An Alternative View to the “Africa Dummy”

For the last four decades the pace of economic growth in African countries remained too slow or stagnant. This problem is analyzed by first developing a framework that focus on growth process of indigent economy, where deferring current consumption is hardly possible, and by relaxing the usual assumption of unfailing market condition. The analytic result suggests that the degree and direction of effects of factors of market failure make a difference in nations\u27 level of income per capita as well as its rate of growth. On this ground, the poor economic performance observed in the region can be well attributed to poor capacity to manage and exploit factors of market failure. The empirical evidence obtained from analysis of panel data supports strongly this argument

Education and Economic Performance in Sub Sahara Africa

In Sub Sahara Africa, where the process of economic growth is almost enigmatic, schooling is being considered, in most parts of the region, as a factor that may help resolve the mystery. This paper aims at examining the degree of growth effect of schooling in this region. Following the endogenous growth model developed by Lucas (1988) that considers human capital as one factor of production and schooling as means of human capital accumulation, two results of schooling are explicitly stated: accumulation of privately owned and publically owned human capital. By developing a growth estimating equation containing these two types of schooling results from the model and confronting the equation with empirical data from Sub Sahara Africa, the hypothesis that schooling has got growth effect is tested. The analytic result suggests that in the region, during the covered period of study, only part of schooling that leads to accumulation of communally owned human capital is associated with per capita income growth

Export Earnings Instability and Economic Growth in Sub-Sahra African Countries

The paper investigates the impact of uncertainty generated by export earnings instability on economic growth. A model that links uncertainty to economic performance is developed, and from the model, the condition under which outward - oriented economic policy contributes positively to economic growth was set. From panel data analysis, it is inferred that to benefit from an outward-oriented economic policy, the stable component of export revenue of the region has to grow annually by at least 7.5% if this condition is not satisfied, the policy acts adversely on economic performance by inducing resource misallocation

A Health Production Function for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

The paper estimates a health production function for Sub-Saharan Africa based on the Grossman (1972) theoretical model that treats social, economic, and environmental factors as inputs of the production system. In estimating this function, socioeconomic and environmental factors such as income per capita, illiteracy rate, food availability, ratio of health expenditure to GDP, urbanization rate, and carbon dioxide emission per worker are specified as determinants of health status, proxied by life expectancy at birth. The parameters of the function are estimated by a method of one-way and two-way panel data analyses. The results obtained from two-way random effect model suggest that an increase in income per capita, a decrease in illiteracy rate, an increase in food availability are well associated with improvement in life expectancy at birth. Overall results suggest that a health policy, which may focus on the provision of health, services, family planning programs, and emergency aids to the exclusion of other socioeconomic aspects may do little in efforts directed toward improving the current health status of the region.Sub-Saharan Africa, Health expenditure, Production function, Medical care, Panel data.

Factors influencing poverty levels in rural households in Southwest China

This paper examines factors behind poverty in Kelang and Haizi, rural villages in Yunnan province in the South West China. Determinants of household income per capita, off-farm employment choice and off-farm income levels were investigated using seemingly unrelated regression, probit model and Heckman selection model, respectively. Farm household survey data collected in 2003, were used for estimation. The analytical results indicate off-farm employment, land productivity, land area per labour units, education and proximity to a large city play an important role in determining the level of household income per capita

Dependency Ratio and the Economic Growth Puzzle in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Conventional growth theories in the literature explain the poor economic performance of African economies by stressing the inadequacy of savings, human capital, and poor institutional quality. However, the key question is how to enhance savings for the accumulation of both physical and human capital in order to spur growth. A common thread that runs through the existing models is that the dependency ratio, not only remains constant over time, but has no long-run negative impact on economic growth. By relaxing this rigid assumption, this paper constructs a growth estimating equation which accommodates this demographic factor. The analytic results from the modified model suggest that economies with high dependency ratio face their stable equilibrium at lower levels of their income per capita. Moreover, econometric results from analysis of panel data drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa economies suggest that the growth puzzle can be well explained in terms of the demographic factors, especially the level and dynamics of dependency ratio of the region.Sub-Saharan Africa, growth model, dependency ratio, steady state, panel data, fixed-effects model, random-effects model

Estimating a health production function for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

The paper estimates a health production function for Sub-Saharan Africa based on the Grossman (1972) theoretical model that treats social, economic, and environmental factors as inputs of the production system. In estimating this function, socioeconomic and environmental factors such as income per capita, illiteracy rate, food availability, ratio of health expenditure to GDP, urbanization rate, and carbon dioxide emission per worker are specified as determinants of health status. The parameters of the function are estimated by one-way and two-way fixed and random effects model of panel data analyses. The results of the two-way random effect model suggest that an increase in income per capita, a decrease in illiteracy rate, and an increase in food availability are strongly associated with an improvement in life expectancy at birth. Overall, the results imply that a health policy which may focus on the provision of health services, family planning programs, and emergency aids to the exclusion of other socioeconomic and environmental aspects may do little to improve the current health status of the region.