Fiscal deficit in sub-saharan Africa: A new intuition from the institution and political drivers.

Motivated by the growing fiscal deficits in sub-Saharan Africa, this study examines fiscal deficit's economic, political, and institutional drivers using a panel of twenty-three sub-Saharan African countries. Panel spatial consistent correlation, dynamic fixed effects autoregressive distributed lag, and feasible generalised ordinary least squares were used as the estimation techniques. Our findings reveal that while per capita income, trade openness, population, and religious tension increase the size of fiscal deficit, bureaucracy quality, government stability, Law and order, and military in politics reduce the extent of fiscal deficit.

Foreign remittances, deprivation and patriotism.

Substantial research evidence have shown the benefits of foreign remittances and patriotism to national growth and human welfare. Also, many studies have established the importance of lower extent of deprivation on economic growth and better well-being. However, little or no research has examined the impact of foreign remittances on subjective personal relative deprivation and patriotism, and impact of deprivation on patriotism in a single study.

The effect of remittance and volatility in remittances on macroeconomic performance in Africa: any lessons for COVID-19?

Premised on the World Bank's projection of a 20% fall in global remittances due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been concerns that remittance-dependent countries may be excessively affected. In this study, we explore the link between remittance, remittance volatility and macroeconomic performance to make a case for the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the study examined the impact of remittance volatility on some macroeconomic variables [real gross domestic product (RGDP), consumption, investment, export and exchange rate] in a panel of seven African countries with the highest remittance-GDP ratio.