This paper analysed the relation between the stock market indices and the developments in the international energy market using historical monthly data from January 1985 to December 2017. Energy prices as applied in the study are composed of changes in the prices of crude oil, natural gas (NGS) and liquefied NGS (LNGS). We employed the traditional vector autoregressive techniques in estimating the linkages between the variables of interest. Our findings showed that changes in energy prices did not have significant influence on the stock market. Although there was evidence of a long-run relationship between the two variables, no causal relationship was found to exist between them; this entails that past values of the prices of crude oil, NGS and LNGS were not vital in predicting the developments in the stock market. Likewise, lagged values of the stock market indices were not instrumental in forecasting the movements in energy prices. Thus, we conclude that the stock market could be more responsiveness to other macroeconomic indicators other than the energy prices.

2020). Influence of public relations' media public enlightenment campaign and community participation strategies on waste management. AbstractWaste management has posed a lot of threats to both humanity and the stability of the natural environment. This study specifically investigated whether public relations' media enlightenment campaign has any significant influence on waste management and also studied whether public relations' community participation has any significant influence on waste management. The population of the study consists of residents of Enugu metropolis. Survey method was adopted for the study, and the sample size of 384 residents were determined using Cochran's method. Cronbach's Alpha was used to determine the reliability of 0.980. Using the convenience sampling technique, the questionnaires were distributed to 384 residents, and 295 of them were duly filled and validated. Using simple linear regression for data analysis, the findings revealed that public relations' media public enlightenment campaign strategy has a significant influence on waste management (r = 0.933; t = 76.736; F = 5888.365; p < 0.05). Similarly, it was revealed that public relations' community participation strategy has a significant influence on waste management (r = 0.930; t = 76.280; F = 5667.029; p < 0.05). Ergo, there is a need to improve on media public enlightenment campaign strategy towards educating and encouraging waste management behavior among residents through an adequate traditional and social media awareness campaign. Also, residents should be encouraged to participate actively and meaningfully in environmental waste management issues in Enugu metropolis. The implication is that residents will be more conscious of managing their wastes effectively as a result of adequate information gathering from the media and participation in waste management activities.

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This study investigated in cross-country and panel form the interactions of bank development, stock market development and global equity index, focusing on the BRICS countries covering the period 1990 to 2018. We found a bidirectional causation between bank development (CPSGDP) and stock market performance as proxied by the depth of the markets (MCAPGDP) in the BRICS countries. Cointegration was also found using the panel cointegration framework and the bounds test for the ARDL estimators. This largely proves that a long-run relationship of both direct and reverse nature exists between bank development and stock market performance. For the bank development and market performance models respectively, all the error-correction terms were found to be negatively significant, indicating that they both share dynamic profile and adjust appreciably to deviations from equilibrium between the short run and the long run. The global equity index showed that stock market development interacts more with the global financial environment than bank development in the BRICS countries. Our findings support the complementarity and coevolution hypothesis in the stock market and bank development nexus.

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