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There has been increasing studies that details the transmission channels through which financial development permeates to speed up growth to higher echelon. Studies have underpinned that financial development yield more growth when these channels are optimized. With studies on real sector performance sparse, this paper contributes to this discussion as it examined the effect of financial development in fostering industrial growth under the condition of high and low human capital endowment. This was investigated for a sample of five (5) West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) countries from 1990 to 2022. The study developed a panel threshold regression (PTR) model where human capital functioned as threshold variable and data collected from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), World Development Indicator (WDI) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) databases. The study finds a threshold effect of financial development on industrial sector growth. The PTR estimator shows financial development can produce more industrial growth if human capital exceeds a gross of 62.9493%. Additionally, other factors such as trade openness, natural resource rents and higher labour participation in economic activities support industrial sector growth. In the design of industrial growth enhancing policies, policy mandarins should implement measures that improve human capital and further develop the financial system by scaling up education expenditure to the UNESCO prescribed 26% of GDP, educating women, leveraging technology to improve human capital productivity and outcomes, reducing loan collateral requirements, strengthening legal frameworks, and boosting banking competition by allowing entrant of capitalized financial institutions and timely exist of insolvent ones.

This study investigates the validity of Thirlwall’s Law in Nigeria, examining whether balance-of-payments constraints affects economic growth in Nigeria. Utilizing annual data from 1980 to 2020, the analysis employs an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to estimate the income elasticity of imports and tests for cointegration to verify long-term equilibrium relationships. Findings reveal that Nigeria’s income elasticity of import demand exceeds unity, suggesting that income growth significantly heightens import dependency, which exacerbates balance-of-payments pressures. The results confirm Thirlwall’s hypothesis, indicating that Nigeria’s growth is constrained by its current account position. This study contributes to the literature by applying Thirlwall’s Law to a resource-dependent developing economy with high import reliance and limited export diversification. Key policy recommendations include the adoption of an import-substitution strategy to bolster domestic production in high-demand sectors, alongside export diversification efforts to reduce external dependency. These findings underscore the urgent need for structural reforms to stabilize the balance of payments and promote sustainable economic growth in Nigeria.

This paper explores the nonlinear dynamics relationship between petroleum product prices and inflation in Nigeria. By focusing on the role of exchange rate fluctuations in amplifying the relationships, the paper employs a multiplicative interaction approach to address the nonlinear effects of petroleum prices on inflation. Utilizing data from 2016: Q1 to 2024: Q2 from the National Bureau of Statistics and the Central Bank of Nigeria, the study introduces interaction terms to capture how petroleum prices and exchange rates interact to influence inflation. The methodology includes static and dynamic panel estimators, with a focus on the within effect model to account for unobserved state-specific factors. Key findings reveal that AGO and PMS prices significantly drive both headline and food inflation, while DPK's impact varies, and GAS shows minimal effect. The study highlights those geographical factors—proximity to seaports and fuel depots—significantly influence inflationary pressures. States closer to these facilities experience lower inflation due to reduced distribution costs. This suggests that policies aimed at partial subsidization for states farther from key infrastructure could mitigate regional inflation disparities. The findings contribute to the understanding of inflation dynamics, emphasizing the need for targeted policy interventions tailored to regional economic conditions in Nigeria.

There is a pool of techniques and methods in addressing dynamics behaviors in higher frequency data, prominent among them is the ARCH/GARCH techniques. In this paper, the various types and assumptions of the ARCH/GARCH models were tried in examining the dynamism of exchange rate and international crude oil prices in Nigeria. And it was observed that the Nigerian foreign exchange rates behaviors did not conform with the assumptions of the ARCH/GARCH models, hence this paper adopted Lag Variables Autoregressive (LVAR) techniques originally developed by Agung and Heij multiplier to examine the dynamic response of the Nigerian foreign exchange rates to crude oil prices. The Heij coefficient was used to calculate the dynamic multipliers while the Engel & Granger two-step technique was used for cointegration analysis.  The results revealed an insignificant dynamic long-term response of the exchange rate to crude oil prices within the periods under review. The coefficient of dynamism was insignificantly in most cases of the sub-periods. The paper equally revealed that the significance of the dynamic multipliers depends greatly on external information about both market indicators which are two-way interactions. Thus, the paper recommends periodic intervention in the foreign exchange market by the monetary authorities to stabilize the market against any shocks in the international crude oil market, since crude oil is the main source of foreign exchange in Nigeria.

The study examined the dynamic responses of profitability indexes to capital adequacy ratios of authorized internationalized deposit money banks in Nigeria. The data were sourced from the financial year books of the deposit money banks and analyzed with static and dynamic panel estimators. The static estimator shows that the banks have differences in managerial style, size and profitability. Also, it was revealed that return on asset and return on equity responded positively to asset size, efficiency of the use of asset and current ratio in the static models and they were highly significant. However, they were insignificant in the dynamic specifications except asset size that was significant in the return on asset model showing a weak dynamic response of profitability to capital adequacy ratios. Hence the study recommended that Banks should improve their share based as to increase the asset as this will improve profitability.

