Current efforts at reforming Nigeria’s economy cover all known approaches to trade and investment... more Current efforts at reforming Nigeria’s economy cover all known approaches to trade and investment reforms. At unilateral level the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) forms was adopted. Bilateral efforts manifests in the increasing number of bilateral investment treaties and bilateral trade agreements in the recent years. Efforts at regional level include intra-regional efforts under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and extra-regional efforts as exemplified by the on-going negotiations of an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between West African countries and the European Union (EU). Multilateral efforts are not lacking as Nigeria is actively engaged in the negotiations of Doha Development Round (DDR) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Efforts at liberalizing trade and investment regimes in the country are not new as the country attempted structural adjustment programme (SAP) was pivoted on trade, exchange rate ...
This article presents some preliminary evidence on the existence and magnitude of consumption abr... more This article presents some preliminary evidence on the existence and magnitude of consumption abroad and the type of trade in higher education, using a combination of advertisement survey data by Nigerians during 2001-2006 and secondary data on Nigerians enrolled in universities outside the country. We found that higher education consumption abroad is increasing without explicit regulation by Nigeria’s regulatory bodies. The findings also point to the development of a market for local recruiting agencies and the need for regulation not only for quality control but also to avoid collusion between local students recruiting agencies, foreign higher education providers and foreign embassies. The study therefore proposes the setting up of a technical committee to advise on issues concerning negotiations on higher education during the WTO rounds and also provide a clear framework on the process and dynamics of the trade for the benefit of the citizens and the country.
The Millennium Development Coals (MDGs) are a potentially powerful tool for economic development.... more The Millennium Development Coals (MDGs) are a potentially powerful tool for economic development. There is the growing awareness about the economic importance of tourism in Nigeria. Though the industry is fraught with certain challenges, which are seemingly insurmountable, it has a crucial role to play in helping Nigeria to achieve the 2015 anti‐poverty MDGs. This paper discusses some of the potential benefits of the tourism industry in Nigeria as well as an overview of the industry. Furthermore, it states the MDGs and its limitations. Furthermore it will discuss some of the problems that could impede the growth of the tourism sector. As Nigeria is becoming keenly aware of the substantial development potentials of tourism, this paper presents some recommendations to be considered in order to reap these potentials and facilitate the process of achieving the MDGs.
PurposePoverty reduction remains one of the main goals of development efforts, as evidenced by th... more PurposePoverty reduction remains one of the main goals of development efforts, as evidenced by the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals by most developing countries and international agencies. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between trade (exports) and employment and how the relationship reduces poverty through the instrumentality of employment, with a focus on Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes the form of descriptive analysis.FindingsEvaluating the case for Nigeria, the authors find that oil exports which drives economic growth do not provide the needed employment to reduce poverty, while agricultural trade, particularly exports, are capable of reducing poverty and inequality in Nigeria through the channel of employment and agricultural productivity growth.Originality/valueThe paper makes a link between export trade, employment and poverty reduction in Nigeria.
... Tiamiyu et al: Catalytic mechanisms for promoting ICT investment 3 ... mass media, agricultur... more ... Tiamiyu et al: Catalytic mechanisms for promoting ICT investment 3 ... mass media, agricultural information systems and networks, etc), which influence the knowledge, perceptions and predis-positions of firms and their owners (Adekunle and Alluri 2004; Al-Hassan 2008; Asogwa ...
Abstract: The paper estimates the Okun’s coefficient, and checks the validity of Okun’s law in Ni... more Abstract: The paper estimates the Okun’s coefficient, and checks the validity of Okun’s law in Nigeria, using the time series annual data during the period 1980-2008. Engle granger co-integration test and Fully Modified OLS were employed. The empirical evidences show that there is positive coefficient in the Regression, implying that Okun’s law interpretation is not applicable to Nigeria. It was recommended that government and policy makers should employ economic policies that are more oriented to structural changes and reform in labor market.
This study investigates fiscal dominance and exchange rate stability in Nigeria. The period of in... more This study investigates fiscal dominance and exchange rate stability in Nigeria. The period of investigation spanned 1981q1–2018q4, and the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) technique was employed to test the fiscal dominance hypothesis and further examine the shock transmission effects of fiscal deficit components such as budget deficit and public debt on exchange rate movement in Nigeria. As a robustness, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique was employed to analyse the shock transmission effects of these components on the movement of exchange rate in Nigeria. More so, granger causality test was conducted to trace the direction of causality among the fiscal deficit components and the exchange rates. The results show that budget deficit and changes in exchange rates in Nigeria have bi-causal relationship, while public debt could not granger cause exchange rate movement in the country. The SVAR estimates suggests that exchange rate movement in Nigeria reacted only to...
