Globalization, Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Africa: A Macroeconomic Perspective

The last two decades has witnessed an increase in globalizing influences affecting most countries, Africa included. These influences have arisen partly as a result of domestic and international policies, such as trade policies, and partly as a result of general globalizing impulses, such as technological developments and enhanced communications. The single overarching objective of this paper is to outline the macro evidence on the extent to which globalization is taking place and poverty is reducing in Africa, and to consider this to both characteristics of the region (i.e., within the region) and relative to other global regions. It draws on some of the most recent evidence about the globalizing processes in various forms so as to try to determine the speed and extent of globalization in Africa. This helps to put into proper perspective the impact of globalization on poverty and inequality. It is essentially a partial and descriptive approach, at best indicative of associations, and stops short of attempting to identify, empirically, channels of influence and causal relationships.globalization, inequality, poverty, Sub-Saharan Africa

Determinants of Income Inequality and its Effects on Economic Growth: Evidence from African Countries

Income distribution, Income inequality, Economic growth

Aid Effort and its Determinants

determinants of aid efforts, generosity, ODA, DAC, donors, G7

Distributional invariance and the design of sams

The decomposition of a matrix multiplier derived from a social accounting matrix (SAM) by Pyatt and Round [(1979). Accounting and Fixed Price Multipliers in a Social Accounting Matrix Framework. Economic Journal, 89, 850–873] has prompted a number of subsequent applications. In one of the earliest examples Stone [(1985). The Disaggregation of the Household Sector in the National Accounts, Chapter 8. In: G. Pyatt and J.I. Round (eds.) Social Accounting Matrices: A Basis for Planning. Washington, DC, The World Bank, 145–185] made the intriguing observation that the higher order (circular) effects of an exogenous change in final demand on the distribution of income and the structure of production were more or less independent of the sectoral composition of the initial injection. Our initial objective in this article is to explore this phenomenon of distributional invariance and to derive sufficient conditions for it. We then argue that these conditions have important implications for the design of SAMs, for the taxonomies they adopt and for levels of disaggregation, all of which strongly condition the quality of results that can be generated via subsequent modelling