Determinants of National Saving in Four West African Countries

Saving is one of the preeminent integral of economic growth. The desideratum of this study is to investigate the determinants of national saving in four West African countries, namely, Ghana, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Cote d¡¯ Ivoire. The study uses annual data from the World Bank database for the period 1997-2016. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test, Cumulative sum of residuals (CUSUM) test, and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test were used to examine the stationarity, stability, and cointegration of the variables respectively. ARDF model analysis was carried out to determine the short run and long run determinants of national saving in the studied countries. The long run results reveal that gross domestic product, per capita income and real interest rate has a statistically and significant positive effect on gross savings, were as age dependency ratio has a statistical, and insignificant negative relationship with gross saving. The short run results suggest that gross domestic product and per capita income possesses positive statistical significant effects on gross national savings. It is recommended that, in other to promote saving, growth and development, pragmatic and realistic economic policies should be formulated to strengthen all monetary and financial institutions in the respective countries.