ARDL model show that South Africa's heavy reliance on coal for electricity generation significantly impacts CO2 emissions. Furthermore,...

This paper examines the asymmetric impact of financial development on economic growth in Mauritius during the period 1980–2021. The analyses were carried out using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model in conjunction with additional complementary tests, including the NARDL bounds F -test for cointegration, the Brock-Dechert-Schei...

In this study, nexuses between governance and trade performance in terms of natural resource rents are assessed in 44 Sub‐Saharan African countries. The empirical evidence is based on Tobit regressions. The findings show that political governance (entailing “voice and accountability” and political stability) and institutional governance (consisting...

Transitioning to a carbon-neutral renewable energy (REN) option to decarbonize ecosystems and mitigate carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions and the negative impacts of climate change is consistent with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 7 and 13. Scholars have identified natural resource wealth and institutions as critical factors in the REN t...

The understanding of what drives capital flows is continually evolving. Earlier theories provided support for the role of macroeconomic factors, however, the drivers expanded to include non-macroeconomic factors following the Lucas (1990) paradox, which spurred interest towards examining the role of institutional quality and, in more recent years,...

Background The surge in remittances in most sub-Saharan African countries motivated this study to establish whether remittance inflows enhance financial development and whether governance plays any significant mediating role in the nexus between financial development and remittance inflows. Purpose The study examines the impact of remittance inflo...

Purpose This study examines the roles of cross-sectional dependence, asymmetric structure and country-to-country policy variations in the inflation-poverty reduction causal nexus in selected sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1981 to 2019. Design/methodology/approach To account for cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity and policy variati...

In this study, the influence of economic growth on income disparities in 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries is investigated for the period 2005-2015. The primary objective of the study is to empirically test Kuznets? hypothesis, which holds that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and income inequality. The study...

The majority of empirical literature acknowledges that information and communication technology (ICT) has a favourable effect on economic growth/development. Different studies, however, contend that this impact is modest or perhaps null, yielding inconsistent findings. In view of this complication, we therefore conducted a study with the aim to ana...

The increasing role of foreign capital inflows in reducing the disparity between government revenues and costs as well as impellent economic growth has motivated this study to establish the direction of causality between foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign aid, and economic growth in Kenya. By using annual time series data from 1970 to 2020 wi...

This study investigated the impact of remittances on the nominal exchange rate in Kenya, using annual data from 1980 to 2020. The study was motivated by the need to find out how remittances affect the exchange rate in Kenya based on an increase in remittance inflows in low- and middle-income countries, including Kenya. This is important as Kenya co...

This study departs from earlier studies by incorporating nonlinearities, asymmetric structures, cross-sectional dependence, and policy variations across countries into the remittance-poverty causal nexus. Due to the high incidence of extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) despite the persistent remittance inflows to the region, data on SSA for...

This study aimed to empirically determine the symmetric and asymmetric causal relationship between banking regulation and bank credit delivery using a context of 23 sub-Saharan African countries from 1995 to 2017. The estimated symmetric and asymmetric error correction-based multivariate panel Granger-causality models allowed for both long-run and...

This paper studies the institutional factors that tend to matter for capital inflows, for middle-income Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Previous studies have focused more on macroeconomic push and pull factors and less on institutional factors. The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics between institutional quality...

Purpose The present study investigates the nexus between health performance dynamics and economic growth in 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018. Design/methodology/approach Four health performance dynamics are used, notably: total life expectancy, male life expectancy, female life expectancy and risk of maternal death. The...

Purpose This study examines the moderating role of institutional quality and its threshold in the African financial development-economic complexity nexus. This objective follows the argument that institutional quality influences the financial system's efficiency in allocating resources to innovative initiatives and activities that increase producti...

The study examined the crowding in or out effect of public investment on private investment in Botswana from 1980 to 2018 using the autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach. The findings of the study indicate that infrastructure public investment negatively affects private investment while non-infrastructure public investment has a po...

This study assesses the importance of military expenditure in moderating the role of insecurity dynamics on tourist arrivals or international tourism in 163 countries. It is framed to assess how the future of international tourism can be improved when military expenditure is used as a tool to mitigate perceived and real security risks that potentia...

