Government Expenditure and Regional Economic Growth: The Direction of Causality

This study examines the link between government expenditure and regional economic growth, over the period 2013 to 2017. Gross County Product per capita growth is used as indicator of regional economic growth. This study used Error Correction Model and Engle and Granger framework two step procedure to investigate the long-run and short-run equilibrium relationship between expenditure and regional growth. The analysis reveals that expenditure and regional growth are cointegrated and, hence a long-run equilibrium relationship exist between them. Non-devolved expenditure is found to be significant in determining regional growth and growth significantly affect non-devolved in short-run. Further, short-run uni-directional causality was detected between capital, recurrent expenditures and growth. This study argues that expansionary government expenditure accelerates regional economic growth in long-run. The absence of a long-run causality moving from growth to components of expenditure implies that economic growth macroeconomic policies can be implemented without adversely affecting the size of government expenditure.