This paper investigated the impact of tax revenue on private domestic investment in Nigeria from 1980 to 2018 using the modified ordinary least squares- Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL). The paper used oil revenue, non-oil revenue, and Corporate Income Tax (CIT) as the independent variables while Private Domestic Investment (PDI) is the dependent variable. Oil revenue and non-oil revenue were used as a proxy for oil and non-oil tax. These data were obtained from secondary sources- central Bank of Nigeria, World Bank database and Federal Inland Revenue service statistical bulletin. The result showed that a long-run relationship exists between the aforementioned variables. Also, the paper revealed that oil and non-oil do not have a significant impact on PDI but CIT has a positive and significant impact on PDI. The paper recommends that proper measures/reforms should be put in place in order to reduce the impact of tax on private domestic investment in Nigeria.

This paper investigated this disparity in the literature using Nigeria data from 1980 to 2016. In doing this, energy consumption was disaggregated, and their impacts on economic growth investigated using a modified Ordinary Least Square technique which allows for time gaps in the model. It was observed that only renewable energy impacted on economic growth in the long-run whereas non-renewable energy component impacted on economic growth in the short-run. Therefore, the study sees the impact of energy consumption on economic growth to be indistinct in Nigeria within the period under review. This further buttresses the need for improvement in electricity production and distribution in Nigeria. Given the importance of energy consumption on productivity, the study, therefore, suggests policies/measures that will bring about increasing the supply or improvement of energy production in the country.

Agriculture is the bedrock for combating poverty and developing rural areas. This motivated government policies on agriculture. This paper evaluated the performance of Fadama III in addressing food productivity and rural development in Rivers State. A critical review of secondary materials from Rivers State National Fadama III Development Programme Coordinating Office Report on implementation of National Fadama III projects in Rivers State formed the methodology for the study. It revealed the concept, approaches and implementation process of economic interest groups and government financial commitments to various farming activities in the local government areas. There were remarkable improvements in rural development in the participated local government areas. The assessment further revealed committed efforts by officers and management of the program which ensured effective implementation of rural infrastructure in participated communities. It is recommended that expenditure control measures adopted by the management of fadama program in Rivers State should be applied in future agricultural projects to ensure quality deliverables. The government should pursue only rural development-oriented agricultural policies, and finance projects that have certified Local Development Plans. Seemingly bottleneck criterion that would delay the release of funds should be relaxed for agricultural program managers to be proactive to beneficiaries’ requests and function effectively. Finally, the fadama program should be extended to increase communities’ dual opportunities of experiencing both agricultural and rural development.

This research analyzed the insurance industry and economic growth in Nigeria between 1980 and 2015. Secondary data ranging from real gross domestic product, the premium of the insurance business, claim expenditure of insurance industry and inflation rate were utilized and sourced from Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) multiple regression techniques, Descriptive statistics, Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test of stationarity and ARDL Bound Test Co-Integration were adopted for the model in the Study. The findings revealed that the premium of the insurance industry (PMI) impacts negatively on economic growth both in the extended and short run period. The claim expenditure of the insurance industry (CEX) revealed a progressive relationship with economic growth in the long run and a negative relation with growth in the short run. We therefore conclude following the Keynesian theory of aggregate demand which states that, ‘’if we will have to wait till the long run, we will all be dead’’, that insurance industry in Nigeria has not impacted positively on economic growth of Nigeria within the period under review and its operations and investment have not been prominent and contributory to the growth and development of Nigeria. Based on these outcomes, we recommend amongst others, that more investment ought to be made towards the insurance industry in Nigeria especially in terms of proper policy formulation by the government that would channel funds and encourage competition among the players in the industry and invariably contribute to the growth of the economy.

This paper examined the effect of power supply and the performances of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs). In doing this, the paper used durations of public power supply, bills paid for public power and cost paid for private power supply as measures of power supply on the performances index of the SMEs in Port Harcourt. The performance indexes are employed in the models as the dependent variables while the power supply indexes are the explanatory variables. The data were sourced primarily through a well-structured questionnaire and the samples determined by the Cochran sampling techniques. The data were analyzed with the Qualitative Respond Model. It was revealed that a lower duration of public power supply significantly reduces the profitability, productivity and revenue, as well as the storage of products of the SMSEs, examined. Hence, the study recommended among others that there is a need to allocate more electric power to the industrial area of Rivers state- Port Harcourt, especially in the day light to encourage productivity, profitability and employment generation in the state.

The practice of mock bank is an institutional arrangement to expose potential bankers to basic rudiments of banking operations with the ultimate aim of increasing the profitability of the organization through employee performance. This study assessed the impact of mock bank practices on employee performance in the banking sector as a panacea for repositioning the Nigerian economy with a specific focus on Union Bank Plc. The objective is to examine the contributions of operational experience to staff, ascertain the impact of professional ethics on commercial banks in Nigeria and identify the contributions of knowledge of organizational structure on the operations of commercial banks. T-statistics was used to test the three hypotheses. Results showed that there is a significant relationship between experienced, knowledge of job ethics, and organizational structure by employees before recruitment and performance at the workplace when compared to those recruited before training. Further results revealed that employees that had mock bank experiences perform better with less supervision. It was recommended that reinforcement of mock bank practices in tertiary institutions in Nigeria and allotment of higher credit units to mock bank practice should be encouraged.