This paper examines the country-level dynamics of long-run growth in Africa between 1975 and 2005. We are primarily interested in examining how growth has affected mobility and the distribution of income among countries. We analyse changes in the cross-country income structure and convergence....

This paper reviews the literature on the impact of ethnic diversity on economic development. Ethnically polarized societies are less likely to agree on the provision of public goods and more likely to engage in rent seeking activities providing lower levels of social capital. Initial conditions...

This paper reviews the innovative capabilities and absorptive capacities of African countries, and investigates whether they have played significant roles in the region's slow and episodic economic growth. Results from cross-country regressions covering 31 Sub-Saharan African countries suggest...

The current paper, first, finds that although the post-independence growth of African economies has fallen substantially below that of other regions, this comparative evidence is less than uniform across time and countries. Second, it uncovers total factor productivity as the primary culprit...

This study complements existing literature by investigating how investment-driven finance affects inequality in Africa. The empirical evidence is based on restricted and unrestricted Two-Stage Least Squares and a pre-crisis periodicity (1980-2002). Inequality is measured with estimated household...

We explore the potential effects of the first leaders of Sub-Saharan Africa. We first outline a set of theoretical reasons for why leaders may matter particularly at the critical juncture of African independence and why this influence may be persistent. In an unbalanced panel from 40 African...

Recent evidence from an exhaustive political economy study of growth of African economies- the growth project of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) suggests that 'policy syndromes' have substantially contributed to the generally poor growth in sub-Saharan Africa during...

Although growth has improved substantially in most African countries in recent years, poverty across the continent has fallen very little in the aggregate. There have been strong poverty reduction performances in some countries, but others exhibit higher poverty rates now than in 1990 despite...

The paper analyses the enigmatic high growth in Ethiopia from 2004 to 2015 (10.9% p.a.) and gauges the prospects for the future. In 2000, Ethiopia was the poorest country on the globe in per capita GDP - a mere 124 USD in current prices. The main finding is that the take-off was driven by...