The purpose of this study is to complement extant literature by examining how mobile money innovations can moderate the unfavorable incidence of female unemployment on female doing of business in 44 countries from sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004 to 2018. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions. The employed doing...

The present study investigates the incidence of financial institutions' dynamics of depth and access in the effect of income inequality on poverty and the severity of poverty in 42 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1980 to 2019. The Gini index is used to measure income inequality while poverty is measured as the poverty headcount ratio, and the se...

This paper examines Rwanda’s debt-inflation dynamics and the asymmetric effect of government debt on inflation using time series data spanning the years 1980–2021. The study applied a battery of tests to examine the debt-inflation linkage in this country, including the bounds F-test for cointegration, the Brock-Dechert-Scheinkman (BDS) nonlinearity...

The enormous volume of literature has widely discussed the aid–growth correlation while identification of their causal relationship remains elusive and mixed. The main objective of this article is to investigate whether aid sources matter for explaining the aid–growth causal nexus among African low‐income countries (LICs) during 2000–2017. A novel...

This study examines the symmetric and asymmetric impact of public debt on economic growth in Côte d'Ivoire using time series data from 1972 to 2021. The analyses were performed using both linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models. The study also utilised the bounds F-test for cointegration, the Brock-Dechert-Scheinkman (BDS)...

In this paper, the dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption on economic growth in Kenya has been empirically examined during the period from 1990 to 2019, using the autoregressive distributed lag-bounds testing approach. The study was motivated by the call to increase renewable energy use in Kenya. Contrary to expectations, the results of the...

The present study investigates how increasing bank accounts and bank concentration affect mobile money innovations in 148 countries. It builds on scholarly and policy concerns in the literature that increasing bank accounts may not be having the desired effects on financial inclusion on the one hand and on the other, that bank concentration which i...

This chapter gives an overview of some key financial sector reforms that have been implemented in some sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries since the onset of the new orthodoxy of financial liberalisation in the 1980s. The chapter also examines trends of some financial sector indicators in selected countries since the 1990s. In order to evaluate fin...

This chapter provides a review of previous studies on the causal link between financial development and economic growth in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. It explores all existing theories underpinning the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in a stepwise fashion. Although attempts have been made to conduct th...

This study empirically explores the ICT diffusion-financial development nexus for 45 African countries over the period 2000–2018. For the investigation of the nexus, the recently developed panel VAR in generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique was applied. The findings provide evidence of bidirectional causality between ICT diffusion...

This chapter empirically explores the ICT diffusion-financial development nexus for 45 African countries over the period 2000–2018. For the investigation of the nexus, the recently developed panel VAR in generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique was applied. The findings provide evidence of bidirectional causality between ICT diffusi...

Purpose This study aims to assess the role of financial inclusion (FI) in moderating the incidence of entrepreneurship on energy poverty in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach The assessment is made by using pooled data and two-stage least squares. The exposition builds from the 7th (GLSS7) and 6th (GLSS6) rounds focusing on the Ghana Living Standa...

Purpose This study investigates how enhancing information and communication technology (ICT) affects female economic participation in sub-Saharan African nations. Design/methodology/approach Three female economic participation indicators are used, namely female labour force participation, female unemployment and female employment rates. The engage...

This study assesses the importance of military expenditure in moderating the role of insecurity dynamics on tourist arrivals or international tourism in 163 countries. It is framed to assess how the future of international tourism can be improved when military expenditure is used as a tool to mitigate perceived and real security risks that potentia...

This study examines the impact of public investment on private investment in South Africa using the autoregressive distributed-lag (ARDL) and nonlinear ARDL bounds testing approach for the period from 1980 to 2018. The ARDL results show that public investment crowds in private investment in the long and short run. The NARDL results indicate that th...

The present study investigates how increasing bank accounts and bank concentration affect mobile money innovations in 148 countries. It builds on scholarly and policy concerns in the literature that increasing bank accounts may not be having the desired effects on financial inclusion on the one hand and on the other, that bank concentration which i...

