Disaggregated Agricultural Output and Macroeconomic Dynamics: Evidence from a Linear

This study investigates the impact of agricultural output on macroeconomic performance in Nigeria from 1980 to 2024. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing was employed to examine the dynamics of short-run and long-run impact analysis. The stationarity properties of the variables are employed using the ADF, PP, and KPSS tests. The cointegration test confirms the existence of a co-movement between agricultural output variables and real gross domestic product. The results indicate that crop and forestry outputs exert significant positive effects on GDP, whereas livestock and fishery outputs are positive but statistically insignificant. Inflation also exhibits a positive and significant impact on real gross domestic product, while interest rate and exchange rate effects are negligible. In the short-run dynamics, the result revealed that changes in livestock and crop production significantly influence real GDP; the diagnostic tests confirm model stability, absence of serial correlation, homoskedasticity, and normality of residuals. Overall, the findings underscore the centrality of agriculture, particularly crop and forestry subsectors, in driving Nigeria’s economic performance, highlighting the need for policies that enhance agricultural productivity, value chain development, and sectoral integration to sustain long-term economic growth.