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The purpose of this paper is to consider the heterogeneous relationship among financial development, foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth, examining the possible directions of causality among them in both the short and long runs.

A sample of the G-20 countries over the period 1970–2016 is utilized. A vector error-correction model is used to consider the possible directions of causality among financial development, FDI and economic growth.

Results suggest a cointegrating relationship among the three series. Although short-run links among the variables are mostly non-uniform, both financial development and FDI matter in the determination of long-run economic growth.

Attention must be paid to policies that promote financial development. This, in turn, calls for fostering incentives to guarantee continued support to liberalize the economy and promoting capital openness. Additionally, financial infrastructure should be improved to improve financial innovation. The establishment of a well-developed financial market, including well-functioning banks and other financial institutions, can facilitate further investment and an easier means of raising capital to support the activities of FDI. Economic growth can ultimately be elevated through both financial development and FDI.

The study considers a sample of the G-20 countries, which have received relatively little attention in the existing literature. In addition, the study concurrently analyses the trivariate causal relationship among financial development, FDI and economic growth, a topic on which there has been a dearth of research.

The authors investigate the role played by the political climate and other covariates on the prevalence of undernourishment for 34 low-income countries across a 21-year period.

Political climate is measured in terms of political freedoms and civil liberties. The authors follow a Granger causality approach, which looks at predictive causality (i.e. causality in a temporal sense). For the socio-economic data, the authors rely on annual time series data from the World Bank.

Most of the findings are in keeping with our expectations: (1) Lowering women's fertility rate lowers undernourishment; (2) undernourishment converges to its long-run equilibrium path in response to changes in income, political climate, health expenditure, fertility rate and drinking water access; (3) the effect of an instantaneous shock from income, changes to the political climate, health expenditure, fertility rate and drinking water access on undernourishment are completely adjusted in the long run. One surprising result is that there is a positive and significant relationship between the prevalence of undernourishment and political freedom. The authors offer several possible explanations for this unexpected result.

Given our results, careful attention to the co-curation of policies is desirable. As an example, the authors would advocate a more proactive role by the richer countries in terms of their commitments to foreign aid in addressing the identified problems.

The authors use advanced panel data techniques, considering a long span of time. Unlike other studies which aim to establish correlations, the authors test for Granger causality.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the age-old trade-and-economic-growth controversy. The authors do so by utilizing the data relating to the G-20 countries between 1988 and 2013.

The authors seek to establish the formal statistical links between openness to trade and economic growth in the context of interactions with financial depth, gross capital formation, and foreign direct investment. The authors use a panel vector autoregressive model to obtain the estimates. The authors check for the robustness of the results.

The authors find that all the variables are cointegrated. That is, there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the variables. Moreover, trade openness, financial depth, gross capital formation, and foreign direct investment are all causative factors for the economic growth of the G-20 countries in the long run. At the same time, the short-run results demonstrate that there is a myriad of causal links between these variables.

The decision makers in the G-20 countries wishing to encourage economic growth in the long run should pay close attention to trade openness, financial depth, gross capital formation, and foreign direct investment inflows to their countries.

The authors study an important group of countries over a long span of time, using advanced panel data techniques. The results demonstrate that future studies on economic growth that do not simultaneously consider trade openness, financial depth, foreign direct investment, and gross capital formation will offer biased or misguided results.

The paper investigates whether Granger causal relationships exist between bond market development, stock market development, economic growth and two other macroeconomic variables, namely, inflation rate and real interest rate. The study aims to expand the domain of economic growth by including a more in-depth analysis of the possible impact that bond market and stock market development has on economic growth than is normally found in the literature.

This paper uses a panel data set of the G-20 countries for the period 1991-2016. It uses a panel vector auto-regression model to reveal the nature of any Granger causality among the five variables.

The paper provides empirical insights that both bond market development and stock market development are cointegrated with economic growth, inflation rate and real interest rate. The most robust result from the panel Granger causality test is that bond market development, stock market development, inflation rate and real interest rate are demonstrable drivers of economic growth in the long run.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack theoretical foundations. Therefore, perhaps the more fully grounded interactive findings of this study can inspire theorists to fill the missing gap.

This paper includes lessons for policymakers in the G-20 countries seeking to stimulate economic growth in the long run and how they need to ensure greater stability of the interest rate and inflation rate as well as fully developing their financial markets, as both bond markets and stock markets are obvious drivers of economic growth.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study causal relationships between bond market development, stock market development, economic growth and two other macroeconomic variables, i.e. inflation rate and real interest rate.

Empirical evidence on the relation between happiness (life satisfaction) and corruption is barely perceptible in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to closing this gap by presenting some estimates using a large cross-section of countries over the period 1996-2010.

The empirical model allows both corruption and per capita income to enter as arguments of a happiness “production function”. The correlation between happiness and corruption is presumed to be non-linear.

