This study empirically examined the impact of external debt on economic growth. Also, the interactions of governance, external debt and external debt volatility were further investigated with emphasize on the interective effect of governance as proxied byKaufmann, D., (2007) quality governance measures such as; government effectiveness, political stability, voice and accountability, regulatory quality and corruption control on economic growth. The study utilized annual time series data, focusing on thirty selected Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 1997 to 2020. The Dynamic System Generalised Method of Moments estimation technique was adopted while controlling for conventional sources of economic growth. Empirical findings from the study reveal that external debt and external debt volatility have a negative and significant impact on economic growth in SSA. Furthermore, the interaction of governance indicators, external debt and its volatility, had a positive impact on economic growth in SSA. This study recommends that SSA government should endeavor to avoid excessive external debt to promote the regions’ capacity to invest in her financial prospects, and to circumvent the danger of repayment of loans using her small income. The SSA governments should also improve the quality of governance by ensuring political stability, minimising corruption, implementing sound policies and regulations that can permit and promote economic growth through the development of the private sector. The governments must ensure that every borrowed debt is properly supervised and utilised for its purposes to spur economic growth. More so, the Guidotti-Greenspan rule of Reserve adequacy should be applied to keep excess borrowings in check.

The study examined stock prices (SP) and exchange rate (ER) interactions with multivariate VAR-GARCH model using monthly data from January 2000 to October 2014. The results of the Engle and Granger and Johansen cointegration test show that there is stable long-term relationship between SP and ER. The empirical evidence of the VAR-GARCH model shows a significant mean spillover running from stock market to exchange market but not a mean spillover from exchange market to stock market. The variance equation results indicated the existence of bidirectional volatility transmission effect between SP and ERs, indicating the past innovations in stock market have the great effect on future volatility in foreign exchange market, and vice versa. The results have important implications for international portfolio managers in the portfolio diversification decisions and risk hedging strategies.

Background This study seeks to examine the causal link between financial deepening, national security, ecological footprint, and economic growth in Nigeria, in order to contribute to the contradicting evidence on economic growth drivers. Methods The dynamic ARDL model was employed as the baseline model to establish the link between the phenomena, and the FMOLS and DOLS as robust models using time series data spanning from 1995 to 2022. The FMOLS and DOLS models take into consideration the presence of endogeneity, cross-sectional dependency, and heterogeneity. Results The results demonstrate that whereas ecological footprint has positive and significant long-term relationships with economic growth, financial deepening and national security have negative and significant long-run relationships with economic growth. There was a 34% and 50% correction to the short-term to long-term adjustment speed, respectively. The findings of the Granger causality, interaction terms, marginal (ME), and threshold (TH) effects demonstrate: a) a significant bidirectional causal relationship between national security and economic growth, as well as a one-way significant causal link between financial deepening and economic growth; b) changes in national security and ecological footprint have a significant and negative impact on the financial deepening effect on economic growth; c) significant negative and marginal effects of national security on economic growth, as well as significant positive marginal effects of ecological footprints on economic growth; and d) the impact of financial deepening on economic growth becomes apparent when the increases in the marginal effect of the ecological footprint reach a critical limit over the ( TH CO 2 = 0.981) threshold. Conclusions This study highlights the significant link between Nigeria’s financial deepening, national security, ecological footprint, and economic growth. It recommends that viable policies be put in place to support the development of financial institutions, increasing security infrastructure investment, and promoting renewable energy use for sustainable environment and reduced carbon emissions.