Demand for different types of public goods: evidence from Nigeria

Preferences of Nigerian households vary across different types of public goods. For example, some prefer roads while others favor education even after controlling for the existing supply of these goods. What explains this variation? We argue that the perceived distributional consequences of specific public goods differ conditional on the personal characteristics of households. In particular, households demand the type of public good that (a) increases the utility of assets they already own and (b) resonates with their past experiences involving the lack of particular public goods. We test our argument with data on 123,000 Nigerian households. We find strong evidence for our argument across six types of public goods.     

The impact of accounting reform on accounting quality: Evidence from Nigeria

The effectiveness of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is dependent on the strength of enforcement of accounting standards in a given country. This study explores the implications of the adoption of IFRS in Nigeria after the enforcement of accounting standards was strengthened. The strengthening of accounting standards enforcement, and the subsequent adoption of IFRS in Nigeria, was recommended by the World Bank to improve the country's regulatory outlook after a capital market crisis in 2007/2008 that was triggered by widespread accounting irregularities. Results indicate that accounting quality declined in Nigeria following the adoption of IFRS; while earnings management increased, timely loss recognition and earnings persistence reduced. Our study contributes to the burgeoning literature on IFRS adoption and concludes that the effect of IFRS adoption is contextual. Therefore, accounting regulatory institutions operating in a similar context to Nigeria should localize IFRS.     

Determinants of mobile phone ownership in Nigeria

Mobile phones are recognized as a primary platform for mitigating the digital divide and increasing economic growth, and the same appears to be true for Nigeria, the largest economy in Africa. Since 2012, mobile phone penetration has shown nearly linear growth, reaching 83% in 2016. However, this statistic falls to only 46% after correcting for ownership of multiple SIM cards and sharing of mobile phones among multiple users. The determinants of mobile phone ownership in Nigeria are poorly understood, which hinders research that could inform policies capable of increasing mobile phone penetration and eliminating the digital divide. To begin to fill this research gap, we have analyzed socio-economic factors related to mobile phone ownership in the country. We used a logit model and the latest national-level Datafirst ICT dataset (2012) about mobile phone adoption from 1552 individuals. The sample was stratified, clustered, and probability-weighted to make it representative of the situation at the national level. The results suggest that factors such as geographic location and income may not strongly influence mobile phone ownership, in contrast to what was previously thought. Instead, the strongest factors appeared to be education level, informal work, social engagement, type of electricity supply and employment status. Our analysis suggests that to increase mobile phone ownership and close the digital divide, policy makers should target younger adults, provide training in digital literacy specifically for mobile phone use, invest in electricity supply infrastructure, and develop content and applications in non-English languages. These findings may contribute to understanding mobile phone distribution in Nigeria as well as inform implementation of the country's ICT Roadmap 2017–2020 and Vision 2020.     

Migrant remittances and financial inclusion among households in Nigeria

This article investigates the impact of remittances on financial inclusion, using the 2009 World Bank’s Migration and Remittances Household Survey data for Nigeria. An instrumental variable estimation technique was used to estimate the impact of remittances on financial inclusion, and migrant network effect was used as an instrument to control for potential endogeneity between remittance and financial inclusion. This article finds that the receipt of remittances increases the probability of using formal financial services, such as deposit accounts and Internet/mobile banking. This article concludes that reducing barriers and costs to remittance inflows can improve the access to and use of formal financial services in Nigeria, which can lead to an increase in funds for investments and the economic growth of the country.     

Women entrepreneurship orientation,networks and firm performance in the tourism industry in resource-scarce contexts

Drawing on network theory, this study examines how the entrepreneurship orientation (EO)-performance nexus is intermediated by networks firms establish with government agencies, suppliers, and resource acquisition. Structural equation modelling is used to test the model on a sample of 556 women tourism entrepreneurs in Ghana and Nigeria. Findings indicate that EO positively influences firms’ social ties, resource acquisition, and performance. The results also indicate that establishing strong ties with government agencies leads to more resource acquisition among women owned tourism businesses than strong business ties with suppliers. Furthermore, business ties are more beneficial when they mediate the effect of EO on performance and become weak and negative when the effect is sequentially mediated by business ties and network resource acquisition. Political ties negatively influenced performance. This study provides novel insights into the EO, networks and performance nexus in resource-scarce contexts. The managerial implications for supporting women entrepreneurs are critically examined.     

