Cointegration and Causal Relationship between Taxes and Spending for Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

Edward Ghartey ()

International Economic Journal, 2010, vol. 24, issue 2, 267-282

Abstract: Causal relationships between taxes and spending are examined for three African countries using the GDP as a control variable, and dummy variables to address structural changes in Nigeria and South Africa. There is one cointegration equation between nominal fiscal variables in all three countries, one cointegration equation for Kenya and two cointegration equations for Nigeria and South Africa for the real fiscal variables and their respective dummy variables. Short-term results of the nominal variables show fiscal independence for all three countries. In real terms, taxes cause spending for Kenya and Nigeria and a weak fiscal synchronization for South Africa. There is long run fiscal synchronization in nominal terms for all three countries, and in real terms for both Nigeria and South Africa, while real taxes cause spending in Kenya. Long-run estimates show a unit increase in nominal (real) taxes translating into a less than proportionate increase in nominal (real) spending for Kenya and South Africa, and a more than proportionate increase in nominal (real) spending for Nigeria. Fiscal imbalance is not a threat in the budgetary process in Kenya and South Africa, but an issue of concern in Nigeria, where oil revenues are a major source of support for budget short falls.

Keywords: Autoregressive distributed lag error-correction model; taxes; spending; causality; cointegration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10168730903510674 (text/html)
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:taf:intecj:v:24:y:2010:i:2:p:267-282

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RIEJ20

DOI: 10.1080/10168730903510674

Access Statistics for this article

International Economic Journal is currently edited by Jaymin Lee Editor

More articles in International Economic Journal from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().