Does Remittances and Output Growth Improve Household Welfare in Nigeria?

Remittances are welfare-improving private external inflows that directly alleviate poverty levels and inequality by raising living standards via increased consumption of non-durable (food and clothing etc), and durables goods (education and health), a significant part is kept as savings. At the macro level, remittances serve as a stabilizer by providing foreign currency that increases capital formation, employment, and national income. This study apply secondary data spanning from 1981-2012 to analyze the impact of remittances and economic growth on poverty in Nigeria using various econometric techniques such as Augmented Dickey Fuller test to ascertain the stationarity and Johansen Co-integration test to establish the long-run relationship among the variables; Granger causality test is employed to test pair-wise causality while, the Two Stage Least Square technique is used to estimate to impact of the variables on each other. Our results confirm that remittance exerts a positive significant impact on consumption and economic growth, while real GDP is negatively significant, contributing about -2.3% to consumption. The study concludes that remittances are valuable complement to broad-based development efforts, and has a paradoxical impact on poverty and economic growth. Thus, government should implement an apt policy sufficient to checkmate the adverse effects of remittances (e.g., over dependency), and create an enabling environment for business growth. Keywords: Remittances, economic growth, consumption, Two-stage least squar

Measuring Revealed Preference Hypothesis of the Theory of Consumer Behaviour Using Roy’s Identity: A Case Study of Oriade LGA of Osun State, Nigeria

The paper examines whether the Roy’s identity is applicable to the measurement of revealed preference hypothesis in Oriade LGA of Osun State, Nigeria using iteration technique. The paper revealed that Milo, a brand of beverages is most preferred because a greater percentage of the households consume Milo. In terms of preference, Bournvita came second preferred while Nescafe was least favoured. The iteration result shows that expenditure on Milo and Bournvita was positive and significant for total expenditure on beverages. However, the consumption of Nescafe proved insignificant. The iteration result finally shows that convergence takes place meaning that the Roy’s identity is applicable in the measurement of the revealed preference of the 120 households considered in the paper. The paper concludes that producers of beverages should increase the supply of Milo and Bournvita to the area while the producers of Nescafe should endeavour to find out why their product was least favoured