In the last 37 years Nigeria has undergone several stages of financial reforms with different impacts on the economy. Hence, this paper empirically analyses the impact of financial reforms on credit growth in Nigeria using annual data from 1980 to 2016. The research work hinges on the theoretical underpinning of the McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis on the relevance of financial reforms in a lagging economy. Analysing the data with autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) error correction representation and bounds testing techniques, we notably find evidence to this hypothesis and state that at higher real interest rate there is increased financial intermediation evidenced by credit growth. Other findings are that in the long-run, financial system deposits, inflation rate and per capita GDP are strong asymmetrical predictors of credit growth and real interest rate (the financial reform indicator) while the short-run relationships are indicator-specific. We further show that a long-run cointegration relationship exists between domestic credit and other covariates and likewise between the real interest rate and its regressors.

No abstract

Nigeria is confronted with the issue of limited capital and has to resort to foreign debt in order to augment domestic savings, balance of payment deficits, and shortfall in revenue which induce continuous raise in the debt stock at an alarming rate. In the light of this, this study assesses the impact of public debt on external reserve in Nigeria. The objectives of this study include the assessment of the trends and relationship between public debt and external reserve in Nigeria, using the Johansen cointegration and FMOLS technique on the secondary data from 1981 to 2013. The result revealed that public debt has a positive and significant effect on external reserve stock in the long run suggesting that the nation's debt crisis can be attributed to both exogenous and endogenous factors such as the nature of the economy, economic policies, high dependence on oil, and swindling foreign exchange receipt. This study recommends that the federal government should employ more superior method to negotiate for fixed interest payment and varying amortization schemes, as well as seek multiyear rescheduling rather than year by year basis.

Poverty in Africa is primarily rural concentrated, about 75% of the poor population live in rural areas and draws their livelihood and food from agriculture. The Sub-Saharan African region is home to more than quarter of a billion people living in extreme poverty, with the Eastern and Southern Africa having the world's highest concentrations of poor people. The renewed focus on the poverty reducing potential of agricultural productivity accentuate from the fact that the incidence of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing faster than the population. The study examined the effect of agricultural productivity on poverty reduction in Africa using the dynamic panel data approach estimated using the System-GMM technique for the period 1991-2015. The conceptual framework of the study identified three main linkages via which agricultural productivity translates to poverty reduction; this include: i. income empowerment, ii. Market expansion, and iii. Sustenance enhancement. The empirical result suggests that agricultural value added per worker contributes Original Research Article

The correctness and reliability of findings and\recommendations of empirical studies conducted by social and economic researchers depend largely on the efficiency of the econometrics methodologies employed in such studies. Of particular interest are such studies which are centered on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) considering the relevance of such studies to the total wellbeing of the world populace. In view of this, there is always a need for theoretical review of econometrics methodologies commonly used by researchers with a view to providing researchers with research updates on the theoretical standing of these methodologies. In this study, we set up a Monte Carlo Experiment (MCE) to evaluate the relative performance of various estimators of a simultaneous equation model in the presence of varied levels of multicollinearity. The model was estimated with a simulated data set of sample size 30 over 100 replications. The parameter estimates obtained from the six estimators considered were evaluated using RMSE criteria. Our result revealed that irrespective of the level of multicollinearity in our model, ILS and OLS yielded best estimates of the parameters. On the contrary, the system estimators all performed poorly in the presence of multicollinearity. Also, 2SLS, LIML and 3SLS estimators yielded virtually identical estimates. By our findings, in the presence of multicollinearity, estimators OLS and ILS performed best and should therefore be preferred above the multi-equation estimators.