Aid flows to developing countries is ultimately intended to help recipient countries attain sustainable development especially in the area of capital development, sustained economic growth, poverty reduction and reduced mortality rate. The justifications for increasing official aid to the poor countries of the world have constantly come under scrutiny and have generated intense debate among researchers. Against this background, this study is aimed at assessing the impact of official aid on poverty reduction in Nigeria from 1981 to 2014. The ARDL and the error correction model (ECM) were used to estimate for long-run and short-run dynamics respectively, while the Bound test was employed to test for long-run relationship between our variables of interest. Result of the Bound test showed that there exist a long-run relationship between official aid flows and poverty. Both long-run and short-run regression estimates revealed that official aid has non-significant positive impact on poverty reduction within the period. There is however strong sign of convergence toward long-run equilibrium as the speed of adjustment is significantly high. The results further showed that population growth exerted negative influence on poverty reduction both in the long and short-run whereas labour force participation was found to have relative positive impact on poverty reduction. We therefore conclude that while it is evident that official aid has positive influence on poverty reduction, the influence so established is not significant. We recommend that aid donors and international aid organizations should earmark aids for a specific needs and exhaust every prudential steps in making sure that such aid are used for the targeted aim with fact-based appraisals and implementation reports.

The goal of this study is to assess the industry effects of monetary policy transmission channels in Nigeria within the period 1981-2014. Techniques of analysis employed in the study are the Johansen cointegration and the error correction model (ECM). Our regression estimates reveal that the private sector credit, interest rate, and exchange rate channels have negative effects on real output growth, both in the long run and in the short run. The results further show that, relatively, the degrees of the established effects are higher in the long run than in the short run. We employed the Johansen cointegration approach to determine the nature of relationship that exists between our dependent variable and the independent variables. The results show that, in the Nigerian case, monetary policy transmission channels jointly have a long-run relationship with real output growth of the industrial sector, and disequilibrium in the system is corrected at the speed of 72.2% annually.

Corporate mergers and acquisition has become a highly popular strategy in recent years. Thus, much attention has been focused on its outcomes. It has served as a substitute for innovation, a greater means of diversification. The banking sector is often referred to as an engine growth of the economy. The intermediation role which the sector plays in national development cannot be overemphasized. Thus, given the recent consolidation exercise in the Nigerian banking sector, we explored the impact of mergers and acquisition on managerial commitment in this paper. We adopted the descriptive survey method and primary data were obtained using oral interview and questionnaire. The population of this study comprised all consolidated banks in Nigeria and the total sample size for this study was 384 respondents from commercial banks in South East Nigeria. The Chi-square (X2) non-parametric statistic was used to test the hypotheses. The results revealed that mergers and acquisitions have significant positive effect on managerial role and commitment of managers of commercial banks in Nigerias South East Region. We, therefore, recommend that incentive measures such as improved pay and good working environment should be promoted in commercial banks during mergers and acquisitions as these will further enhance managerial commitment.

The paper investigated the effect of saving behavior and debt-service on the debt burden and its effect on some economic indicators, debt service to export, export to GDP, debt service to GDP, savings rate and income per capita of 14 West African Countries. The data from the World Bank economic indicators for the period 1985-2015 were used as models. This was analyzed using fixed and random effect regressions and houseman tests to determine the most appropriate estimator. The results revealed that the national savings of these countries should play a significant role in terms of payment of debt services and the countries' ability to reducing their total debt burden. It is also revealed that an increase in the export/GDP growth will lead to growth in the country’s economy by providing more resources to pay the national debt, both external and domestic debt. The national saving rate should aim at improving the economic growth rate through a higher saving ]rate. The paper recommends that these countries should pursue a balanced saving policy, increase the export/GDP ratio and total revenue generated for a fully sustainable reduction of total debt burden so that future generations would not inherit a huge debt burden.

This study was exploratory. Tables and figures were used to analyze the table and inferences drawn leading to our conclusion and recommendations.<br>