TITLE:
Financial Innovation in Sierra Leone: Is the Money Demand Still Stable?
AUTHORS:
Morlai Bangura, Isatu Kargbo, Sandy Pessima
KEYWORDS:
Money Demand, Financial Innovation, ARDL
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.13 No.3,
March
17,
2022
ABSTRACT: This study seeks to examine the stability of the
money demand function in Sierra Leone taking into account financial innovation
and structural break for the period 1980 to 2016 using the autoregressive
distributed lag (ARDL) framework. The empirical results show that there is a
unique cointegrated and stable long-run relationship among real broad money and
its determinants. The estimated
results also revealed that in the long-run, financial innovation, real income,
inflation rate and exchange rate significantly impact real money balances in
Sierra Leone. Specifically, financial innovation has a negative relationship
with real money balances. This implies that financial innovation is crucial in
explaining money demand in Sierra Leone, given that financial innovations are
becoming more prominent in aiding financial intermediation. In the short-run,
only financial innovation and inflation have an impact on real money balance. All
the other variables in the model are not statistically significant. Finally,
the CUSUM and CUSUMSQ tests revealed that demand for real money balances in Sierra Leone is stable, despite the
inclusion of financial innovation and accounting for structural break.