The study models the behaviour of the Central Bank of Nigeria. An extended Taylor’s framework tha... more The study models the behaviour of the Central Bank of Nigeria. An extended Taylor’s framework that accounted for exchange rate dynamics and political risk factors was adopted. In order to capture both ex-ante and ex-post behaviours of the monetary authority in the country, Markov-Switching Dynamic Regression (MSDR) approach was employed. The period of investigation spanned 1981q1 – 2017q4. The study found that money supply in Nigeria was endogenous and showed, consequently, that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) acted discretionally rather than stick to some monetary policy rules for the period under investigation. The results also suggested that political risk factors significantly moderated the behaviour of the CBN; especially during period of high interest rate regime. With or without the effects of political risks being accounted for, low interest rate regime was found to be more persistent than high interest rate regime. With a relatively high persistence of low interest rate, ...
This paper explores the relationship between trade in health services, its liberalization, and Af... more This paper explores the relationship between trade in health services, its liberalization, and Africa‟s health system with particular focus on Africa. Using a sample of African countries, a regression model link, health outcomes to health inputs and health policy variables were estimated to cover two separate periods- the pre- General Agreement in Trade in Services (GATS) (1990-1994) period and GATS period (1995-2006). The coefficients of the regression are then compared to determine the impact of GATS. Increasing the public health expenditure through additional budgetary provisions in African countries improves health only at the margin. The lack of agreement in the form of GATS limited the intensity of trade in health services. The non-significance of the trade in health services proxy variables during GATS period shows that health trade services impacts on Africa‟s health sector should be limited to commercial presence (Mode 3) and movement of health professionals (Mode 4) which ...
Governance for Structural Transformation in Africa, 2019
This chapter examines the effect of regional trade integration and governance on structural trans... more This chapter examines the effect of regional trade integration and governance on structural transformation in the ECOWAS trade bloc during 2000–2015, using the methodology for calculating the Africa Regional Integration Index (ARII) developed jointly by African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to estimate the relevant regional trade index. The results of panel regression show that poor governance negatively affects structural transformation while openness of member states’ economies to both intra-regional trade and the rest of the world promote positive transformation towards the industrial sector. Trade integration alone as measured by its index, TINT, records neither positive nor negative statistically significant effect on any of the measures of structural transformation. Therefore, ECOWAS countries require both intra-regional and international trade with the rest of the world to structurally transform from t...
This paper attempts to investigate the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in W... more This paper attempts to investigate the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in West Africa using as motivation the role that urbanization plays in economic growth via the provision of employment opportunities to rural migrated labour, and creation of markets in most developing countries. Using a panel regression approach on West African countries’ data from 1950 to 2005, the paper found that all the variables except one in the parsimonious, fixed effect model are significant at 10 per cent while the urbanization variable is significant at 5% level. This finding confirms a priori expectation of positive signs consistent with the neoclassical modernisation theory and confirms that economic performance in West Africa can be enhanced through sound urban development policies that support economic openness.
