Econometrics and Statistics

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    The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Environmental Quality: Empirical Evidence from SADC Countries (1990-2016)
    (UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE, 2019-05-03) CHINYANGA, Earnest. R
    The impact of trade liberalization on environmental quality has received considerable attention, both in policy debate and in the theoretical literature. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence on the issue remains mixed and lagged. This study adds to the literature by unearthing the relationships and decomposing the effect into scale, technique and composition in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region using OLS with Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) estimation technique. Aggregated panel data on carbon dioxide emission and on natural resource depletion spanning from 1990-2016 are used as proxies for environmental quality. The study findings provide evidence supporting the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the case of natural resource depletion. However, the EKC model is not present in the case of carbon dioxide emission. The results also indicate that trade liberalization has detrimental effect on environmental quality as a result of a positive scale effect of trade overriding the negative technique effect of trade. This finding appears to confirm the pollution haven hypothesis. Also, energy consumption is positively related with carbon dioxide emission and negatively related with natural resource depletion. Sustainable development assistance and urbanization have a negative relationship with carbon dioxide emissions. On the other hand, sustainable development assistance has a positive effect on natural resource depletion. Therefore, the study recommends that further trade liberalization policies in developing countries in Africa should be accompanied by strict enforcement of environmental regulations in order to avert the adverse impact of trade on the environment. The Member States should be mindful of the kind of multinational corporations allowed to produce and should allow corporations whose activities produce relatively less emissions or nearly produce no pollution.
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    POPULATION DYNAMICS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN MALAWI
    (UNIVERSITY OF MALAWI, 2020-09-24) KUCHANDE, STEVEN LIMBANAZO
    The study dwells on analysing population dynamics in relation to economic development in Malawi. As Malawi’s population grows at 3% per year, this rapid growth of the population has been identified as a challenge by various players in the area of development calling for innovative ways of managing population phenomena for sustainable development. The study’s specific objectives are threefold which are to determine the effects of changes in Malawi’s population size, population growth, age structure and spatial distribution on one hand on economic growth, food production and socioeconomic development in Malawi on the other hand. The study employed Autoregressive Distributed Lag models on time-series data spanning from 1960 to 2016 obtained from the World Bank’s World Development indicators and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. The study first finds that population dynamics and economic development have a significant long run relationship in Malawi. Specifically, the rate of population growth and the share of urban population have a negative effect on economic development while the young and working aged population have a positive effect. In sum, the study identifies how population dynamics relate to economic development and thus how they can be managed to achieve development targets both in the short term as well as in the long term. The implications on policy are that interventions need to be made on the reduction of the rate of population growth, investments in the current youth and working aged population’s human capital as well as skills development and physical capital formation in rural areas.
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    FISCAL POLICY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS IN SADC COUNTRIES: A SPATIAL ECONOMETRIC APPROACH
    (UNIVERSITY OF BOSTWANA, 2020-12-06) TSELADIKAE, KATLEGO DANNY
    This study pursued an empirical investigation on the nexus between fiscal policy and economic growth in SADC countries with special reference to spatial analysis. Econometric approach employed in the study is based on the data spanning from 2000-2017 considering twelve countries in the SADC region. The study uses both the traditional and spatial econometric approaches to map channels through which fiscal variables affect economic growth considering individual countries and the region as a whole. The empirical evidence from the country-level analysis is mixed but substantial across economies. The Toda and Yamamoto causality followed for individual countries supports the adoption of different hypotheses to address fiscal variables. However, the panel causality test proposed by Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) suggested the use of the tax-spend hypothesis. The investigation of spillover effects through the spatial modelling suggested that tax revenue in the region negatively affected other contiguous countries due to spatial interaction. The recommendations were that the countries should adopt tax harmonization policies and that tax revenues and government spending decisions should be reconciled. Boosting economic growth for the region remains vital since it influences the evolution of debt levels.