The role of local financial market on economic growth: A sample of three African economic groupings

Abstract

Capital market development has been identified as one of the critical underpinnings of economic growth, in the developed but more essentially in the developing economies. Evidence abounds on the virtues of adequately spanned capital markets to provide requisite capital needed to fund investment activities as well as infrastructural developments. Although, foreign capital may be sourced to supplement inadequate local capital base, the associated costs (both logistics and supervisory) are generally daring to consider as convenient alternatives. Various studies have examined the role of local financial market development on economic growth, but none have strictly generated a combined focus on the three major African groupings ? the Southern, the Western and the Northern African regions. In addition, there is no documented study that has compared the economic performance of each of these three major economic groupings in Africa. The purpose of this paper is to fill these voids... Using...