Chekwube Madichie

Purpose: The new scramble for Africa is marked by an influx of direct investment for the extraction and exploitation of the region’s natural resources, which has undoubtedly boosted the expansion of African commodities such as oil and minerals, as well as promoting rapid economic growth in several countries in the continent. Regrettably, Africa’s labour has been largely ignored, as most oil and mineral investments are capital-intensive and are likely to displace labour in local production, while also jeopardizing the continent’s job prospects. The study looked at the impact of FDI in the oil sector on labour employment in ten oil-rich African countries from 1995 to 2018 as part of its investigation into the new scramble and labour in Africa. Methodology/approach: The study used the Instrumental Variable (IV) regression in the context of the system Generalized Method of Moment (SGMM) estimator, based on dynamic panel modelling. Findings: The findings suggest that foreign investments ...

The heat of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) in the form of automated technologies in industrial production processes is on the global world. This has raised worries regarding the potential impact of the 4IR particularly on the future of jobs in developing countries. The study investigates the impact of the 4IR on industry labor employment, with particular emphasis on the role of tertiary education in SSA from 2000 to 2018. Due to the dearth of adequate data relating to the elements of 4IR such as robotics, internet of things (IoT), and cloud technologies, the study is benchmarked on the technology achievement of SSA countries, tertiary education attainment, and some elements of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) like mobile phone technology and internet densities. The study employed instrumental variable regression, within the framework of the System GMM estimator, covering the 48 SSA countries. The result shows that technology achievement index (TAI), technolo...

Small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) have been identified as the engine and foundation of rapid industrial growth. Unfortunately, the potentials of the SMEs to accelerate the process of industrialization in Africa have been undermined by numerous constraints, prominent among which is lack of access to finance. The study examined the impact of SMEs financing on industrial growth in Africa using panel time-series data from all the 15 ECOWAS countries from 1986 – 2016. In implementing the panel data regression, the study engaged in panel unit root using the LLC, IPM, Fisher-type ADF and PP tests, and co-integration tests using the Kao residual-based and Johansen- Fisher combined tests. The study also placed adequate control for any unobserved heterogeneity among the ECOWAS countries, using a well-specified fixed effect in exploiting the time dimension present in the dataset. The result shows that SMEs output significantly affects industrial growth positively while the Deposit Mone...

The nexus of population dynamics and environmental degradation has been discussed widely in the extant literature. Most related studies have utilized carbon emission as a proxy of environmental quality. However, carbon emission does not capture the multidimensional nature of environmental degradation. To fill this gap, this study utilized the ecological footprint to capture environmental degradation because it is a more dynamic environmental quality measure. The paper examines the population-environmental degradation hypothesis for five populous African countries (DR Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania) using panel information from 1990 to 2019. The Cross-sectionally Augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) was employed to assess the relationship among the data - ecological footprint per capita (ECFP), population growth rate (POPG), population density (POPD), urban population growth rate (URBN), age structure of the population (AGES), per capita GDP growth rate (PGDP), energy consumption (ENEC), and trade openness (TRAD). The findings of the study revealed that POPG, POPD, AGES, PGDP, ENEC and TRAD increase environmental degradation. Urbanization (URBN) has no significant influence on environmental degradation in the selected African countries. The study concludes with policy prescriptions geared towards addressing population expansion and improving environmental quality.

This paper empirically investigated the impact of financial development on economic growth in Nigeria during the period 1986 – 2012.To achieve the purpose of this research, we estimated the real GDP as a function of the gross fixed capital formation, financial development (the ratio of private sector credits to GDP), liquidity ratio, and the interest rate. The methods used are: the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) techniques, Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test, Johansen cointegration test, error correction technique, and the Granger causality test. The empirical results revealed that: all the variables used are integrated of the same order, I(1); there is evidence of the existence of a long run relationship among the variables used; the normalized cointegration coefficients revealed that financial development affects economic growth negatively in the long run. However, the short run impact of financial development on economic growth is positive. This goes to show that the finance-le...

Poor standard of living has remained a source of concern in Nigeria despite enormous resources available to the nation. Concerted efforts have been made through intensive power sector reforms and huge budgetary allocations to the sector, yet the performance of the power sector towards improving the standard of living of the Nigerian households has remained a source of doubt. This study investigated the impact of household electricity consumption on the standard of living in Nigeria over the period 1981 – 2018. The study employed the ARDL bound cointegration test to determine the existence of a longrun relation between the standard of living and the chosen explanatory variables, while the Pairwise Granger was used to establish the direction of causality between the household electricity consumption and standard of living. The results show that household electricity consumption is a significant contributor to an improved standard of living in Nigeria and that a feedback causality flow...

Trade elasticities are very crucial for both economic forecasting and international policy analysis. However, the value of trade elasticities has remained the subject of diverse opinion in most international economic policy debates. This is because results from most empirical studies in this area are still mixed. Therefore, this paper uses import substitution model framework to estimate the price and income elasticities of import demand in Nigeria for the period 1970 – 2013. We use Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing proposed by Pesaran et al. (2001) to study the long run relationship between variables of interest. The results of the unit root test based on ADF and PP provide justification for the use of ARDL bound test as the variables were either I(0) or I(1) and none is I(2). The cointegration results show that there is a long run relationship between import demand and the chosen explanatory variables, thus all the variables move together in the long run. The esti...

