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Israel’s gender wage gap is substantially larger than the OECD average, and it has been trending upward over the past decade. This study finds that the gender gap in monthly wages of employees at the outset of their careers, a stage when people are also forming and expanding their families, reaches 33%. The lion’s share of this disparity can be attributed to family attributes. Marriage and the birth of children greatly widen the gender
wage gap, as they reinforce the tendency toward specialisation within the household, with the mother taking more responsibility for housework and most of the breadwinning burden falling on the father. Consequently, women tend to choose employment that is less remunerative but more conducive to integrating career and family life – a choice that may also impact earlier decisions on fields of study in school, which then limit career options downstream. A relatively small share of the disparity, 4.5 percentage points, can be explained by gender differences in fields of study and employment sectors. Although the issue is not one of lower abilities among girls, female pupils study math and science – fields that lead to relatively higher-wage employment – at lower levels in upper secondary schools than their male counterparts, which reduces their subsequent likelihood to study these subjects at the academic level. Women are more likely to be employed in the service industries than in the manufacturing and infrastructure industries, where wages are higher. To the extent that women’s choice of study subjects arises from normative biases transmitted to them by their parents, teachers, and society at large, it is important that this issue be understood and rectified. Girls should be encouraged to study math and science at higher levels, both in secondary school and in higher education. This needs to be supplemented by a major improvement in Israel’s early childhood education system – first and foremost for the children, but also in terms of availability and cost for mothers wanting to work more hours. It is also recommended that paternity leave be instituted, and that tax benefits and the “work grant” (also commonly known as the negative income tax) for young mothers be increased.

This study investigates the impact of external debt servicing on capital expenditure in Nigeria over the period spanning 1981 to 2024. The study utilised the ARDL framework for analysis, with findings showing that
external debt servicing impacts negatively and significantly on capital expenditure in the short-run. It is also revealed that in both the short-run and the long-run, the inflation rate impacts positively and significantly on
capital expenditure, while the impact of reserves is positive and significant only after a one-period lag. The study’s outcome implies that servicing external debt in Nigeria drains the resources that should be channelled into
infrastructural facilities necessary to stimulate economic growth. Consequently, it is recommended that fiscal authorities should prioritise an improvement in the budget for capital expenditure, while observing fiscal responsibility. It is also recommended that there is a need to reduce the external component of the debt so that exchange rate shocks do not affect future debt repayment.

Keywords: External debt; exchange rate; capital expenditure; ARDL.

Fiscal deficit and declining real GDP growth rate in West Africa are some of the fundamental challenges facing the region. This study examines the impact of fiscal deficit on economic growth in selected West African countries (Ghana, Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau) from 1991 to 2022. Anchored on the Keynesian fiscal deficit and the endogenous growth theories, the study employs panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag Pooled Mean Group (ARDL-PMG) for the joint dynamic effects. The empirical results indicate that fiscal deficit exerts a positive, statistically significant joint impact on
economic growth in the long-run; specifically, a 1 per cent point increase in the fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio leads to a 0.43 per cent point increase in economic growth. Conversely, human capital development, investment,
openness, foreign direct investment and exchange rates are insignificant in both the short run and long run. However, the outcome of the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) robustness check validates the growthenhancing role of most of the control variables, except foreign direct investment. The study concludes that since fiscal deficit can stimulate economic growth, it should be channelled to productive capital investments
instead of recurrent expenditure. Hence, the study recommends the implementation of countercyclical fiscal policy, boosting domestic production for export and pursuing deficit-financing that aligns with ECOWAS convergence criteria.

Keywords: ARDL-PMG, Economic Growth, ECOWAS, Fiscal Deficit, West Africa.
JEL Classification: H30, H68, O11, O47.

The FinTech revolution, after the global health shock in 2019, has changed the financial landscape in the world by breaching the traditional banking territory. In India, this revolution has provided diverse platforms for easy, fast and convenient financial transactions. This paper investigates the democratisation of financial services through the lens of accessibility, people’s participation and the opportunities it provides to common people. It investigates various roles of FinTech, more specifically delving into Unified Payments Service (UPI) transactions between 2017 and 2026, using a loglinear regression model. The results indicate an upward trend, and average use is high after the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, this paper explores the transaction risks associated with these services.

Keywords: FinTech, UPI, Democratisation of Finance and Transaction Risks.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the influence of behavioural factors, namely risk tolerance and trust in financial institutions, on investment decision-making among individual investors. Furthermore,
the study investigates the mediating role of trust in financial institutions in the relationship between risk tolerance and investment decision-making. Data were collected from 345 individual investors through purposive
sampling. Smart PLS 4.0 was used for data analysis. The findings suggested that risk tolerance is positively associated with investment decision-making. Similarly, trust in financial institutions also demonstrated a significant and positive impact on investment decision-making. Moreover, the results revealed that trust in financial institutions partially mediates the relationship between risk tolerance and investment decision-making, underscoring its importance in shaping investors’ financial behaviour.

Keywords: Behavioural finance, risk tolerance, trust in financial institutions, investment decision-making, individual investor.