Explaining the growth of government spending in Ghana

Obeng, Samuel Kwabena and Sakyi, Daniel (2017) Explaining the growth of government spending in Ghana. The Journal of Developing Areas, 51 (1). pp. 103-128. ISSN 0022-037X

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Abstract

Government spending is a reflection of government policy choices. However, the implications of government spending growth necessitate an understanding of the drivers of the growth of government spending. The present paper modifies the median voter model to explain the growth of government spending by introducing foreign aid, public debt, and democracy. The paper argues that these variables are important drivers of government spending for developing countries, hence a model explaining the growth of government spending of these group of countries that ignores the potential impact of foreign aid, public debt and democracy does not capture fully what determines the growth of government spending. Such a model is too simplistic and less relevant for policy purposes. The paper therefore makes use of annual time series data to determine the long-and short-run impact of per capita income, tax share, minimum wage, population growth, foreign aid, public debt and democracy on the growth of government spending in Ghana over the period 1980-2012. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDT) bounds test for cointegration and the error correction model (ECM) procedures were used for the estimation. Additionally, the paper provides results of generalized forecast error variance decomposition in order to determine the effect of innovations in both the dependent and independent variables on the dependent variable. The findings reveal that per capita income, tax share, population growth, minimum wage, foreign aid, public debt, and democracy are key determinants of the growth of government spending in the long-run. With the exception of minimum wage, these variables are also key determinants of the growth of government spending in the short-run. Variance decomposition results suggest innovations in per capita income and population growth generally account for the largest variations in government spending over the horizon considered. Also, innovations in foreign aid, public debt, and democracy are responsible for significant variations in government spending. The findings and policy recommendations of the paper provide vital information for policy implementation in Ghana.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	government spending,foreign aid,public debt,democracy ,ardl,cointegration,sdg 8 - decent work and economic growth ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/decent_work_and_economic_growth
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Applied Econometrics And Finance
Related URLs:	https://muse.jhu.edu/article/654397
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	23 Nov 2017 06:05
Last Modified:	25 Sep 2024 13:07
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65547
DOI:	10.1353/jda.2017.0006

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