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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.

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.

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.

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.

The paper investigates the determinants of capital structure and the speed of adjustment of capital structure decisions of Nigerian firms.

The paper adopts three methods: difference GMM, system GMM and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA).

The empirical results show that firms' efficiency affects the capital structure decisions of Nigerian firms. At the same time, short-term debt has a higher speed of adjustment in the context of Nigerian firms. The roles of other control variables are established in the paper.

Nigerian firms should adopt short-term debt in order to achieve their targeted debt levels. Managers of Nigerian firms are also advised to be more efficient in order to attract higher performance.

The paper is the first literature to measure the efficiency of firms using SFA method. Extant studies in the literature have neglected the determinant while four papers that adopt the determinant data envelope analysis (DEA) method. This is also the first study to document the speed of adjustment in capital structure decisions in the context of Nigerian firms.

This article aims to explore the Nigerian government's budgetary response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the economic and social implications of the pandemic response.

Our analysis is based on a review of secondary evidence such as Nigerian Federal Government budget documents, policy documents, Central Bank of Nigeria circulars, news media articles, World Bank and International Monetary Fund reports, reports from Big Four accounting firms and policy think-tanks.

The authors highlight how increased borrowing to fund COVID-19 related economic and social interventions have significantly squeezed Nigeria's fiscal space. The authors also highlight that while some interventions provide short-term economic relief to the poor and small businesses, other interventions and gaps in the policy response have the potential for significant negative impact on businesses, households and unemployment. In addition, the authors highlight the potential for long-term benefits to the health sector and for private sector engagement in corporate responsibility and philanthropy.

The authors present a comprehensive account of the Nigerian government's budgetary response to the COVID 19 pandemic and the economic and social implications of this response.