This study examined the relationship and causality that exist between remittance inflows exchange rate and monetary aggregates - money supply, interest rate, and the domestic price level in Nigeria. The Johansen co-integration and the Granger causality techniques were employed. The Johansen co-integration test indicated that long run relationship exist among the variables. The Granger causality test results revealed a unidirectional causality running from money supply (LM2) to remittances (LREM) only at lag one and not in the reverse. In other lags, there was no evidence of causality between the duos. The results also showed that, consistently from lag one to lag five, causality run from exchange rate (LEXR) to LREM and not in reverse direction. Unidirectional causality run from interest rate (INT) to LREM, occurring from lag one to lag four. There was no evidence of causality in any direction between inflation rate (INF) and LREM within these lags. We also found that causality run ...

Economic diversification is identified as a recipe for achieving inclusive growth and the role of institutions in strengthening the process of diversification cannot be ruled out. This study examined the role of institutions in helping economic diversification to achieve inclusive growth in Nigeria. Inclusive growth was measured using the growth rate of the inequality-adjusted human development index. Based on the Solow growth model and adopting the Johansen cointegration test, the results show that economic diversification in Nigeria does not significantly contribute to inclusive growth. The interaction of diversification with the institutions gave a positive significant result meaning that effective institutions will help economic diversification contribute to inclusive growth. Hence, the government using appropriate institutions can ensure an investment-friendly environment to support economic diversification and encourage inclusive growth in Nigeria.

The sharp and continuous decline in crude oil prices since the mid-2014, along with the lackluster efforts at diversifying the sources of revenue and foreign exchange in the economy, incontrovertibly led to the recession that greeted Nigeria in the second quarter of 2016 as manifested by fiscal crisis. Hence this study examines the imperative of economic diversification in trade and industrial policies in Nigeria. In order to characterize the pattern of trade and industrial transformation in the diversification process, we adopted the augmented version of Kaldor’s first law which establishes a link between manufacturing output and economic growth. Based on annualized secondary time series, spanning from 1970 to 2015, obtained from the CBN statistical bulletin of various years, the study employed the contemporary econometric techniques of cointegration and error correction mechanism, within the framework of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model as proposed by Pesaran et al ...

Abstract: This study evaluated the nexus of unemployment and exports while recognising the effects of control variables such as RGDP, FDI inflows, population and inflation rate. The bound testing approach based on autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) was adopted in analysing the time series data that spanned from 1970 to 2012. The ARDL bound tests and the Johansen cointegration tests results indicated evidence of cointegration among the variables. Estimated long run coefficients based on ARDL model revealed that exports, FDI, RGDP, and inflation rate relate negatively with unemployment while population has impacts positively on unemployment in the long run. The short run version of the ARDL model based on parsimonious error correction showed that exports, FDI inflows and inflation have a negative and significant relationship with unemployment even up to the third period lag. However, the real GDP has the wrong sign (positive) in the short run, but it is not significant. The error correction term indicated that about 33.84 per cent of the divergences between the actual and equilibrium rate of unemployment is corrected in each period (annually). Results of the long run causality based on the Toda-Yamamoto method showed evidence of unidirectional causality running from exports to unemployment. The 2.07 value of the DW together with that of Breush-Godfrey serial correlation LM test showed that our model is free of autocorrelation.

ABSTRACT: Trade elasticities are very crucial for both economic forecasting and
international policy analysis. However, the value of trade elasticities has remained the subject
of diverse opinion in most international economic policy debates. This is because results from
most empirical studies in this area are still mixed. Therefore, this paper uses import
substitution model framework to estimate the price and income elasticities of import demand
in Nigeria for the period 1970 – 2013. We use Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound
testing proposed by Pesaran et al. (2001) to study the long run relationship between variables
of interest. The results of the unit root test based on ADF and PP provide justification for the
use of ARDL bound test as the variables were either I(0) or I(1) and none is I(2). The
cointegration results show that there is a long run relationship between import demand and
the chosen explanatory variables, thus all the variables move together in the long run. The
estimated long run coefficients show that the price and income elasticities of import demand
in Nigeria were about 0.03 and 0.55 respectively during the period covered. This implies that
the long run import demand in Nigeria has been price-and income-inelastic since the sizes of
the coefficients of real GDP and relative prices were less than unity and among the explanatory
variables studied, real GDP was the main determinant of import demand in Nigeria.
Furthermore, the long run coefficient of domestic prices which is also regarded as the crossprice
elasticity of import demand with respect to home made goods was about 0.0062 and
statistically insignificant, thus there is evidence of imperfect substitution between foreign made
goods and domestically produced goods. The results from the short run dynamics of the model
suggest that about 67 percent of the disequilibrium between the long term and short term
import demand is corrected each year. We therefore conclude that the use of currency
devaluation as an import substitution tool is not validated by our results, whereas the use of
higher taxes and interest rates as a tool of expenditure switching policies should be expected
to have limited impact on Nigeria’s trade balance.