While the results do not support the existence of a Kuznets-type trajectory, the study finds that the level of per capita income determines whether happiness and corruption are related and in what way. The authors estimate cutoff income levels at which corruption has a discernible effect on happiness. The results show that corruption reduces happiness, but only for high-income countries – roughly the upper half of the income range in the sample.

Results nullify the oft-asserted statement that happiness is negatively linked to corruption in all countries. The nature of correlation is more complex.

The paper goes beyond simply testing whether happiness is related to corruption. It conjectures that the relationship between the two variables is non-monotonic. Thus, the analysis considers the notion that the association between happiness and probity is income dependent. A novel feature of the empirical model is that the estimated income cutoff levels are endogenously determined. That is, income thresholds are not pre-determined. The authors also test for the robustness of the results by addressing the issue of potential endogeneity of corruption.

Studies on the determinants of remittances focus primarily on a single country or undertake cross‐country analyses using aggregate data. By comparison, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the determinants of remittances from multiple host to multiple destination countries. To address this deficiency, the purpose of this paper is to use a novel dataset which captures these bilateral flows.

The paper concentrates on three sets of explanatory variables: those which characterize the pair relationship, those that pertain to migrants' host country, and those related to the migrants' home country.

Cultural and political factors play a fundamental role. Altruism is not key in migrant remittances; investment motives are more important. Bilateral aid inflows bear a direct relationship to remittances. The marginal effect of happiness (in migrants' host and home countries) on remittances is positive for a large percentage of countries in the sample.

Results nullify the oft‐asserted role of remittances in assisting with adverse economic conditions, such as inflation. They also identify a possible nexus between remittances and foreign aid – a link that heretofore has not been identified or discussed in the literature or recognized by policy‐makers.

The contribution of the paper is its use of bilateral data to present evidence on remittances capturing not only North‐South, but also South‐South flows. The paper also contributes to the literature by considering, for the first time, some additional variables as potential determinants of remittances, chief among them the level of happiness of migrants' host and home countries, as well as the level of aid disbursed to migrants' home country.

The purpose of this paper is motivated by research-based assertions that: the causes of economic growth in countries like India are not well understood; they are not elucidated by using simple bivariate relationships between economic growth and other variables, taken one at a time; and dynamic linkages between growth, trade openness and financial sector depth are required for any comprehensive treatment of this inquiry.

This paper investigates the pivotal role of financial depth (defined as the relative importance in the economy of the banking sector or the stock market) and whether it bears any evidential relationship to trade openness and economic growth during the era of Indian post-globalization since 1990. Two key objectives are to uncover whether there is a long-run relationship between the variables and whether they can be said to cause one another. Autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bounds testing procedures and vector autoregressive error correction model (VECM) approaches were used to derive the results.

This paper affirms that the variables are indeed formally cointegrated. It was also found that trade openness, economic growth and financial sector depth Granger-cause each other.

This paper demonstrates that greater trade openness can predictably accelerate India’s economic growth. If policymakers wish to maintain sustainable economic growth in India, they can do so by encouraging both freer trade and financial market development in the long run.

No investigation of this type and sophistication has hitherto been performed for India. The methods developed for this study can also be applied to any of the vast range of countries for which dynamic growth-openness-financial depth interactions have not already been investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of causal relations between banking sector maturity, stock market maturity, and four aspects of performance and operation of the economy: economic growth, inflation, openness in trade, and the degree of government involvement in the economy.

The authors look for possible links between the variables by conducting panel cointegration and causality tests, using a large sample of Asian countries over the period 1960-2011. Novel panel data estimation methods allow for robust estimates, using both variation between countries and variation over time.

The study identifies interesting causal links among the variables deriving uniquely from our innovations. In particular, The paper finds that for all regions considered, banking sector maturity and stock market maturity are causally linked, sometimes in both directions. Furthermore, stock market maturity may lead to economic growth, both directly and indirectly through indicators such as inflation and trade openness. The findings also support the notion that economic growth affects the maturity of the stock market in most regions.

The results lend support to the notion that a mature financial sector is a key contributor to generating economic growth. Furthermore, economic growth itself has the potential to bring about maturity in the financial sector.

The paper uses sophisticated principal-component analysis, panel cointegration, and Granger causality tests, methods not used in this literature before. The method was applied to recent data pertaining to 35 Asian countries – a group of countries that has previously not been adopted in this literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of international remittances on financial development in developing countries.

The focus is on a panel of 124 developing countries for the period 1990–2015. The empirical evidence is based on the instrumental variable-fixed effect model.

Results obtained in this study indicate that a 10 percent increase in the remittance to GDP ratio leads to 1.7 percent increase in domestic credit to private sector, 1.9 percent increase in bank credit, 1.2 percent increase in bank deposit, and 0.8 percent increase in liquid liabilities. The positive impact of remittances on financial development in developing countries is particularly important because financial development fosters long-run growth and reduces poverty.

To address the endogeneity of remittances, the study estimates bilateral remittances and use them to create weighted gross national income per capita and real interest rates of remittance-sending countries. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to assess the endogeneity of remittances in this way.