A Panel Data Analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa's Economic Growth

This thesis examines the relationship between real GDP per capita growth rate of Sub-Saharan Africa countries and various variables suggested by theoretical literature related to Solow model or endogenous growth theories. The set of most commonly used variables is further extended by additional variables which have not been given an ample attention in the context of analysis of SSA countries' economic growth so far. The econometric analysis uses unbalanced panel data set comprising annual observations on 45 SSA countries between 1980 and 2011 applying a simple pooled OLS and FE estimation. We also touch IV estimation to address endogeneity problem. Moreover, we test the sensitivity of parameter estimates. Along with the analysis of total set of SSA countries, we subgroup countries into 4 groups - oil exporters, middle-income countries, non-fragile low-income countries and fragile countries. We present results for each group. The results support the findings of earlier empirical studies related to most commonly variables associated with economic growth, except the negative effect of population growth rate and conditional convergence hypothesis. The analysis of additional factors reveals the strong relevance of latitude, colonial heritage and landlockedness, while no systematic effect of neither...