The growing need to find a solution to poverty alleviation has resulted in heightened interest from researchers to find the most important economic variable that could serve as a panacea to poverty alleviation. Consequently, the surge in remittance inflows globally, in general, and in low and middle-income countries, in particular, has ignited studies focused on the establishment of the nature of the relationship between remittance and poverty. According to Migration Policy Institute (2019), the global monetary transfers from migrants reached $689 billion in 2018 with remittance inflows to low and middle-income countries, taking 77% of the global transfer. The monetary transfers to low and middle-income countries are expected to grow by $21 billion in 2019 and projected to reach $550 billion (Migration Policy Institute 2019). Remittance has grown to be an important source of foreign income besides foreign direct investment and official development assistance (ODA) (Ratha et al. 2018).

In this study, the causal relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and poverty is investigated using Botswana as a case study, 1980 to 2017, using a trivariate causality framework. The main objective of this study is to establish the direction of causality between FDI and poverty. Three proxies of poverty have been used: 1) household consumption expenditures; 2) infant mortality rate and 3) life expectancy. The study uses the ARDLbounds testing approach and ECM-based Granger-causality model in a stepwise fashion to examine this linkage. The empirical results show that the causal relationship between FDI and poverty reduction in Botswana may be sensitive to the proxy used to measure the level of poverty reduction. When infant mortality rate and life expectancy are used as proxies for poverty reduction, a unidirectional causality from FDI to poverty is found to prevail both in the short and in the long run. However, when household consumption expenditure is used as a proxy, no causality is found, irrespective of whether the causality test is conducted in the short or in the long run. On the whole, the study found that Botswana could benefit from FDI inflows in the fight against poverty.

In this study, we examine the causal relationship between tourism and financial development in South Africa using data from 1995 to 2017. The study attempts to establish whether financial development Granger-cause tourism in South Africa. The Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach and ECM-based Granger causality test were used to examine the link. The results show that when broad money was used as a proxy for financial development, a distinct unidirectional causality from tourism to financial development was found in the short and the long run. However, when the domestic credit provided by financial sector and market capitalisation of domestic listed companies were used as proxies, a bidirectional causal flow was confirmed in the short run, but a unidirectional from financial development to tourism was found to dominate in the long run. The results confirm the reinforcing effect between tourism and financial development in the short run with financial development taking the centre stage in the long run.

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The main objective of this study is to investigate the causality between international remittance inflows and poverty in South Africa using time series data from 1980 to 2017. The study was motivated by the increasing role of remittances in poverty reduction and human development on the one hand, and the burgeoning inflow of remittances on the other hand. Since 1998, South Africa remittance inflows have shown a more or less upward trend. As an example, in 1998, the country recorded an increase in remittance inflows of 18.5 per cent and later maintained a steady increase in remittance inflows with an average increase of 25.3 per cent during the period 1999 ‐2017. Using a multivariate Granger‐causality model, our results show that there is a distinct unidirectional causal flow from poverty to remittances in the short term when the infant mortality rate is used as a proxy for poverty. However, when household consumption expenditure is used as a proxy, no causality is found to prevail in both the short and the long term. Policy implications are discussed.