Publisher:
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Courant Research Centre - Poverty, Equity and Growth (CRC-PEG), Göttingen
Abstract:
The Africa-Dummy has been identfi ed and different explanations for its appearance have been published. In this paper, the issue of the empirical identifcation of the Africa-Dummy is addressed. We introduce a fixed effects regression model to identify the Africa-Dummy in one regression step so that its correlations to other coeffcients can be estimated. A semiparametric extension of this model checks whether the Africa-Dummy is a result of misspecifi cation of the functional structure. Furthermore, we show that sub-Saharan African countries have a positive return to the population growth and when adding interaction effects, the Africa-Dummy is even positive. Moreover, we show that the Africa-Dummy changes dramatically over time and the punishment for sub-Saharan African countries decreases incrementally since the mid-nineties. According to the Augmented Solow Growth model, it was even insignificant since the end-nineties.