A Roadmap to a Successful Exchange Rate Regime Transition: Takeaways from 6 African Transitions

This article investigates the role of monetary policies in the success of exchange rate regime transition and the mitigation of related risks. We adopted a comparative methodology for three types of regime switches using 3 GARCH family models and data from 6 African countries over two decades. Our main findings are that a gradual and well-prepared transition improves its outcome and allows the market more flexibility in absorbing domestic and external volatilities, even during a crisis. The results of this study will provide policymakers with a road map to succeed in the exchange rate regime transition and mitigate the inherent risks

The challenging journey to floating: How did both the steering of the transition and COVID19 transform the domestic Forex Market in Africa?

This article investigates the impacts of transition process steering and the COVID19 pandemic on domestic forex market behavior. To do so, we conducted a comparative analysis based on various GARCH family models and the case of four African countries which adopted different transition paths from fixed to intermediary and/or floating regimes. Our main empirical result is that smooth and gradual transition allows for a better adaptation of the domestic market actors, resulting in improved liquidity management and shocks absorption than countries with forced regime switch. We also notice a significant fallout from the COVID19 pandemic on economies where the regime transition was abrupt as the domestic forex market became more sensitive to endogenous factors. Finally, we presented critical policy implications and some suggestions for future studies

COVID-19 impacts on financial markets: Takeaways from the third wave

This study provides an updated analysis of the impact of COVID-19 daily contaminations and vaccinations on the financial markets by incorporating the third wave observed in 2021. Our methodology is based on a comparative approach using a multivariate hetero­scedasticity model and data from the Eurozone and ten other countries from different economies. Our results show that COVID-19 contaminations and vaccinations strongly affected most of the countries in our sample (except for the UK, Russia and India in the case of COVID-19 contaminations). We also found that optimistic market sentiment concerning the evolution of the pandemic prevailed among the countries forming our sample (except for Switzerland, Russia and India)

Geometry effect of irrigation storage basin on particles removal efficiency: A computational fluid dynamics study

Drip irrigation requires the use of high quality water to avoid emitters clogging and the wear of hydraulic pumps and sand filters. Investing in an irrigation storage basin is not only beneficial to meet crop water requirements but also to remove naturally suspended solids by sedimentation. However, the design and sizing of an irrigation storage basin is usually based only on irrigation water needs and plant area without taking into consideration that the shape and size of the basin can also have an effect on the removal efficiency. Moreover, storage volume can be achieved by different combinations of length, width and depth. The present paper studies the effect of irrigation storage basin geometry on its performance in settling down suspended sediments. The methodology adopted in this study is based on the computational fluid dynamics using ANSYS Fluent. Specific experimental results taken from the literature are used to confirm the reliability of the numerical simulations to describe the flow field. First, a parametric study is executed in order to identify the effect of each basin dimensions. Then, trap efficiency is calculated for twenty basins having the same capacity of storage and different geometries in order to select the optimal dimensions. Results show that the removal efficiency is very sensitive to basin size, especially to its depth and length. Nevertheless, for a specific capacity of storage, two different dimensionless parameters can be used to select the optimal size: the length to depth ratio and the length to width ratio. In cases, where the depth value is required due to soil type or land surface, the second ratio can be used