Search

Do intergovernmental transfers affect the multidimensional well-being of households? This paper investigates the relationship between intergovernmental transfers and household multidimensional well-being, using the revenue allocation by the federal government to sub-national or state governments in Nigeria. We follow Alkire & Foster to compute a multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which is the weighted sum of three broad dimensions of poverty – health, education, and living standards. We adopt an instrumental variable (IV) approach by using exogenous variation in oil windfalls as an instrument to mitigate the endogeneity concerns associated with using intergovernmental transfers in our analysis. We find that an increase in intergovernmental transfers leads to an improvement in household multidimensional well-being or a decline in the multidimensional poverty index. We identify recurrent and capital expenditures as some of the potential channels through which intergovernmental transfers affect the multidimensional well-being of households in Nigeria. The findings of this paper reinforce the growing evidence of the developmental impacts of intergovernmental transfers, especially in the context of developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the effects of international remittances on the expenditure patterns of households in Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). This article focuses on five countries in SSA, which are some of the destinations that account for the highest receipt of international remittances. We analyze both aggregate and distributional effects of international remittances on expenditure patterns of households. To investigate the distributional effect of international remittances, we adopt the instrumental variable quantile (IV‐quantile) regression framework that allows us to simultaneously address the endogeneity of international remittances and possible heterogeneity in the impact of international remittances on households' expenditure patterns. We instrument for international remittances by using the economic conditions in migrants' countries as an instrument for international remittances. Our results show that the receipt of international remittances increases expenditures on food, durables, education, and health. Using the IV‐quantile regression, we find the effects of international remittances on household expenditure on food, durables, education, and health increase across the different expenditure quantiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of industrialization and urbanization on CO2 emissions in 20 African countries for the period 1980 to 2013.Design/methodology/approach In order to correct for cross-sectional dependence, this study adopts the use of pooled mean group. Also, the study contributes to the literature by estimating the direct, indirect and total effects of industrialization and urbanization on carbon emission.Findings The results show that industrialization and urbanization directly increase environmental degradation. Interestingly, industrialization and urbanization were also found to reduce environmental degradation through their indirect effects on per capita income. In general, the authors conclude that the indirect effect of industrialization will overcrowd the direct effect, and this will lead to a decline in the overall effect of industrialization on carbon emission. Also, the positive direct effect of urbanization outweighs the negative indirect effect, thus the overall effect of urbanization will endanger carbon emission in the long run.Originality/value The existing studies on emission, industrialization and urbanization have typically been biased toward Africa. This present study filled this gap. The choice of African countries is based on the notion that the continent is desirous of expanding her industrialization level. This has coincidentally led to the increase in urbanization growth rate as well as income level of former rural dwellers. The second contribution of this study is the “effects decomposition” into direct, indirect and total effects. This is to reveal some inherent information that might be missing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]