Impact of capital market development on economic growth in nigeria

Thesis Abstract

The Nigerian financial system experienced series of reforms and amidst these reforms an important component of the sector, the capital market has demonstrated an impressive performance evidenced from its growth especially in the last decade. Coupled with this development, the Nigerian economy has also experienced growth which did not significantly translate into positive improvements in employment, and poverty reduction. This study examined the relationship between capital market development and economic growth in Nigeria. It tests the competing finance-growth nexus hypotheses using Granger causality tests in a Vector Auto regression framework over the period 1981-2012. The study also examined the impact of capital market development on economic growth in Nigeria and tested for the evidence of long run relationships. Annual data on some capital market development indicators and real growth domestic product were collected and used for the study. The empirical results from causality test at lags 7 show that value of transaction and turnover ratio each drives real GDP with no reverse or feedback effect. Thus, this supports the evidence of unidirectional causal link from these two indicators to real gross domestic product. In essence, the general causality results reveal some evidence that capital market development causes economic growth in Nigeria as shown by some of the capital market development used in this study. The co-integration results imply that there exists a significant long-run relationship between capital market and economic growth. There exist four significant co integrating vectors or four different linear combinations of the capital market indicators that can drift together roughly at the same time with the RGDP. The study recommends among others the need for availability of more investment instruments such as derivatives, convertibles, future, and swaps options in the Nigerian capital market in order to boost the value of transactions. Also, it is recommended that all the tiers of government should be encouraged to fund their realistic developmental programmes through the capital market. This will help in boosting the activities of the capital market, as well as the financial sector. Hence, it will redirect the resources that may be used in other spheres of the economy.