Do Petroleum Product Pump Prices Influence Economic Growth in Nigeria? An Empirical Analysis

This study examined the impact of fuel pump price adjustment and the causal relationship between fuel pump price adjustments and economic growth in Nigeria using secondary data extracted from the Central Bank of Nigeria annual report and National Bureau of Statistics publications spanning from 1980 - 2019. Descriptive statistics, unit root test, Johansen cointegration test, VECM and Granger causality test were employed to analyse the data. The result showed that a 1% increase in the prices of PMS and AGO increased economic growth by 0.014%, 0.038% and 0.018% respectively while AGO is reduced by 0.002%. Also the prices of PMS, AGO and DPK does not granger cause economic growth in Nigeria within the period under this study meaning that any macroeconomic policy that affects economic growth should be pursued independent of fuel pump prices as any policy aimed at influencing economic growth through pump price adjustments seems to be ineffective.

Interest Rate–Economic Growth Nexus Under Currency Board Operations

This paper analyses the effect of the prime interest rate as a monetary policy instrument to stimulate economic growth in Namibia, a small open economy that is constrained by currency board operations. A Vector Autoregressive Model (VAR) was used for the period 1980–2019. The result shows that Namibia’s prime interest rate has no significant effect on economic growth. This finding remains robust and consistent when impulse response function and variance decomposition are employed. The impulse response function indicates a shock on the prime interest rate exhibits an inverse relationship. However, this effect is insignificant in both short and long-run scenarios. The variance decomposition indicates that the prime interest rate has a strongly exogenous impact, implying it has a weak influence on GDP growth. Policy implication indicates that small open economies under currency board operations need to identify different policy responses to circumvent external shocks and addresses their development needs.