Government Investment Expenditure Research Articles

Private and Public Investment: Are they Substitute or Complementary in Driving Economic Growth in Nigeria?

The paper investigates the relationship between government and private investment with a view to ascertaining their complementarity or substitutability in driving economic growth in Nigeria for the period of 1981-2021. To achieve the objective, nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) models and nonlinear Granger causality tests were employed to analyze annual secondary data which were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. Findings show that government investment expenditure displayed a positive and long-term influence on private investment, suggesting a “crowding-in” effect where increased public investment stimulates private investment thereby fostering overall economic growth. Economic adversities or reduced public investment exerted a substantial negative impact on private investment, underscoring the complementarity of government investment expenditure in driving economic growth in Nigeria. Also, the nonlinear Granger causality tests reveal unidirectional relationship as government investment expenditure causes private investment across various embedding dimensions, emphasizing the positive influence of government investment on private investment. The findings generally suggest the need for balanced fiscal policies, prioritizing productive government investments, encouraging private investment, controlling inflation, and making time-sensitive policy decisions to promote economic growth in Nigeria.

The optimal government size and economic growth: A comparative study between Malaysia and South Korea

Inspired by the Look East Policy, Malaysia aims to learn from such a successful Asian country as South Korea in order to break through its upper-middle-income trap. Using the dynamic threshold nonlinear approach, this comparative study is therefore timely to compare and contrast the nonlinear correlation between economic growth and government spending between these two nations. When considering two different measures of government size as the threshold variable, namely government operating/real GDP (GS1) and government investment/real GDP (GS2), the practical findings of this research indicate the presence of a threshold effect between government size and economic growth in the contexts of Malaysia and South Korea. Specifically, the BARS curve exists in Malaysia and South Korea when GS1 is set as the threshold variable. However, a U-shaped curve of nonlinear relationship exists in both countries when GS2 serves as the threshold variable. Interestingly, the threshold two-regime regression results show that while government operating expenditures in both Malaysia and South Korea are not found to be overspent and are beneficial for economic growth, the Malaysian government's investment expenditure has not achieved the full potential of accelerating economic growth compared to South Korea.

Does the structure of state budget matter for Egypt’s fiscal deficit? An empirical investigation using an ARDL bounds testing approach

ABSTRACT The current study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the relationship between structure of the State budget and fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio in Egypt over the period 1981/1982–2020/2021. The dynamic relationship between the examined variables is tested using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration. The study finds an empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis that budget structure matters for fiscal deficit in Egypt. A higher share of investment expenditure in total government expenditure is correlated with a lower fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio in the long- and short-run. The share of taxes in total government revenue is found to be negatively (positively) associated with the fiscal deficit-to-GDP ratio in the short-run (long-run). In addition, the current account balance is found to be negatively correlated with the fiscal deficit, in the long-run, which supports the ‘twin deficits hypothesis’ and the ‘current account targeting hypothesis’. Furthermore, the study finds a unidirectional Granger causality relationship that runs from fiscal deficit to government investment expenditure.

IMPACT OF GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT EXPENDITURE ON ECONOMIC GROWTH IN GHANA

The paper investigated the impact of government investment expenditure on economic growth in Ghana using secondary data spanning from 1975 to 2018. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and the Granger Causality test were adopted to examine the objectives. The results showed that government investment expenditure related positively to economic growth in the long run, but has no statistically significant effect on growth in the short run. Other variables such as foreign direct investment, labour force, gross capital formation, debt service, interest rate, inflation rate, and foreign aid influenced growth positively or negatively. A unidirectional causal relationship ran from Government investment expenditure to growth. The study, therefore, recommends that to attain sustainable future economic growth, the government should pay more attention to its investment expenditure; by providing the necessary resources and the enabling environment for education, health and technology. Keywords: Government Investment Expenditure, Growth, ARDL, Granger Causality, Human capital

Macroeconomic Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic: Fresh Evidence from Korea

Korea’s economy has suffered greatly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on such a background, this paper investigates the macroeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Via impulse response function analysis, the results reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic has a considerable short-term influence on Korea’s key macroeconomic variables, while its long-term effects are not significant. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, total demand in Korea has decreased. It is mostly reflected in the lower consumption and investment demand. Simultaneously, this has put increased pressure on inflation and unemployment. Moreover, the results also show that government investment expenditure and monetary policy may, to some degree, ameliorate the status of consumption demand. Meanwhile, they may alleviate employment pressures in order to boost output. In reality, both have some negative consequences. Based on the evidence presented in this article, the Korean government may implement appropriate policies to ensure the smooth functioning of the Korean macroeconomy.

