Determinants, efficiency and potential of agri-food exports from Nigeria to the EU: Evidence from the stochastic frontier gravity model

This study uses an extended gravity model to examine the determinants, efficiency and potential of agri-food exports from Nigeria to the EU for the 1995–2019 period. It uses a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate the extended gravity model. The results show that the economic size (GDP) of Nigeria and the EU countries, as well as bilateral distance, positively determine agri-food exports from Nigeria to the EU. Also, the results show that Nigeria's agri-food exports to the EU are negatively determined by the income (per capita GDP) of Nigeria and its EU trading countries, bilateral exchange rate and EU new member states (NMS). The results further show that Nigeria scores relatively low in terms of the efficiency of its agri-food exports to the EU countries. On a final note, the study shows that Nigeria's agri-food exports with the EU have a relatively large potential that has not been exploited. We document policy recommendations in this study.

Export and total factor productivity of EU new member states

The common denominator of the European Union’s (EU) strategic long-run documents is the role of total factor productivity in fostering future growth and competitiveness. Hence, this article analyses the impact of total factor productivity on export competitiveness in EU new member states (NMS). As opposed to the stagnation of the growth of total factor productivity in the advanced economies, EU NMS exhibited stronger growth that was interrupted due to the 2008 economic and financial crisis. After the crisis, the growth continued but it was not as strong as before. The results of the empirical analysis confirm the vital role of total factor productivity for the export competitiveness of the EU NMS. However, the results also point to the fact that the impact of total factor productivity on export competitiveness is not that beneficial in the countries where the value of total factor productivity has not returned to the pre-crisis level.

The labour market and income distribution in post-socialist economies — Non-obvious regularities

The goal of this paper is to analyse the major processes which took place on the labour market of post-socialist economies and to check what the outcomes of thee mechanisms used for income distribution. Few findings are especially interesting because of its counterintuitive character. First, there is a “strange” relation between the depth of recession and scale of rise in unemployment. Countries which suffered from quite moderate fall in GDP experienced high level of unemployment, while the economies which noticed substantial recession were able to sustain very limited unemployment rate. One can also expect that economy which suffered from sharp rise in unemployment should be the one in which income inequalities deteriorate in the biggest extend. Again, this is not what has happened in post-socialist countries. Economies like Russia or Ukraine which noticed quite limited rise in unemployment rates, experienced the highest deterioration in the income inequalities indicators. Finally, closer look at labour markets of EU New Member states shows that social cohesion in these countries is a much bigger problem than it appears from simple Gini coefficients.