We investigate the asymmetric effect of oil and gas resource rent on economic growth of Ghana for the period 2010 to 2019, dwelling on the hypothesis that natural resources extraction has double-edge effect on economic growth. Using Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model as estimation strategy, we find that oil and gas resource rent affect economic growth asymmetrically. Specifically, our NARDL estimates suggest that oil resource rent promotes economic growth significantly, providing empirical evidence in support of the resource blessing hypothesis. However, gas resource rent exerts a significant adverse effect on economic growth, providing empirical evidence to support the resource curse hypothesis. Our findings point to the need for policies that promote the expansion of oil resources firms than gas resource firms in the short run while long term policies should target setting up both oil and gas resource firms in developing countries, especially countries with similar socioeconomic and demographic setting like Ghana. Finally, government and monetary authorities should ABOUT THE AUTHORS Opoku Adabor holds B.A and Master's in economics from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science. He is currently a PhD student at RMIT University, Australia. He has worked as graduate research assistant at KNUST. His research interest includes macroeconomics, international, monetary economics and economic policy analysis.

PurposeThe “resource curse phenomenon” has received a lot of attention from researchers; however, there has not been any sound explanation to back this phenomenon since the main reason why natural resource should restrain economic growth instead of boosting economic growth remains unanswered. This paper contributes to literature on “resource curse hypothesis” by examining the role of government effectiveness in influencing the impact of gas resource rent on economic growth.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted the Cobb-Douglass production and incorporated gas resource rent, institutional quality (government effectiveness), inflation and exchange rate as additional variables that influences total output (gross domestic product). The author estimated the empirical form of the Cobb-Douglass production using autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and Toda and Yamamoto (1995) as the main estimation strategies while other time series approaches were used as a robustness check.FindingsThe estimates from the ARDL short-run and the long-run dynamics suggest that the direct impact of gas resource rent on economic growth was positive but not statistically significant. At the same time, the interacting of gas resource rent and government effectiveness showed a positive and statistically significant effect of nearly 0.4123 and 0.8724 on economic growth in the long run and short run, respectively. The results from the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) also indicated that economic growth has a strong influence on gas resource rent while government effectiveness drives economic growth and not vice versa.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings from this study imply that government effectiveness plays a crucial role in averting the “resource curse phenomenon”. Hence, improving government effectiveness and efficiency through minimizing corruption among state institutions would be imperative in curbing the “resource curse phenomenon” in developing countries.Originality/valueThe influential role of government effectiveness on the relationship between gas resource rent on economic growth is examined.

Purpose While the relationship between natural resource rent and economic growth is well documented in the literature, not much robust analysis has been done to estimate the causative relationship between oil resource rent and economic growth in Ghana. This might be due to the fact that commercial production of crude oil started not long ago in Ghana. This paper aims to examine the causal relationship between oil resource rent and economic growth for the period of 2011 to 2020 in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach The study incorporates economic growth as a function of oil resource rent, non-oil revenue, foreign direct investment, capital and interest rate in a Cobb–Douglass production function/model. The study used four different estimation strategies including the autoregressive distributed lags model, Toda–Yamamoto test approach, nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags model and nonlinear Granger causality. Findings The main finding revealed that 1% increase in oil resource rent generates 0.84% increase in economic growth of Ghana in the long run. Contrary, the authors find an insignificant positive effect of oil resource rent on economic growth of Ghana in the short run for the period under study. The result from the Toda–Yamamoto test approach also showed a unidirectional causality running from oil resource rent to economic growth of Ghana, providing evidence in support of the resource blessing hypothesis in Ghana. The results are robust to two different alternative estimation strategies. Originality/value The causal relationship between crude oil resource rent and economic growth is examined.

This study examines the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on the performance of manufacturing firms in Ghana for the period 1990 to 2018. The study uses the bounds test approach to cointegration within the framework of autoregressive distributed lags model as the estimation strategy. The results reveal that exchange rate and monetary policy rate has a negative and significant relationship with manufacturing firm performance. It was also found that inflation, trade openness, and investment have significant positive relation with manufacturing firm performance in Ghana. Based on the negative and significant relationship with exchange rate and manufacturing firm performance, it is recommended that government and private partnership should ensure effective management of the exchange rate fluctuation and also encourage manufacturing firms to patronize locally made capital goods for their production in the face of a depreciating exchange rate. Further, the study recommends that monetary authorities should reduce interest rate to increase investment by firms. This will enhance manufacturing firms' performance.