An Examination Of The Relationship Between Government Spending And Economic Growth In Namibia

Abstract

The existing studies on the relationship between government spending and economic growth provide inconclusive empirical evidence. This study examines the causal relationship between government spending and economic growth for the Namibian economy by employing general government (final) consumption expenditure and real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data for the period 1980 to 2012. The study employs the pair wise Granger causality test, Co-integration test and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). The series were tested for stationarity using the Augmented DickeyFuller (ADF) test. The study found that the variables were non-stationary but would become stationary after being differenced once. VECM and pair wise Granger causality tests results support the hypothesis of public expenditure causing economic growth as proposed by the Keynesian theory. The results show that there is a unidirectional relationship between the two variables. The empirical investigations suggest that government spending has a significant and positive impact on economic growth in Namibia.