Asymmetric Impact of Government Expenditure on Economic Growth in Nigeria

"The study investigates asymmetric impact of government expenditure on the economic growth of Nigeria using secondary data that spans through 1981 through 2018. In capturing the asymmetric impact, the study adopted the Non-Linear Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model. Government expenditure components (recurrent and capital expenditure) were decomposed to positive and negative changes due to government review. From the result, it was confirmed that in the short-run, both positive and negative changes in recurrent and capital expenditure had a significant positive impact on economic growth in Nigeria at different time lag. In the long-run, positive changes in recurrent expenditure have a negative impact on economic growth, while negative changes have a positive significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria. Positive changes in capital expenditure have a positive impact on economic growth, while negative changes has a negative 5% significant impact on economic growth. It was concluded from the findings that government expenditure plans has a significant impact on the economic growth of Nigeria in the short-run and long-run. Therefore, it is recommended that government should rebalance its plans between capital and recurrent expenditure to enhance its growth target."