In the Southern African Development Community, the relationships between exchange rate instability, inflation and economic growth remain at the forefront of economic debate because of the historical antecedent and economic clustering of member countries. Nonetheless, much is not known regarding the complexity, complementarity or substitutability of exchange rate instability and inflation on economic growth for SADC countries. This article examined the influence of exchange rate instability on the inflation–growth nexus of the region for the period of 2000 to 2018. Three major techniques of analyses, Pooled Mean Group (PMG), Generalised Moments (GM) and Dynamic Fixed Effect (DFE), were employed in achieving the goal of the study, but the Pooled Mean Group estimator of the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag was favoured by the Hausman test as the main instrument. The GARCH (1, 1) was also employed to generate exchange rate instability. The findings of the study showed that exchange rate instability and inflation have a negative relationship with economic growth of the region. Results further show evidence that economic growth of the region is adversely influenced by the consequential effect of exchange rate instability on inflation: the higher the level of instability in exchange rate, the worse the inflationary-growth relationship of the region. This confirms the menu cost theory of price setting: the higher the rate of inflation, the quicker the exchange rate pass-through effect. It is therefore recommended that policies to ensure appreciation of local currencies should be the priority of member nations.

Resulting from the incessant political and economic uncertainty that bedevils the EAC region in the recent past, the various governments have used monetary policy changes in response to shocks from macroeconomic variables. However, the available literature shows a non-agreement by scholars as far as the dynamics in monetary policy, external shocks and macroeconomic activity connections are concerned, for both country-by-country analyses and regional assessments. This article widens the frontiers of knowledge about how the dynamics of monetary policy, external shocks and macroeconomic performance interact within the EAC economic region. We adopted the S-VAR method because of its contemporary nature as far as a transmission of monetary policy approach is concerned. The interconnectivity among the countries of EAC is an indication that any shock to the price of commodities (non-oil commodities) has significant implication on the exchange rate, which will be channelled through the supply of money and monetary policy to the GDP. The need to diversify the productive and export base of member countries, compared to the continuous dependence on one or a few products as the major source of income, is hereby advocated.

Purpose: This paper investigates the endogenous relationships between banking performance and social welfare in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive three-stage multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach based on alternative informational assumptions is applied.Findings: Results indicate that banking performance is paradoxically associated with stagnant economic activity and higher wealth concentration for the minority. The authors found that SADC banking performance promotes higher Human Development Index (HDI) standards possibly via efficient financial intermediation, dissemination of best managerial practices and other forms of positive spillovers in these countries.Originality/value: This paper contributes to the MCDM literature by simultaneously exploring the key concepts of “utility functions” (using COPRAS) and “distance to ideal solutions” (using TOPSIS) in mapping and explaining the feedback and cause-effect processes between banking performance and social welfare that may exist. Another distinctive aspect is related to the computation of bias-free criteria weights, using a robust SWARA order-rank based on information entropy. Finally, this paper is concerning the endogeneity measurement, using a novel stochastic structural relationship non-linear programme.

Purpose: This study is a pre-COVID-19 exposition of the existing situation about external debt-GDP relationship, incorporating corruption into the hypothesis, making South Africa the object of the study. The aim is to examine the causal relationship between corruption, economic growth and external debt, and in the end proffer solutions to the problems arising therefrom.Design/methodology/approach: The study employed ARDL technique on time series data running from 1990 to 2019 with real gross domestic product as the dependent variable and external debt, external debt servicing, corruption, inflation and capital formation as regressors. Necessary tests that include unit root, cointegration, CUSUM and CUSUMSq, normality, serial correlation and heteroscedasticity were performed on the model.Findings: The study shows that corruption, inflation and external debt servicing exert negative influences on economic growth while the effect of investment on growth was positive. External debt's effect in the short run was positive while its long-run effect on growth was negative. Among other things, the need to improve and strengthen public institutions in addition to targeting tax evaders and avoiders for increased government revenue were emphasized.Originality/value: The study incorporates corruption into the country specific debt-GDP debate as against earlier studies that excluded corruption in their time series analysis or that were cross-country based. The authors also exposit the existing knowledge of the debt-GDP hypothesis before the outbreak of COVID 19 pandemic. This is expected to serve as a precursor to subsequent studies on the rising debt of South Africa during and after the pandemic.