Does Budget Deficit Impede Economic Growth? Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of budget deficit on economic growth in Bangladesh over the period of 1981-2017. This study employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to capture long-run cointegration along with long-run and short-run elasticity of the explanatory variables. Moreover, directional causalities between the variables used in this study have been checked using vector error correction model (VECM). The results of the analysis under ARDL model revealed that in case of Bangladesh, budget deficit positively affects economic growth both in long-run and short-run while government total expenditures lead to increase GDP only in long-run. These findings support the Keynesian proposition that budget deficits crowd-in private investments resulting economic growth. Furthermore, directional causality tests conducted using VECM explored unidirectional causality running from budget deficit to economic growth while feedback causality has been found between governments total expenditures and economic growth. For policy implications, this research provides evidence that in an emerging economy like Bangladesh, government spending through deficit financing can drive positively in the level of economic growth. Bangladesh, however, should not have the luxury of forgetting about the bad consequences of consistent and gradually increasing budget deficit at all.