This study aimed at examining the relationship between public spending and economic growth and how the composition of government expenditure affects economic growth in Kenya using time series data from 1980 to 2014. To achieve the objectives modified Granger causality and Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) were used. The results revealed both short term and long term causality from economic growth to government expenditure but only short run causality from government expenditure to economic growth. The long run ARDL regression results showed development expenditure promotes economic growth while government purchases have no significant effect on GDP. The results further showed that Views: 257