Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth, South–South trade and the generalised balance-of-payments constraint

Alberto Bagnai, Arsène Rieber and Thi Anh-Dao Tran

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2016, vol. 40, issue 3, 797-820

Abstract: Using the post-Keynesian balance-of-payments constrained growth approach, we investigate the recent increase in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) growth, focussing on the contribution of South-South trade. The model is estimated by panel co-integration on a sample of 20 low- and lower-middle-income SSA countries, using annual data from 1990 to 2008, and considering three partner areas: SSA itself, developing Asia and the rest of the world. The results show that in the past decade the balance-of-payments constraint of SSA has been relaxed. This shift has occurred through different channels of transmission: the other SSA countries contributed through the real growth effect, developing Asia through the market share effect and the rest of the world through the terms of trade effect. These results help reconcile puzzling evidence on the pattern of SSA external indebtedness and provide new insights on the role of ‘Asian drivers’ on SSA growth, as well as on the sustainability of SSA growth recovery.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bev020 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth, South–South trade and the generalised balance-of-payments constraint (2016)
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:oup:cambje:v:40:y:2016:i:3:p:797-820.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().