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In tandem with China’s national strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative, China has emerged as a key player in Latin America buttressed by its economic relations with the region in trade, foreign direct investment (FDI), and loans. At the same time, a critical issue in the development of Latin America has been its historically high levels of income inequality, which has underlined the social, political, and economic instabilities in the region. While the development model of China has contributed to income inequality within its borders, it will be equally important to explore whether the new economic relationship between China and Latin America, particularly within the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, have had an impact on inequality and poverty in the region. The central thesis in this study is around the effects of China’s economic engagement with Latin America on its income distribution and poverty levels. This study used data from sixteen Latin countries from 2000 to 2018 to investigate if economic relations with China change income inequality and poverty in Latin America. To account for economic relations with China, we consider imports from China, exports to China, Chinese FDI, and Chinese loan commitments. Additionally, for comparative analysis, we examine the effects of FDI, exports, and imports from United States to Latin America. Both sets of data are controlled for the same variables to ensure consistency and accuracy in our findings. Our study yields some findings that link China’s and United States’ economic relations with Latin America to reductions in income inequality and poverty in the region as well as the presence of China in Latin America as a challenge to the influence of the United States in Latin America.

Keywords: China, Latin America, Income Distribution, Poverty Reduction

The pursuits for sound economic growth, national development and financial sustainability have become the bane of Nigeria and thus, lingering over the years despite the abundant natural, human and material endowments. This study examines the effect of budget deficit and macroeconomic attributes on financial sustainability in Nigeria. The study used ex-post facto as the research design for the study. Indeed, the study employed quantitative and critical realism as the research approach and
paradigm of the study respectively. The data for the study was obtained from the secondary sources of data collection. Nigerian economy was employed as the domain and population of the study using fourty (40) years spanning from 1982 to 2022 as the period of the study. To analyze data, the bounds test for co-integration, the ARDL estimation techniques were jointly employed. Based on the result of ARDL for long-run co-integration, it clearly states that all the regressors (EXTD, EXRS, DBS, EXR and CPI) have a longrun co-integration with financial sustainability as measured by Debt-GDP. It is recommended amongst others, that government borrowings through external debt and debt servicing arrangements should be tailored to tackle
critical and physical infrastructures while the apex bank should deploy a holistic approach designed at tackling the fluctuation in the general price level as measured by the (CPI), promoting local production and investment through empowering the small and medium scale enterprises in order to boost productivity, create more jobs, attract foreign investors, encourages export and finally reducing the over reliance on crude oil revenue.

Keywords: Deficit Financing, External Debt, Debt Overhang, Fiscal Illusion, Nigeria.

Background: Methods of SDG index depicting progress and extent of sustainability achieved by normalizing the indicators and weighted sum suffer from limitations and lead to different rankings. Methods: The paper proposes multiplicatine aggregation to compute country-level Index for overall progress of SDG-8 (ISDG-8)) and progress of all the 17 SDGs at global level. Results: The proposed index satisfies desirable properties and facilitates identification of critical targets requiring managerial attention for correcting policy measures, assessment of progress over time, distance from the SDG targets at a given time-point, testing statistical hypothesis of equality of ISDG-8t ) for two different countries for a given year and also for equality of I(SDG-8t) for two successive time points., plotting of progress path at country level and computing measure of similarity between such paths registered by a pair of countries. Conclusion: The proposed method of multiplicative aggregations without scaling and choosing weights offers significant benefits and contributes to improve aggregation of SDG avoiding major limitations of existing methods of aggregations, is recommended. Future studies suggested.

Keywords: SDG Index; Sustainable Composite Index, Geometric mean, Progress path, Testing of hypothesis.
JEL classification: C43, E24, I 32

First, it shall be reminded when and for what reasons "paradoxes", that is negative, indefinite tending towards ±?, and zero production prices appear in single production techniques. Next, we present a separable production technique, that is a production technique, which is divided into at least two parts, one of which outweighs ordinaly not cardinaly to all the other parts with respect to labour productivity and to r- productivity, and we show that here too not only "paradoxical prices" appear, but also indefinite arithmetical values of the profit rate, as well as tending towards ±? nominal wage rates. In addition, w-r-relations with negative w and r, and positive slope, as well as positive profits with negative surplus product appear. Finally, negative "labour values" appear. All these paradoxes are a consequence of the implicit presupposition that productivity and r-productivity in the production of each commodity is in all the production processes of this commodity the same, which contradicts the separability of the technique. As a result, the neoricardian interpretation of profit, as well as Steedman's proof of negative " labour values" cannot be substantiated.

Keywords: “Paradoxical prices” and w-r-relation in joint production, surplusapproach, Negative “labour values”.
JEL Classifications: B51

The financial sector in Central Africa, despite recent progress, remains weakly inclusive and essentially dominated by banks. The need for access to bank financing for micro businesses and SMEs is such that the region still has a lot of potential to exploit in the years to come. Using data from Global Findex, we aim to understand the drivers of corporate financial inclusion (FI) in Central African countries. More precisely, using a Multivariate Probit (MVP) model, we examine the determinants of
companies’ FI indicators. Furthermore, considering the FI as a continuous phenomenon, we used the Instrumental Variable Probit (IVP) model to study the impact of determinants of the business climate on financial inclusion indicators (external audit, bank account and access to credit). In this regard, the integration of the local financial system with global financial markets will facilitate efforts to ensure financial inclusion in the region.

Keywords: Businesses, financial inclusion, Central Africa, Probit Multivatiate Model, Instrumental Variable Probit Model.
JEL Ranking: G21, O16