Yasmin Bani

Bio: Yasmin Bani is an academic researcher from Universiti Putra Malaysia. The author has contributed to research in topics: Poverty & Economics. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 9 publications receiving 40 citations.

Remittances, poverty and human capital: evidence from developing countries

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between remittances and poverty through the human capital channel in developing countries, which has received less attention in the literature.,The paper applied the system GMM developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) containing 54 developing countries. This estimator is appropriate compared to a cross-section technique because it controls for the endogeneity of all explanatory variables, includes unobserved country-specific effects and allows for the inclusion of lagged dependent variables.,The results suggest that, while remittances reduced poverty, the effect is moderated via education. A 1 percent increase in remittances reduces the poverty headcount by 0.47 percent, while the reduction is 0.33 percent via education. The marginal effect of remittances is negatively related to the level of education, indicating that education mitigates the effect of remittances on poverty.,This paper includes the implications for the policymakers to justify the need for more effective approaches. It is useful to identify whether and how remittances and human capital interact in their effect on poverty when deciding the most desirable allocation of available resources between these two priorities.,This paper takes a step forward filling the limited evidence on the role of human capital in remittances–poverty relationship in developing countries. Different from the existing studies which have used the traditional panel estimators, this study utilizes the dynamic panel estimators such as system GMM to tackle the specification issues of endogeneity, measurement errors and heterogeneity.

The impact of energy consumption on environmental quality: empirical evidence from the MINT countries

Abstract: Rapid increases in energy consumption and economic growth over the past three decades are considered the driving force behind rising environmental degradation, which remain a threat to people and healthy environment. This study investigates the impact of energy consumption on environmental quality in the MINT countries using a panel PMG/ARDL modelling technique, and the Granger causality test spanning from 1971 to 2017. The empirical results confirm the existence of long-run nexus among the variables employed. The results also reveal that economic growth, energy consumption and bio-capacity have a positive and statistically significant effect on environmental degradation during the long run period. We find that a 1% increase in primary energy consumption leads to 0.4172% increase in environmental deterioration in the long-run period, but it is insignificant in the short run. This implies that energy consumption deteriorates environmental quality through a negative effect of ecological footprint. The result also suggests that as MINT countries increase the use of energy to accelerate pace of economic growth, environmental quality would deteriorate through increased ecological footprints. The coefficient of the error correction term (ect) is negative and significant (− 0.2306), suggesting that ecological footprint, a measure of environmental degradation would converge to its long-run equilibrium in the MINT region by 23.06% speed of adjustment every year due to contribution of economic growth, energy consumption, urbanization and biocapacity. The Granger non-causality test results reveal a unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth, energy consumption, and urbanization to ecological footprint and from economic growth to biocapacity. The results further show bi-directional causality between biocapacity and ecological footprint as well as between biocapacity and economic growth. Moreover, urbanization causes economic growth and biocapacity Granger-causes urbanization. Based on these findings, policy implications are adequately discussed.

Do remittances promote human development? Empirical evidence from developing countries

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of remittances on human development in developing countries using panel data from 1980 to 2014 and to address the critical question of whether the increasing trend of remittances has any impact on human development in a broad range of developing countries.,Usual panel estimates, such as pooled OLS, fixed or random effects model, possess specification issues such as endogeneity, heterogeneity and measurement errors. In this paper, we, therefore, apply dynamic panel estimates – System generalised method of moment (Sys-GMM) developed by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995). This estimator is able to control for the endogeneity of all the explanatory variables, account for unobserved country-specific effects that cannot be done using country dummies due to the dynamic structure of the model (Azman-Saini et al., 2010).,The effect of remittances is statistically significant with positive coefficients in developing countries. The significant coefficient of remittances means that, holding other variables constant, a rise in remittance inflows is associated with improvements in human development. A 10 per cent increase in remittances will lead to an increase of approximately 0.016 per cent in human development. These findings are consistent with Ustubuci and Irdam (2012) and Adenutsi (2010), who found evidence that remittances are positively correlated with human development.,The paper considers implications for policymakers to justify the need for more effective approaches. Policymakers need to consider indicators of human development and to devise public policies that promote income, health and education, to enhance human development.,The question of whether remittances affect human development has rarely been subject to systematic empirical study. Extant research does not resolve the endogeneity problem, whereas the present study provides empirical evidence by utilising dynamic panel estimators such as Sys-GMM to tackle the specification issues of endogeneity, measurement errors and heterogeneity. The present study provides a benchmark for future research on the effect of remittances on human development.

Relationship Between Governance and Trade: Evidence From Sub-Saharan African Countries

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of governance in Sub-Saharan African towards trade. This study utilized panel data from 1996-2017. This employed Pooled Mean Group approach by categorizing the Sub-Sharan African (SSA) countries into Low Governance Index (LGI) and Very Low Governance Index (VLGI) countries, considering its abundant resources. The results of the findings indicate that corruption does not affect trade in LGI countries but increases that of VLGI countries, signifying that corruption “greases the wheels” of trade in countries with a high rate of corruption. However, political instability reduces trade for LGI countries, whereas, in VLGI countries, it does not affect trade, indicating that political instability only impacts in countries with relatively better governance. Government expenditure, income, and population growth increase trade in LGI countries but does not show any evidence of impacting trade in the VLGI countries. The study concludes that governance (corruption and political instability) is a significant determinant of trade in the SSA; hence, the importance of dealing with corruption and ensuring a stable political environment.

The Relationship between Public Expenditure, Corruption and Poverty in Nigeria

Abstract: Poverty in Nigeria affects about 67% of the population who have insufficient means of supporting their families. World Food Programme have spent $126million on food assistance in Nigeria, yet majority are hungry. Government, through its expenditures, provided public goods to improve welfare and reduce poverty, but all is to no vail because it is mostly affected by bureaucratic bottlenecks and corruption. This paper investigated the long-run consequence of corruption in a model of public expenditures and poverty in Nigeria, to test the hypothesis of “grease or sands the wheels” . The sources of data were; Central Bank of Nigeria, National Bureau of Statistics Nigeria, and World Bank for 21 years (1996-2016). The study employed the ARDL bounds test. The findings revealed a long-run relationship between public expenditures, corruption and poverty. The aspect of expenditures on economic sector is significant, while that of social sector is not. Corruption is positively related to poverty, this is despite increase in corruption index, which remains below 30% (still corrupt since it’s less than 50%), hence, making the public expenditure not to impact on poverty, sanding the wheels. The study suggested some measures to enhance corruption index thereby allowing public expenditure to impact on poverty.