Investigating the impact of international trade on economic growth: A case study of Nigeria

The disparity of opinions and empirical evidence on the impact of international trade on economic growth has become a nuisance, especially for developing countries like Nigeria, and calls for further research. This is the gap that this study seeks to fill. This study will investigate the impact of international trade on Nigeria economic growth. The objectives for this study are to assess the most recent effect of exchange rates on economic expansion in Nigeria, examine the impact of export on Nigeria's economic expansion, determine the link between foreign trade and Nigeria's economic expansion in to comprehend the causal connection, provide a procedure to follow when using international trade as a means to increase economic growth, Vector autoregression (VAR) analysis technique was used to estimate the various components of foreign trade. Multivariate Time series secondary data was used for this study and it was obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin 2020, World Bank datasets etc. which covers the period 1981 to 2020. The hypothesis revealed that there is currently significant causality among exchange rate, export and economic development but there are no present of significant causality between import, foreign direct investment and economic growth of Nigeria. Therefore the null hypothesis of exchange rate and export can be accepted that supported increase in economic growth.