Output gap determinants in Ethiopia

Adisu Abebaw and Francesco Tajani

Cogent Economics & Finance, 2021, vol. 9, issue 1, 1887550

Abstract: The output gap measured as the percentage deviation of actual output from its potential level is an indicator of an economy’s achievement. Output gap has been an important concept used for forming of policies. In this study, we estimated the potential output and output gap, established some of its macro-economic determinants for the Ethiopian economy. By using yearly data spanning from 1990 to 2018, the study estimated the potential output and output gap using HP filtering, and production function approaches. Accordingly, both approaches indicated that the output gap has been fluctuating over the study period—indicating the actual output inconsistently and frequently deviating from its potential level. Mainly, in 1996 and 2003, the actual output showed the highest positive and negative deviations from its potential, respectively. The study also examined the effect of some macro-economic indicators on the output gap using the ARDL framework. Accordingly, inflation, trade openness, lending rate, and FDI are found to be having a significant effect on the output gap. Lending rate and trade openness have positive and significant effect, whereas inflation and FDI have a negative significant effect on the output gap. This study suggests; augmenting domestic production and utilization capacity, avoiding unrestricted importation and, export diversification, lowering lending rate and increasing FDI inflow; helps to reduce output gap. Besides, understanding the trend of potential and output gap would be helpful in dealing with inflation.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23322039.2021.1887550 (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:oaefxx:v:9:y:2021:i:1:p:1887550

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/OAEF20

DOI: 10.1080/23322039.2021.1887550

Access Statistics for this article

Cogent Economics & Finance is currently edited by Steve Cook, Caroline Elliott, David McMillan, Duncan Watson and Xibin Zhang

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