Analysis of Non-Oil Exports – Economic Growth Relationship in Nigeria: The Role of Institutional Qualities

ABSTRACT: One of the primary policy issues over the years in the context of the Nigerian economy has been how to enhance the performance of the non-oil export sector of the economy in order to diversify the country's export base and contribute more to GDP (gross domestic product). Rather than a lack of policy initiatives, the noticeably abysmal performance of Nigerian non-oil exports has been increasingly attributed to poor policy implementation. However, the question of whether such poor implementation is due to the quality of institutional settings, particularly in a developing economy such as Nigeria, has been largely unexplored. To the best of our knowledge, none of the previous studies deemed it necessary to control for the role of institutional quality in the non-oil export-growth nexus from the perspective of the Nigerian economy. To bridge this important gap in the literature, we hypothesize that institutional qualities matter in the relationship between economic growth and non-oil exports. Motivated by a desire to diversify Nigeria's economy away from its reliance on oil exports, this study re-examines the export-led growth hypothesis from the standpoint of non-oil exports while accounting for the role of institutional qualities. We employ the ARDL estimation technique as the best econometric model for the study given its suitability for variables of mixed order of integration in terms of the series' stationarity. More so, the ARDL technique enables us to simultaneously capture both the short-run and long-run dynamics of the nexus. Empirically, we show results that suggest that improved institutional qualities have the potential to boost the positive effects of non-oil exports on economic growth. We also find that the extent to which institutional quality matters for enhancing the effects of non-oil exports on economic growth depends on the institutional quality indicators chosen. On the whole, we expand on the export-led growth hypothesis by considering the role of institutional characteristics and conclude that improving institutional qualities should be prioritized in the path to Nigerian economic diversification.