<b>Impact of Public Debt on Economic Growth in Nigeria: ARDL and NARDL Approaches</b>

This study investigated the impact of public debt on economic growth in Nigeria between 1986 and 2023. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to assess the impact of public debt on economic growth, while Non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model was used to assess the asymmetric relationship between public debt and economic growth. A positive but insignificant relationship was observed between external debt and growth in the long run. Domestic debt was observed to have a negative and insignificant relationship with economic growth in the long run. The NARDL results obtained reveal that a positive change in external debt will cause an insignificant increase in growth. A negative change in external debt will also cause a positive but insignificant impact on growth. This result shows that external debt has a statistically insignificantly impact on growth of the economy in Nigeria. A positive change in domestic debt has a negative and significant impact on growth, likewise a negative change in domestic debt also causes a negative and insignificant impact on growth. This could be as a result of “crowding out effect,” which reduces funds available to the private sector for additional investments. This study recommends that the government and stakeholders in policy making must ensure to support the private sector in mobilizing funds for investment in the real sector of the economy to improve economic performance in order to avoid “crowding out effect.”