On the government revenue on economic growth of Sub-Saharan Africa: Does institutional quality matter?

Abstract

As studies report inconclusive results, the linkage between government revenue and economic growth remains a topic of debate in economic literature. This study investigates the effect of government revenue on the economic growth of Sub-Saharan African countries with the main objective of whether institutional quality matters. The panel data for 43 SSA countries were obtained from dependable data sources: World Development Indicator and Heritage Economic Freedom Index for the period of 2012–2022. The result from system GMM estimation reveals that government revenue adversely affects economic growth while institutional quality positively enhances economic growth before interacting with each other. However, the interactive coefficient of government revenue and economic growth positively affected the real GDP growth rate of SSA countries over the study periods. Precisely, before interacting with institutional quality, a percentage change in government revenue, keeping all other things constant, leads to a 0.0866% decline in economic growth while it marks a 0.2329% upsurge in economic growth in the presence of institutional quality. The result of the study further revealed that government revenue promotes the economic growth of the region when combined with institutional quality. On the other hand, foreign direct investment and openness to trade were the key sources of economic growth whereas the population growth rate adversely impacted economic growth in SSA countries during the study period under consideration. The policy implication of the study is that SSA needs to strengthen government revenue management. Further, the finding of the study implies that SSA countries need to improve institutional quality through promoting efficiency of the regulatory quality and the size of the SSA governments. In addition to this, the fast real GDP growth rate of SSA countries demands improved institutional quality indicators such as the rule of law and extended access to the open market.