Informal associations, shocks, and household food consumption: panel data estimation from rural Nigeria

We use the three-waves panel data for households in rural Nigeria from the General Household Surveys (GHS), which is part of the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), to investigate how informal associations help households that are exposed to adverse shocks in smoothing their food consumption. We find that informal associations help to improve the percentage of food expenditure and dietary diversity of households who are members compared to those non-member households. Moreover, we investigate potential mechanisms through which these relationships hold, and we find that households are able to borrow from both the association and other individuals who may be members of similar networks. Our results are robust to different specifications

Environmental pollution policy of small businesses in Nigeria and Ghana: extent and impact

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of firms’ operation and environmental protection polices in Nigeria and Ghana, where there has been a rising industrial growth amidst low regulatory and institutional frameworks. We analyze the extents to which firms’ adoption of environmental protection policies affect their performances. We use firm-level data of 842 firms (447 for Nigeria and 395 for Ghana) distributed across different regions of both countries for our descriptive and econometric estimations. We find, among other things, that firms’ adoption of internal policies on environmental protection is dismally low in both Nigeria (32%) and Ghana (17%), with policies focused on reducing solid (38%, Nigeria; and 35%, Ghana), gaseous (22%, Nigeria; and 44%, Ghana), and liquid (24%, Nigeria; and 14%, Ghana) pollution. Training appears to be an important intervention that can help improve firms’ adoption of such policies. We also found that firms’ adoption and implementation of environmental protection policies significantly improve their performance