The relationship between budget deficit and economic growth remains one of the widely debated topics among policy makers and economists in both developed and developing countries of the world. This paper empirically investigated the long run and short run relationship between budget deficit and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa countries from 1991 to 2018 using Panel data for twenty (20) sub-Saharan Africa Countries. The estimation technique employed in the study was the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimation method and the regression results revealed that in the long run, budget deficit has a negative and significant relationship with economic growth whereas in the short run, it has a positive and significant relationship with economic growth. The study concluded that government should reduce the overall recurrent expenditure as it will help to mitigate the problem of budget deficit that leads to debt accumulation in sub-Saharan Africa countries and increase expenditure on developmental projects.

The findings in the literatures are mixed on relationship between the size of government and economic growth. This necessitated the conduct of this study in Nigeria which runs a federal system of government. The research which covered the component tiers government (Federal, state and Local) between 1980 and 2017, deployed non-linear autoregressive distribution lag (NARDL). The result indicated the existence of non-linear relationship between the size of government and the economic growth at all the tiers of government and suggested the existence of BARS curve for each level of government. In the long run, increase in the size of Federal government is positive but has an significant relationship with economic growth. On the other hand, the enhancement of the sizes of each of the State and Local governments positively and significantly impact economic growth. The reduction in the size of Federal governments significantly influences growth. However, reduction in each of the sizes of the State and local governments is insignificantly related to economic growth. The need for governance to be moved from the Federal nearer to the sub-national grass roots level is therefore recommended.