Recently, the extent to which economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects exchange rate movements has been an important research question. Therefore, this paper examines the effects of both economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and the volatility index (VIX) on exchange rates for the case of four countries, which recorded the highest number of deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we use the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction model, developed within an ARDL model. The findings show that: (i) during the pre-pandemic period, the co-integration tests showed that there is a positive effect of the VIX index on the Brazilian real in the long run. Likewise, there is a positive effect of the volatility index on the exchange rates of both the Indian rupee and the Swedish krona during the pandemic period, as well as between the volatility index and the Indian rupee before and during the COVID-19. Regarding the effect of EPU on the exchange rates, we found that during the pre-pandemic period there was no statistically significant effect for the four countries, while during the pandemic period, there is a positive relationship between the EPU and the Brazilian reals. While the case of the before and during the COVID-19, we find that there is a positive relationship between the EPU index and the exchange rates of both the Indian rupees and Mexican new pesos. (ii) we note that the error correction coefficients for the period before the outbreak of the epidemic are lower than during the pandemic period. Specifically, the exchange rate correction in the epidemic period is faster than in the period preceding the outbreak of the epidemic. This indicates that before a pandemic period is more vulnerable to fundamental shocks. (iii) the impact of the VIX shock is greater than the EPU shock. Our results offer practical implications for policymakers and investors. 

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between economic growth and financial development for the period 1980 - 2017 in Upper-Middle-Income countries by employing panel (FMOLS, DOLS and GMM) and panel Granger-causality tests by Toda–Yamamoto. The results confirmed that domestic credit to private sector (percentage of GDP) and broad money (percentage of GDP) have a positive effect on economic growth. As a result, it can be said that financial development accelerates economic growth. In addition, the results showed that unidirectional causality running from economic growth to financial development in the countries of Jordan, Morocco, Belize, Botswana, China, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru, and Thailand. While, the unidirectional causal relationship is running from financial development to growth in the countries of Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, South Africa and Turkey. In contrast, there is no causal relationship in Oman, Tunisia, Brazil, Mauritius and Mexico. 

In this paper, we examine the intertemporal causal relationship between economic growth and energy consumption in the selected sixteen the Middle East and North Africa countries by annual data (1985–2016). Unlike the majority of the previous studies and as an alternative to the conventional method of having the same integration of time series and large samples, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test approach and causality analysis were applied by Toda & Yamamoto (1995). The results of the bounds test show that there is a stable long run relationship between economic growth and total final energy consumption. On the other hand, the results of the causality test, show that there is a unidirectional causal flow from economic growth to total energy consumption that energy conservation policies may not unfavourable effects on economic growth. Overall, these countries meet the conservation hypothesis which means that the causal aspect is unidirectional from economic growth to total final energy consumption and that energy conservation policies will have little or no negative impact on growth in these energy-dependent countries

This paper aims to explore the relationship between economic growth and financial development of the MENA countries over the period 1990 to 2015. The results of the fixed and random effect tests showed that there is a negative relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth, but their impact on oil-importing countries is greater than that of oil-exporting countries. While the impact of domestic credit to the private sector has a positive affect economic growth, it appears that its impact on oil-importing countries is greater than that on oil exporting. In addition, the unidirectional causality stems from growth to domestic credit in long run, the bidirectional causality between economic growth and renewable energy consumption in the MENA. In the case of oil-importing countries, there is no causal relationship between the variables, whereas for the oil-exporting countries there is a unidirectional causality that extends from real GDP to domestic credit, as well as from renewable energy consumption to real GDP. In addition, there is unidirectional causality that stems from the domestic credit to energy consumption. These results indicate that the MENA countries are an economy independent of energy and that economic growth is crucial in providing the resources necessary for sustainable development.

The current study has been conducted to understand the organizational commitment levels of the teachers, who are currently working at the Libyan schools, which are operating in Turkey based on their different personal factors (gender, marital status, age and length of service). This data set has been collected by asking 116 teachers to fill-in questionnaires. The mentioned teachers are currently working for 10 Libyan schools operating in Turkey. The questionnaire includes the first part consisting of demographic questions while its second part deals with the questions pertaining to the teachers’ organizational commitment levels. In order to measure the teachers’ personal factors like seniority, gender, age, and marital status, the first part has been carefully designed. In the second part, eighteen organizational commitment assessment items were selected for measuring the teachers’ organizational commitment levels. For this purpose, we applied an already tried and tested scale, which was originally developed by Allen, Smith and Meyer (1993), so as to test the four hypotheses. According to our one-way variance analysis, the mean scores obtained for the teachers showed significant differences in organizational commitment when variables like marital status and age were taken as independent variables.

This paper studies the impact of global oil price fluctuations on global exchange rates of the dollar against the euro (USD/EUR), using the bounds testing approach method to test co-integration, error correction model, in the framework of the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) by Pesaran et al. (2001) during the period from 1990 to 2016. Moreover, the results of the analysis showed a positive balance relationship between the two variables in the long and short term. On the other hand, our estimates suggest that, 1% depreciation in the dollar leads to 0.58 rises in the oil price in the long run. The error correction results show that coefficient of (ECM) = -0.43, imply that deviation from the long-term exchange rate is corrected by 43% by the following year. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher recommended the need for coordination between movements of oil prices and financial policy for what needs economic political mechanism of delicate balance.

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of price shocks on economic growth in Libya using a sample of annual observations from 1990 to 2016. We apply autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models for the analysis of long-run relations between variables. Our estimates suggest that oil price increases have a statistically significant and positive effect on the economic growth of Libya. However, that the positive change 1% in the shock of crude oil prices has a positive impact on Libya's GDP by 0.29%. In addition, the error correction (ECM) results showed that 68% of the imbalance from the previous year's shock converges to the long-term equilibrium in the current year. Overall, the results indicate that crude oil prices have had a positive impact on economic growth in the long-term, while trade openness and imports have had a negative impact on economic growth. Finally, to overcome the impact of fluctuations in oil prices, long-term plans should be initiated to diversify the Libyan economy and gradually reduce dependence on the oil.

This paper examines how oil price shocks affect the Libyan economicgrowth over the period from 1990 to 2016. Using the autoregressive distributedlag (ARDL) bounds test, the study finds that oil price changes affect theLibyan economic growth. Oil prices are important in explaining GDP movements.Moreover, this test suggests that oil price has a long-term positive impact oneconomic growth. Our empirical results indicate a two-way causal relationshipbetween oil prices and GDP, while a one-way causal relationship arises fromimports and trade openness to oil prices. However, oil price shocks do notappear to have a statistically significant effect on the trade balance. Theresult shows that the country should formulate appropriate energy conservationpolicies taking into cognizance of her peculiar condition.