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The paper aimed at empirically investigating the impact of institutional capacity on macroeconomic performance of the Nigerian economy for the period 1961-2011. The analysis is based on a multivariate vector error correction model. The empirical results confirm co-integration relationship between institutional capacity, fiscal-monetary policy mix and macroeconomic performance. Results of the generalized impulse response functions suggest that one standard deviation innovation on institutional capacity reduces macroeconomic performance in the short, medium and long term, while results of the variance decomposition indicate that a significant variation in Nigeria's macroeconomic performance is not attributable to changes in the capacity of institutions, based on the proxy employed. It is recommended that for macroeconomic performance to be improved and sustained, mechanisms which deliberately seek to enhance institutional capacity, with a view to stimulating growth and providing the impetus for the achievement of macroeconomic objectives in the short, medium and long term horizons be instituted and vigorously pursued.

The paper aimed at empirically investigating the impact of financial deepening on the growth of an economy, with particular emphasis on Nigeria over the period 1981–2010. Financial deepening was segregated to capture both bank and non‐bank financial variables, because both are imperative to economic activities. The study therefore combined a proxy of banking sector development with stock market development to capture the influence of financial deepening on growth. The analysis is based on the bound testing approach to cointegration. The empirical results confirm cointegrated relationship between economic growth and financial deepening. The study also showed that, in the period of study, while there is bidirectional causality between bank financial deepening and economic growth, causality runs from economic growth to non‐bank financial deepening. The results of the investigation are in favour of the finance‐growth cum growth‐finance hypothesis. For the period under study, Nigeria's economic growth is sensitive to changes in financial deepening, past level of growth and the openness of the economy. It is therefore imperative that policies which seek to deliberately increase financial depth be vigorously pursued, in order to stimulate growth and consequently further deepen the financial sector of the economy.

In this paper, the Theil index was utilized to study the impact of macroeconomic variables on diversification in Nigeria for the period 1981-2015, using the bounds test approach to cointegration on data generated from secondary sources. Cointegration was found to exist between the economic diversification indicators and associated variables. We also found that capital formation, real effective exchange rate, domestic credit to private sector and foreign direct investment promote diversification. Government efforts in Nigeria should be geared towards diversifying the economy using oil revenue, promote foreign direct investment in the non-oil sector, provide fixed capital, encourage the flow of credit to the private sector, and implement a cautious exchange rate regime.

In this paper, the impact of policy and institutions on non-oil exports in Nigeria is investigated, using data from secondary sources for the period 1961-2012, and implemented through the autoregressive distributed lag framework. Non-oil exports were found to have a long-run equilibrium relationship with policy and institutional variables. Money supply and exchange rate were found to be positively associated with and statistically significant determinants of non-oil exports in the long and short run. Fiscal deficit, interest rate, "constraints on the executive" and openness were found to be inversely related to non-oil exports in both the short and long run. While inflation was found to be negatively related to non-oil exports in the short run, it is the reverse in the long run. An enhanced political institutional framework is required, that is attuned to growth in the non-oil sector of the economy, as a mechanism for improving the country"s non-oil exports.