Capital flight and domestic investment in Nigeria: Evidence from ARDL methodology

Abstract

Capital flight is a challenge for many developing countries of the world. The problem is more severe in a nation like Nigeria where domestic investment has been terribly affected. This study undertakes an empirical investigation of the impact of capital flight on domestic investment in Nigeria between 1980 and 2017. Deploying the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric methodology, the study finds that capital flight has negative and significant impact on domestic investment. In particular, the long run impact of capital flight on domestic investment (0.57) turns out to be more severe than its impact in the short run (0.27), implying that a continuous and persistent build-up of capital flight exerts a negative cumulative effect on domestic investment over time. The study further reveals that the quality of institutions in Nigeria is a disincentive to domestic investment. It therefore recommends the strengthening of institutions to rein in on the illegal outflow of capital from the Nigerian economy in order to guarantee the availability of investible funds. The real sector of the local economy must be grown to bolster the value of the naira. This will stem the tide of capital flight and attract investments into critical sectors.