Measuring the Volatility in Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Rate using the GARCH-type Models

Abstract

The objective of this paper was to empirically characterize the volatility in the growth rate of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Ghana in three sectors using data spanning from 2000 to 2012. The GARCH-type models(GARCH, EGARCH and GJR-GARCH) were used for the analysis of data. The results of the study present evidence that the symmetric GARCH(1, 1) structure applies reasonably well to GDP when quarterly observations are used.. As expected from financial time series, the data for the study exhibit characteristics such as leptokurtosis, clustering, asymmetric and leverage effects. It was found that there was a significant increase in volatility and leverage effect.