Time: 13:00-15:00 (UK Time), Wednesday, 11 October 2023
Presenter: Professor Joshua Abor, University of Ghana Business School
Chair: Professor Victor Murinde, SOAS University of London
Abstract
In order to accelerate economic recovery and build financial resilience in Africa, policy makers and researchers are debating the centrality of climate finance and international trade in designing sustainable inclusive growth solutions. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing efforts by investigating how climate finance and international trade influence inclusive economic growth. The study proposes some plausible econometric models and invokes dynamic system GMM techniques to estimate the models on a panel dataset of 54 African economies over the period, 2004-2022. Three new results are uncovered. First, on the relationship between climate finance and international trade, it is found that while climate finance is inversely associated with intra-African trade, there is a stable positive relationship between climate finance and trade openness in Africa. Second, regarding the potential heterogeneous impact of trade on growth, the results show that intra-African trade has a positive effect on inclusive growth, while trade openness has an inverse effect on inclusive growth. Third, the new evidence supports the argument that climate finance plays a better role in moderating the nexus between international trade environment and inclusive growth. Specifically, the positive impact of intra-trade on inclusive growth is enhanced when climate finance flows more into the host country, while the negative impact of trade openness on inclusive growth is reduced at an increasing level of climate finance. Overall, the findings of this study have important policy implications.
Keywords: Climate finance; International trade; Intra-African trade; Trade openness; Inclusive growth
Presenter
Professor Joshua Yindenaba Abor is a Financial Economist and Professor of Finance with numerous years of expertise, mainly in development finance and economics research, as well as in senior-level practitioner, policy, and consulting roles. He is former Dean of one of the largest Business Schools in Africa – University of Ghana Business School, and Senior Consultant with the Corporate Support Group. He is an Afreximbank Research Fellow at the African Export–Import Bank, Egypt and has held Visiting Scholar positions at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Washington DC. He is an Adjunct Professor of Development Finance at the Stellenbosch Business School, and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Economics, University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Ghana. He is an External Fellow at the Centre for Global Finance, SOAS University of London, and a Researcher with the African Economic Research Consortium. He is a member of the American Economic Association, the Canadian Economic Association, the Economic Society of South Africa and a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has contributed to the financial economics literature, mainly in the areas of banking and finance, monetary policy, development finance, financial market development, FinTech innovation and financial inclusion, corporate finance and governance, international trade finance, and international financial flows and growth. His papers have appeared in reputable international journals. He has authored and edited highly-cited monographs, including ‘Entrepreneurial Finance for MSMEs’, ‘Financial Markets and Institutions’, ‘Money and Banking in Africa’, ‘Contemporary Issues in Development Finance’, ‘The Economics of Banking and Finance in Africa’, ‘Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Developing Markets’, ‘The Economics of the Oil and Gas Industry’, ‘Sustainability Management in the Oil and Gas Industry’ and ‘The Changing Role of National Development Banks in Africa’. He also serves and chairs the boards of some companies and is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Ghana.