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Government Expenditure and Formal Financing of Agricultural Activities and Labor Participation Rate: A Study of Nigeria

Ikwumezie, Aham, I., Nwadike, Chizube Ihunna, Opara, Peterdamian .I.

Abstract

Borrowing from banks, credit unions, and other non-bank financial institutions is known as formal finance. Since both official and informal financing have advantages and disadvantages, a borrower may profit from acquiring both at the same time. These forms of finance are often augmented with government expenditure for economic development. This study utilised annual time series data spanning from 1986 to 2024 to examine the interplay between finance and labour participation rate in Nigeria. Formal financing was measured by commercial banks credit, microfinance loans and agricultural credit guarantee scheme fund. Employing the autoregressive distributed lag model as a methodological framework, the research identified evidence of both long-run and short-run asymmetrical effects of financial components on agricultural labour participation rate in Nigeria. Specifically, the estimations derived from the long-run and short- run dynamic ARDL indicated that negative fluctuations in government expenditure allocated to agriculture, credit from commercial banks, loans from microfinance institutions, and funds from agricultural credit guarantee schemes resulted in marginal enhancements in agricultural labour participation rate, whereas negative fluctuations correspondingly led to a decline in agricultural labour participation rate. Moreover, it was further discerned that interest rate significantly and negatively moderated the beneficial impact of finance on agricultural labour participation rate. Additionally, the findings from this analysis revealed that the temporal response of agricultural labour participation rate to finance was the same in the short run and long run.

References

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