What is new? The role of asymmetry and breaks in oil price–output growth volatility nexus

This study examines the role of asymmetry and breaks in oil price–output growth volatility nexus. A representative of 10 countries was selected from net oil-exporting and-importing economies for the period 1986–2017. It is hypothesised that countries respond differently to changes in oil price. To prove this point, we use the recent nonlinear ARDL of Shin et al. (2014), based on the framework of the dynamic common correlated effect of the heterogeneous panel of Chudik and Pesaran (2015), to decompose oil price into positive and negative partial sums. Our results show that without accounting for breaks, asymmetry only matters for net oil exporters in both short- and long run. However, accounting for breaks expanded the importance of asymmetry to net oil importers (in the short run). These results are robust to changes in the measures of oil price and growth volatility

Maximising Sustainable Development Impacts of Foreign Direct Investment in Africa: Expectations, Host Governments’ Priorities, and Policy Design Effectiveness

In this thesis, I investigated four key areas relevant to maximising the sustainable development impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the economies of African countries. It is argued and recommended in recent FDI and sustainable development discussions that, in order to maximise the contribution of FDI to the sustainable development of developing countries, the host governments need to understand the gains that they expect from FDI, as well as the motives and strategies of foreign investors coming to invest in their host economies, so that appropriate policies that attract the type of FDI that aligns with the host governments’ expectations can be adopted. While these key components are relevant to advancing knowledge and contributing to the economic growth and development of developing countries, there is little exploration into how they can be adopted in various developing countries, considering the idiosyncrasies in individual country capacities. This thesis took on the task of exploring these key areas in the context of African countries