Services Sector Growth and Development Sustainability in Nigeria

摘要

Between 1981 and 2013, services share of gross domestic product in Nigeria grew five times the share of manufacturing coming second to agriculture. However, the output growth rates of services and manufacturing exceed that of agriculture. The study formulated the question as to whether the observed services sector expansion can support long-term economic growth. Two models were specified for estimation with manufacturing and agriculture as dependent variables and vectors of services outputs as independent variables. Data expressed in 1990 constant basic prices were sourced from Central Bank of Nigeria and expressed in logarithm form for regression. Using two test statistics, all variables in the regression were confirmed stationary at not more than one order of integration Given that the variables are cointegrated, the autoregressive distributed lag model and three other augmented static estimators were applied to the models. All diagnostics tests support the stability of our models and reliability of results. We conclude that a strong service-manufacturing association is necessary for services sector growth to sustain long-run economic development.