This study complements the extant literature by assessing economic sector and globalization channels for gender economic inclusion. The study is focused on 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1995-2019 and the empirical evidence is based on fixed effects regressions. The following findings are established. First, economic and politica...

This study complements the extant literature by assessing economic sector and globalization channels for gender economic inclusion. The study is focused on 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1995-2019 and the empirical evidence is based on fixed effects regressions. The following findings are established. First, economic and politica...

In this paper, the modulating effect of income inequality in the finance–growth nexus using data from 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries is examined. The study examines i) whether financial development still spurs economic growth in the studied countries, and ii) whether income inequality modulates the effect of financial development on economi...

The study assesses linkages between information technology, inequality, and adult literacy in 57 developing countries for the period 2012–2016. Income inequality is measured with the Gini coefficient while six dynamics of information technology are taken on board, namely use of a virtual social network, Internet access in schools, Internet penetrat...

We examine the cyclicality of government expenditure and the impact of fiscal rules in a panel of five East African Community (EAC) countries using annual data for the period 1980–2019. The analysis is based on pooled ordinary least squares and panel autoregressive distributed lag regressions. We find that government consumption is acyclical while...

In this study, the relationship between stock market development and poverty reduction is examined in sub-Saharan African countries during the period 1993–2019. Three proxies of stock market development were used, namely stock market capitalization, stock market traded value and stock market turnover ratio, thereby leading to three separate model s...

The potential for information technology penetration in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) is very high compared to other regions. Unfortunately, productivity levels in the area are also deficient. This study investigates the importance of information technology in influencing the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on total factor productivity (TFP) d...

This paper aims to re-examine the impact of energy consumption on economic growth in South Africa over the period from 1981 to 2020. The study used a non-linear ARDL model and four proxies of energy consumption, which are largely from non-renewable sources, to examine this linkage. The proxies used in the study include electricity consumption, coal...

This paper discusses the dynamics of bank regulation in the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) region during the period before the 1990s and post 1990s and describes the trends in bank regulatory measures between 1995 and 2017 using the updated databases of the World Bank’s Bank Regulation and Supervision Surveys. Before the 1990s, bank regulation in the ma...

This study investigates the effect of globalisation on governance in 40 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2000-2019, with particular emphasis on income levels (low income versus middle income), legal origins (English common law versus French civil law), landlockedness (landlocked versus unlandlocked), resource wealth (oil-rich versus oil...

This paper assesses the role of financial inclusion in moderating the incidence of entrepreneurship on energy poverty in Ghana. The assessment is made by using pooled data and two stage least squares. The exposition builds from the 7th (GLSS7) and 6th (GLSS6) rounds focusing on the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GSS, 2014, 2019) that is collected b...

The main objective of this paper is to review literature on the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level (FTPL) and its validity in price level determination for both developed and developing economies. FTPL may be understood on the categorisation of the fiscal regime into two types, namely, the Ricardian and non-Ricardian regimes. Empirical evidence for t...

In this study, the causal relationship between disaggregated imports and economic growth is investigated in South Africa. The study was motivated by the need to establish how South Africa can achieve the growth trajectory that is much needed by the country to achieve sustainable development goals. The study applied the autoregressive distributed la...

Purpose: This study examined the causal flow between economic growth, poverty, and remittances for Tanzania, using annual data from 1990 to 2020. Tanzania is working to achieve the policy targets set in its Vision 2025, and the findings of this study will add value to policy effectiveness and timing. The study uses household consumption expenditure...

The study assesses the how information sharing by means of mobile phones affects banking system efficiency in Africa with particular emphasis on income levels (Middle income versus Low income countries) and legal origins (English Common law versus French Civil law countries). The focus is on 53 African countries with data for the period 1996-2019 a...

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to examine macroeconomic and institutional factors that influence capital flows to low-income sub-Saharan African (SSAn) countries. It analyzes capital flows in a disaggregated manner: foreign divert investment, portfolio equity and portfolio debt. There is a gap in the empirical literature in examining the facto...

