Τhe effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth in Ghana: the role of exchange rate volatility

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to examine the effect of foreign direct investment inflows on economic growth in Ghana: the moderating role of exchange rate volatility. The study used Auto-Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) and Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH). The study was based mainly on secondary data from World Development Indicators (WDI) where annual time-series data of 39 years was used for the study ranging from 1980 to 2018. The study found that FDI had a positively significant impact on growth in the short run. Also, exchange rate volatility had a negatively significant impact on economic growth in the long run. However, domestic capital and trade openness had a positive significant impact on economic growth in the long run. The long-run estimate suggests that FDI decrease growth and exchange rate volatility dampen the negative effect of FDI on growth. The study, therefore, recommended, among other things, that the government should formulate policies that attract foreign direct investors into the country, as this may stabilize the economy.