Does Africa Grow Differently?

This paper argues that understanding the mechanisms of growth requires going beyond the reduced form, and demonstrates important differences in the mechanisms of growth in Africa. Certain policy distortions and exogenous factors are more costly to growth in Africa than elsewhere, while the growth benefits of other reforms and exogenous factors are more limited in Africa than elsewhere. These differences are most apparent in equations which separately explain the explanatory variables common in reduced form growth equations. An expanded growth accounting framework shows that many of the differences in Africa's growth mechanisms are also quantitatively significant in explaining Africa's slow growth.