IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org//p/ags/faoaes/288957.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Institutions, economic freedom and structural transformation in 11 sub-Saharan African countries

Author

Listed:
  • Carraro, Alessandro
  • Karfakis, Panagiotis

Abstract

Good institutions are a fundamental pre-requisite to successfully achieve structural transformation in growing developing countries (UNECA, 2016). Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a rapid growth but a weak and slow structural transformation process, which is mainly characterized by the reallocation of labour from agriculture to low skilled services. The focus of this paper is to explore how political and economic institutions affect structural transformation in a panel of 11 sub-Saharan African countries. Our empirical analysis reveals a positive and statistically significant effect of quality of institutions and economic freedom measures on structural transformation between sectors, which translates into movement out of agriculture. Better institutions appear to not improve productivity within sectors, however results highlight the important role played by institutions in facilitating reallocation or resources across sectors. Our findings suggest that improving the legal system, providing a stable macroeconomic environment, and improving freedom to exchange across borders will facilitate structural transformation processes in sub-Saharan African countries. We finally recommend that measures undertaken by governments should be included in a set of targeted policies designed according to countries' characteristics.

Suggested Citation

  • Carraro, Alessandro & Karfakis, Panagiotis, 2018. "Institutions, economic freedom and structural transformation in 11 sub-Saharan African countries," ESA Working Papers 288957, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:faoaes:288957
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.288957
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/288957/files/i8422en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.288957?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gniniguè, Moukpè & Awade, Essossolim, 2023. "Diaspora as Driver of Agricultural Structural Transformation in West Africa," African Journal of Economic Review, African Journal of Economic Review, vol. 11(3), June.
    2. Peter Asare-Nuamah & Anthony Amoah & Simplice A. Asongu, 2021. "Achieving food security in Ghana: Does governance matter?," Working Papers 21/090, European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS).
    3. Haldar, Anasuya & Sethi, Narayan, 2022. "Effect of sectoral foreign aid allocation on growth and structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa—Analysing the roles of institutional quality and human capital," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1010-1026.
    4. Michael Effah Asamoah & Imhotep Paul Alagidede & Frank Adu, 2021. "Private Capital Flows, Real Sector Growth and Institutional Quality in Africa," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(1), pages 171-207, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer/Household Economics; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Agricultural and Food Policy;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:faoaes:288957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/faoooit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.