Foreign Capital Mobility and Per Capita GDP Growth in Nigeria (Published)
The movement of capital across national boundaries has remained an interesting area in development narratives considering its role in the development process. This paper provides deeper insights into the empirical relationship between capital inflows and per capita GDP growth in Nigeria between 1980 and 2018. The heterogeneous nature of foreign capital was taken into consideration following its decomposition into its key components of debt, aid and migrants’ remittances. Time series for each of the variables were collected from secondary sources including NBS, World Bank World WDI, World Bank, International Debt Statistics and IMF International Financial Statistics. Combinations of ADF unit root and bounds cointegration tests in addition ARDL and Granger causality tests form basis for the analysis. It was found from the unit root test results that the variables are mixed integrated. Again, the bounds test show evidence of long run relationship amongst the variables. The ARDL estimates reveal that migrants’ remittances have the significant positive effect on per capita GDP in the long run. With 1 percent increase in remittances, per capita GDP will, on the average, increase by about 2.2595 percent. On the other hand, multilateral debt negatively affects per capita GDP in both short and long run. It was found from the results that bidirectional causality exists between migrants’ remittances and per capita GDP while unidirectional causality flows from technical cooperation grants to GDP per capita. Given the findings, it is recommended that policy makers should initiate policies and provide incentives helpful for mobilizing international resources and allow for a paradigm shift that will ensure the allocation of the resources to key sectors with high potentials for growth of per capita GDP.
Keywords: Aid, Debt, Foreign Capital, Per Capita GDP, Remittances, development narrative
Institutional Impediments to International Remittance: Transmission-Cost Issues in Nigeria (Published)
This study investigates the institutional impediments of remittances with reference to the cost of transmission in Nigeria. The study is motivated by the increasing inflows of remittances through informal channels that would have been directed into the financial system to improve savings and enhance financial deepening if they were accounted for. The study therefore investigates whether the use of informal channels is caused by the increasing costs of collecting remittances that is partly induced by financial institutions. The study uses a bank exit survey data and a household survey data collected by the Center for Demographic and Allied Research (CDAR). T-test analysis and logit regressions were employed to achieve the objectives of the research. The findings show that there is no significant difference in the frequency of receipt for the formal and informal channels, transaction cost negatively and significantly determinants the use of formal channels flows, and finally there exist a significant difference between the transaction costs of using formal and informal channels of remittances. Financial institutions should therefore checkmate the charge of remittance receipt to encourage the use of formal channels and increase the frequency of flows
Keywords: Impediment, Institutional, Nigeria, Remittances, Transmission-Cost