Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach

This paper studies the link between democracy and economic development for 28 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1980-2005 in a panel data framework. A democracy index constructed from the Freedom House indices. A variety of panel data unit root and cointegration tests are applied. The v...

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Main Author: Jaunky, Vishal
Format: Journal Article
Published: Physica-Verlag GmbH und Co. 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/50864
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author Jaunky, Vishal
author_facet Jaunky, Vishal
author_sort Jaunky, Vishal
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper studies the link between democracy and economic development for 28 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1980-2005 in a panel data framework. A democracy index constructed from the Freedom House indices. A variety of panel data unit root and cointegration tests are applied. The variables are found to be integrated of order one and cointegrated. The Blundell-Bond system generalized methods-of-moments is employed to conduct a panel error-correction mechanism based causality test within a vector autoregressive structure. Economic growth is found to cause democracy in the short-run, while bidirectionality is uncovered in the long-run. In addition, the long-run coefficients are estimated through the panel fully modified ordinary least squares and dynamic ordinary least squares methods. Democracy has a positive impact on GDP and vice versa. These results lend support to the virtuous cycle hypothesis. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-508642017-09-13T15:34:26Z Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach Jaunky, Vishal This paper studies the link between democracy and economic development for 28 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1980-2005 in a panel data framework. A democracy index constructed from the Freedom House indices. A variety of panel data unit root and cointegration tests are applied. The variables are found to be integrated of order one and cointegrated. The Blundell-Bond system generalized methods-of-moments is employed to conduct a panel error-correction mechanism based causality test within a vector autoregressive structure. Economic growth is found to cause democracy in the short-run, while bidirectionality is uncovered in the long-run. In addition, the long-run coefficients are estimated through the panel fully modified ordinary least squares and dynamic ordinary least squares methods. Democracy has a positive impact on GDP and vice versa. These results lend support to the virtuous cycle hypothesis. © 2012 Springer-Verlag. 2013 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/50864 10.1007/s00181-012-0633-x Physica-Verlag GmbH und Co. restricted
spellingShingle Jaunky, Vishal
Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach
title Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach
title_full Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach
title_fullStr Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach
title_full_unstemmed Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach
title_short Democracy and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach
title_sort democracy and economic growth in sub-saharan africa: a panel data approach
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/50864