Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship between foreign capital inflows, human capital development (HCD) and economic growth in ECOWAS countries. Design/methodology/approach In line with the augmented Solow model, the relationship between foreign capital inflows, human capital development and gross domestic product in the ECOWAS member countries is investigated using the pool mean group method. Findings The authors find overwhelming evidence that foreign capital inflows and human development have a significant effect on economic growth in ECOWAS member countries. However, foreign direct investment (FDI), official development assistant, HCD and gross domestic investment are positively related to economic growth in sub-regions economies. Conversely, migrate official remittance, portfolio investments and external debts are negatively related to economic growth. Research limitations/implications The authors recommend that sound economic policies should be targeted in encouraging foreign capital accumulation and HCD, especially on FDI, official development assistance that exerts a positive impact on the economic growth of the sub-region. Therefore, training is required to prepare the labor force to work with new technologies and promote efficient enterprise for ECOWAS economies to compete with developed countries and emerging economies. Social implications This study argued that the development of human capital is a pathway that may lead countries away from sustained growth. In the context of any economy which lack well-developed capital and education markets, many otherwise qualified citizens may be denied the basic skills they need in order to contribute fully to the nation’s economic development. HCD would encourage foreign investments, resulting in reduction in poverty in ECOWAS countries. Originality/value Several studies have been done on foreign capital inflow and economic growth nexus such as Orji et al. (2014), Ajide and Raheem (2016), Musibau et al. (2017), etc.; however, none of the research studies has actually examined the effect of the relationship between foreign capital inflows and HCD on economic growth in ECOWAS countries. This study is designed to fill the vacuum.

The REITs market has attracted a lot of interest among the academic, policymakers, and market participants. The linkages between REITs and macroeconomic and financial variables have been adequately explored in the literature, with more emphasis on linear models. This study expands the frontier of knowledge by examining the role of uncertainty in the comovement/spillover between REITs and the currency markets. Some interesting results were observed. First, using the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover test, we find that there is strong connectedness between the REITs and currency markets. Second, the BDS test shows that nonlinearity is a very crucial factor to be put into consideration when examining the role of EPU in affecting the interactions between REITs and exchange rate markets. Third, the non-parametric causality-in-quantile test confirms that the connectedness between the markets and EPU is stronger around the lower and middle quantiles. These results have important policy implications for policymakers and market participants. The study also offers suggestions for future research.

Recognizing the growing importance of the green energy market—renewable energy stocks and bonds—and its classification as a viable financial asset, this paper examines hedging strategies with brown market instruments—gold, oil, bond and the composite S&P500—on the green energy markets. That is, we examine whether, and to what extent brown assets can provide a hedge for green assets, using variants of the multivariate GARCH framework (DCC, ADCC and GO-GARCH). Our dataset spans the period 01/12/2008 to 30/09/2021. To account for the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, we split the dataset into two—pre-covid (1/12/2008–10/03/2020) and covid-era (11/03/202–30/09/2021). Two key findings emanate from our results: first, conventional bonds and stocks provide the most consistent hedge for investment in the green markets. Second, the results are sensitive to the state of the market—hedging effectiveness declined during the covid period in the green stock market. Among other things, it is recommended that investors include instruments of the green market in portfolio allocation.