Abiola John Asaleye

Nigerian economy depends on oil as the major source of revenue, failure to diversify the revenue base has raised questions about its sustainability and implication on the economy. This study uses market capitalization, broad money stock, credit to private sector, prime interest rate and deposit liability as proxies for the financial sector, while output in the manufacturing sector and manufacturing employment are used as proxies for manufacturing performance. The study examines the causal effects, shock effect and long-run impact using Granger Non-Causality, Vector Error Correction Model, and Dynamic Ordinary Least Square method, respectively. The results showed unidirectional causality, confirming the hypothesis of the ‘supply-leading view’ and ‘demand-following view’ except for market capitalization and output in the manufacturing sector, where independence was observed. The variance decomposition shows that the forecast error shock of credit to private sector and prime interest rate show more variations in manufacturing sector performance than other financial indicators. The long-run result using output in manufacturing sector as dependent variable shows a positive significant relationship with other financial sector indicators, except for broad money stock and deposit liability. This study recommended credit channel for transmission of monetary policy using interest rate to improve the performance of manufacturing sector, among others.

There has been an increasing trend in the unemployment rate despite the growth rate witnessed. Monetary policy is presumed as one of the ways to improve the situation. Likewise, the relationship between monetary policy and employment has generated controversial debates in the literature. Though its connection has been extensively studied, however, the implications of monetary policy in respect to time frame perspectives on employment and output have not been widely addressed in the literature. This study provides evidence on shock effects, long and short-run impacts of monetary policy transmission through the credit channels on output and employment in Nigeria within the period of 1981 to 2016 using the Structural Vector Autoregression and Autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL). Evidence from the forecast error shock showed that variations in monetary policy indicators affect output more than employment in the first two periods; however, it affects employment more afterwards. The ARDL results show no evidence of co-integration when output is used as the dependent variable; conversely, cointegration exists when employment is used as the dependent variable. The monetary policy indicators: money supply, bank deposit liability and interest rate are statistically and economically significant with employment in the long run. In the short run, money supply and interest rate are economically and statistically significant. The findings revealed that the Nigerian government can maximize the long-run benefits of monetary policy through the credit channels on employment. Hence, there is a need for policymakers to look beyond short-run gain and promote long-run employment via monetary policy among others.

The responsibility of the government of any economy cannot be overemphasized. Likewise, the resources generated and infrastructural development helps to boost the economic growth of any nation. There has been overdependency of Nigerian economy on the oil sector, the major source of revenue. However, this sector has experienced several challenges ranging from devaluation in naira and fall in prices of crude oil in the international market. This serves as a revelation for the Nigerian government to seek an additional source of income. To this end, the main aim of this paper is to examine the impact of total tax revenue on agricultural performance in Nigeria. The study uses Engel and Granger approach to cointegration to establish the long- and short-run behavior, it was found that a positive and significant relationship exists between revenue obtained in the agricultural sector, capital in agricultural sector proxy by loan and agricultural output, while employment and total tax generated are not significant in the short run. In the long run, employment, capital and total revenue are statistically significant with agricultural output, while tax is insignificant. The implication of the result showed that tax has not yielded desirable result in promoting the agricultural sector in Nigeria. To promote pro-poor growth, long-run employment and improve overall welfare, there is a need to incorporate benefit from tax into agricultural performance. The study recommends among others the need for a systemic approach, given a significant percentage of the total tax generated to boost the development of the agricultural sector.