Abstract:The study investigates the effect of public health expenditure on health outcomes in Nigeria, as captured by life expectancy at birth and infant mortality rates. The result shows that public health expenditure and health outcomes have long-run equilibrium relationship. Furthermore, the results showed that an increase in public health expenditure improves life expectancy and reduces infant mortality rates. In addition, urban population and HIV prevalence rate significantly affects health outcomes, while per capita income exhibits no effect on health outcomes in Nigeria. The findings suggest that public health expenditure remains a necessary component in improving health outcomes in Nigeria.

This study investigates the extent to which environmental hazards affect the life expectancy in Africa using Nigeria time series data spanning from 1960 to 2017. The study adopted generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model in estimating the total number of 58 (years) observations to ensure robustness in the estimation results. The estimation results show that environmental hazards in terms of carbon dioxide (CO 2) emission from solid fuel consumption reduce life expectancy (LEX) by 1 month and 3 weeks with a statistically significant result. Also, income, as proxied by GDP, extends LEX by 1 year 6 months with statistically insignificant result, while population growth (POPG) equally extends LEX by 5 years 5 months due to increase in human resource/manpower which enhances agricultural productivity in Africa. Based on the empirical findings, there is a need for the African Union (AU) to adopt a policy regulating the excessive CO 2 emission from solid fuel consumption to ameliorate the negative consequences it exerts on the lifespan of the African population. Also among other policy recommendations, the economies in Africa should increase budgetary allocations to science and technology sector to drift the economies from solid fuel consumption to more robust electricity/digital driven technology and hybrid-energy efficient mechanisms.

Infrastructural development has been the major concern of countries all over the world due to its significant impact in fostering growth. In Nigeria, it has been observed that the level of infrastructure posed serious threat to attaining sustained growth. This study therefore examines the impact of capital expenditure on infrastructural development in Nigeria, utilising time series from 1970 to 2017. The study adopted autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model due to the possibility of the past value of the dependent variable explaining its present value, and found that capital expenditure, construction expenditure and non-oil revenue have the potency of accentuating infrastructural development in the long-run but such is being hampered by external debt. The positive effect of recurrent expenditure on infrastructural development is a pointer that bulk of the expenditure in Nigeria over the years is recurrent in nature. These suggest the need to boost non-oil revenue, reduce recurrent and channel external debt into productive infrastructural development.

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This study aims at ascertaining the relationship between welfare and economic growth in Nigeria, capturing both economic and environmental welfare. Nitrous oxide emission and Carbon dioxide emission in Nigeria are used to capture environmental welfare while government education expenditure, per capita health expenditure and per capita income are used to capture economic welfare. Using quarterly data spanning 1999-2016 and employing the cointegration analysis as well as the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation technique, the study found that a long-run relationship exists between economic growth and welfare in Nigeria. It also found that both environmental and economic welfare significantly affect economic growth in Nigeria.

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Towards the acceleration of the attainment of sustainable growth, most countries have focused on agricultural exports as a means of driving their economy. Developing countries of Africa are highly dependent on the agricultural sector and agricultural exports are a major determinant of economic growth of these countries. However, the impact of agricultural exports on economic growth of ECOWAS countries remains unclear. This study therefore evaluates the impact of agricultural exports on the economic growth of fifteen ECOWAS countries using panel data for the period 1980-2013. Variables employed are labour force participation rate, capital stock, agricultural exports, non-agricultural exports, inflation and economic growth. The results of the fixed-effect model show that agricultural exports have not impacted significantly on the economic growth of ECOWAS countries such as Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria with respect to the Republic of Benin, which is the selected baseline. The study also analysed the country combined effect of the agricultural exports and found that it was significant but the rate of impact was weak. The study recommends, among others, that even though agricultural exports had a significant impact on economic growth, there is still a need for ECOWAS governments to improve their agricultural sector as its significance is more noticeable in some countries such as Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria.

It is argued that while increase in budgetary allocation to social services is highly desirable, it is not sufficient to guarantee enhancement in better health outcome. This paper links public health expenditure, economic growth and health outcomes and the causality among them using Nigeria data. The finding suggests increase in public health expenditure has decreased infant mortality rate while infant mortality rate is negatively correlated with economic growth. Interestingly, the direction of causality among public health expenditure, infant mortality rate and growth is unidirectional, from public health expenditure to growth. Contribution/Originality: This is one of the few studies which have investigated public health expenditure, economic growth and health outcomes (infant mortality rate) in Nigeria. 1. INTRODUCTION Health undoubtedly is one of the most important factors that determine the quality of human capital, a necessary factor for economic growth. Therefore, any public expenditure on health can be viewed as a form of investment in the overall health status of a nation (Dang et al., 2016). A consensus of opinion have been formed among researchers recognizing health as a public good, the demand and supply of which cannot be left at the mercy of invisible hands or profit maximizing individual as well as on considerations of utility maximizing conduct alone. The recognition of the above led the World Health Organization (WHO) to propose at the 2010 World Health Assembly, issues that will address financing of health, which will ensure qualitative and affordable healthcare services. Riman and Akpan (2012) also alludes that the pattern of health financing is closely and indivisibly linked to the quality of health outcomes, capable of achieving the long term goal of enhancing nation's economic development. Health care financing does not only involve how to raise sufficient resources to finance health care needs, but also on how to ensure affordability and accessibility of healthcare services, equity in access to medical services as well as guarantee financial risk protection. Carrin et al. (2007), Riman et al.