South Africa’s interest rate behaviour: Investigating the influence of the indicators of financial openness

This study seeks to investigate the influence of financial openness variables on South Africa’s interest rate during the period between1980-2020. The study used both Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Philip-Perron (PP) tests to determine the order of integration of the variables, while the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test was used to investigate both the short and long-run impact of the independent variables on the dependent variable. The findings of the study revealed that in the short-run both foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and FDI outflows impacted the interest rate positively. However, portfolio investment, exchange rate and capital account openness did not have any significant impact on interest rate within the duration of this research. The long-run results revealed that FDI inflows had a positive and significant impact on interest rate. Also, while capital account openness had a significant and positive impact on the interest rate, FDI outflows, portfolio investment, and the exchange rate had no significant impact on interest rate. The study concludes that apart from portfolio investment which did not exert significant impact on interest rate, other financial openness indicators used in the study had a significant impact on South Africa’s domestic interest rate. The paper argues that, appropriate monetary policy measures targeted to lessen the monetary impact of excess capital inflows should be considered.  Additionally, capital account liberalization policy should be encouraged, but it needs to be regulated if it places an excessive amount of liquidity pressure on the economy

Economic openness, institutional quality and per capita income: Evidence from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

The controversy surrounding the actual impact of institutional quality and economic openness on economic growth is among the motivating factors for this study. The study seeks to investi- gate this relationship in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) by using the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) test with annual series covering the period from 2000 to 2020. Findings indicate that in the short-run, regulatory quality and FDI outflows had an adverse impact on the economic performance of the ECOWAS bloc. Furthermore, the long-run results show that trade openness, political stability and FDI outflows had an adverse impact on the economy of the bloc, while regulatory quality positively affected the economy. Consequently, the paper recommends that member countries in the ECOWAS bloc should put in place effective regulatory framework in the short and medium term to attract FDI inflows, while building a strong and stable political environment in the long term