Does political risk matter for infrastructure investments? Empirical evidence

Infrastructure assets are vital for economic development and integration, but they also encompass political risks. In Africa, infrastructure assets have remained a paradox where there is great potential for opportunities but very few projects get to the final phases. Adequate infrastructure can propagate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals whilst supporting recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing from a longitudinal data set from 2000 to 2021 for 35 African countries, the paper empirically examined the nexus between infrastructure and political risk. Several techniques were employed to determine the dynamic effect, cointegration and causality between infrastructure and political risk. Controlling for the potential endogeneity in infrastructure the system Generalized Method of Moments, the relationship between political risk and infrastructure was ascertained. Furthermore, the ARDL-PMG was employed to determine the cointegration and causal relationship between infrastructure and political risk. The results suggest a cointegration between infrastructure assets and political risk. Infrastructure adjusts to changes in political risk to its long-run equilibrium at a speed of adjustment of 16.9 per cent. Bridging infrastructure gaps in Africa requires an extensive set of actions. Thus, the policy derivatives of our findings, suggest controlling the proliferation of political risk to support infrastructure investment. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

COVID-19 and Stock Market Liquidity: An Analysis of Emerging and Developed Markets

Using a panel of indices for five developed market and five emerging markets for the period from 31 December 2019 to 19 June 2020, the relationship between stock market liquidity and COVID-19 pandemic is examined. The study is the first to interrogate nexus using three measures of liquidity, the percentage spread, market depth and Amihud's (2002) ILLIQ measure. The pandemic is a global health condition with financial market implications, the results indicate that, stock market liquidity improved as we found a negative and significant relationship between illiquidity and COVID-19 across all the liquidity measures in all markets. However, improvements in stock market liquidity were more prevalent in developed markets relative to emerging markets. The results show that volatility negatively affected liquidity when illiquidity was measured by spread. Future research should focus on the impact of quantitative easing on stock markets liquidity during market turmoil.