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PurposeThis study examines the moderating effect of institutional quality on the finance-growth nexus in South Africa from 1986 to 2015.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts unit root tests, cointegration test and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model.FindingsThe findings reveal that institutional quality constitutes a drain to the growth benefits of financial development (FD) in South Africa in the short-run while FD and institutional quality converge to enhance growth process of the country in the long-run. Also, the threshold of institutional quality beyond which institution stimulates strong positive impact of finance on growth is estimated to be 6.42 on a 10-point scale.Practical implicationsThis study, therefore, suggests that institutional quality matters in the way FD influences economic growth in South Africa. Hence, stakeholders are encouraged to trace and block lapses and loopholes in the institutional framework guiding financial system in South Africa so as to maximize growth benefits of FD.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the extant studies by introducing a country-specific analysis into the empirical examination of how institutional quality influences the impact of FD on economic growth. Also, this study deviates from other studies by determining the threshold of institutional quality beyond which FD stimulates strong positive effect on economic growth in South Africa

PurposeThe increasing debate on the viability of broad-based productive employment in stimulating the participatory tendencies of growth makes it instructive to inquire how the African “Big Five” have fared in their quests to ensure growth inclusiveness through public investment-led fiscal policy.Design/methodology/approachTime varying structures and nonlinearities in the government investment series are captured through the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag, asymmetric impulse responses and variance decomposition estimation techniques.FindingsStudy findings show that positive investment shocks stimulate growth inclusiveness by enabling access to opportunities through job creation and productive employment for the populace; this result is evident for Morocco and Algeria. However, there is a non-negligible evidence that shocks due to decline in the government investment manifest in insufficient capital stocks and limited investment opportunities, impede access to opportunities by the populace, hinder labour employability and make growth less inclusive. Furthermore, all short-run findings corroborate long-run results regarding the reaction of inclusive growth to positive investment shocks with the exclusion of South Africa; which, unlike its long-run finding, shows that shocks due to increases in investment can foster growth inclusiveness. Also, in respect to short-run negative investment shocks, Nigeria is the only country that does not align its long-run findings.Practical implicationsThat public investment shocks make or mar inclusive growth effectiveness shows the need for appropriate fiscal policy consolidation and automatic stabilization guidelines to ensure buffers against shocks and to enhance government investment generation efficiency for a sustainable inclusive growth process that is more participatory in Africa.Originality/valueThis study is the first to accommodate possibilities of shocks in the inclusivity of growth analysis for the five biggest African economies which jointly account for over half of the recorded growth in the continent. As such, there is quantitative evidence that government investment is a potent determinant of growth inclusiveness and it is susceptible to structural changes and time variation of shocks.

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This paper investigates Granger causality between electricity consumption and Nigerian real GDP, using Vector Error Correction (VEC) Granger Causality/Block Exogeneity Wald Test. The empirical result supports long run bidirectional relationship, which means that electricity consumption predicts economic growth and vice versa in the country, though causality from electricity consumption to economic growth is stronger. This finding is evidence in support of the country's electricity deregulation and reform programme, which is a core component of various projects towards the realisation of Transformation Agenda (TA) and