Re-examining the government expenditure–growth nexus in ECOWAS countries

Olumide Olusegun Olaoye, Monica Orisadare, Ukafor Ukafor Okorie and Ezekiel Abanikanda

Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences, 2020, vol. 36, issue 4, 277-301

Abstract: Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of government expenditure on economic growth in 15 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) countries over the period of 2005–2017. More precisely, this paper investigates whether institutional environment influences the effect of government spending on economic growth. Design/methodology/approach - This study adopts the generalized method of moments-system method of estimation to address the problem of dynamic endogeneity inherent in the relationship. Similarly, unlike previous studies which assume that the disturbances of a panel model are cross-sectionally independent, we account for cross-section dependency and cross-country heterogeneity inherent in empirical modeling using Driscoll and Kraay's nonparametric covariance matrix estimator, adjusted for use with both balanced and unbalanced panels along with Monte Carlo simulations. Findings - The authors find that though, government spending has a positive impact on economic growth but the level of institutional quality adversely affect that positive impact. This suggests that the institutional environment in ECOWAS countries is a drag and not a push factor for government fiscal operations and/policies. Thus, the results provide empirical evidence that there is a conditional relationship between government spending and economic growth in African countries. That is, the effect of government spending on economic growth is dependent on the quality of institutions. Lastly, these findings suggest that in order for government spending to contribute to economic growth, African countries must develop a strong institutional environment. Originality/value - Unlike previous time series studies for African countries which concentrated on the two variable case, we include institutional quality as a third variable to underline the potential importance of institutional quality for economic growth in ECOWAS countries.

Keywords: Government expenditure; Economic growth; Institutions; GMM; Driscoll–Kraay standard errors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jeaspp:jeas-12-2018-0140

DOI: 10.1108/JEAS-12-2018-0140

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Associate Professor Ghulam A Arain and Dr Rebecca Abraham

More articles in Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().