Abstract

Although, economic crimes are not new phenomena in Nigeria, however, their size, sophistication and magnitude have changed in recent times. Theoretical literature on economic crimes and economic growth has generated a rich debate over the last few years producing scholars who theorized that economic crimes could be growth-enhancing and others who see it as growth-reducing. Where is Nigeria in this great debate? The failure to determine the nature of the relationship between economic crimes and economic growth in previous empirical works affected the choice of methodology employed by previous empirical works on Nigeria. This study is an attempt to offer a better methodology and proxy in the estimation of this relationship. Therefore, this study aims at providing robust econometric analysis, which deepens the understanding of the relationship between economic crimes and economic growth in Nigeria both in the short run and long run within the uninterrupted democratic dispensation period of 1999 to 2012 using OLS technique incarnated in a state-space time-varying methodology. Findings show a strong evidence of non-linear significant relationship between economic crimes and economic growth in Nigeria in the long-run with infinitesimal short run impact. The study also found a bi-directional causal relationship between economic crimes and economic growth in Nigeria and recommends, amongst others, a matrix of policies that address effective reduction of economic crimes, which includes heavy investment in infrastructure especially energy which nourishes industrial build-up that in turn creates employment as well as reduce the level of poverty.

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