This study examines the determinants of corporate disclosure level of listed companies in Nigeria.Specifically, the study investigates the relationship between two structure characteristics and corporate disclosure in Nigerian listed firms. The data used in the study were obtained from the annual reports of 60 companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange from the various sectors of the Nigerian economy. The study covers the post International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) adoption period of three years (2012 -2014). The structure characteristics (independent variables) are firm size and leverage. Corporate disclosure (dependent variable) was disaggregated into mandatory, voluntary and total disclosure. The data were analysed using both descriptive statistics and the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression. Findings from the descriptive statistics reveal that contrary to prior findings, there is a steady improvement in mandatory disclosure by Nigerian companies since the country's adoption of IFRSs. However, voluntary disclosure still remains relatively low.Our empirical results show a significant positive association between firm size and mandatory disclosure. The results also reveal a significant negative relationship between leverage and mandatory disclosure. Both leverage and firm size showed a significant positive relationship with voluntary disclosure. The combined effect of leverage and firm size show a significant positive relationship with total disclosure. Based on these findings, we recommend that the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria and other regulatory agencies should intensify efforts towards enforcement of companies' compliance with the requirements of IFRSs and other relevant statutory provisions.

This study seeks to unravel the relationship between national electoral events and industry's stock market returns using the various presidential elections in Nigeria. The study adopts the traditional Market Model (MM) and testing with the Cumulative Abnormal Return (CAR) approach on the daily market data from the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Evidences abound that banking and Petroleum sector decreases before and increases after all elections. With the same trend for other sectors such as Conglomerates stock prices which oscillated in the same direction for the1999 and 2003; Brewery took their turn 1999 and 2011 while building sector experienced this event effect in 1999, thereby revealing industry connectivity with political activities. This manifests as their stock returns tend to reduce generally before and increase after election periods. We therefore recommend the depoliticization of public policies through strict adherence to corporate governance codes and strengthening of public institutions. This will put a check on the political manoeuvrings of the economy by boosting investors' confidence on the market regardless of electoral activities and power swings. More importantly, for those stocks that experiences increase in value after election it is a better time to sell those portfolios and buy these stocks that experience loss in value at a post-election window.

Risk taking is described as an integral part of financial services. For micro-financing in particular, engaging in proactive risk taking is essential to their viability and long term sustainability. Maintaining a good strategy that ensures an optimal mix in risk-return trade-off is much more important for the microfinance banks (MFBs) that operate on a for-profit basis. Having faulted the value-at-risk technique which is common in the asset and liability literature, we introduce the multi-stage stochastic programming using econometric time series model. Specifically, for the scenario generation, we specify a VaR model with the inclusion of dichotomy regime which captures the multi-stage characteristics of assets. We use the liability derived investment (LDI) model to generate the liability series over the period of study. The optimization result showed that MFBs in Nigeria are by far more risk averse than they are profit seeking. This comes with the attendant effect of not being able to achieve the outreach and sustainability objectives to the fullest. MFBs in Nigeria need to look into their investment strategy with a view to structuring the mix and value of the balance sheet components at different periods to meet their stated objectives.

The relationship between the deliberate reinvention of the wheel, for macroeconomic indices such as interest rate, inflation, exchange rate, stock prices, index of industrial output within the electoral windows and the political parties' (incumbent and opposition) ideology is the focus of this study. Monthly macroeconomic data for

This paper seeks to unravel the connectivity between stock market volatility and exchange rate within the political cycles of sovereign states presidential election years between 2000-2016 using the dynamic system GMM estimation and VECH technique data source from Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI). A significant positive relationship between market volatility and exchange rate manifests in the studied countries, more in Nigeria and South Africa. A significant shift in a conditional correlation of the variances of most markets exists except for Kenya, Japan, and Hong Kong. This perhaps is indicative of weak institutional and democratic culture within the financial system; hence independence of public institutions would guarantee non-interference that ensures policy consistency. Financial, economic and behavioral finance barometers need to integrate both local and international political development for effective and result-driven investment. As a result of the significant opportunistic business cycle effect that manifested with a significant shift in the conditional correlations of the variances of some of the markets we strongly believe that a truly independent central bank would not only guarantee political non-interference but also will ensure policy consistency.