This study aimed to analyse financial liberalisation, political stability, and economic determinants of Kenya’s real economic growth using time series data over the period of 1970–2016. The authors specified quadratic and interactive models to be estimated by employing a quantile regression analysis. The traditional and quantile unit root test was used in testing the stationarity issue. The co-integration findings indicated that the capital account openness and financial development impede on real economic growth; and the political stability also had potential influence on the real economic growth of Kenya. Interestingly, there is a nonlinear U-shape link between financial development and real economic growth that undermined the real economic growth at its onset, but as it advanced, it enhanced the growth of the country in the long run. The policymakers should ensure that the capital account is more liberalised so that it will continue to stimulate the financial development. In the same way, the liberalisation of the domestic financial market should be taken in earnest to overcome the negative effects of financial repression in totality, while maintaining the stable political atmosphere.

This study attempted to develop a happiness index tool for evaluating rehabilitation initiatives used to reinstate returnees at district Swat, Pakistan. The Happiness Index (HI) tool compares two periods, i.e., HI before rehabilitation (BR) and HI after rehabilitation (AR). The returnees’ happiness index (RHI) is also compared with Pakistan’s Happiness Index to identify the difference. Data for this study were elicited from 382 respondents through a structured survey questionnaire. The results show that after rehabilitation (AR), the returnees’ happiness index improved from 3.89 to 5.36, which is still less than the world happiness index of Pakistan, i.e., 5.65 in 2019. This study concluded that rehabilitation projects had a significantly positive impact on the HI of the returnees. However, more effective and sustainable initiatives are required to align the RHI to the HI of Pakistan. Further, the RHI tool adopted by this study is significant for measuring the happiness of the marginalized and affected people in Pakistan and beyond.

The research examined this asymmetric effect between the interrelationship of the interbank rate on the external competitiveness purchasing power represented by the real effective exchange rate for Malaysia and Thailand using monthly data covering the period of 1994 until 2020. The empirical findings confirms an asymmetric effect between interbank rate and real effective exchange rate based on the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag estimates. The research also finds a unidirectional asymmetric causal relationship running from real effective exchange rate on interbank rate Thailand, which indicate the monetary policy has a direct relationship on interbank rate volatility. While in Malaysia, there is no causality running between both variables since the country has proposed several soft monetary policies and more concentrating on the short-term borrowing by improving the tight money supply circulation based on the domestic inflation, global economic, and financial market volatility. Therefore, the research recommends a specific need of monetary stabilizer policy to stabilize both countries’ currencies and put more effort to liberalize the foreign exchange rate system in a globalized economy.

HRMARS is well established journal publisher based in Pakistan. It is publishing prominent journals in social sciences since 2011.

HRMARS is well established journal publisher based in Pakistan. It is publishing prominent journals in social sciences since 2011.