Examining the Robustness of Competing Explanations of Slow Growth in African Countries

This research examines previous findings regarding the robustness of the African growth dummy by (i) expanding the list of variables to include those suggested by Easterly and Levine (1998) and Sachs and Warner (1997b) and (ii) with a modelling strategy that allows explicitly for model uncertainty. Using the Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates approach, this paper concludes that the African growth dummy does not appear to be robustly related to growth. This supports the interpretation that the significance of the African dummy may be attributable to omitted variable bias. The paper also contributes to the debate on growth strategies for Africa by assessing the robustness of divergent perspectives offered in the recent literature