Modelling the Causal Relationship among Remittances, Exchange Rate, and Monetary Policy in Nigeria

This study examined the relationship and causality that exist between remittance inflows exchange rate and monetary aggregates - money supply, interest rate, and the domestic price level in Nigeria. The Johansen co-integration and the Granger causality techniques were employed. The Johansen co-integration test indicated that long run relationship exist among the variables. The Granger causality test results revealed a unidirectional causality running from money supply (LM2) to remittances (LREM) only at lag one and not in the reverse. In other lags, there was no evidence of causality between the duos. The results also showed that, consistently from lag one to lag five, causality run from exchange rate (LEXR) to LREM and not in reverse direction. Unidirectional causality run from interest rate (INT) to LREM, occurring from lag one to lag four. There was no evidence of causality in any direction between inflation rate (INF) and LREM within these lags. We also found that causality run from exchange rate (LEXR) to money supply (LM2) only at lags one and four and not in the reverse order. Keywords: Remittance Inflows, Exchange Rate, and Monetary Policy.

Modelling Household Electricity Consumption and Living Standard in Nigeria

Poor standard of living has remained a source of concern in Nigeria despite enormous resources available to the nation. Concerted efforts have been made through intensive power sector reforms and huge budgetary allocations to the sector, yet the performance of the power sector towards improving the standard of living of the Nigerian households has remained a source of doubt. This study investigated the impact of household electricity consumption on the standard of living in Nigeria over the period 1981 – 2018. The study employed the ARDL bound cointegration test to determine the existence of a longrun relation between the standard of living and the chosen explanatory variables, while the Pairwise Granger was used to establish the direction of causality between the household electricity consumption and standard of living. The results show that household electricity consumption is a significant contributor to an improved standard of living in Nigeria and that a feedback causality flows between the household electricity consumption and standard of living in Nigeria. Based on these findings, the study recommends among other things that the government should improve the level of electricity supply especially for the residential consumption by investing more on infrastructural development via the installation of more transformers that will facilitate electricity distribution across the country

Modelling the dynamics of cryptocurrency prices for risk hedging: The case of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin

AbstractCryptocurrencies have, over the years, gained an unprecedented prominence in financial discourse, with the market fielding over 5,300 digital currencies and reaching over $2 trillion in market capitalisation in 2022. The surge in market values of digital currencies and their popularity in the world of e-commerce have remained unabated and equally received special attention from researchers focusing on identifying the underlying factors that drive changes in their market values. Thus, this study models the dynamics of the prices of cryptocurrencies alongside their interconnectedness, focusing on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin along the time and frequency dimensions of monthly data from 1 March 2016 to 05/31/2022. Based on the ARDL model, results show that the volume of transactions of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, oil prices, and gold prices exert a more significant positive influence on their prices in the longrun than in the shortrun. However, the publicity of the selected cryptocurrencies (google search rates) does not significantly influence their prices. Interestingly, results from the Wavelet Granger causality tests show no causality between the raw series of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin prices. However, a bi-directional causality exists between Bitcoin and Ethereum prices during the longrun in their low frequencies, a unidirectional causality running from Bitcoin to Litecoin prices during the longrun in their low frequencies, and a unidirectional causality running from Litecoin to Ethereum prices during the shortrun, medium run and longrun in their high, medium, and low frequencies. These findings have profound implications for the global financial market and investor decisions