Abstract
Assessment of the Relationship Between Commercial Gap and Economic Growth: The Case of Gambia
With the globalization process, countries opened up to the outside world by liberalizing their trade and thus had the opportunity to significantly affect their economic growth. This is because the countries that are opened to the outside can easily move their goods, services, knowledge and capital along the borders with little restrictions. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between trade openness and economic growth in Gambia. Within the scope of the study, various evaluations have been made regarding the 1966-2017 period of the Gambian economy. Extended Dickey-Fuller Test (ADF), Phillips Peron (PP) Unit Root Tests and Autoregressive Distributed Delay Model (ARDL) were used for analysis. The findings show that national income has a long-term relationship with consumption expenditure, fixed capital formation and public expenditure variables. Consumption expenditure, fixed capital formation and public expenditure variables have a positive effect on national income by 0.80, 0.25 and 0.22, respectively. In this study, it is concluded that Gambia's national income is most affected by consumption expenditure compared to other variables. However, no significant relationship was found between the commercial openness variable and national income in the long run.
Keywords
Trade Openness, Economic Growth, Gambian Economy, ARDL Model.
