The relationship between financial development and economic growth in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)

Purpose The paper examined the relationship between financial development and economic growth for the period 1996 to 2018 in Eswatini. Design/methodology/approach The Autoregressive Distributed Lag bounds test (ARDL) was employed to determine the long-run and short-run dynamics of the link between the variables of interest. The Granger causality test was also performed to establish the direction of causality between financial development and economic growth. Findings The ARDL results revealed that there is a long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth. The Granger causality test revealed bidirectional causality between money supply and economic growth, and unidirectional causality running from economic growth to financial development. The results highlight that economic growth exerts a positive and significant influence on financial development, validating the demand following hypothesis in Eswatini. Practical implications Policymakers should formulate policies that aims to engineer more economic growth. The policies should strike a balance between deploying funds necessary to stimulate investment and enhancing productivity in order to enliven economic growth in Eswatini. Originality/value The study investigates the finance-growth linkage using time series analysis. It determines the long-run and short-run dynamics of this relationship and examines the Granger causality outcomes.