Oil price movements, exchange rate and Nigerian manufacturing sector growth: a short-run analysis

The selection of financing is a top priority for businesses, particularly in short- and long-term investment decisions. Mixing debt and equity leads to decisions on the financial structure for businesses. This research analyzes the moderate position of company size and the interest rate in the capital structure over six years (2013–2018) for 29 listed Pakistani enterprises operating in the sugar market. This research employed static panel analysis and dynamic panel analysis on linear and nonlinear regression methods. The capital structure included debt to capital ratio, non-current liabilities, plus current liabilities to capital as a dependent variable. Independent variables were profitability, firm size, tangibility, Non-Debt Tax Shield, liquidity, and macroeconomic variables were exchange rates and interest rates. The investigation reported that profitability, firm size, and Non-Debt Tax Shield were significant and negative, while tangibility and interest rates significantly and positively affected debt to capital ratio. This means the sugar sector has greater financial leverage to manage the funding obligations for the better performance of firms. Therefore, the outcomes revealed that the moderators have an important influence on capital structure.

The objective of the article is to study the influence of political and economic factors on the situation on the world foreign exchange market, substantiate the importance of fundamental analysis in forecasting currency rates. The concept and mechanisms of functioning of the world currency market, its assets and specific features in comparison with other financial platforms are considered in the article. The need for special attention to fundamental analysis during the periods of global political and economic events is grounded. Based on the analysis of the dynamics of the leading world currency pairs in recent years, the period from October 2016 to April 2017 was chosen for an analysis because that period is full of significant events in the world political and economic arena, which are powerful levers of the traders’ behavior, and hence the direction of the dynamics of key currency pairs. These events are as follows:

• presidential elections in the USA;
• two increases of the Federal Reserve rate; and
• the policy of the European Central Bank, aimed at stimulating inflation.

It is substantiated that using the fundamental analysis makes it possible to assess the trend and scale of changes in the rates of the world currencies, and in combination with technical analysis is an integral tool for successful trading and forecasting the dynamics of currency pairs. The possibility of using the mechanisms of functioning of such fundamental analysis tool as artificial neural networks and the ways of their application in solving such problems has been considered.

This study explores the relationship between bank credits, exchange rate and non-oil GDP in Azerbaijan, utilizing FMOLS, CCR and DOLS co-integration methods to the data spanning from January 2005 to January 2019. The results from the different co-integration methods are consistent with each other and approve the presence of a long-run relationship among the variables. Estimation results reveal that there is a positive and statistically significant impact of bank credits and exchange rate on the non-oil GDP in the long run for the Azerbaijani case which are in line with the expectations and with the theoretical findings discussed in theoretical framework section. This finding also indicates that a 1% increase in credit and real exchange rate increases non-oil GDP by 0.51% and 0.56%, respectively. The results of this paper are useful for the policymakers and promote the economic literature for further researches in the case of oil-rich countries.