摘要：The aim of this paper is to re-examine the cointegrating and causal relationship between
financial development and economic growth in the ECOWAS. To this end, we use the
Gregory and Hansen (1996a, 1996b) approach to cointegration with structural change and
the procedure for non-causality test of Toda and Yamamoto (1995). Data are from the World
Bank (2007) and cover the period 1960-2005. We show that there is a long-run relationship
between financial development and economic growth in six countries, namely, Burkina Faso,
Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In addition, we show that
financial development ‘leads’ economic growth in Ghana and Mali while growth causes
finance in Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone, and a bidirectional causality in
Cape Verde and Liberia. The policy implication is that Cape Verde, Ghana and Mali should
give policy priority to financial reform while Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone
should promote economic growth.
