Economic growth and openness in Africa: What is the empirical relationship?

Ching-Cheng Chang and Michael Mendy

Applied Economics Letters, 2012, vol. 19, issue 18, 1903-1907

Abstract: This study examines the effects of trade policies on economic growth in Africa. The econometric methodology follows the cross-country studies by Barro (1991) and Kandiero and Chitiga (2003) with empirical application to a panel of 36 African countries observed over the period 1980 to 2009. Panel regressions are carried out using the fixed-effects models. The aim is to provide an empirical evidence for the driving force of Africa's economic growth. The results illustrate that openness in trade and investment is positively related to economic growth significantly. However, foreign aid, gross national savings and investment have negative relationships to both Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and GDP. Using South Africa as benchmark, the regional performance indicates that North Africa is the best one in generating positive GDP growth from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), followed by Middle Africa whilst East Africa and West Africa compete for the third and fourth positions.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2012.676728 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:19:y:2012:i:18:p:1903-1907

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2012.676728

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().