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionAs was widely circulated by development prac... more (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionAs was widely circulated by development practitioners, the key to sustained poverty alleviation is trade (Bruno et al., 1998). However, it was posited that the early studies were based on rather small samples, while the recent works have extended the sample and reached mixed conclusions laced with great controversy. In general, empirical studies suffer from a number of shortcomings and the question surrounding the correlation between trade and poverty have not been resolved (Baldwin, 2000). Baldwin (2000) offers explanations for the differences among researchers of the trade-poverty nexus. While econometric analyses are limited by the scope and comparability of available quantitative data, differences in what investigators regard to as appropriate econometric models and sensitivity test analyses are based, in part, on the personal policy predictions of authors which results in significant differences in the conclusions reached under such quantitative approaches (Baldwin, 2000). Also, many empirical studies on trade, poverty and sustainable development have, at least, being conceptually deficient with development synonymously taken as sustainable development for analyses. However, these concepts are not totally one and the same (Asefa, 2005).This confusion is broadly informed by the diverse nature with which sustainable development has assumed in the literature. Sustainability and sustainable development has been used interchangeably. Sustainability is dichotomized into soft and hard dimensions (Calverley and Amarasinghe, 2013). The former is referred to as green economy, while the latter is known as green society (Cook et al., 2012). Basically, researches have largely been focused on using a single framework to capture the concept of sustainable development. However, the universality of sustainable development suggests that this concept is to be viewed from various dimensions. The prominent are the economics, social and ecological views. From the economics perspective, the neoclassical theory provides the first explanation and further refinements were done by Hartwick (1977) and Solow (1986) with follow ups by Toman (1992) and Daly (1994). Ecologically, sustainability must involve limits on population and consumption levels. These limits apply to all biological systems. As such, sustainability was to be in terms of the maintenance of ecosystem resilience (Holling, 1994). The social perspective of sustainability relates to the aspect of human development with which the HDI has remained largely prominent. In fact, Common and Perrings (1992) distinguished between 'Solow Sustainability' derived from the economic model of stable or increasing consumption and 'Holling Sustainability' based on ecosystem resilience and considered both largely disjoint. This implies there may be no close relationship between economic efficiency and ecological sustainability. Hence, a need for a dynamic analysis of the sustainability concept as a single indicator and/or framework cannot capture sustainable development (Bossel, 1999). This is the void in empirical estimations that this study seeks to advance.As such, this study contributes to the existing studies in three major ways. Firstly, upon conceptual clarifications, we seek to provide a validated theoretical framework for the study of trade-poverty-sustainable development nexus. Secondly and towards a dynamic analysis, we seek to construct an appropriate composite index for sustainable development for Nigeria as rightly captured by the World Bank (1997), and empirically extended by Bolt et al. (2002) and Gogoneata (2010). Thirdly and methodologically, we employ the use of dynamic technique of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds testing approach which still remains grossly latent in the empirical literature for the trade-poverty-sustainability nexus.This paper is organized as follows: it reviews the related theoretical and empirical literature, followed by a brief methodological review and further presents the methodological framework used in the study. …
Current efforts at reforming Nigeria’s economy cover all known approaches to trade and investment... more Current efforts at reforming Nigeria’s economy cover all known approaches to trade and investment reforms. At unilateral level the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) forms was adopted. Bilateral efforts manifests in the increasing number of bilateral investment treaties and bilateral trade agreements in the recent years. Efforts at regional level include intra-regional efforts under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and extra-regional efforts as exemplified by the on-going negotiations of an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between West African countries and the European Union (EU). Multilateral efforts are not lacking as Nigeria is actively engaged in the negotiations of Doha Development Round (DDR) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Efforts at liberalizing trade and investment regimes in the country are not new as the country attempted structural adjustment programme (SAP) was pivoted on trade, exchange rate ...
This article presents some preliminary evidence on the existence and magnitude of consumption abr... more This article presents some preliminary evidence on the existence and magnitude of consumption abroad and the type of trade in higher education, using a combination of advertisement survey data by Nigerians during 2001-2006 and secondary data on Nigerians enrolled in universities outside the country. We found that higher education consumption abroad is increasing without explicit regulation by Nigeria’s regulatory bodies. The findings also point to the development of a market for local recruiting agencies and the need for regulation not only for quality control but also to avoid collusion between local students recruiting agencies, foreign higher education providers and foreign embassies. The study therefore proposes the setting up of a technical committee to advise on issues concerning negotiations on higher education during the WTO rounds and also provide a clear framework on the process and dynamics of the trade for the benefit of the citizens and the country.
The Millennium Development Coals (MDGs) are a potentially powerful tool for economic development.... more The Millennium Development Coals (MDGs) are a potentially powerful tool for economic development. There is the growing awareness about the economic importance of tourism in Nigeria. Though the industry is fraught with certain challenges, which are seemingly insurmountable, it has a crucial role to play in helping Nigeria to achieve the 2015 anti‐poverty MDGs. This paper discusses some of the potential benefits of the tourism industry in Nigeria as well as an overview of the industry. Furthermore, it states the MDGs and its limitations. Furthermore it will discuss some of the problems that could impede the growth of the tourism sector. As Nigeria is becoming keenly aware of the substantial development potentials of tourism, this paper presents some recommendations to be considered in order to reap these potentials and facilitate the process of achieving the MDGs.
