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More growth or fewer collapses ? a new look at long run growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

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  • Arbache, Jorge Saba
  • Page, John

Abstract

Low and highly volatile growth define Africa's growth experience. But there is no evidence that growth volatility is associated to long term economic performance. This result may be misleading if it suggests that volatility is not important for economic and social progress. In this paper we use a variant of the method developed by Hausmann, Pritchett, and Rodrik (2005) to identify both growth acceleration and deceleration episodes in Africa between 1975 and 2005. The authors find that Africa has had numerous growth acceleration episodes in the last 30 years, but also nearly a comparable number of growth collapses, offsetting most of the benefits of growth. Had Africa avoided its growth collapses, it would have grown 1.7 percent a year instead of 0.7 percent, and its GDP per capita would have been more than 30 percent higher in 2005. The authors also find that growth accelerations and decelerations have an asymmetric impact on human development outcomes. Finally, our results suggest that it is easier to identify the likely institutional and policy origins of growth decelerations than of growth accelerations.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The World Bank in its series Policy Research Working Paper Series with number 4384.

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Date of creation: 01 Nov 2007
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Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4384

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Related research

Keywords: Governance Indicators; Achieving Shared Growth; Economic Conditions and Volatility; Economic Growth; Nutrition;

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Cited by:
  1. Naudé, Wim, 2010. "Africa and the global economic crisis: A Risk assessment and action guide," MPRA Paper 19856, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  2. Bluhm, Richard & Crombrugghe, Denis de & Szirmai, Adam, 2012. "Explaining the dynamics of stagnation: An empirical examination of the North, Wallis and Weingast approach," UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series 040, United Nations University, Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology.
  3. Sara Guerschanik Calvo, 2010. "The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-10: A View from the Social Sectors," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-18, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
  4. Hallward-Driemeier, Mary & Khun-Jush, Gita & Pritchett, Lant, 2010. "Deals versus rules : policy implementation uncertainty and why firms hate it," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5321, The World Bank.
  5. Pedro Conceição & Sebastian Levine, 2011. "The African Moment: On the Brink of a Development Breakthrough," Working Papers 2011-001, United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Africa (UNDP/RBA).
  6. Caroline Harper & Nicola Jones & Andy McKay, 2010. "Including Children in Policy Responses to Economic Crises," Working papers 1003, UNICEF,Division of Policy and Strategy.
  7. Page, John, 2011. "Should Africa Industrialize?," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
  8. Grenade, Kari & Pasha, Sukrishnalall, 2012. "Accelerating Guyana’s Growth Momentum," MPRA Paper 41960, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  9. Guillaumont, Patrick & Wagner, Laurent, 2012. "Aid and Growth Accelerations: Vulnerability Matters," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
  10. Fabrizio Coricelli & Aikaterini Karadimitropoulou & Miguel A. León-Ledesma, 2012. "A Disaggregate Characterisation of Recessions," Studies in Economics 1209, Department of Economics, University of Kent.
  11. Arbache, Jorge Saba & Page, John, 2008. "Hunting for Leopards : long run country income dynamics in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4715, The World Bank.
  12. Nicole Alice Sindzingre, 2008. "From Growth to Poverty Reduction: a New Conceptual Framework in Development Economics," Post-Print halshs-00648001, HAL.
  13. Dimitris Christopoulos & Miguel León-Ledesma, 2009. "Efficiency and frontier technology in the aftermath of recessions: international evidence," Studies in Economics 0922, Department of Economics, University of Kent.

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