The nexus between microfinance banking and poverty reduction is well documented in banking and finance literature. As a poverty reduction strategy, the microfinance initiative is expected to create room for financial accessibility to the economically active poor people. Consequently, this study estimated the effect of microfinance banks’ (MFBs) on poverty reduction in Nigeria from 1992 to 2018 using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to regression analysis. With a VAR lag order selection of two, the ARDL bounds test revealed that the poverty rate and MFBs activities were bound by a long-run relationship. The long-run estimates suggested that the MFBs loans-to-deposit ratio and liquidity ratio caused poverty reduction in the long-run. On the other hand, the short-run estimates indicated that the MFBs were unable to ensure poverty reduction within a short period, though all the variables exhibited significant coefficients within one year. These findings imply that the ability of MFBs to reduce poverty takes a long period.

This study investigated the effect of macroeconomic policies on stock market liquidity in Nigeria using annual time series data that spanned from 1986 to 2018. Specifically, the paper analyzed how monetary and fiscal policies interactions affect stock market liquidity. Stock market liquidity was measured by stock turnover ratio. Unit root test confirmed that the variables were of mixed integration which necessitated the application of ARDL technique. The ARDL bounds testing revealed that a long-run relationship existed between fiscal and monetary policies instruments, and stock market turnover ratio. In the long-run, it was found that government debt had negative and significant effect on stock market turnover ratio while monetary policy variables such as monetary policy rate and cash reserve ratio had significant effect on stock market turnover, but only the policy rate was positive. In the short-run, all the explanatory variables were significant apart from monetary policy rate which was, though, significant after one period lag and liquidity ratio which was not significant at any level. The results of the ECM suggested that stock market liquidity was affected by the interactions of fiscal and monetary policies instruments in Nigeria. Consequently, the paper concluded that macroeconomic policies that would enforce sustainable and efficient financial market towards improving stock market liquidity be strictly implemented.