Impact of Disaggregated Public Expenditure on Economic Growth of Selected African Countries: A Panel VECM (Published)
The study investigated the long-run and short-run equilibrium relationship between economic growth and disaggregated public expenditure in selected West African Countries with panel data spanning 1990-2017. The study employed panel co-integration based on Pedroni and Panel Vector Error Correction Model (PVECM) with Engle and Granger´s procedure for empirical analysis. The findings revealed that expenditure on infrastructure, health and education have positive impact on economic growth at about 2%, 6% and 2% respectively, but only expenditure on infrastructure is significant. Defence expenditures and education expenditures at both lags have indirect and insignificant influence on economic growth while health expenditure has direct and insignificant impact on economic growth at all lags. The study recommends policy makers to focus on developing health, infrastructure and education sectors which has not contributed significantly enough to economic growth in the selected African countries
Keywords: Defence, Education, Health, Infrastructure, PVECM, economic growth