Investigating Crowding-Out Effect Of Government Expenditures: Evidence From Turkey

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of government consumption and investment expenditures on private sector investment in the Turkish economy. In this study, the Cointegration Vector Autoregressive Model based on 1980-2018 data has been used. The results of the cointegration vector obtained from the Johansen Cointegration Test show that during the period under review, government investment expenditures are complementary and incentive and government consumption expenditures are competitive with private investment expenditures. Based on the results, it is suggested that to economic prosperity and development in various economic sectors, the government should undertake infrastructure expenditures.

Public Finance in Pandemic Times

Never before in living memory has economic destruction been so severe as it has been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has struck at a time when the economy has already been slowing due to structural problems. Therefore, hastening the recovery process and accelerating the pace of economic growth requires the government not only to provide substantial stimulus but also to implement structural reforms. The stimulus provided so far has been mainly by the RBI on the supply side in terms of reducing interest rate, augmenting augment liquidity, restructuring loans to stressed sectors, moratorium on repayment of loans to severely impacted businesses and regulatory forbearance. The fiscal stimulus on the demand side has not been significant and amounted to just about 1.5 percent to 2 percent of GDP. The sharp contraction of the economy by 15.7 percent in the first half has substantially eroded revenue collections requiring both central and state governments to sharply reduce both government consumption and investment expenditures. Faster recovery in the second half of the year will crucially depend upon heavy lifting by the governments which requires them to increase consumption expenditures, transfers as well as capital expenditure by scaling up borrowing as well as monetizing the assets. The aggregate fiscal deficit as well as outstanding debt are likely to show a sharp increase which will raise questions of sustainability. The government has initiated a number of reforms, particularly to infuse flexibility to land and labour markets, reform regulatory systems in education and healthcare, and has made additional borrowing to the states conditional on undertaking power sector reforms, property tax reforms and improving the ease of doing business. However, implementation of these reforms holds the key. There is a need to urgently address problems of the financial sector. Reforms in sectors such as police and judiciary too are overdue to protect the life and property of people and enforce contracts.

Government expenditure and economic growth: a post-Keynesian analysis

ABSTRACT In a post-Keynesian growth model with positive saving propensity out of wages, this paper analyses the implication of different kinds of government expenditures on aggregate demand and economic growth. We distinguish between government expenditure on consumption and investment. The basic idea is that certain kinds of government investment expenditure influences labour productivity. In a formal model, we incorporate this idea by assuming labour productivity as an increasing function of government investment expenditure. When the economy is in a profit-led demand regime, under the balanced budget assumption, we show that a shift in government expenditure from consumption to investment leads to an unambiguous rise in both aggregate demand and economic growth. However, the result is ambiguous in the wage-led demand regime. Once the balanced budget assumption is dropped, while in a wage-led demand regime a rise in government investment expenditure may decrease aggregate demand and growth, it unambiguously raises both aggregate demand and growth in a profit-led demand regime. On the other hand, in the absence of a balanced budget assumption, a rise in government consumption expenditure has a positive effect in both regimes. We also show that allowing the government to run a deficit and incur debt does not necessarily lead to the public debt rising without bounds.

Impacts of productive and recurrent public expenditure on economic growth in South Africa: An analysis using the autoregressive distributed lag – error correction model

Orientation: The weak economic growth experienced by South Africa in the face of increased government spending is a concern. Research purpose: Investigating different components of government spending helps to observe their relationships with economic growth and conclude whether or not government spending contributes to the lower economic growth. Motivation for the study: Earlier studies in South Africa considered the effects of total government spending on economic growth; however, estimating this effect does not depict reality. Research approach/design and method: This study used annual data from 1976 to 2017 to observe this relationship. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds-test approach to cointegration and the ARDL-based error correction method were adopted. Main findings: The results showed that the two components of government spending positively affect economic growth in the short and long run. Government investment spending has a greater effect on economic growth in the long run than in the short run. The results showed that government consumption expenditure outweighs government investment expenditure, with the latter having lesser effect on economic growth. Practical/managerial implications: This shows that increased government spending is not to be blamed for the slow growth in South Africa, supporting theory. Contribution/value-add: Some studies did not disaggregate government spending into government investment and consumption spending in South Africa; and observed how each component affects economic growth; and other studies used econometric techniques that are different from the one used in the current study. This study therefore contributes to the ongoing discussion of the effect of government spending on economic growth.

