Which comes first – savings or growth? Time series evidence from ECOWAS countries

This study examines the direction of causality between domestic savings and economic growth in twelve West African countries during the period 1981-2014. It uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration and the Granger causality test. The results show that economic growth causes domestic savings in Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria, while the reverse causality running from savings to economic growth holds in Benin, Gambia, Mali, Niger, and Senegal. A two-way causality prevails in Ghana. However, no evidence of causality in either direction was recorded for Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Togo. These findings show that the direction of causality between savings and growth is country-specific among the West African Countries