Export sophistication increases income in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from 1981–2000

Faqin Lin, Ermias O. Weldemicael and Xiaosong Wang
Additional contact information
Ermias O. Weldemicael: The University of Melbourne
Xiaosong Wang: Renmin University of China

Empirical Economics, 2017, vol. 52, issue 4, No 20, 1627-1649

Abstract: Abstract Previous studies on export diversification show that sub-Saharan African countries are at the lowest end in export diversification in the world. Recent literature also indicates the importance of export sophistication on economic development. This raises an important question whether export sophistication contributes to the income improvement in sub-Saharan African. The paper examines the causal effect of export sophistication on income in sub-Saharan Africa with panel data. By employing instrumental variables techniques and heteroskedasticity identification strategy that correct for endogeneity bias, the findings show that within-country variations in export sophistication lead to income growth. That is, a 1 % point increase in the export sophistication index is associated with an increase in GDP per capita of approximately 0.08 % points in the long run.

Keywords: Export sophistication; GDP per capita; Sub-Saharan African (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 O1 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-016-1103-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:empeco:v:52:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s00181-016-1103-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... rics/journal/181/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00181-016-1103-7

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economics is currently edited by Robert M. Kunst, Arthur H.O. van Soest, Bertrand Candelon, Subal C. Kumbhakar and Joakim Westerlund

More articles in Empirical Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().