Conference Theme: Global Uncertainties and Policy Interventions for Macroeconomic Stability in Africa
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Background
In recent times, global uncertainties have spiraled beyond control especially with the COVID-19 outbreak. These call for serious concerns and necessary attention by all the stakeholders especially policymakers and economists around the world. The reasons are not farfetched as the current trend of uncertainties has unprecedented implications for the already sluggish global growth recoveries. Thus, this necessitates several coordinated policy interventions regionally and globally due to interconnectedness and contagion effects across regions and the globe alike.
Global uncertainty level became a major concern in recent times with the 2008/2009 global financial crisis occasioned by the US housing bubble that had a spill-over effect on several capital markets around the world thereby engendering global growth fragility and macroeconomic instability among countries and regions. In a bid to curb the global crisis, several unpopular policy interventions were introduced such as quantitative easing and unconventional monetary policy stances. Despite these interventions, global economic recovery has been sluggish since the 2008/2009 financial crisis. In fact, up till now, most developed countries like the US accounting for about 20.0 percent of global economic activities, still experiences deflationary trends with very low interest rates as against the developing countries like the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries with high interest rates due to inflationary pressures.
Furthermore, as the world continued to combat the situation via several conventional and unconventional policy stance, global economic activities were grossly affected again in the 2015/2016 commodity price shock. This further aggravated the already tensed global uncertainty level. Thus, most commodities- dependent economies experienced a fiscal shock that resulted in their worst recession in 2016. African economies were among the worst hit and they were plagued with unprecedented macroeconomic instability manifesting in the form of twin deficits-fiscal and current account deficits. The aftermath was an escalating debt profile accounting for about 57.7 percent of GDP, an overall fiscal balance of -5.87 percent of GDP, and a rising debt service to revenue ratios in SSA. The rising debt across SSA countries is further aggravated by sluggish growth trajectories and alarming unemployment rates despite several policy interventions. This calls for serious concern as current debt trends are unmatched with the expected growth and employment levels thus pointing to unproductive spending and leakages.
Similarly, as African countries grappled with post-2016 recession challenges, other global risks emerged including the US-China trade tension, Brexit, and several geopolitical unrests across the globe. These all contributed to the current global economic uncertainties. An old-time global risk factor, especially to Africa, is global warming due to climate change thereby calling for environmental sustainability via the need for an environmentally friendly production process. This poses more concern for Africa. This is because growth and energy use policies are always at variance with current global climate change concerns thus, endangering employment prospects in Africa.
In the same vein, as the world including Africa battled to resolve these global challenges at different fora, including the IMF-World Bank meetings, World Economic Forum meetings, the AfDB-UNECA African Economic Conferences, a COVID-19 global pandemic struck, leaving in its trial a heightened blaze of global uncertainty. Thus, global trade was halted due to travel restrictions and this resulted in rising job losses, unprecedented pressure on existing health facilities, and serious fiscal pressures across the globe. The aggregate effect was a decelerating global demand that affected energy demand thereby exposing most countries to both energy and COVID-19 shocks. Prior to COVID-19, 2020 global growth was projected to be at 3.3 percent, advanced economies were to grow at 1.6 percent, SSA was to grow at 3.5 percent, and Nigeria was to grow at 2.5 percent. However, the COVID-19 outbreak interjected these promising growth projections with global economic activities being revised to contract by -4.4 percent, advanced economies to contract by -5.8 percent, SSA to contract by -3.0 percent and Nigeria contracted by -1.92 percent in 2020.Nigeria’s actual 2020 growth was surprising to many as this was against several forecasts around the world. This was due to the government’s swift response to provide pandemic-related support packages including the development finance support from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). All these accounted for about 0.3 percent of Nigeria’s GDP.
Consequently, it is imperative that policymakers and economists take a cursory look at the current trend of global uncertainties and, the policy interventions so far, to entrench national, regional, and/or global macroeconomic stability.
Conference Objectives
African countries, including the leading African economies like Nigeria and South Africa, are at a disadvantage due to their high exposure to the global world. Thus, global risks and uncertainties are exogenous shocks that impact negatively not only on their growth trends but also on their fiscal and external positions. However, sustainable policy interventions provided for macroeconomic stabilization are important, especially for long-term growth and the needed economic diversifications to build domestic buffers against a future occurrence of such a global crisis. Thus, the conference aims at providing a comprehensive diagnosis of the several issues surrounding global uncertainties, as well as the optimal policy interventions necessary for macroeconomic stability in Africa.
The Conference is expected to bring together outstanding delegates and participants across academia, industry, government, development partners among others to unravel policy direction for Africa to overcome the current global challenge and circumvent future ones.
Sub-Themes
Based on the Conference theme and objective, the sub-themes are:
• Theoretical issues on uncertainties and macroeconomic stabilisation
policies
• Global economic uncertainties and development finance
• Global uncertainties, climate change, and unemployment
• Global economic uncertainties and exchange rate management
• Global economic uncertainties and macroeconomic policy interventions
• Economic uncertainties, gender, health, poverty, and other
development issues
Format of the Conference
The Conference will feature many activities. There will be keynote paper presentation and plenary sessions with lead paper presentations and discussions. There will also be policy round table discussions where representatives of different stakeholders will lead discussions on several aspects of global uncertainties and the policy interventions so far. There will also be concurrent sessions’ paper presentations.
Submission Guidelines
We invite authors to submit Abstracts on any of the sub-themes listed above. The Abstract should be typed in standard MS Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF format. It should not be more than 700 words in length, typed in Times New Roman, font 12, double line spacing. The submission should include the following in the order in which they are listed: title of the research paper, the author(s), JEL classification codes, overview (not more than half a page), research objectives, and research hypothesis (if any), methodology (if any), Data (definition and proxies (if any) and data sources, expected results, references, and the corresponding author’s mailing address, phone and e-mail address (for papers that are jointly authored). Please, note that any submission that does not adhere STRICTLY to these submission guidelines will not be considered.
Important Deadlines
Deadline for submission of Abstracts May 31, 2021
Notification of acceptance of papers June 15, 2021
Deadline for submission of full paper August20, 2021
The Abstract should be submitted electronically to: nes.conferences@gmail.com and copy: pberegha@gmail.com. For further information on the Conference, please, visit the Society’s website: www.nigerianeconomicsociety.org.
Conference Fees
NES Members
?35,000 for early Registration, before July 31, 2021
?40,000 for late Registration, after July 31, 2021
Non-NES Members
?40,000 for early registration, before July 31, 2021
?45,000 for late registration, after July 31, 2021
Students
?10,000 for Students Registration
?5,000 for NESA Delegates Registration
Virtual Presentation
N15,000 for presenter
N5,000 for each co-author of a paper (compulsory)
Please, visit:www.nigerianeconomicsociety.orgfor more information on the Nigerian Economic Society.
Professor Perekunah Eregha Dr. Anayochukwu B. Chukwu
Conference Editor Publicity Secretary
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