Long-Run Country Income Dynamics (original) (raw)

This paper examines the country-level dynamics of long-run growth in Africa between 1975 and 2005. The authors examine how growth has affected mobility and the distribution of income among countries. They analyze changes in cross-country income structure and convergence, and look for evidence of the formation of country groups or"clubs."Using a novel method of breaking up the growth histories of African economies into medium-term spells of growth accelerations and declines, the authors investigate whether a group of African"leopards"- the regional equivalent of Asia's"tigers"- is beginning to emerge.

In examining some big questions on African development, we provide evidence that dynamics of some development indicators could support both endogenous and neoclassical growth theories in the convergence debate. This paper investigates convergence in real per capita GDP and inequality adjusted human development in 38 African countries, disaggregated into 10 homogenous panels based on regions (Sub-Saharan and North Africa), income-levels (low, middle, lower-middle and upper-middle), legal-origins (English common-law and French civil-law) and religious dominations (Christianity and Islam). The main finding is that the income component of the human development index moves slower than others in the convergence process and thus requires a more focused policy intervention. As a policy implication, looking beyond income convergence can provide a concrete agenda for development involving all aspects of economic, institutional and social life.

The issue of income convergence among regional blocs has been considered, mostly ignoring international trade. This work set to find out whether sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are converging with High Income Economies with international trade as a source of convergence. Secondly, the study investigated the causal relationship between convergence and trade. That is whether trade causes convergence or convergence causes trade. Lastly, the study investigated the various components of trade such as merchandise export to high-income economies, merchandise import from high-income economies, merchandise export to developing economies in sub-Sahara Africa, merchandise import to developing economies in sub-Sahara Africa, import of service and export of service. The study used Arellano-Bond and Arellano-Bover and also included both difference and system GMM. Because the data was unbalanced panel, the study also included one-way error component unbalanced model estimation and the results ...

Economic transition in Africa has gone through different, yet dramatic phases of development characterised by efforts to eradicate poverty. This article analyses the diverse changes in the continent’s economic growth-trajectory and post-independence endeavours to grow out of the much-publicised vicious circle of poverty (Young, 2010). The paper, on the basis of qualitative and quantitative research, argues that various international indices to measure poverty exist, but it attributes the success of the continent to achieve growth to income distributional-processes which can be analysed through the lens of continental human-poverty trends. It contends that research provides insights on how poverty in Africa has been spreading. Due to the existence of surplus resources, the World Bank (WB), for instance, anticipated the African continent to show higher growth-rates comparative to the industrialised capitalist world (Omideyi, 2007). Apparently, a higher proportion of poverty within Afr...

Considering the recent interest in the need to curb inequality and enhance economic growth as a tool for fighting poverty in Africa, we employ a panel of 20 African countries. The paper empirically examines the determinants of growth and income inequality and the channel through which growth determinants influences income inequality. The study is restricted to the period 1991 to 2015 based on data availability. We employ Panel Fixed Effect (PFE) models to investigate growth-inequality relationships and find that, there exists a positive long-run relationship between growth and inequality in the selected African countries. For causality analysis, we employ Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality for heterogeneous non-causality test approach, where we found neutrality hypothesis between growth and income inequality, and between foreign direct investment and inequality, while between other regressors all with a feedback. The results suggest that population growth; mortality rate...

The interaction and the mechanism by which income inequality is evolving considering different globalization pattern is a major concern by several studies. The study particularly focus on the idea how globalization has possibly lead to income inequality widening the gap between the poor and rich and limiting growth rate sub-Saharan countries. This will be investigated by taking evidence of cross country data applying panel observation of different income distribution pattern. For this reason the analysis in this study draws on data from 41 sub-Saharan countries over a period of 35 years horizon covering from 1980-2015, pooled together in a panel system and further investigates that income inequality pattern and its relationship with key determinants of globalization (international factor migration and trade) affecting between and within national inequality in the past three decades. Two kinds of evidence supports our test against generalization of the impacts on the income inequality trends within countries participating in the international trade a negative impact on inequality due to growth in import and a significant and positive impact on income inequality due to growth in export during the period.

Economies of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have been growing slowly in recent time. Economic growth is thought to affect inequality but not much is known about the nature of such relationship in SSA and there is no concordance among the few available. This paper examined the relationship between economic growth and inequality in the region using data from 1990 to 2017estimated with the Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model and Granger Causality. Hausman’s test suggested the superiority of the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) over the Mean Group (MG) Model. The PMG results showed that economic growth had significant and negative effect on income inequality (proxy by GINI-coefficient) in the long run suggesting a state of the later part of the Kuznet curve. This is in addition to the negative effect in the short run which is contrary to the theory. Furthermore, the result of the Granger Causality test revealed evidence of unidirectional relationship running from economic grow...