Browsing by Author "Frimpong, Prince Boakye"

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    Effect of oil price volatility on the trade balance in sub-Saharan Africa
    (OPEC Energy Review, 2022-09) Forson, Priscilla; Dramani, John Bosco; Frimpong, Prince Boakye; Arthur, Eric; Sulemana, Mahawiya; 0000-0002-4863-7065; 0000-0002-3640-2664; 0000-0002-2829-9257; 0000-0003-2327-1797; 0000-0003-2281-3590
    Crude oil price volatility as an important driver of the trade balance of economies has been widely documented in the literature. However, studies on the effect of oil price volatility on the trade balance in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) are limited. In this paper, we explore the effect of crude oil price volatility on the trade balance across 34 SSA countries using Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Common Correlated Effect Pooled Mean Group (CCEPMG) estimators for the period January 2004 to December 2017. We find that crude oil price volatility exerts a negative effect on the trade balance of SSA countries. We further demonstrate that inflation, interest rates and exchange rates are significant transmission channels for oil price volatility to impact trade balance. We suggest that policymakers hedge as well as adopt price-smoothing schemes to minimise the volatility of oil prices on trade balance. Again, countries should adopt an inflation-targeting regime to ensure the stability of the general price level. Finally, central banks of the respective countries should apply a combination of foreign exchange market interventions and interest rate changes to reduce the effect of oil price volatility on their trade balance when the exchange rate is taken into account.
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    Modelling the informal sector and energy consumption in Ghana
    (Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2022) Dramani, John Bosco; Frimpong, Prince Boakye; Ofori-Mensah, Kwame Ansere; 0000-0002-3640-2664; 0000-0002-2829-9257; 0000-0002-0486-1575
    The International Monetary Fund (2017) defines the informal sector as unrecorded economic activities that possess monetary value and contribute to tax revenue and gross domestic product. This sector accounts for a huge percentage of economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa and given the numerous regulations on the formal sector it may grow further. Since the activities of the informal sector are unrecorded, how does its energy demand affect national energy demand? In answering this question, we rely on the autoregressive distributed lag esti mation technique to quantify the effect of the informal sector on energy consumption. We find that the informal sector exerts a 0.055% adverse effect on energy consumption. Further, we find that education, employment, and foreign direct investment are channels through which the informal sector affects energy consumption. The findings have relevant policy implications. First, since the growth of the informal sector decreases energy consumption, the economies of developing countries should be formalized to spur industrial energy consumption. Second, the national energy policies of Ghana and other developing countries should take into consideration the characteristics of the informal sector in conducting projections of energy demand.