Recent studies find that democracy increases economic growth but often do not address through what channels such an effect could travel. This study considers whether or not democracy strengthens the rule of law, an institutional measure purported to increase economic growth. Utilizing a panel...

Comparison between Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and East Asia indicates that gender inequality in education and employment is estimated to have reduced SSA's per capita growth in the 1960-92 period by 0.8 percentage points per year. Therefore reducing gender-based asset inequality in SSA is an...

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...

The link between the mortality and epidemiological transitions is used to identify the effect of the former on the fertility transition: a mortality transition that is not accompanied by improving morbidity causes slower demographic and economic change. In a model where children may die from...

The main of this article is to analyse the evolution of Cape Verdean economy and find a binding constraint to economic growth, using the technique “growth diagnostic” proposed by Hausmann et al. (2005). The real GDP per capita in Cape Verde increased from US$ 806 in 1970 to US$ 2.830 in...

This paper explores the current state of knowledge about the business interest groups (chambers of commerce, manufactures associations, farmers associations etc.) in economic policy reform in Africa.

This econometric study takes a simulation approach to investigate the impact of external debt on economic growth in sub-Saharan African countries using a small macroeconomic model estimated for 1970-1994. An important finding was the significance of debt overhang variables in the investment...

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...

This paper provides new empirical evidence concerning the relationship between human capital (measured by education and health related variables) and economic growth for a large sample of 49 African countries over the period from 1996 to 2010. Using traditional cross-section and dynamic panel...