Recent global events concerning high-profile corporate failures have put back on the policy agenda and intensified debate on the efficacy of corporate governance mechanisms as a means of increasing firm financial performance. This study attempts to address this question using pooled ordinary least squares regression analysis for a sample of 93 firms quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange for the period 1996–1999. While making a case for a board size of ten and for concentrated as opposed to diffused equity ownership, the results argue for the separation of the posts of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chair. Moreover, although the results find no evidence to support the idea that boards with a higher proportion of outside directors perform better than other firms, there is evidence that firms run by expatriate CEOs tend to achieve higher levels of performance than those run by indigenous CEOs. In the main, the results are consistent with existing literature, but there is need to err on the side of caution in any attempt to generalize the findings as the sample selection was determined by the availability of data rather than by any probability criterion.

Infrastructure has been identified as the key constraint to private sector development in Nigeria. Hence, this study analyses the cost of power outages to the business sector of the Nigerian economy using both a survey technique and revealed preference approach. One strong outcome of the study is that the poor state of electricity supply in Nigeria has imposed significant costs on the business sector. The bulk of these costs relate to the firms’ acquisition of very expensive backup capacity to cushion them against the even larger losses arising from frequent, lengthy power fluctuations. Small-scale operators are more heavily affected by the infrastructure failures as they are unable to finance the cost of backup power necessary to mitigate the impact frequent outages. The small-scale operators that can afford to back up their operations have to spend a significant proportion of their investment outlay on this. The study advocates for institutional reforms of the power supply sector in Nigeria.

This paper attempts to explain the movements of Zambia’s real effective exchange rate using a vector error correction model and quarterly time series data between 1973 and 1997. The study results are similar to most studies about the nature of the determinants of the real exchange rate. Through the use of purchasing power parity tests, impulse response and variance decomposition functions, the study indicates that Zambia’s real effective exchange rate depends significantly on the prevailing real fundamentals, price differentials and real shocks.

Land conservation technologies are known to play an important role in improving farm incomes. For this reason substantial investments are made in research to improve agricultural technologies in various parts of the world, from the development of new crop varieties to new practices of land management. The study builds on the few existing analyses of determinants of land conservation practices in Kenya and explores the impact of land rights and assets among other factors on adoption of soil conservation practices. Primary data from households in a semi-arid district in Kenya are used to achieve the study objectives. Random effects probits are used to derive the parametric estimates of our models. The findings are that property rights regimes and assets affect both the decision to conserve land and the type of conservation practices used by farmers. The results further suggest a positive correlation between land tenure security and population density and indicate that the poor are less likely than the non-poor to adopt land conservation practices. Education, available biomass, market development and location of the farm are also found to be important determinants of adoption. These findings call for pursuit of both short-term and long-term policy measures that offer incentives for land conservation through government initiatives and the involvement of local communities. Recommended policy measures include enhanced security of tenure, targeted programmes for poverty alleviation, improved access to education, and development of social and physical infrastructure.

Technical efficiency is said to be determined by individual farm- and farmer-specific characteristics. Such characteristics may be divided into two groups – demographic characteristics, which dominate the decision making process of the farmer, and socioeconomic and institutional characteristics, which influence a farmer’s capacity to apply the decisions at the farm level. This study explores the potential for improving production efficiencies of farmers and identifies factors that influence such efficiencies. The study reports data from a sample of 65 small- and medium-scale farmers. A stochastic production frontier approach is used to estimate the farmer-specific technical efficiencies. The estimated efficiencies are then explained by socioeconomic and demographic factors. Education, credit accessibility and extension services are found to contribute positively to the improvement of efficiency. These

The object of the study is to determine the presence and level of integration of the rural and urban foodstuffs markets of Nigeria. A central prediction of the law of one price is that prices of all transactions will tend to uniformity, allowing for the transportation cost between different spatial markets. Using the Johansen bivariate test of cointegration, it was established that the rural and urban foodstuffs markets are pair-wise cointegrated. The test for convergence to the law of one price as well as the test for weak exogeneity for urban foodstuffs prices (Y1) could not be rejected at the 1% level of significance. Hence, we conclude that the rural and urban foodstuffs markets are well integrated and are in the same market for arbitrage. The results further suggest that the urban market price drives the rural market price. The size of the adjustment coefficient for the rural foodstuffs price (Y2) shows that the speed of adjustment to disequilibrium is moderate. The persistence profile further shows that it would take about five months for the effects of a shock on the market system to die out. The findings of this research have significant policy implications for Nigeria’s domestic foodstuffs market system as well as its international trade policies.

To participate in the labour market or not to participate appears to be an issue of survival for women in the Ghanaian economy. Parallel to the rising trend in female participation rates, there has been a tendency towards a decline in fertility. At the core of these patterns has been the schooling factor. This study uses data from the Ghana living standards surveys with demographically enriched information to estimate female labour force participation and fertility models. We find that female schooling matters in urban and rural localities alike. Both primary and post-primary schooling levels exert significant positive impact on women’s labour market participation, and have an opposite effect on fertility. We conclude that although the gender gap in education has become narrower over the years, it is important for government policy to ensure the sustainability of the female educational gains obtained. Arguably, this is the key mechanism for enhancing female human capital and productive employment with favourable impacts on perceptions of ideal family size and fertility preferences.