The Impact of Mercantilism on Macroeconomic Exposures of Business in Nigeria: Implications for Economic Policy

The paper examined the impact of mercantilism ideology on macroeconomic exposures of business in Nigeria. This was prompted by the sluggish growth and poor performance of businesses in Nigeria. In order to probe into this issue, an attempt was made to investigate the relevance of mercantilists’ contributions to the Nigerian business activities by discriminately considering macroeconomic exposures, which is operationally defined as the business environment. For this issue to be addressed, questions on how macroeconomic exposures such as personal income tax, company income tax, unemployment rate, GDP per capita, per capita income, money supply and lending rate have impacted on business in Nigeria was raised. For the sake of empirical evidence, those macroeconomic exposures appealed to some secondary data by proxy. The findings ensued from the analysis are that the contributions of mercantilists are relevant to macroeconomic exposures of business in Nigeria because their business philosophy is in line with realities on Nigerian business environment. However, unemployment rate as a macroeconomic exposure did not conform to the philosophy of mercantilism. Arising from the foregoing, it was concluded that if the Nigerian business world should look inward and harness the available economic resources, then the ideas of the mercantilism are likely to be totally relevant. Based on this, it was therefore recommended that the Nigerian Government should initiate economic policies that could encourage sectoral protection.