Trade Openness and Employment: Evidence from Nigeria
Trade Openness and Employment: Evidence from Nigeria

Summary/Abstract: The rate of Unemployment has been on the increase over the years in Nigeria despite all the direct labour policies that the government have implemented to no avail. Scholars have observed that trade openness is a way to address the problem of unemployment in literature. But the debate on this has been indecisive in developing economies, so it becomes necessary to investigate this relationship in Nigeria. The identified Vector Error Correction model and Granger Non-Causality are used for this purpose. Our findings show short-run, but no long-run causalities among employment, trade openness, Real Gross Domestic Product, Consumer price index, exchange rate and interest rate. Negative long-run relationship between trade openness and output has also been established. This implies that trade has been harmful to employment generation. It was recommended that the government should increase their competitiveness in the international market and make use of interest and exchange rates for trade competitiveness.

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