Political Instability and Economic Growth: Implications of Coup Events in Sub-Saharan Africa
Abstract
The study examines the differential roles of various elite political instability (PI) events-successful coups d'etat, abortive coups, or coup plots-in the growth of Sub-Saharan Africa. It analyzes World Bank economic statistics and data on the incidence of coups d'etat for 31 countries in a cross-country augmented production function framework that incorporates PI events as well as labor and capital as arguments. It finds that abortive coups, rather than successful coups, had the greatest adverse impact on economic growth over the 1960-1986 period. Coup plots were also observed to be growth-inhibiting. This deleterious "direct" effect of PI is observed to be channeled via the deterioration in the marginal productivity of capital, regardless of coup event. While abortive coups negatively influenced economic growth monotonically, however, the impacts of successful coups and coup plots appeared to be non-monotonic: negative generally but positive at very low levels of investment. Copyright 2002 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Wiley Blackwell in its journal The American Journal of Economics and Sociology.
Volume (Year): 61 (2002)
Issue (Month): 1 (01)
Pages: 329-348
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Handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:61:y:2002:i:1:p:329-348
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Romain Houssa & Oleg Badunenko & Daniel J. Henderson, 2010. "Explaining African Growth Performance: A Production-Frontier Approach," Working Papers 1013, University of Namur, Department of Economics.
- Richard Jong-A-Pin & Shu Yu, 2010. "Do coup leaders matter? Leadership change and economic growth in politically unstable countries," KOF Working papers 10-252, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
- Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2011.
"Terms of Trade and Growth of Resource Economies: A Tale of Two Countries,"
CSAE Working Paper Series
2011-09, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
- Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2011. "Terms of Trade and Growth of Resource Economies: A Tale of Two Countries," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Working Paper W, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
- Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2010. "Africa's Economic Future: Learning from the Past," CESifo Forum, Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 11(1), pages 62-71, 04.
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