PurposePoverty reduction remains one of the main goals of development efforts, as evidenced by th... more PurposePoverty reduction remains one of the main goals of development efforts, as evidenced by the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals by most developing countries and international agencies. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between trade (exports) and employment and how the relationship reduces poverty through the instrumentality of employment, with a focus on Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes the form of descriptive analysis.FindingsEvaluating the case for Nigeria, the authors find that oil exports which drives economic growth do not provide the needed employment to reduce poverty, while agricultural trade, particularly exports, are capable of reducing poverty and inequality in Nigeria through the channel of employment and agricultural productivity growth.Originality/valueThe paper makes a link between export trade, employment and poverty reduction in Nigeria.
... Tiamiyu et al: Catalytic mechanisms for promoting ICT investment 3 ... mass media, agricultur... more ... Tiamiyu et al: Catalytic mechanisms for promoting ICT investment 3 ... mass media, agricultural information systems and networks, etc), which influence the knowledge, perceptions and predis-positions of firms and their owners (Adekunle and Alluri 2004; Al-Hassan 2008; Asogwa ...
Abstract: The paper estimates the Okun’s coefficient, and checks the validity of Okun’s law in Ni... more Abstract: The paper estimates the Okun’s coefficient, and checks the validity of Okun’s law in Nigeria, using the time series annual data during the period 1980-2008. Engle granger co-integration test and Fully Modified OLS were employed. The empirical evidences show that there is positive coefficient in the Regression, implying that Okun’s law interpretation is not applicable to Nigeria. It was recommended that government and policy makers should employ economic policies that are more oriented to structural changes and reform in labor market.
This study investigates fiscal dominance and exchange rate stability in Nigeria. The period of in... more This study investigates fiscal dominance and exchange rate stability in Nigeria. The period of investigation spanned 1981q1–2018q4, and the Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) technique was employed to test the fiscal dominance hypothesis and further examine the shock transmission effects of fiscal deficit components such as budget deficit and public debt on exchange rate movement in Nigeria. As a robustness, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique was employed to analyse the shock transmission effects of these components on the movement of exchange rate in Nigeria. More so, granger causality test was conducted to trace the direction of causality among the fiscal deficit components and the exchange rates. The results show that budget deficit and changes in exchange rates in Nigeria have bi-causal relationship, while public debt could not granger cause exchange rate movement in the country. The SVAR estimates suggests that exchange rate movement in Nigeria reacted only to...
The study models the behaviour of the Central Bank of Nigeria. An extended Taylor’s framework tha... more The study models the behaviour of the Central Bank of Nigeria. An extended Taylor’s framework that accounted for exchange rate dynamics and political risk factors was adopted. In order to capture both ex-ante and ex-post behaviours of the monetary authority in the country, Markov-Switching Dynamic Regression (MSDR) approach was employed. The period of investigation spanned 1981q1 – 2017q4. The study found that money supply in Nigeria was endogenous and showed, consequently, that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) acted discretionally rather than stick to some monetary policy rules for the period under investigation. The results also suggested that political risk factors significantly moderated the behaviour of the CBN; especially during period of high interest rate regime. With or without the effects of political risks being accounted for, low interest rate regime was found to be more persistent than high interest rate regime. With a relatively high persistence of low interest rate, ...
This paper explores the relationship between trade in health services, its liberalization, and Af... more This paper explores the relationship between trade in health services, its liberalization, and Africa‟s health system with particular focus on Africa. Using a sample of African countries, a regression model link, health outcomes to health inputs and health policy variables were estimated to cover two separate periods- the pre- General Agreement in Trade in Services (GATS) (1990-1994) period and GATS period (1995-2006). The coefficients of the regression are then compared to determine the impact of GATS. Increasing the public health expenditure through additional budgetary provisions in African countries improves health only at the margin. The lack of agreement in the form of GATS limited the intensity of trade in health services. The non-significance of the trade in health services proxy variables during GATS period shows that health trade services impacts on Africa‟s health sector should be limited to commercial presence (Mode 3) and movement of health professionals (Mode 4) which ...
