Crises, Economic Integration and Growth Collapses in African Countries

Abdilahi Ali and Katsushi Imai

No DP2013-07, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

Abstract: In the past few decades, many African countries have implemented policies of trade and financial liberalisation. As a result, Africa is today more integrated into the global economic system than it was a few decades ago. Yet, like developing countries in other regions, African economies have also encountered their share of economic and financial crises. The objective of this paper is to explore the (independent) effects of crises and openness on a large sample of African countries. Focusing on sudden stops, currency, twin and sovereign debt crises, the paper shows that crises are associated with growth collapses in Africa. In contrast, openness is found to be beneficial to growth. More specifically, we find that, consistent with standard Mundell-Flemming type models, greater openness to trade and financial flows mitigates the adverse effects of crises. These findings are robust to various measures of both openness and crises as well as to endogeneity concerns.

Keywords: Financial crises; Economic integration; Growth; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F15 F43 G01 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2013-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-fdg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2013-07.pdf First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Crises, Economic Integration and Growth Collapses in African Countries (2015)
Working Paper: Crises, Economic Integration and Growth Collapses in African Countries (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2013-07

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