International Trade and Growth in Nigeria
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The study investigates the relationship between international trade and economic growth in Nigeria from 1981 to 2022. The specific objective was to assess the impact of total imports, and total exports on per capita income. Data on total imports, exports (proxies for international trade), and per capita income (proxy for economic growth) were obtained from the World Bank Development Indicators (WDI). The stationarity of the data was tested using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) tests. The appropriate lag lengths were determined using lag length selection criteria. The ARDL bound test was employed to assess the long-run relationships among the variables. The Error Correction Model (ECM) was applied to estimate the coefficients in the model. The results of the ADF and PP tests showed that the variables were stationary at mixed levels, both at level I 0 and first difference I 1 . A one-period lag was selected based on the lag length criteria. The ARDL bound test revealed significant long-run equilibrium relationships in the Model. The ECM results revealed that imports had an insignificant negative effect on per capita income (coefficient = -0.017954, p = 0.4627), while exports had an insignificant positive effect (coefficient = 0.004460, p = 0.8352). The study concluded that international trade had an insignificant impact on Nigeria's economic growth over the study period and recommends that the government should implement trade policy reforms that simplify procedures and reduce trade barriers to expand market access and increase Nigeria’s integration into global supply chains.
