This study explores how global economic policy uncertainty (EPU) shocks comove with stock returns (SR) of eight African countries—Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zambia. The study employed daily data from December 2010 to December 2019 using wavelet coherence analysis. The results showed that global EPU comoves with most of the SR of African markets and was concentrated in the longer term, especially during the period between 2011 and 2019, although not substantially. The findings indicate that short-term investments in African stocks are less susceptible to global economic policy uncertainty. It is recommended that foreign investors could hedge agaist policy uncertainties by investing in stock listed in African Stock exchanges while appropriate country-level policies are deployed to manage long-term effect of EPU.

This study provides an analysis of chaotic information transmission from the COVID-19 pandemic to global equity markets in a novel denoised frequency domain entropy framework. The current length of the pandemic data offers the opportunity to examine its role in the asymmetric behaviour patterns of investors according to time horizons and the diversification potentials available to them. We employ the total daily global confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 27 equity indices from December 31, 2019, to April 18, 2021. Our results corroborate the idea that diversification potentials are stronger in the short to medium term. The Global Index (higher risk) and Canada and New Zealand (lower risk) remain at both ends to pair some other equities to offer diversification prospects because of the transmission of information from COVID-19 to the selected equity markets. In addition, we provide the source of these diversification prospects as information flow rather than transmission of shocks, which is common in the literature. Furthermore, our results suggest detailed levels of risk (lower vis-à-vis higher) in the situation where they have been stripped of the noise in the market. The findings allow both investors and policymakers to make informed decisions based on the time horizons since the pandemic communicates different chaotic information with the lapse of time. This is imperative to avoid the negative consequences of the increasing infection rate on global stock markets.

This paper employed wavelet coherence and partial wavelet coherence to investigate the time‐frequency effect of global economic policy uncertainty on the comovement of five agricultural commodities such as maize, oat, rice, soybean, and wheat using monthly data from January 1997 to December 2019. In general, we observed heterogeneity in comovement structures of the agricultural commodities market at different time‐frequency scales which are profound at high frequencies from the bivariate wavelet coherence. The partial wavelet coherence analysis shows that global economic policy uncertainty is a driver of agricultural commodity market connectedness. This implies that extreme changes in economic policy uncertainty have the tendency to influence commodity price comovement. This poses risk to the stability of the agricultural commodities market, which requires the policymaker’s intervention to protect against the spillover risk contagion effect in uncertain times.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the gender disparity in financial literacy among retirees in the Cape Coast metropolis in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach: The finding of this paper is based on 334 respondents (183 males and 151 females) to financial literacy questionnaires covering the respondents’ general knowledge on budgeting, use of automated teller machine, time value of money, account types, cheque handling and insurance. Data were analysed with Pearson χ² and independent sample t-test. Findings: Nominal scores showed that male domination in financial literacy in seven out of the ten questions used to assess financial literacy while female retirees lead in three. These observed nominal differences were, however, found not to be significant through χ² test of independence except the question on the calculation of interest rate on loans in favour of males. The cumulative effect, through computation of financial literacy index was deemed to be significantly different between males and females, favouring males, using independent sampled t-test. Practical implications: The implication is that older men continue to have their financial literacy hegemony perpetually and are stronger in computational ability. It suggests that policy responses to address gender disparity in financial literacy should work more on computational ability of females. Originality/value: There is no known study of financial literacy related to gender disparity in Ghana.

Owing to the adverse impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on world economies, it is expected that information flows between commodities and uncertainties have been transformed. Accordingly, the resulting twisted risk among commodities and related uncertainties is presumed to rise during stressed market conditions. Therefore, investors feel pressured to find safe haven investments during the pandemic. For this reason, we model a mixture of asymmetric and non‐linear bi‐directional causality between global commodities and uncertainties at different frequencies through the information flow theory. Consequently, we utilise the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) and the Rényi effective transfer entropy techniques to establish the dynamic flow of information. The intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) from the CEEMDAN are carefully extracted into multi‐frequencies through cluster analysis to reconstruct the series into high, medium, and low frequencies in addition to the residue. We utilise daily data from December 31^st, 2019, to March 31^st, 2021, to provide insights into the COVID‐19 pandemic. The correlation coefficients and variances demonstrate that the high frequency (IMFs 1–4) which measures the short‐term dynamics is the dominant frequency, suggesting short‐lived market fluctuations relative to real economic growth for institutional investors. Moreover, outcomes from the multi‐frequency entropy indicate a negative bi‐directional causality of information flow between global commodities and uncertainties, especially in the long term. Generally, the findings present pertinent inferences for portfolio diversification, policy decisions, and risk management schemes for global commodities and markets volatilities. We, therefore, advocate that market volatilities act as effective hedges for global commodities, and they clearly act as balancing assets rather than substitutes in the long‐term dynamics of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Investors who delayed in investing within financial markets of commodities and market volatilities are likely to minimise their portfolio risks.

This paper analyses the US dollar exchange rate pass‐through to consumer prices in Ghana from January 1990 to January 2020 using the empirical mode decomposition‐based nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags model (EMD‐NARDL). This model eliminates the noise component of the underlying data and captures the short‐ and long‐run nonlinearities. We find evidence of cointegration between denoised series of consumer prices and exchange rate and asymmetric pass‐through in both the short‐ and long‐run. Specifically, exchange rate pass‐through was found to be in the long‐run incomplete in the period of depreciation and statistically zero pass‐through in the period of appreciation. In the short‐run, the exchange rate pass‐through in periods of depreciation is near complete; that is, 81% against 74% in periods of appreciation. We recommend that monetary authorities consistently monitor exchange rate behaviour and maintain efficient exchange rate management policies to ensure stable consumer prices. This could be achieved through proper and timely policy interventions using the available monetary policy tools such as foreign exchange reserves.