CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1. Background of the study
The Nigerian economy has been plagued with several challenges over the years. In spite of many, and frequently changing, fiscal, monetary and other macro-economic policies, Nigeria has not been able to harness her economic potentials for rapid economic development (Ogbole, 2010). According to Adeoye (2006), the debate on the effectiveness of fiscal policy as a tool for promoting growth and development remains inconclusive, given the conflicting results of current studies. Over the last decade, the growth impact of fiscal policy has generated large volume of both theoretical and empirical literature. However, most of these studies paid more attention to developed economies and the inclusion of developing countries in case of cross-country studies were mainly to generate enough degrees of freedom in the course of statistical analysis (Aregbeyen, 2007). Fiscal and monetary policies are inextricably linked in macro-economic management; developments in one sector directly affect developments in the other. Undoubtedly, fiscal policy is central to the health of any economy, as government’s power to tax and to spend affects the disposable income of citizens and corporations, as well as the general business climate.
Monetarist strongly believes that monetary policy exact greater impact on economic activity as unanticipated change in the stock of money affects output and growth i.e., the stock of money must increase unexpectedly for central bank to promote economic growth. In fact, they are of opinion that an increase in government spending would crowd out private sector and such can outweigh any short-term benefits of an expansionary fiscal policy (Adefeso and Mobolaji, 2011). On the other hand, the concept of liquidity trap which is a situation in which real interest rates cannot be reduced by any action of the monetary authorities was introduced by Keynesian economics. Hence, at liquidity trap an increase in the money supply would not stimulate economic growth because of the downward pressure of investment owing to insensitivity of interest rate to money supply. John Maynard Keynes recommends fiscal policy by stimulating aggregate demand in order to curtail unemployment and reducing it in order to control inflation. While there are several studies on this debates between Keynesian and Monetarist in the developed countries, only fragmented evidence have been provided on this issues in the case of Nigeria (Adefeso and Mobolaji, 2011). Today, monetary and fiscal policies are both commonly accorded prominent roles in the pursuit of macroeconomic stabilization in developing countries, but the relative importance of these policies has been a serious debate between the Keynesians and the monetarists. The monetarists believe that monetary policy exert greater impact on economic activity while the Keynesian believe that fiscal policy rather than the monetary policy exert greater influence on economic activity. Despite their demonstrated efficacy in other economies as policies that exert influence on economic activities, both policies have not been sufficiently or adequately used in Nigeria (Ajisafe and Folorunsho, 2002). The objective of this research work is to examine the effect of central bank of Nigeria monetary and fiscal policies on the growth of Nigeria economy.
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