The study examined the impact of disaggregated public expenditure on unemployment rate in Angola, Togo and Tunisia with panel data spanning from 2000 to 2017. The data were majorly sourced from the World Bank Indicator. The study employed Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) techniques for empirical analysis. The findings of two-step system GMM showed that expenditure on infrastructure and education reduce unemployment rate, while expenditure on defense and health increase unemployment rate in the region. The short-run elasticity estimate showed that infrastructure and education expenditures reduce unemployment rate by 9% and 1.83%. A unit rise in defense and health expenditure increase unemployment rate by 5.2% and 84.5%. The long-run elasticities of infrastructure and education expenditure reduce unemployment rate by 3.8% and 7.89%, while the long-run defense and health expenditure elasticities increase unemployment rate by 22.and Tunisia. The policy implication is that, the positive relationship between expenditure on health and unemployment could be attributed to mismanagement of government funds due to corruption, while that of defense and unemployment could be high rate of insecurity and crimes in the region.Therefore, the study recommended among others a drastic measure to further improve the education sector through adequate investment in education that will help in skills, development and training.

No abstract

Background to the StudyCashless policy is a policy where transaction can be done without necessarily carrying physical cash as a means of exchange of transaction but rather with the use of credit or debit card payment for goods and services (Roth, 2010). Despite the undeniable benefits of cashless policy on bank efficiency emanating from empirical or theoretical literature it has attracted the attention of a variety of groups; scholars, investors, public, entrepreneur, banks management, traders, governments and so on in Ondo North Senatorial District of Ondo State, Nigeria. The cashless policy has brought confusion among the populace as many misconceived the term to be a policy where there is no more cash in the circulation but card and other instruments. Many still believe that, the cash limit set by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in respect to cashless policy is too low and query on how the Central Bank of Nigeria arrived at the bench-mark. Notwithstanding the fact that the cashless policy come with enormous benefits; there are also some missing links that confronted the policy such as financial constraints, infrastructure, deficit, literally levels, fraudulent activities and poor power supply in Nigeria. As more payment systems have been introduced, analysts have predicted the emergence of a 'cashless society'. Today, we still pay with cash and cheques, but several other payment instruments, such as credit and debit cards, are widely used. The use of paper money is declining, but at a rather slow pace. As it were, Nigeria is a country heavily dominated by cash and there are some factors that negatively affect the choice of cash over non-cash instruments. Some of these include time spent in counting and verifying cash, susceptibility to loss, time spent in the banking halls, amongst others (Nader, 2011).The potential benefits of cashless policy have become a debate about whether and how their adoption improves bank efficiency. Several attempts have been made to investigate the impact of cashless policy on bank efficiency. Kariuki (2015) established that banks with high profit growth are more likely to be using cashless tools like; ATMs, POS and mobile terminal. Oshikoya (2017) suggested that the use of and investment in cashless policy requires complementary investments in skills, introduction and improvement on customer deposits service, investment and change entails risks and costs which might reduce bank profits in shorter term. Hence there is need to use some non-financial efficiency measures such as efficiency and effectiveness to assess the impact of cashless policy investment on banking efficiency. Also, the study seeks to establish whether cashless policy influence return on total assets of commercial banks in Ondo

The need for adequate and consistent policies to mitigate the continuous rise of carbon emission have motivated the energy economist in the past decades to actively involved and explore common economic agents that are driving the rising pattern in the environmental pollution. This study is positioned towards contributing to the on-going debates on this issue by exploring the impact of bank credit to the private sector on aggregate carbon emissions and carbon emission intensity in Nigeria over the period 1971– 2016 using dynamic ARDL simulations. Controlling for the influence of fossil energy intensity of consumption and economic globalization, the study found that bank credit to the private sector has a positive significant long-run increasing effect on aggregate CO2 emission and carbon emission intensity in the economy. Second, the estimated coefficients show that fossil energy intensity of consumption and economic globalization have a significant long-run and short-run increasing impact on aggregate CO2 emission and carbon emission intensity in the economy. In contrast, the population has a significant long-run and short-run reducing effect on aggregate CO2 emission and only the long run reducing effect on carbon emission intensity. Third, economic growth has significant short-run and increasing long-run effects on aggregate CO2 emission and a long run increasing effect on carbon emission intensity. In sum, the results show that the economy is yet to transient to renewable energy.