an Eldis Resource
Explaining African economic performance
Authors:
Paul Collier; Jan Willem Gunning
Publisher:
Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford, 1997
Africa has had slow growth and a massive exodus of capital. In many respects it has been the most capital-hostile region. We review and interpret the aggregate-level and microeconomic literatures to identify the key explanations for this performance. There is a reasonable correspondence of the two sets of evidence, pointing to four factors as being important. These are a lack of openness to international trade; a high-risk environment; a low level of social capital; and poor infrastructure. These problems are to a substantial extent attributable to government behavior and the paper includes a review of the political economy literature which addresses that behavior. [author]
