Author: Nuhu Musa
Volume: 61 Issue No:2 Year:2019

Abstract: Foreign capital has been acknowledged as one of the driving forces of economic growth. The study examined the effects of foreign private capital on economic growth in Nigeria, using time series data for the period 1986-2017. To achieve the objective, the study employed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) for the analysis. The study used real gross domestic product as proxy for economic growth, being the dependent variable, while the independent variables in the model included foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, international remittance, gross fixed capital formation, labour force, government expenditure, and trade openness. Stationarity test was carried out using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test. The result of the stationarity test indicate that the variables have mixed order of integration. The ARDL bound test indicated the existence of a longrun relationship or cointegration among the variables. Furthermore, the result of the AR root graph indicates that the variables are stable. The empirical study indicated that foreign direct investment, remittances, portfolio investment, and trade openness exert positive significant effect on economic growth in Nigeria. However, government expenditure was negative but statistically insignificant. Based on this finding, the study recommended that government should create an enabling environment that will spur the inflow of foreign private capital.

JEL classification: F3, E22, G11, O16