Explaining Nigeria’s Economic Growth: Balance of Payments Constrained Growth Approach With External and Internal Imbalances

This study employs a system estimator to examine the validity of balance of payment constrained growth model in the case of Nigeria. We modified a version of Thirlwall’s model developed by Soukiazis et al. (2014) to incorporate the role of foreign contents in growth process. The new version of the model improves significantly explaining the growth in Nigeria. The outcome of this study shows that imported intermediate and capital goods significantly contribute to manufacturing export and domestic investment growth. However, high reliance on the imports of intermediate goods constrains economic growth. World real income exerts significant effect on aggregate exports, similar arguments could not be established when the manufacturing export sector is considered in isolation. Our results reveal that economic growth in Nigeria is constrained by internal and external imbalances. The study recommends among others increasing the manufactured export share, efficient use of oil rents as well as containing budget deficit within acceptable threshold to position the economy on a viable growth path.     

Agricultural technology adoption and household welfare: Measurement and evidence

Previous studies on the adoption and impacts of improved crop varieties have relied on self-reported adoption status of the surveyed households. However, in the presence of weak variety maintenance and poorly functioning seed certification system, measurement errors in self-reported adoption status can be considerable. This paper investigates how such measurement errors can lead to biased welfare estimates. Using DNA-fingerprinting based varietal identification as a benchmark, we find that misclassification in self-reported adoption status is considerable, with significant false negative and positive response rates. We empirically show that such measurement errors lead to welfare estimates that are biased towards zero and substantially understate the poverty reduction effects of adoption. While the empirical evidence suggests attenuation bias, our theoretical exposition and simulations demonstrate that upward bias and sign reversal effects are also possible. The results point to the need for improved monitoring of the diffusion process of improved varieties through innovative adoption data collection approaches to generate robust evidence for prioritizing and justifying investments in agricultural research and extension.     

An investigation of air accidents in Nigeria using the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) framework

Increasing air traffic growth has been achieved along with substantial improvement in safety globally. While air traffic is equally growing in Nigeria, safety levels do not appear to be growing side by side. This was gleaned from the spate of accidents and fatalities recorded in the last couple of decades. The study therefore set out to assess safety performance in Nigeria's air transport industry by comparing accidents and fatality rates with global average levels during the period 1985–2008. A content analysis of the accident reports was done using the Human Factors Analysis Classification System (HFACS) as a conceptual framework; this was augmented with results of industry experts assessment of the Nigerian aviation industry. Their assessments were also discussed in the context of the conceptual framework. Accidents and passenger fatality rates in Nigeria were higher than global average figures for most of the years included in the analysis period. Findings on aircraft ages show that these are also higher than world average levels. The aviation industry experts' assessment presented various challenges which include inadequate airport facilities, absence of timely meteorological information and dearth of skilled personnel in Nigeria's aviation industry. The content analysis of the accident reports using the HFACS shows that skill based errors; physical environment and inadequate supervision are the most frequently occurring categories influencing accident occurrences. The Chi-square and Fishers's test used to analyze significant relationships in the HFACS categories obtained in the accident reports showed five pairs of significant associations between adjacent categories. Based on these associations, Supervisory Violations:-Crew Resource Management:- Decision Errors path is deemed the most potent for accident occurrences. Findings from the research point to the need to address personnel skill, physical environment issues (mostly weather related) and supervisory competence.     

Environmental Business–NGO Partnerships in Nigeria: Issues and Prospects

A number of insightful efforts have explored the nature of business–NGO partnerships and their associated outcomes for sustainable development. While some of these works have helped to clarify the benefits of such partnerships, and the different strategies NGOs can adopt in their interaction with business, others have identified the conditions necessary for a successful partnership. However, the question of how the different strategies adopted by NGOs in their engagement with business interact has remained relatively unexamined. Drawing on an environmental business–NGO partnership for sustainable development in Nigeria, this paper confirms the existence of a creative tension between the different NGOs’ strategies. This creative tension affects the nature of the environmental partnership and performs three main functions. These are an enabling function, a discipline function and a critical distance function. The article concludes by considering the theoretical and practical implications for business–NGO partnerships as a vehicle for sustainable development in developing countries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment