ECONOMICS

This study examines the impact Value Added Tax (VAT) revenue and economic performance in Nigeria using time series data from year 1994-2020. The result of the estimated OLS model shows that there is a positive and significant relationship between VAT revenue and economic performance in Nigeria which was proxied by the real GDP at 5% level of significance. Personal Income Tax was found to positively affect economic growth and was significant at 5% level and lastly, the analysis revealed that a positive relationship exists between VAT revenue and total household consumption expenditure and the relationship was found to have being statistically significant at 5% level. The study recommended that government should consider the implications when making decisions about VAT rates and structure and that a potential solution is to mitigate the negative effects of VAT on lower-income households by implementing a progressive tax system where lower rates are applied to basic necessities and higher rates to luxury goods and services. The study further recommended that in order to enhance economic growth of Nigeria through VAT revenue, the enlightenment of the public on how VAT works, how it is calculated and how it affects them can increase understanding and acceptance of the tax.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is often seen as a driver of economic development, bringing capital, technology, and expertise to various sectors, including healthcare. However, its impact on health expenditure in Nigeria remains unclear. This study examines the relationship between FDI and health expenditure in Nigeria using secondary time-series data from 1990 to 2023, sourced from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).The dependency theory forms the theoretical framework of the study. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square regression method was employed to assess whether FDI significantly influences health expenditure while accounting for economic growth and government expenditure. The findings reveal that while FDI shows a positive relationship with health expenditure, its impact is statistically insignificant. In contrast, economic growth significantly contributes to increased health spending, highlighting its crucial role in healthcare financing. Interestingly, government expenditure on health appears to have a negative effect, raising concerns about inefficiencies in public healthcare investment. Additionally, due to data limitations, the study could not fully assess FDI’s impact on healthcare accessibility, quality, and private sector investment, leaving room for further
investigation

This study empirically examined the impact of external debt burden on infrastructural growth in Nigeria from 1981-2018. Being a time series data, and to avoid spurious regression result in our model, a test for stationary of the data using Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test was carried out. The variables; infrastructural growth, domestic debt, external debt, exchange rate, and interest rate were found to be stationary at their first differences. Then, an ARDL Bound Co-integration technique was used to establish if the stationary variables are co-integrated in the long-run. The finding indicates that the variables were found to be co-integrated in the long run. Further, an ARDL was employed to obtain long run coefficients of the respective regressors. The ARDL result revealed that Domestic Debt (negative impact), Exchange Rate (negative impact), and Interest Rate (positive impact) exerts a
significant influence on infrastructural growth while External Debt (positive impact) was found to be insignificantly related to the growth of infrastructures in Nigeria. It recommends amongst others, that the government should as a matter of priority create more favourable institutional policy and regulatory framework to meet up these challenges. On the whole, there is need for the policymakers to adopt policy framework consistent with availability of external finance that is credibly maintained. Conclusively, infrastructure growth is one of major elements of structural reforms in developing economy like Nigeria because of its expected large economic and social impact.