We examine the interrelationship among foreign aid, foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in South-East Asia (SEA) and South Asia (SA) during 1980–2016. The findings from alternative empirical estimations suggest that while foreign aid is negatively associated with FDI as well as growth, FDI positively influences growth. Further, governmental financial assistance to private sector for domestic investment turns out to be important in all empirical estimations insofar as positively associated with FDI flows as well as growth. We, therefore, infer that low-income SEA and SA economies should focus on channelizing governmental financial assistance to private sector for domestic investment, macroeconomic stabilization, trade openness, and efficient utilization of aid flows, in order to attract, absorb and reap the benefits of complementing FDI flows and sustaining higher economic growth.

This paper investigates the impact urbanization, industrialization, corruption, human development, energy consumption, and foreign direct investment (FDI) on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions of 61 developing economies of the global south region of Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the period 1990–2015. The empirical results show that the effect of corruption on CO₂ emissions is indeed heterogeneous and contradictory. Specifically, results exhibit that due to immature economic system, and policy paralysis, corruption penetrates the developing economies, and eventually cause carbon emission and pollution. Furthermore, results reveal that FDI guided by clean development mechanism and involved in emission reduction projects in the developing economies play a predominant role to curb the CO₂ emission, pollution, and environmental degradation.

We employ event study methodology to analyze the impact of unprecedented unconventional monetary policy (UMP) measures employed by the Reserve Bank of India to fortify monetary transmission mechanism and to restore financial stability. We find that the UMP announcements result in a decline in bond yields and yield spread as well as increase in market capitalization and sectoral portfolio of stock returns. Evaluating the relative efficacy of UMP measures, we find that targeted long-term repo operation announcements are more effective in easing bond yields than mere long-term repo operations. Our findings provide beneficial inference for day-traders and investors as asset prices increase significantly and durable goods producing stock returns found to be higher than those of non-durable goods. The lessons that can be drawn for the emerging market economy central banks, who do not have enough space to conduct conventional monetary policy and even when they do not face zero lower bound interest rate, they still can employ UMP tools to directly influence banks cost of funds, and long-term bond yields and interest rates, and in turn, portfolio of stock returns and investments to stimulate aggregate demand. JEL Codes: C13, C54, E52, E65

Commodity and oil price fluctuations have significant bearing on domestic macroeconomic performance and macroeconomic policymaking of an emerging economy. The article explores the impact of non-energy commodity and oil price fluctuations on output, inflation and real exchange rate (RER) in India; and commodity and oil constituting sizeable imports. The empirical analysis carried out through vector error correction model (VECM) for the post-liberalization period 1991–2014 clearly points out that commodity and oil price shocks have a significant impact on the variation in output and prices accounting for RER adjustment and the role of a developed financial market (private credit). The RER adjusts to commodity and oil price shocks, accounting for foreign exchange reserves and financial markets (private credit). The impulse response functions indicate that one standard deviation shock in commodity and oil price persists for three to eight quarters over domestic prices and output. While these results point to lessening of commodity and oil imports through a series of medium and long-term structural-cum-policy reform measures, in the immediate, they also lend a role of intervention by monetary authority (central bank) in pursuit of inflation targeting. Conjointly, pursuance of countercyclical fiscal policy to stabilize domestic output and prices in short run are called for.