In this study, the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Botswana is re-examined using disaggregated data from 1980 to 2020 on financial development. The importance of financial development and economic growth in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be overemphasised. The study used the Autoregres...

The study assesses how information sharing through mobile phones affects banking system efficiency in Africa with particular emphasis on income levels (middle-income versus low-income countries) and legal origins (English Common law versus French Civil law countries). The focus is on 53 African countries with data for the period 1996-2019, and the...

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This study evaluates the relationship between industrial development and pollution emission in Africa. This is done by testing the existence of EKC, IPAT and PHH models in some selected African countries. We analyzed the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), urbanization, industrialization and economic growth on carbon emission in nine African...

The role of financial access in adding value to economic sectors in sub-Saharan Africa is premised on two foundational elements in the scholarly and policy literature, notably: (i) the importance of access to finance in economic development and (ii) gaps in the corresponding contemporary literature on value added across economic sectors (Asongu & O...

This study investigates the impact of bank regulation and supervision on bank credit in 23 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries and their low-and middle-income groups from 1995 to 2017. The long-run results indicated that stringent entry barriers and supervisory power reduced lending, but supervisory power mitigated the negative effect of entry barr...

In this study, the impact of the crude oil price on economic growth is investigated in seven middle-income oil-importing countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), namely Botswana, Kenya, Mauritania, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia. The estimation is based on both linear and non-linear panel autoregressive distributive lag (panel ARDL) mod...

Most recent studies have established a significant link between public debt and inflation. However, limited studies dealt with the direction of causality between these variables. Since external public debt relief in 2005, the Nigerian government has pursued public debt management strategy aimed at restoring macroeconomic stability. Yet, inflation r...

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate the nonlinear effects of bank regulation stringency on bank lending in 23 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1997-2017. Design/methodology/approach - This study employs the dynamic panel threshold regression (PTR) model, which addresses endogeneity and heterogeneity problems within a nonlin...

The study examined the dynamic effect of fiscal policy on wealth inequality in middle-income countries using panel data from 2010 to 2018 and the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. Two measures of fiscal policy were considered, namely government expenses and taxes on income, profits and capital gains. GDP per capita and adult popula...

This study complements the extant literature by assessing how enhancing supply factors of mobile technologies affect mobile money innovations for financial inclusion in developing countries. The mobile money innovation outcome variables are: mobile money accounts, the mobile phone used to send money and the mobile phone used to receive money. The m...

This study examines the relationship between tourism development, governance, and income inequality in 31 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. In the main, the study aims at examining whether tourism inflows ameliorate or exacerbate income inequality in the studied countries. The study also aims to examine whether institutional governance modulates...

This study establishes economic growth needed for supply-side mobile money drivers in developing countries to be positively related to mobile money innovations in the perspectives of mobile money accounts, the mobile phone used to send money, and the mobile phone used to receive money. The empirical evidence is based on Tobit regressions. For the n...

In this paper, the dynamic relationship between ICT, income inequality and economic growth in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries is examined during the period 2004–2014. Three ICT and three income inequality indicators were used to examine this linkage. The ICT indicators used include internet penetration, mobile phone penetration and fixed broadb...

The purpose of this special issue is to contribute to the growing body of literature on the externalities of information technology within the specific remit of the relationship between information technology and sustainability outcomes in developing countries, not least because of the sparse scholarship on the subject focusing on developing countr...

Objective: In this study, we investigate the impact of tourism on financial development in Kenya using time series data from 1995 to 2017. The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to cointegration and error correction model to examine this connection. To increase the robustness of the results, the study uses t...

This study has empirically investigated the impact of bank development on unemployment in Kenya, based on time-series data spanning from 1991 to 2019. Using the ARDL bounds testing approach, the results of the study have revealed that in Kenya, the impact of bank development on unemployment, though time-invariant, depends largely on the proxy used...

This article aims to shed some insights into the ongoing debate on the aid-growth nexus by examining whether sources of aid matter in explaining aid effectiveness. In doing so, we consider three main proxies for bilateral aid based on three sources of aid such as Total Aid (TA); Traditional Donors aid (TDA) and Non-Traditional Donors aid (NTDA) as...