Magister Commercii - MCom / South Africa's unique colonial history, apartheid legacy, and ongoing transition to democratic governance drive the country's determination to attain its development objectives. Embedded in that determination is a broad social and .environmental public benefits agenda-that is, a sustainable economic development agenda. Public benefits include, inter alia, banking access, black economic empowerment and financial sector stability and efficiency. "

Masters of Commerce / The literature on financial inclusion and poverty connections has received considerable attention recently. There exist a scarcity of local studies examining the relationship between financial inclusion (FI) and poverty. Precisely, there is a lack of local studies who previously used FinScope data to investigate the mentioned relationship in South Africa. This study is motivated to fill the gap. To achieve the aims, the study will source data from FinScope (a secondary data) for the periods of 2011 and 2016. The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke indices were used to measure the level of poverty, while the lower-bound poverty (LBPL) line was used to differentiate the poor from the non-poor. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was also applied to derive the financial inclusion index (FII). Probit regressions were run to measure the likelihood of being poor and being financially excluded. Ordinary Least Squares were run to identify the nature of the relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. Lastly, bivariate regression was also run to test the relationship between poverty and financial exclusion. The empirical findings indicated that the South African financial system is inclusive. Unemployment and financial language restricted financial service access. The frequently used financial services were borrowing and funeral cover. Black African female with low education residing in rural areas and unemployed were poorer. The rich elderly white man from the urban areas of the Western Cape and Gauteng who are highly educated, were more likely to be financially included. The regression analysis showed that the female was more likely to be financially included yet poor. It is also found that Gauteng residents were less likely to be poor. Also, individuals from a bigger household were less likely to be excluded. The other results showed that individuals with higher real per capita income enjoyed much lower probability of being financially excluded, and they are mainly white individuals living in urban areas.

This paper examines the relationship between financial development and poverty fora sample of SSA countries while taking into account an interaction effect between thefinancial sector and the institutional framework, which is thought to be causing someomitted variable bias in previous studies. The study covers the period 2000–2019.These relationships are investigated using fixed effects. The results show thatfinancial development had a statistically significant and positive impact on povertyreduction. Also, the estimates reveal that institutional quality has a significant andpositive impact on poverty reduction. However, it was discovered that whereinstitutions perform better, the pro-poor impact of financial development is alsobetter. These findings support the theory that finance, and institutions have acomplementary effect. The study recommends, amongst others, that a judiciousallocation of resources between financial development and strengthening the qualityof institutions will be critical to reducing poverty and boosting economic growth inthe region.

This study empirically examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in Nigeria. It employs statistical techniques such as the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach as well as a short and long run Granger Causality test on time series data spanning from 1960-2016. Empirical results reveal that the financial development indicators have a long run relationship with economic growth in Nigeria and the existence of unidirectional and bidirectional Granger causality was also discovered. This study recommends that policy should be geared towards promoting financial development in the country as well as encouraging more financial depth and openness – in order to foster economic growth in Nigeria.

This paper investigates the effect of financial development on income inequality in 20 African countries. Theory and a growing number of empirical studies suggest that the former exerts a negative impact on the latter by enabling low-income holders to undertake income-enhancing education and business investments, thereby promoting a tighter income distribution. However, using the share of GDP constituted by domestic credit to the private sector and broad money respectively as proxies for financial development, the results of this study fail to give significant evidence of this income-equalising effect. Given the heterogeneous nature of the economies studied here and the fact that data quality and quantity improve over time, it is believed that country-specific studies and future research can offer more conclusive results on how financial development influences income distribution in the African context. This would also provide a stronger foundation for policy recommendations in the continent’s plight to address the persistent high levels of income inequality.

El presente trabajo analiza la existencia de un vínculo entre el crédito privado empleado como proxy de desarrollo financiero y el comercio exterior, para ello usa un panel de datos de 9 años para 94 países. Los resultados obtenidos mediante el método generalizado de momento revelan que el crédito tiene un efecto positivo y significativo en la apertura comercial. Además, se encuentra una relación no lineal entre el crédito privado y el comercio internacional el cual demuestra que cuando los países superan cierto umbral crediticio el efecto del crédito en la apertura comercial deja de ser eficiente. Finalmente, se confirma un efecto diferenciado y adicional del crédito privado en la apertura comercial para países desarrollados. No obstante, se encuentra que los países en desarrollo, con sistemas financieros en progreso, tienen una brecha mayor para su crecimiento a diferencia de los países desarrollados con sistemas financieros avanzados. Dichos resultados tienen relevancia económica en tanto contribuyen a formular políticas económicas que incrementan la cantidad y calidad de crédito privado con el fin de mantener un nivel considerable de comercio exterior lo que contribuirá positivamente al producto bruto interno de cada país. / This paper analyzes the existence of a possible link between private credit used as a proxy for financial development and foreign trade in a nine-year data panel for ninety-four countries. The results obtained using the generalized method of moments reveal that credit has a positive and significant effect on trade openness. Furthermore, there is a non-linear relationship between private credit and international trade, which shows that when countries exceed a certain credit threshold, the effect of credit on trade liberalization ceases to be efficient. Finally, a differentiated and additional effect of private credit on trade openness for developed countries was confirmed. However, it is found that developing countries with financial systems in progress have a greater gap for their growth than developed countries with advanced financial systems. These results are economically relevant as they contribute to a form of economic policies that increase the quantity and quality of private credit in order to maintain a considerable level of foreign trade, which contribute positively to each country's gross domestic product. / Trabajo de investigación

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