We investigated the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the productivity and profitability performance of quoted firms in Nigeria. We sampled a panel of 38 quoted firms in Nigeria from 2015 to 2024 and the data were sourced from the annual reports and audited financial statements of the firms as well as the Nigerian economic policy uncertainty index and the World Development Indicators of the World Bank. We analysed the data using the panel Fixed Effects estimator with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors, which provided the baseline estimates, while the traditional panel Fixed Effects, Random Effects, and Pooled Ordinary Least Squares estimators were used to provide robustness checks. The results showed that economic policy uncertainty significantly and negatively affects both capital productivity and labour productivity of quoted firms in Nigeria. This implies that rising economic policy uncertainty impairs the ability of quoted firms in Nigeria to efficiently utilize their capital and human resources. However, the results further showed that the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the return on capital employed, return on assets, and return on equity of quoted firms in Nigeria is generally negligible. Hence, the significant adverse effect of uncertainty on productivity does not necessarily translate immediately into significant reductions in accounting profitability. Among others, we recommended that Nigerian governments and policy makers should promote policy stability and predictability, improve policy communication and stakeholder engagements, strengthen the transparency and credibility of policies emanating from public institutions, and enhance the policy coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities.

Key words: Economic Policy Uncertainty; Firm Performance; Quoted Firms; Panel Data Models; Nigeria

JEL Classification Codes: D80; H32; L22; C23; N17