This study focuses on the effects of oil price changes on food prices in oilexporting developing countries between 2001 and 2014. These effects in net food-importing and oil-exporting, developing countries have not received adequate attention in literature. The methodology included the application of a non-linear panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The bound testing cointegration analysis of the non-linear panel ARDL specification suggests the presence of co-integration among the variables: food prices, oil price, inflation, and trade openness. The estimated non-linear panel ARDL model indicated the presence of asymmetry in the behavior of food prices solely in the long run. More specifically, in the long run, there is a significant and positive relationship between oil price increases and food prices. Meanwhile, no long-run relation is found between oil price reduction and food prices. Furthermore, the model suggests the absence of asymmetry in the behavior of food prices in the short run, as the relations between both increase and reduction in oil price and food prices are found to be insignificant. The study, therefore, recommends that oil-exporting developing countries should adjust their public policy schemes in such a way as to enable reductions in the oil price to trickle down to food prices. In addition, these countries should ensure the implementation of long-term agricultural policies aimed at insulating their economies from global food crises that may arise due to oil price increases.

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This paper investigates the presence or otherwise of fiscal dominance in Nigeria during the period of 1986-2013 using structural VAR analysis. Annual secondary data were used for the study. Data on fiscal deficits and monetary base were obtained from the publication of Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. The results show that shock to fiscal deficits of government does not stimulate response from the growth of monetary base. In addition, the results show that there exists no causality running from fiscal deficits to growth of monetary base in Nigeria. The study concludes that there is no evidence of fiscal dominance in Nigeria during the study period.

This study uses annual data between 1990 and 2010, and employs Dynamic Ordinary Least Square (DOLS) method to examine what determines poverty level in Nigeria. Unlike many studies, we measure poverty with poverty index generated from combination of per worker agricultural value added, real per capita income and consumption per capita using principal component analysis and common measurement of poverty (i.e. per capita real income). We first remove the trend component of our dependent variables (poverty index), using Butterworth filter and then regressed them on the important variables of interest. The findings show negative relationship between political right in levels and poverty, but positive relationship was found when political right was differenced. This result was not statistically significant. Political terror was found to reduce poverty with statistically significant result in levels when per capita real income was used for poverty, and became positively related with poverty when differenced. The result was statistically significant. We found that civil liberty was positively related to poverty, but the result was not statistically significant. Democracy was noted for reducing poverty with statistically significant result, while the increase in population and poverty were positively related with statistically significant result.