Collier and Gunning: Explaining African Economic Performance

Collier, P, and JW Gunning. 1999. Explaining African Economic Performance. JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE 37: 64-111.

Why has Africa experienced such a slow rate of economic growth? This is explored through a literature review of growth studies, specifically those that focus on endogenous growth. These models are grouped into six categories, but the results are still problematic: Africa is growing even slower than it would be expected to. The later focus of the article is on different national agents: farming households and manufacturing firms. "Drawing on the new literature on 'social capital,' we argue that neither households or firms have as yet sufficiently created the social institutions that promote growth" (64). Section four explores the impact of regulation. "In Section 5 we bring together the argument. Both a hostile environment, particularly high risks, and inadequate social capital, particularly dysfunctional government, have lowered the returns on investment. The low returns on investment have caused capital flight on a massive scale" (65).

That is a summary of the introduction.

"Above, we have made two distinctions in the causes of slow growth. The first was between those that are intrinsic, notably geography, and those that are policy-dependent. The second was between those causes well-proxied in the regression analysis, which are predominantly macro, and those identified at the levels of agents and markets, which are microeconomic. There are thus three conceptually distinct causes of slow growth: geography, macroeconomic policies, and microeconomic policies" (100).