A Re-Examination of the Relationship between Foreign Flows and Economic Growth in LLDCs: Dynamic Fixed Effects (DFE)

There are 32 landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) across four major continents of the world. These countries are mostly low-income or lower middle-income developing economies and suffer from a number of challenges especially, dwindling economic growth. The main objective of the study therefore, is to re-examine how economic growth in LLDCs can be influenced with the aids of foreign flows such as foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign portfolio investment (FPI) and official development assistance (ODA). The study made use of a sample of 19 member-states due to data limitation in order to evaluate the impact of foreign flows on economic growth using ARDL panel approach with the Dynamic Fixed effect (DFE) as the baseline estimation techniques during the period of 1995 to 2017. Our finding reveals that in the long-run, net FDI and net ODA have impacts on the economic growth in LLDCs but net FPI shows no any discernible impacts on GDP growth in LLDCs

Development of a Pilot-scale Pulse Electric Field system for Processing Liquid Foods

Pulse-Electric Field (PEF) System can be described as a system that utilises high voltages applied at a specific interval and with a particular wave shape in treatment (inactivation and destruction of micro-organism cells) of liquid or solid food. Pulse-Electric Field food processing system reduces the drawbacks (such as deterioration in sensory values, energy contents, and freshness) of other methods significantly. To generate the high voltage needed for the treatment, a series of capacitors and diodes connected were used. Generation of the desired pulse shape, which is the square wave is achieved through ATmega-328 microcontroller. The pulse control system is made up of a button to vary the treatment time, the power switch and a 16x2 alphanumeric Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) which serves as visual feedback. For the evaluation of the fabricated system, bacteria were cultured using MacConkey agar solution and then diluted in orange juice which serves as samples of liquid food. From the samples prepared, the bacteria count is in order of 1.61x105CFU/mL before treatment, after treatment the count reduced to 1.01 x105CFU/mL and 2.10 x104CFU/mL concerning 1kHz and 2kHz pulse frequency used for the two samples treated

THE DYNAMISM OF EXCHANGE RATE SHOCKS: EVIDENCE FROM NIGERIA

Purpose. The main objective of this study is to investigate the dynamics of exchange rate shocks in Nigeria. Methodology. The researcher used Error Correction Model (ECM) with annual time series data covering the period of 36 years; 1981 through 2016 as the estimation technique. The estimated co-integration test shows that the macroeconomic variables in the system do share a long run relationship with the exchange rates in the period under investigation. Accordingly, each variable in the system tends to adjust proportionally to bring in the system back to its long run equilibrium. Findings and Implications. The estimation result shows that increase in productive output (gross domestic product) leads to depreciation of the exchange rate in the short run but with insignificant effect in the long run. This, hence, implies that the dwindling trend in domestic production has remained one of the major causal factors of the persistent fluctuation in exchange rate in Nigeria. The persistent rise in price level is equally found to lead to appreciation of the exchange rate simply because of over reliance on cheap and more sophisticated foreign goods and materials, in the short run but with insignificant effect in the long run. The domestic interest rate, as reveal by the estimation results, is found to be significantly impacted on the fluctuation of exchange rate in Nigeria. Limitations. The main limitation of this study is in the area of data availability and model specification. The VAR model as popularized by Sims, (1980) is such that all the variables in the framework are assumed to be endogenous with the exception of exogenous variable. This problem may raise the tendency of for multicollinearity and the statistical insignificance of the regressors co-existing with high overall statistical significance of the regression model (Gujarati, 2005; Brooks, 2008). Originality. To the best of my knowledge, at the time of conducting this research, many of the studies in Nigeria have employed other methods other than Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). And, we affirm that this work is original and not being considered elsewhere for publishing. Therefore, this study will contribute to existing literature on the dynamics of exchange rate shocks in Nigeria