Governance for Structural Transformation in Africa, 2019
This chapter examines the effect of regional trade integration and governance on structural trans... more This chapter examines the effect of regional trade integration and governance on structural transformation in the ECOWAS trade bloc during 2000–2015, using the methodology for calculating the Africa Regional Integration Index (ARII) developed jointly by African Union Commission (AUC), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) to estimate the relevant regional trade index. The results of panel regression show that poor governance negatively affects structural transformation while openness of member states’ economies to both intra-regional trade and the rest of the world promote positive transformation towards the industrial sector. Trade integration alone as measured by its index, TINT, records neither positive nor negative statistically significant effect on any of the measures of structural transformation. Therefore, ECOWAS countries require both intra-regional and international trade with the rest of the world to structurally transform from t...
This paper attempts to investigate the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in W... more This paper attempts to investigate the relationship between urbanization and economic growth in West Africa using as motivation the role that urbanization plays in economic growth via the provision of employment opportunities to rural migrated labour, and creation of markets in most developing countries. Using a panel regression approach on West African countries’ data from 1950 to 2005, the paper found that all the variables except one in the parsimonious, fixed effect model are significant at 10 per cent while the urbanization variable is significant at 5% level. This finding confirms a priori expectation of positive signs consistent with the neoclassical modernisation theory and confirms that economic performance in West Africa can be enhanced through sound urban development policies that support economic openness.
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionAs was widely circulated by development prac... more (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionAs was widely circulated by development practitioners, the key to sustained poverty alleviation is trade (Bruno et al., 1998). However, it was posited that the early studies were based on rather small samples, while the recent works have extended the sample and reached mixed conclusions laced with great controversy. In general, empirical studies suffer from a number of shortcomings and the question surrounding the correlation between trade and poverty have not been resolved (Baldwin, 2000). Baldwin (2000) offers explanations for the differences among researchers of the trade-poverty nexus. While econometric analyses are limited by the scope and comparability of available quantitative data, differences in what investigators regard to as appropriate econometric models and sensitivity test analyses are based, in part, on the personal policy predictions of authors which results in significant differences in the conclusions reached under such quantitative approaches (Baldwin, 2000). Also, many empirical studies on trade, poverty and sustainable development have, at least, being conceptually deficient with development synonymously taken as sustainable development for analyses. However, these concepts are not totally one and the same (Asefa, 2005).This confusion is broadly informed by the diverse nature with which sustainable development has assumed in the literature. Sustainability and sustainable development has been used interchangeably. Sustainability is dichotomized into soft and hard dimensions (Calverley and Amarasinghe, 2013). The former is referred to as green economy, while the latter is known as green society (Cook et al., 2012). Basically, researches have largely been focused on using a single framework to capture the concept of sustainable development. However, the universality of sustainable development suggests that this concept is to be viewed from various dimensions. The prominent are the economics, social and ecological views. From the economics perspective, the neoclassical theory provides the first explanation and further refinements were done by Hartwick (1977) and Solow (1986) with follow ups by Toman (1992) and Daly (1994). Ecologically, sustainability must involve limits on population and consumption levels. These limits apply to all biological systems. As such, sustainability was to be in terms of the maintenance of ecosystem resilience (Holling, 1994). The social perspective of sustainability relates to the aspect of human development with which the HDI has remained largely prominent. In fact, Common and Perrings (1992) distinguished between 'Solow Sustainability' derived from the economic model of stable or increasing consumption and 'Holling Sustainability' based on ecosystem resilience and considered both largely disjoint. This implies there may be no close relationship between economic efficiency and ecological sustainability. Hence, a need for a dynamic analysis of the sustainability concept as a single indicator and/or framework cannot capture sustainable development (Bossel, 1999). This is the void in empirical estimations that this study seeks to advance.As such, this study contributes to the existing studies in three major ways. Firstly, upon conceptual clarifications, we seek to provide a validated theoretical framework for the study of trade-poverty-sustainable development nexus. Secondly and towards a dynamic analysis, we seek to construct an appropriate composite index for sustainable development for Nigeria as rightly captured by the World Bank (1997), and empirically extended by Bolt et al. (2002) and Gogoneata (2010). Thirdly and methodologically, we employ the use of dynamic technique of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bounds testing approach which still remains grossly latent in the empirical literature for the trade-poverty-sustainability nexus.This paper is organized as follows: it reviews the related theoretical and empirical literature, followed by a brief methodological review and further presents the methodological framework used in the study. …
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Papers by Abiodun Bankole