A BOUND TESTING ANALYSIS OF EXCHANGE RATE PASS- THROUGH TO AGGREGATE IMPORT PRICES IN NIGERIA: 1980-2006

This paper examines the extent of pass-through of exchange rate into import prices for Nigeria between 1980 and 2006 using the recently developed UECM-Bounds test proposed by Pesaran et al. (2001). Empirical evidence reveals that world export prices has a dominant effect compared to exchange rate in explaining changes in Nigeria¡¯s import prices in the short and long run. The major implication for our study therefore is that exogenous factors such as world export prices appeared to be more important determinants of domestic import prices than a country¡¯s exchange rate policies.Aggregate Import Price, World Export Price, Bound Testing, Nigeria

Responsiveness of trade flows to changes in exchange rate and relative prices: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper examines the long-run and short-run impacts of exchange rate and price changes on trade flows in Nigeria using exports and imports functions. The bounds testing (ARDL) approach to cointegration is applied on a quarterly data from 1980 Q1 to 2007 Q4. The results indicate that in both the short-run and long-run Nigeria's trade flows are chiefly influenced by income- both domestic and foreign-, relative prices, nominal effective exchange rates and the stock of external reserves. The results also reveal that in the long-run, devaluation is more effective than relative prices in altering imports demand at both baseline and augmented models. The reverse is, however, the case for exports demand. Furthermore, the sum of the estimated price elasticities of export and import demand in Nigeria exceeds unity indicating that the Marshall-Lerner (ML) condition holds thus implying that a devalued naira might hold considerable promise as the panacea to rising trade deficits

Structural breaks, parameter stability and energy demand modeling in Nigeria

This paper extends previous studies in modeling and estimating energy demand functions for both gasoline and kerosene petroleum products for Nigeria from 1977 to 2008. In contrast to earlier studies on Nigeria and other developing countries, this study specifically tests for the possibility of structural breaks/regime shifts and parameter instability in the energy demand functions using more recent and robust techniques. In addition, the study considers an alternative model specification which primarily captures the price-income interaction effects on both gasoline and kerosene demand functions. While the conventional residual-based cointegration tests employed fail to identify any meaningful long run relationship in both functions, the Gregory- Hansen structural break cointegration approach confirms the cointegration relationships despite the breakpoints. Both functions are also found to be stable under the period studied. The elasticity estimates also follow the a priori expectation being inelastic both in the long- and short run for the two functions

Modeling Gasoline Demand with Structural Breaks:New Evidence from Nigeria

This paper extends previous studies in modeling and estimating demand for gasoline for Nigeria from 1977 to 2008. The ingenious attempt of this study, contrast to earlier studies on Nigeria and other developing countries, lies in its assumption of structural breaks in the long run relationship among the variables employed. The study tests for the possibility of structural breaks/regime shifts and parameter instability in the gasoline demand function in Nigeria using more recent and robust techniques. While the conventional residual-based cointegration tests employed fail to identify any meaningful long-run relationship in the gasoline function, the Gregory-Hansen structural break cointegration approach confirms the cointegration relationships despite the breakpoints. The elasticity estimates also follow the a priori expectations being inelastic both in the long- and short-run for both price and income. Having identified plausible breaks in the systems, the test does suggest that a structural break in the cointegration vector is important and needs to be taken care of in the specification of gasoline demand functions in Nigeria. It is envisaged, therefore, that substantial policy lessons would be drawn from the findings of this study especially in the current phase of energy industry deregulation in Nigeria.Gasoline demand modeling; Structural breaks; Parameter stability; Cointegration