Impact of Corruption on Economic Welfare in Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

Abstract

This paper investigated the impact of corruption on the economic welfare; the paper adopts the VECM model as its empirical analysis using annual time series data for the period of 1984-2018. The variables include (CRP), economic welfare as per capital income (PCI), government expenditure (EXH) and inflation (INF) were source from CBN. The study tests the stationarity property of the variables using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Philips-Perron (PP) test in order avoid obtaining a spurious regression. All the variables were stationary at first difference. Result from the co-integration analysis, shows that there is a long-run relationship between the variables employed, since the probability value (0.0119) was less than the conventional 0.05 level of significance. The result of the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) indicates that in the short-run, A one unit increase in corruption level will result in decrease in the level of individuals ‘welfare by 20% in the long-run and a one unit increase in the level of corruption reduces the welfare level of the citizens by 70% in the short-run. In the wake of these findings, the paper strongly recommended that, there is the need for value re-orientation at all levels of the institution and the Nigeria populace in general, since corruption now flows in the blood of an average Nigerian. Value re-orientation will go a long way to restore the lost dignity and conscience of the ordinary citizen, to reduce corruption to the barest minimum