Fiscal procyclicality in emerging markets: The role of institutions and economic conditions

AbstractProcyclicality of fiscal policy is a common feature in emerging markets, by contrast with high‐income economies, and leads to greater business‐cycle amplitudes. We investigate potential causes of fiscal procyclicality, including a host of economic and institutional variables of especial import in emerging markets. We employ dynamic panel methods in a large sample of countries to investigate what factors are associated with fiscal cyclicality. We find that fiscal procyclicality is mainly due to procyclical fluctuations in government investment expenditure. In addition, we find that procyclical fiscal policy is positively associated with government debt levels, terms‐of‐trade volatility, and costs of foreign borrowing, while negatively associated with better government efficiency. Only a weak association is found between International Monetary Fund program participation and fiscal procyclicality. Finally, we find that certain fiscal rules are associated with lower fiscal procyclicality and, in particular, balanced‐budget rules may help mitigate the adverse cyclicality effects of high terms‐of‐trade volatility and government debt burdens in emerging markets.

Effect of Tax and Debt Financed Government Expenditure on Economic Growth in Kenya

This study aims at analyzing the effect of tax and debt-financed government expenditure on economic growth in Kenya using time series data from 1980-2014. Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) was used to analyze the data. The empirical findings showed that public investment expenditure financed by issuing debt has positive effect on economic growth. The results also indicated that financing government consumption expenditure using debt has negative effect on economic growth. With regards to tax revenue, the results indicated that tax financed public consumption spending affects economic growth negatively. Moreover, the results showed financing government investment expenditure using tax revenue promotes economic growth. Based on the findings, this study therefore recommends fiscal authorities in to use borrowing to finance investment expenditure as opposed financing consumption spending. Additionally, given the adverse effects of debt-accumulation on growth performance, policy makers should focus more on domestic revenue mobilization to finance government expenditures.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN SOUTH AFRICA: A RE-EXAMINATION

In this study, we have empirically examined the impact of unemployment on economic growth in South Africa, using time series data from 1994Q1 to 2017Q4. The study made use of the error correction model in determining the relationship between unemployment and economic growth. In addition to economic growth and unemployment, four control variables were added to the model. These were government expenditure, inflation, investment and household final consumption expenditure. Using the error correction model (ECM), the results of the study reveal that there is a negative relationship between unemployment and economic growth in South Africa. An increase in unemployment in South Africa would reduce the rate of economic growth. Based on the research findings, where unemployment was found to have a negative impact on economic growth in the study country, the South African authorities responsible for economic policy are recommended to formulate and enhance policies that aim at reducing unemployment in the country.

Manufacturing Sector Performance And Economic Growth In Nigeria

The paper attempted to examine the impact of manufacturing sector output on economic growth in Nigeria from 1981 to 2016. The study employed secondary data sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria statistical bulletin for Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model and the Granger causality techniques on RGDP, manufacturing capacity utilization (MCU), manufacturing output (LMO), government investment expenditure (GINVEXP), money supply (LM2) and interest rate (INR). Evidence of long-run and short-run relationships among the variables was established. The results showed that MCU has positive influence on RGDP while LMO also affects RGDP positively. It also showed that GINVEXP has negative effects on RGDP whereas LM2 influenced RGDP positively. Moreover, the result indicated a unidirectional causality between RGDP and MCU, LMO and LM2. Based on the above, the study suggest government should intensify efforts to promote socio-economic infrastructural, macroeconomic and institutional framework in Nigeria to provide favourable environment for external and domestic institutions interactions; so harnessed mobilized funds effectively towards productive manufacturing sector.

The Effects of Fiscal Policy on Ghanaian Economy

As part of the Government role in formulating and implementing policies that drives economic output, the need to examine whether or not these policies affect economic growth is useful and timely. The study was conducted by regressing economic output on four fiscal variables such as: government consumption expenditure, taxes, and government investment expenditure and government transfers whilst private investments, labour force and terms of trade as the non-fiscal variables. The analyses were based on time series data covering the period of 1980-2016. The study applies the Dickey-Fuller test for stationary and bounds test approach to cointegration for the estimation of an autoregressive distributed lag model. The result shows that in the long-run government investments and government expenditure affect economic growth positively. Keywords : Expenditure, Growth, Fiscal policy; Budget; Government spending; GDP DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-26-14 Publication date :September 30 th 2019

