Governance, fiscal expenditure, and economic growth in OIC countries: Role of natural resources and information communication technology

This research examines the impact of fiscal expenditures on economic growth, incorporating considerations of governance quality, natural resources, and information communication technologies (ICT). In pursuit of this objective, we employ a Cross Sectional Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lags (CS-ARDL) methodology to analyse panel time series data spanning from 1984 to 2019. Our sample comprises 43 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The findings of our investigation reveal that over the long term, fiscal expenditure acts as a hindrance to economic growth. Conversely, the quality of governance emerges as a significant driver of sustained economic growth. Notably, our study underscores the notion that in OIC nations, economic growth is fostered by the combined influence of fiscal expenditures and governance quality. Furthermore, our analysis underscores the importance of natural resources and ICT as covariates that significantly shape the nexus between economic growth and fiscal expenditure.