PurposeThe paper investigates the determinants of capital structure and the speed of adjustment of capital structure decisions of Nigerian firms.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopts three methods: difference GMM, system GMM and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA).FindingsThe empirical results show that firms' efficiency affects the capital structure decisions of Nigerian firms. At the same time, short-term debt has a higher speed of adjustment in the context of Nigerian firms. The roles of other control variables are established in the paper.Social implicationsNigerian firms should adopt short-term debt in order to achieve their targeted debt levels. Managers of Nigerian firms are also advised to be more efficient in order to attract higher performance.Originality/valueThe paper is the first literature to measure the efficiency of firms using SFA method. Extant studies in the literature have neglected the determinant while four papers that adopt the determinant data envelope analysis (DEA) method. This is also the first study to document the speed of adjustment in capital structure decisions in the context of Nigerian firms.

PurposeThe paper examines whether there is a threshold between financial development and poverty in African economies.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts the innovative dynamic panel threshold model of Seo and Shin (2016) made practicable by Seo et al. (2019)–the model estimates threshold relationship even in the presence of endogeneity. Also, following the recommendations of Cihak et al. (2013) and Sahay et al. (2015), we also adopt a robust measure of financial development based on the four pillars of financial deepening, stability, efficiency and access derived from the principal component analysis (PCA).FindingsThe empirical results show that there exists a threshold level of financial development necessary for poverty reduction in Africa.Research limitations/implicationsOur result is important for policy formulations. First, individual African country must discover the level of financial development necessary for spurring poverty reduction. Second, policymakers, especially in lower-income countries, must keep improving their financial sector development to achieve the threshold level necessary for achieving poverty reduction even though financial development might seem less relevant at its present level.Practical implicationsThe policymakers in Africa should note that there exists a threshold level of financial development that reduces poverty. Hence, the present level of financial development might have not yielded a considerate effect on poverty. Still, the policymakers must keep pushing on until the threshold is achieved.Social implicationsFinancial development reduces poverty level but it must reach a certain threshold level before it does so. So, we advise African policymakers to continue to develop their financial sector to achieve this threshold.Originality/valueThis seems to be the first work to document the threshold relationship using the dynamic panel threshold. Besides, the study specifically concentrates on Africa dividing the continent into different income levels. Moreover, we adopt a robust measure of financial development unlike extant studies on Africa.

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Infrastructure development seems appealing. However, few micro studies investigated the effect and channel of physical infrastructure on household's living standards. We addressed these issues using road infrastructure in kilometers on Nigeria's panel data. Infrastructure development measured as stress-free access to road is found to have significant direct effect on "within" households' well-being. However, the results for the isolated and non-isolated households in the entire economy and conflict-free zones are the same based on distance-quartile. In contrast, the conflict-prone zone's result is different and contrariwise. But, these outcomes suggested that not-too-distant households are better off, although from an unfamiliar viewpoint.

This study sought to examine the impact of product market competition on the dividend payout of non-financial firms listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Data were collected on 76 non-financial firms for 11 years covering 1997-2007 and were analyzed using pooled OLS regression method with robust standard errors. Product market competition was measured by the reciprocal of market power. Our results showed that market power had a positive and significant impact on dividend payment suggesting that product market competition impact negatively on dividend payout of firms in Nigeria. Other factors that significantly and positively influenced dividend payment include profitability and size of firms while firms classified in the manufacturing sub-sector of the exchange paid significantly higher dividends than firms in the commercials and services' sub-sectors. Finally firms that were financially constrained were found to pay significantly lower dividends compared with firms without financial constraints suggesting that Cash flow had a significant impact on dividend payout of firms in Nigeria.