This paper provides an empirical assessment of the driving forces behind structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa, and to further access the role of structural reforms in accounting for cross-country differences in transformation. Evidence from this paper reveals that country specific fundamentals, institutions and policy reforms as well as governance and fiscal reforms are the key drivers of transformation in the region. A set of policy strategies is proposed to engender sustained transformation and development in the region.
This paper provides an empirical analysis of the determinants of the bank lending rate in Ghana using annual time series data from 1970 to 2013. We found evidence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between the average lending rate charged by commercial banks and its determining factors. In the long run, bank lending rates in Ghana are positively influenced by nominal exchange rates and Bank of Ghana’s monetary policy rate but negatively with fiscal deficit, real GDP and inflation. We also find positive dependence of the bank lending rate on exchange rates, and the monetary policy rate both in the short and long run. Specifically, our findings reveal that the Bank of Ghana’s monetary policy rate and the exchange rate, by far, show strong contemporaneous effects on the average bank lending rate in Ghana.
This paper investigates the incentive for developing adaptation technology in a world with changing climate within the directed technical change framework. Consistent with the market size effect, we show that technological change will tend to be biased in favour of the sector that employs the greater share of the work force over time, when the inputs are sufficiently substitutable. An economy with dominant climate sensitive sector can maintain sustained economic growth if it is capable of undertaking frontier innovations in the form of adaptation technology that increases the productivity of the inputs employed in the climate sensitive sector
The dependence of many African economies on a few mineral commodities exposes them to a number of risks, including economic instability, conflict and damaging environmental effects. Structural, institutional and regulatory reforms are needed to break the mineral dependence and promote economic diversification.
This study is a contribution to the empirics of climate change and its effect on sustainable economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using data on two climate variables: temperature and precipitation, and employing panel cointegration econometric technique of the long- and short-run effects of climate change on growth, we establish that temperatures beyond 24.9 °C would significantly reduce economic performance in SSA. Furthermore, we show that the relationship between real GDP per capita on one hand and temperature on the other is intrinsically nonlinear.
The general policy prescription for resource-rich countries is that, for sustainable consumption, a greater percentage of the windfall from resource rents should be channelled into accumulating foreign assets such as a sovereign public fund as done in Norway and other developed but resource-rich countries. This might not be a correct policy prescription for resource-rich sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, where public capital is very low to support the needed economic growth. In such countries, rents from resources serve as opportunity to scale-up the needed public capital. Using panel data for the period 1990–2013, we find in line with the scaling-up hypothesis that resource rents significantly increase public investment in SSA and that this tends to depend on the quality of political institutions. We also find evidence of a positive effect of public investment on economic growth, which also depends on the level of resource rents. Using some of the components of public investment, such as health and education expenditure, we find a negative effect of resource rents, suggesting among other things that public spending of resource rents is directed more to other infrastructure investments.
The paper investigates the extent to which stock market development enhances private investment in Ghana. Quarterly times series data for the period 1991(Q1) to 2011(Q4) are used. Stock market development is proxy by market capitalization. The paper adopts the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method of estimation. The results for deposit interest rates, GDP per capita, and public investment confirm complementarity hypothesis, accelerator principle, as well as “crowding-in” effect for Ghana in the long-run in their respective cases. Market capitalization also increases private investment in the long-run. However, inflation reduces private investment. In the short-run, one quarter lag and two quarters lag values of private investment and public investment respectively increases private investment, while one quarter lag value of market capitalization reduces current levels of private investment. The paper recommends further development of the stock market since doing so will attract more investors and ultimately enhance private investment.