Abstract
This paper provides a contribution to the growth empirics in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on identifying the major determinants of long run economic growth among SSA countries. Being aware of the overwhelming dominance of parametric regression methodology in the extant literature and its associated numerous setbacks, we specifically employ the local linear kernel estimator which does not assume any functional form for the underlying growth model. At the end of the study, the findings suggest that there is a positive and nonlinear relationship between economic growth on one hand as well as investment in physical capital, population and democracy on the other hand. Again, while we find that human capital and inflation have no significant effect on economic growth over the study period, foreign aid was found to have negative effect on economic growth in SSA. The findings obtained in the paper have important implications for growth policy in SSA. Growth policies should thus consider population control, expanding and improving the quality of education and enrolment especially at the higher levels and strengthen democratic institutions. For research, the findings imply that researchers should be cautious in specifying the functional form of growth models when investigating the determinants of economic growth. Keywords: Bandwidth, economic growth, local linear kernel regression, nonparametric, sub-Saharan Africa DOI: 10.7176/JESD/12-16-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2021
Highlights
Economic growth is one of the key indicators of economic performance of any given country and region
We find that human capital and inflation have no significant effect on economic growth in SSA at least over the period considered for the study
Implications This study provides a contribution to the growth empirics in sub-Saharan Africa
Summary
Economic growth is one of the key indicators of economic performance of any given country and region. Interest in factors that determine economic growth of countries and regions has attracted considerable amount of attention in both theoretical and empirical growth literature especially after the publication Robert Solow’s paper in 1956. Using different conceptual and methodological frameworks, these studies have come out with several set of variables that determine economic growth. Notwithstanding, the search for factors that explain economic growth among countries still continues. A popular feature of studies in empirical growth literature is the dominance of parametric methods based on linear specifications of growth models. Estimators used in these models provide efficient and consistent results under very strict assumptions and/or conditions, a situation that affects the robustness of the estimates. In much the same way, trade openness has been found to accelerate growth by Sakyi et al (2014), Yanikkaya (2003) and Wacziarg (2001) but others like Vamvakidis (2002) as well as Rodriguez and Rodrik (1999) concluded that trade openness has significant negative growth effects
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
