Poverty in a Wealthy Economy: the Case of Nigeria

This paper describes the nature and evolution of poverty inNigeria between 1985 and 1992. It begins with the potentialwealth of Nigeria's oil economy and examines how the economicpolicies pursued in the 1980s and 1990s impacted economic growthand welfare. It then presents a profile of poverty in both 1985and 1992 according to different socioeconomic characteristicsof the country's population. The headcount measure of povertyin Nigeria declined from 43 to 34% between 1985 and 1992, primarilydue to a 34% increase in mean per capita household expenditures.The benefits of growth were not shared equally throughout thecountry. The bottom 18% of the income distribution had a lowerstandard of living in 1992 compared with 1985 by any measure.However, all other income groups had a higher standard of livingin 1992. Household expenditure growth was fastest in the southernand middle zones of the country, but it was much slower in thenorthern zone. Poverty in Nigeria, in addition to its overwhelminglyrural and regional characteristics, is also strongly influencedby education, age and the nature of employment. Those withoutan education constitute a large fraction of the poor and theextreme poor. Decomposing the factors causing the reductionin poverty shows that the overall decline of 8.9% was the netresult of a 13.6% decline due to the growth factor and a 4.7%increase due to the income distribution factor. Based on thisanalysis, the paper proposes that promoting broad-based growthand targeted interventions in health, education and infrastructureneed to be central strategies in the fight against poverty inNigeria.     

NUMBER OF TRANSACTIONS AND VOLATILITY: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY USING HIGH‐FREQUENCY DATA FROM NASDAQ STOCKS

Our empirical evidence based on transactions data of a sample of Nasdaq stocks indicates that trades of large firms are related to the proxies of marketwide and firm‐specific information. For large firms, an increase in the number of trades seems to have a beneficial effect on liquidity as measured by bid‐ask spreads. On the other hand, trades of small and medium firms are associated with firm‐specific information and are not related to marketwide information. For small and medium firms, the frequency of trades is positively associated with bid‐ask spreads, apparently because of the adverse information content of trades. JEL classification: G10, G12, G13