Government Expenditure and Economic Growth in Five ECOWAS Countries: A Panel Econometric Estimation

The study explores the cointegration relationship between government expenditure and economic growth for five ECOWAS countries. A panel cointegration approach is used for the dataset for the first time. From the results, government expenditure and economic growth are not cointegrated in both their common and idiosyncratic components. Thus, further analysis on the causalities among the variables could not be assessed. The results collaborate recent findings on the weakness in using fiscal policy to explain economic growth behaviour in these developing and resource constrained countries.