This study examines the effect of savings on investment in East African countries in the face of the recent reduction in trade barriers and other regional integration policies. The findings reveal that among all the regions in Africa, East Africa had the lowest household saving for the period 2000-2016 and only Burundi and Kenya savings and investment rates were co-integrated. The policy implication is that the domestic saving rates significantly drive economic growth via investment in only Burundi and Kenya. In addition, there was weaker impact of savings on investment in the East African Community (EAC) due to flexible capital mobility and harmonized government policies. These findings also corroborate the Solow model that capital accumulation (saving) is not the main driver of economic growth (investment) but rather exogenous technological progress. The study therefore recommends that knowledge, education and skills of the labor force, number of years of schooling, learning by doing, the strength of property rights, the quality of infrastructure, cultural attitudes towards entrepreneurship and work should be improved in the EAC.

No abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the implications of financial inclusion on capital market liquidity in Nigeria. Therefore, we applied Vector Autoregression (VAR) technique to the analysis of the quarterly time series data obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria’s statistical bulletin and World Development Indicators for the period, 2008Q1 to 2018Q4. Findings of this study reveal that deposit penetration, bank penetration and credit penetration have positive but non-significant impact on stock market turnover ratio in Nigeria. Furthermore, unlike deposit penetration which exerts negative and non-significant influence on the value of shares traded ratio; bank penetration and credit penetration have positive but non-significant impact on the value of shares traded ratio in Nigeria. The study posits that financial inclusion exerts no significant influence/implications on stock market liquidity in Nigeria with a very negligible variation in the latter (stock market liquidity) explained by the former (financial inclusion). It is therefore recommended that accounts and bank penetrations should be re-engineered towards their translations to high volume and value of capital market transactions rather than mere financial penetration without any capital market implications in Nigeria.

"This paper examines monetary unification and trade outcome in the case of East African Community (EAC) using the Vector AutoRegressive (VAR) and Augmented Gravity Models for the period 1960-2016. We found that all countries in the EAC have challenges meeting the macroeconomic convergence targets, but Burundi is far from achieving most targets anytime soon. After separating various shocks using VAR, the cross-country correlation estimates show asymmetry of supply and monetary shocks despite external and demand shocks dominating; implying that the region is not an Optimum Currency Area. However, the gravity model shows that monetary unification itself will boost intra-EAC trade to around 60% (a factor of 4) from its current 14%. Thus, between 2006 and 2015, total trade with other EAC countries as percentage of total trade in Burundi averaged 22.5%. It was 30.5% in Rwanda and only 6.1%; 8.4% and 17.4% in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda respectively. The three countries recorded more exports than imports in EAC leading to an overall intra-regional trade surplus balance while Rwanda and Burundi recorded overall intra trade deficit, as they import more from the EAC than they export. As a result, this study reveals that monetary unification may increase trade among member countries in the EAC since the trade creating effects will offset the business cycle shocks."