Journal of Economics and Financial Analysis

This study estimates the impact of real exchange rate on the trade balance of seven countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). In examining this issue, most previous studies assume the relationship to be symmetric. In this paper, we relax this assumption by extending the nonlinear ARDL approach to panel data framework. We filter appreciations from depreciations in the real exchange rate and estimate their respective effects on the trade balance using the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator. The results for the panel show that the long-run relationship between real exchange rate and trade balance is asymmetric. More precisely, the trade balance was found to respond stronger to depreciations in the real exchange rate than to appreciations in the long-run. In the short-run, however, the trade balance is not sensitive to the real exchange rate regardless of whether it appreciates or depreciates. The results for individual country estimation reveal cross-country heterogeneity in the short-run relationship between the real exchange rate and the trade balance.

The Nigerian Government both previous and present has introduced several policies and programmes to reduce or proffer remedial measures to militate against the negative impact of high inflationary levels on the Nigerian economy. All these measures have not led to a productive result as the inflation rate has continued to sour higher over the years. This paper aimed at examining the economic influence of the determinant factors that influence inflationary trends that are multi-dimensional and dynamic which continue to defy solutions. The data used for this work was sourced from the National Bureau of Statistics and Central Bank of Nigeria, from 1983 to 2020. The ordinary least square approach was used to analyze the data and the result shows that consumer's price index, interest rate and total export has a positive effect on Nigeria inflation, but only the Consumer's Price Index (CPI) have a statistically significant effect on the Nigeria inflation at 99% confidence interval. Result also shows that the exchange rate, foreign reserve, money supply, real GDP, real income and total imports has a negative effect though not statistically significant on the Nigeria inflation rate. The result of the Granger causality test shows exchange rate and total imports to Granger cause Nigeria inflation. It is recommended that Government should improve locally manufacture products to meet international demands to reduce total imports.

In international commerce, a steady exchange rate has been touted as a positive indicator for all economies. It increases investor trust and allows global market participants to make realistic business forecasts. Despite the adoption of multiple regimes, Ghana's exchange rate has seen significant depreciation. The literature on trade have paid particular attention to the link between trade balance and exchange rate but failed to include certain relevant variables such as FDI and inflation which this study believes can influence changes in the trade balance. This research estimated the effect of exchange rate on trade balance in Ghana by including these relevant variables that extant studies have ignored. It used yearly data from the World Bank Development Indicators from 1980 to 2019 in a Vector Error Correction (VEC) model and concludes that increases in exchange rate has a short run and long run negative effect on trade balance confirming the established fact that depreciation adversely affect the trade balance of Ghana. However, inflation and FDI were shown to have a positive and significant influence on Ghana's trade balance. The study therefore calls for improved policies and actions to earnestly reduce imports, encourage exports and strengthen the value of the cedi.

The rapid integration of the global markets and financial system has increased stock market volatility due to the increased exposure to various risks. Using different GARCH family models, this study investigates the impact of country risk components shocks on stock market return volatility of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and its sectors for the 1996-2018 period. High positive correlations were found among the sectors, which potentially erodes diversification benefits. The research found that the South African stock market volatility is mainly driven by own/internal shocks, while the effect of county risk shocks on stock return volatility differs across the JSE sectors. We found that financial risk shocks negatively transmit to the volatility of oil and gas sector returns, leading to an increase in conditional volatility. Regarding economic risk, we found a statistically significant relationship between economic risk shocks and the entire JSE and financial and oil and gas sectors. The results show that political risk shocks negatively transmit to stock return volatility in the industrial sector, basic materials, consumer goods, financial, and the oil and gas sectors, leading to higher conditional volatility. Thus, the return volatility of most of the JSE sectors is primarily affected by political dynamics, emphasising the role of political instability in destabilising stock market volatility.

This study is focused on a non-conventional profitability measure, at least in terms of assets pricing models, where dividends or profits are widely used. The attention is focused on a proxy measure of Operating Cash Flows: the "Ebitda after Capex". The relationship returns – cash flows' volatility has been examined through an empirical analysis conducted on the stocks of the S&P500 Index combining the main quantitative and statistical approach with a qualitative overview respect the macroeconomic background. Starting from a correlation rolling window approach, three different regressions techniques have been implemented; the simple Ordinary Least Squares regressions (OLS), the linear Quantile (LQR) regression and the Multiple regression model (MLR), all performed at different levels in terms of stocks (QoQ and YoY) and sectors (MoM, QoQ, YoY).
The cross-sectional and time-series results support the effects of cash flow volatility on the stocks' performance and highlighted its sensitivity respect not only the different short-term and long-term horizons, but also in terms of sector' exposure.