Real Effective Exchange Rates Determinants and Growth: Lessons from Italian Regions

In this paper we analyse the price competitiveness of the Italian regions by computing the Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) for each region, deflated by CPI and vis-a-vis the main partner countries. We use them to look for the medium-term determinants, finding significant heterogeneities in the role of government consumption and investment expenditure. Government consumption has an extremely negative effect on competitiveness in North-Eastern Italy, Southern Italy and Lazio. Investment plays a negative role especially in the North-West, while it can be positive for competitiveness in Lazio and Southern Italy. We also find that the transfer theory does not necessarily hold and it even behaves in the opposite direction in case of North-Eastern Italy and Lazio. Lastly, we show that an increase in the regional price competitiveness influences regional growth positively only in the long run and spillovers may play a role.

Government Spending and Economic Growth in Cameroon

Today, the role of government spending which is considered as the main instrument in the promotion of economic development is seen in the public investment budget (PIB). This study analyzes the role of the public investment spending in the economic growth of Cameroon. Specifically, it brings out the effect of Public and Private Investment on GDP growth in Cameroon. The role of the PIB as an instigator of economic growth should be clarified in order to justify government investment expenditure. Many studies have analysed the relationship between government spending and economic growth but the analysis of the composition of government spending and induced economic growth is an aspect of economic analysis which deserves more interest. This study analysis the effect of government investment spending on economic growth in Cameroon going from the components of the GDP5 and using VAR (Vector Auto Regressive) model. Our results show the intervals in which the various components of government spending have an effect on economic growth in Cameroon. We find that the lagged GDP and government investments have a positive effect on growth whereas private investments affect it negatively.

The Relationship Between Increasing Public/Private Sector Investment and Economic Growth in Iran

The form and the extent of government intervention in the economy are important issues in each country. Because of the importance of the subject, the present article examines the relationship between government investment expenditures, private sector investment and other related macroeconomic variables with economic growth from 1989 to 2013. For examining the long- and short-run relationships between model variables, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach and the standard Granger-causality relationship have been used. Based on the long- and short-run Granger-causality relationship, a one-way causality relationship from economic growth to government sector investment expenditures and a one-way causality relationship from the government sector consumption expenditures to government sector investment expenditures exist. Moreover, research findings show a two-way inverse Granger causality relationship between private sector consumption expenditures and government sector investment expenditures in both long- and short-run. Finally, there is no causality relationship between government sector investment expenditures and private sector investment expenditures.JEL Classification: H11-H50-E22-O43

Dynamic analysis of budget policy rules in Japan

We construct an endogenous growth model with public capital and endogenous labor supply and examine quantitatively the welfare effects of fiscal consolidation on the Japanese economy. We consider two modes of fiscal consolidation: the adjustment to a new lower target of the debt-to-GDP and deficit-to-GDP ratios. We find that the debt and deficit reduction rules based only on government consumption and investment expenditure cuts improve households’ welfare. This improvement in households’ welfare becomes large as the speed of fiscal consolidation rises. Further, reductions in the target debt-to-GDP or deficit-to-GDP ratio generate larger welfare gains. We also discuss the welfare effects of fiscal consolidation with tax increases and transfer payment decreases.

Management of Oil Revenues: Has That of Azerbaijan Been Prudent?

To help explain the common failure of oil or other natural resource exporting countries to diversify into industry, it has been common to trace this failure to real exchange rate appreciation. This has also been done in Azerbaijan. However, because Azerbaijan has devoted so much of its oil revenues to government investment, Azerbaijan provides a suitable case for examining an alternative link through government investment. This study applies the ARDL cointegration method to quarterly time series data on oil prices, government capital formation, non-oil exports and non-oil GDP to estimate the long run relationships linking oil prices to government investment expenditures and further to generation of non-oil GDP. The results show that despite the massive government investment expenditures, extremely little non-oil production of the tradable type has been generated, calling attention to the need for policy reform.

The Government Spending Multiplier in Turkey

ABSTRACTThis study aims to measure the size of the government spending multiplier in Turkey for post-2001 financial crisis period within a structural VAR framework. The analysis demonstrates that a positive shock to government spending tends to increase output, tax, and real interest rate on impact and the size of the fiscal multiplier is relatively large at first few quarters. The fiscal multiplier reaches a peak value of 1.5 at second quarter and then starts to diminish. Furthermore, investigating the effects of the components of government spending reveals the fact that government investment expenditures, rather than consumption expenditures, have a profound impact on output at first few quarters.