Interactive Effects of Remittances and Financial Sector Development on Economic Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

A well-developed and efficient financial sector together with remittances can serve as a transmission mechanism to ensure well-rounded economic growth because extant literature shows that remittances alone may not be sufficient to promote the desirable level of economic growth. Therefore, this study investigated the interactive effects of remittances and financial sector development on economic growth in Nigeria for the period 1977-2017. The data for this study was obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Indicator (WDI) Database. The data were analysed using the Instrumental Variable Generalised Method of Moments (IV-GMM) estimator. The findings of this study showed that remittances alone had a negatively significant effect on economic growth at 1% significance level but when interacted with financial sector development, they enhance economic growth as revealed by the positive coefficient of the interactive term which is also significant at 1% level. The study concluded that Nigeria’s economy profits from migrants’ remittances in terms of economic growth through the existence of a developed financial sector. This study recommended among other things that the interaction of remittances and financial sector development should be used as an avenue to encourage more savings from remittances by lowering transaction costs and increasing payment of deposits’ interest on remitted funds. Besides, bank financial institutions should find a better match for these savings (in terms of investment opportunities) in order to neutralise the negative effects of remittances on economic growth caused by recipients’ consumption smoothing drive.