The article examines the firm’s investment growth effect following capital liberalization and financial constraints. It employs firm-level aggregated data of 80 firms for the period of 2006 to 2016. Employing the differenced dynamic panel regression technique, the analysis has revealed among others that investment growth appears to be significantly determined by cash flow (internal), thereby indicating the presence of profound financial constraint among firms in all industries. Second, the capital account liberalization appears to drive investment more through the indirect channel (capital/credit availability channel proxied by cash flow). Third, capital account liberalization-investment growth nexus appears to be less sensitive and significant with high profitability. This could be attributed to “profit flight” or repatriation of profit by foreign investors who may not necessarily prefer ploughing back of profit, which has implication for further expansion of investment among firms. This suggests that the level of capital openness is still low; hence, there is a need for further liberalization of the capital account with some mandate of profit ploughing back.

This study explores the link that exists between unemployment and current account imbalances in Nigeria from 1980 to 2014. It adopted the ARDL bounds test approach. The result gave evidence for a long-run relationship between the variables and also revealed a significant and inverse relationship between current account surplus and unemployment. Showing that a 1% increase in current account balances in favour of export will lead to a drop in the unemployment rate by 0.117893%. This, therefore, implies that current account deficit will cause a fall in employment and in turn a rise in the unemployment rate. Consequently, current account deficit leads to wage differentials in favour of the exporting countries as against importing countries, like Nigeria, and as such triggers a high rate of unemployment. We strongly recommend diversification of the country’s export-base which may increase employment opportunities and in turn reduce the unemployment rate. Keywords: Unemployment, Employment, Current Account Balances, Balance of payment, Output growth

This study examined the impact of cash flow, capital account liberalization (CAL) on investment growth of firms from both the direct and indirect channels, using the disaggregated firm-level data of 44 tradable and 31 non-tradable firms for the period of 2006 to 2016. It employed the differenced dynamic panel regression technique. Among others the results revealed that CAL is positively but insignificantly related to investment growth, and investment growth appeared to be determined by cash flow (internal) thereby indicating the presence of financial constraint for both samples. However, when we compared the level of financial constraint of the tradable and non-tradable firms, judging by the magnitude of the coefficients of cash flows in both samples, non-tradable firms were found to be severely financially constrained. The study also determined that CAL appeared to be sensitive to investment growth for both firm types through the indirect route, precisely the capital/credit availability channel measured as cash flow. The level of capital openness is still low for tradable firms hence the need for more but monitored openness.

This study examined the impact of cash flow, capital account liberalization (CAL) on investment growth of firms from both the direct and indirect channels, using the disaggregated firm-level data of 44 tradable and 31 non-tradable firms for the period of 2006 to 2016. It employed the differenced dynamic panel regression technique. Among others the results revealed that CAL is positively but insignificantly related to investment growth, and investment growth appeared to be determined by cash flow (internal) thereby indicating the presence of financial constraint for both samples. However, when we compared the level of financial constraint of the tradable and non-tradable firms, judging by the magnitude of the coefficients of cash flows in both samples, non-tradable firms were found to be severely financially constrained. The study also determined that CAL appeared to be sensitive to investment growth for both firm types through the indirect route, precisely the capital/credit availability channel measured as cash flow. The level of capital openness is still low for tradable firms hence the need for more but monitored openness.