Openness, Globalization and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Cote d´Ivoire, 1969-2002

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between openness, globalization on economic growth in Côte d’Ivoire which adopted the openness of its economy as the basic way for development at the beginning of its economic history in 1960. Using a three-variable vector autoregressive (VAR) model, we find that the three variables are tied together in the long-run. Although a positive effect of openness on growth is observed in the short-run, both increasing openness and globalisation do not have positively contributed to the long-run economic growth of this country, a finding that is in the opposite of the prediction of the new growth theory about the potential long-run effects of trade on growth.