Three essays on access to credit and financial shock in Nigeria

This thesis comprises three essays on access to credit and the impact of financial shocks in Nigeria. In the first essay, we examine the impact of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) development fund initiative on access to credit for Micro, Small and Medium (MSM) firms using data from the World Bank Enterprise survey for Nigeria. The key findings reveal that the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Fund (MSMEDF) had a positive effect on access to bank credit by firms. The programme is estimated to have increased the incidence of loan take-up by firms during the period of the study. The second essay investigates whether there is a gender dimension to small- and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) credit market participation and loan success in Nigeria. The findings reveal evidence of an unequal treatment in loan success in those firms that were 100% female owned. The findings reveal that exclusively female-owned firms are not constrained in applying for loans, but are less likely to be successful in their loan application compared to male-owned firms. The third essay examines the impact of unanticipated shocks on household welfare measures in Nigeria. Using the General Household Survey (GHS) data for Nigeria, we exploit the increase in prices of food items as a measure of financial shock in combination with personal and local shocks to investigate their impact on household-level food and non-food expenditures, household assets, savings and food poverty. The empirical analysis reveals that financial shocks exert the most influence on household welfare measures, and household assets play a key role as a shock absorber in providing some resilience to households in the event of a shock.