This study examines Non-Performing Loan (NPL) and its effects on the stability of Nigerian banks with national and international operational licenses from 2014:Q2 to 2017:Q2. A "restricted" dynamic GMM is employed to estimate the macroeconomic and bank specific drivers of NPL for each licensed category. Z-Score is constructed to proxy banking stability, and its response to shocks NPLs is examined in a panel vector autoregressive framework. The results reveal that drivers of NPLs vary across the two categories of banks, but, weighted average lending rate is a vital macroeconomic driver of NPLs for both. The results also confirm the moral hazard hypothesis and riskreturn tradeoff of efficient market theory. Furthermore, international banks withstand NPLs shocks in the long run, despite temporary flux in the short horizon, while the stability of national banks is susceptible to NPLs shocks in the long run. The study recommends that weighted average lending rate, anchored on monetary policy rate should be the focus of banks' regulators when addressing issues of NPLs. Again, strategies for mitigating short run impacts of NPLs on the stability of international licensed banks should be incorporated in the off-site regulatory framework to ensure banking stability.

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This study examines money market and foreign exchange market dynamics in Nigeria by estimating the dynamic correlation and volatility spillovers between Nigeria Naira/US Dollar Bureau De Change (BDC) exchange rate and interbank call rate with data from January 2007 to August 2019. The study employs a dynamic conditional correlation form of GARCH model (DCC-GARCH) to access the nature of correlation, while an unrestricted bivariate BEKK-GARCH (1, 1) form of multivariate GARCH model is utilized to investigate shocks and volatility spillover of the rates. The estimated DCC-GARCH (1, 1) reveals that interest rate and exchange rate are dynamically linked negatively, suggesting that exchange rate (or interest rate) is inversely sensitive to interest rate (or exchange rate) in Nigeria. This result was substantiated by the estimated BEKK-GARCH(1, 1) model. Furthermore, the effects of news (shocks spillover) are bi-directional across the markets. However, volatility spillover is unidirectional, from exchange rate to interest rate, suggesting that, calming the volatility in foreign exchange market does guarantee moderation of volatility in the money market, whereas the reverse is not the case. The results underscore the growing influence of foreign exchange market in the financial space of the Nigerian economy. Thus, the study recommends that foreign exchange policies aimed at maintaining exchange rate stability should be sustained, having found exchange rate to be more effective in moderating interest rate volatility in Nigeria.

This study examines the purchasing power parity (PPP) approach to the determination of exchange rate misalignment in Nigeria by using two variants of the PPP: the absolute PPP (aPPP) and the relative PPP (rPPP). Data on the Nigerian Naira to US Dollar ( N/$), British Pound ( N/£) and Chinese Yuan (N /¥) interbank exchange rates, Nigeria consumer price index and Inflation as well as the US, UK and China consumer price indices and inflation rates spanning 2008:M1 to 2018:M12 were utilized. A recently modified fractional cointegration framework was employed, taking care of smooth structural breaks and nonlinearity, while the unit root tests employed the fractional alternatives. The results confirmed that the aPPP approach to exchange rate determination is unrealistic but revealed empirical support for the rPPP approach. Furthermore, the exchange rates computed with the rPPP approach show that the interbank Naira to US Dollar, UK Pounds and Chinese Yuan exchange rates were overvalued in most of the period of this study. The period of undervaluation observed in June 2016 and April 2017 coincided with the periods when CBN introduced the investors and exporters window. The study recommends the use of rPPP for gauging the level of exchange rate misalignment in Nigeria and suggests the need to diversify the export base to appreciate the exchange rate.

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