African Export Successes: Surprises, Stylized Facts, and Explanations

William Easterly and Ariell Reshef

No 16597, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We establish the following stylized facts: (1) Exports are characterized by Big Hits, (2) the Big Hits change from one period to the next, and (3) these changes are not explained by global factors like global commodity prices. These conclusions are robust to excluding extractable products (oil and minerals) and other commodities. Moreover, African Big Hits exhibit similar patterns as Big Hits in non-African countries. We also discuss some concerns about data quality. These stylized facts are inconsistent with the traditional view that sees African exports as a passive commodity endowment, where changes are driven mostly by global commodity prices. In order to better understand the determinants of export success in Africa we interviewed several exporting entrepreneurs, government officials and NGOs. Some of the determinants that we document are conventional: moving up the quality ladder, utilizing strong comparative advantage, trade liberalization, investment in technological upgrades, foreign ownership, ethnic networks, and personal foreign experience of the entrepreneur. Other successes are triggered by idiosyncratic factors like entrepreneurial persistence, luck, and cost shocks, and some of the successes occur in areas that usually fail.

JEL-codes: D8 F1 O1 O3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-int
Note: POL
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Published as African Export Successes: Surprises, Stylized Facts, and Explanations , William Easterly, Ariell Reshef. in African Successes, Volume III: Modernization and Development , Edwards, Johnson, and Weil. 2016

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16597.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: African Export Successes: Surprises, Stylized Facts, and Explanations (2014)
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:nbr:nberwo:16597

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16597

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().