The study focused on financial sector development and manufacturing performance in Nigeria over the period of 1981 to 2015. In the study, three indicators such as manufacturing capacity utilization, manufacturing output and manufacturing value added were employed to proxy manufacturing performance while money supply as a percentage of GDP, domestic credit to the private sector and liquidity ratio were employed to proxy financial development. The study observed that credit to the private sector and money supply positively but insignificantly enhanced capacity utilization and output, but negatively impacted value added of the manufacturing sector in the short run. There is slight improvement in the long where both money supply and credit to private sector exert positive impact manufactured output. Hence, it becomes crucial for commercial banks to make available certain percentage of their profits for industrial expansion in order to create linkages between both sectors.

As economies integrate financially and both investment and output increase, the environment may be affected depending on the nature of international financial resources attracted into the country. Hence, this study examines the effect of financial integration, output growth, and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the environment in selected African countries involving Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, and Angola between 1980 and 2017. The study uses carbon emissions and particulate emissions (PM) to proxy pollution and analyze the data through the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) technique. Empirical results show that financial integration worsens pollution in Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, and in Africa; output growth deteriorates pollution in South Africa, Algeria, Angola, and in Africa; while FDI fuels environmental degradation in Egypt and South Africa. We recommend that African countries should strive to establish specific targets for lowering emissions even though the Kyoto Protocol did not set specific emissions reduction targets for them.

This study examines the macroeconomic implications of exchange rate depreciation in Nigeria. It employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Testing Cointegration approach for data covering the period of 1970 to 2015. Empirical results confirm that the Naira depreciation positively and significantly impact all the indicators of macroeconomic performance except for output per capita, which is found to be insignificant. This implies that Naira depreciation stimulates trade balance; promotes price instability and increases the interest rate. Thus, currency depreciation does not benefit the country's economy. Moreover, the study confirms that long-run relationship exists between exchange rate depreciation and macroeconomic performance in Nigeria. Thus, there is the need for trade and export diversification to sustain gains from exchange rate movements and mitigate its negative effects on the economy.

The study examines the effect of the social and economic indicators on the stock market performance in Nigeria between 1981 and 2019. The study employs secondary data from the World Bank and Central Bank of Nigeria using the ordinary least squares as the technique of estimation. Findings show that regarding the economic drivers, interest rate, exchange rate, and inflation rate negatively impact the stock market while only income exerts a positive impact. However, both income and interest rate are significant economic drivers of stock performance. Regarding social drivers, life expectancy, poverty, and population exert a positive impact on stock performance. Similarly, both life expectancy and population are significant social drivers of stock market performance in Nigeria. The study recommends that monetary authorities should be cautious in avoiding discretionary policies that might hike the exchange rate; otherwise, the flow of funds to the stock market will be derailed. Also, the fiscal authority should invest massively in safety nets programmes to enhance the capacity of the growing population and reduce poverty.

The erratic performance of the Nigerian economy has generated theoretical and empirical debate in the literature. For instance, while some scholars have posited that inflation and currency depreciation positively influence a country’s economy, others believe the contrary. This leads to the interaction of both the exchange and inflation rates to arrive at an innovative conclusion. Hence, this study examines the effects of both indicators and their interactive effect of the country’s performance in the regulation era between 1986 to 2019, using the autoregressive distributed lag estimation technique. The empirical findings reveal that the interaction of inflation and exchange rate has a negative impact on the economy in the short run, but it is positive in the long run. Thus, the monetary authority should proactively control the foreign exchange rate movement to curtail the recent surge in inflation and boost the performance of the country’s economy.