Replicating “Sources of Slow Growth in African Economies”

Abstract

Economic analysis, even when buried in academic conference proceedings and journals, influences policy. In 2010 Reinhart and Rogoff found that economic growth drops off sharply once government debt exceeds 90 per cent of gross domestic product. Their paper, published as an unrefereed conference proceeding, was taken up en masse by deficit hawks and had a major influence on the 2012 Presidential election in the United States and on austerity programmes in Europe. A recent replication attempt challenges Reinhart and Rogoff’s findings, setting off a firestorm of controversy led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman (Herndon et al. 2013; Krugman 2013; Pollin and Ash 2013; Reinhart and Rogoff 2013). In this chapter I show the value of replication to development researchers. Via replication I challenge the mainstream understanding of economic growth in Africa that was spawned in part by an influential 1997 paper by Sachs and Warner (1997a).KeywordsRoot Mean Square ErrorTrade PolicyTrade OpennessMethodological ChallengeInstitutional QualityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.