A Rough and Lonely Road to Prosperity: A Reexamination of the Sources of Growth in Africa using Bayesian Model Averaging

Abstract

This paper takes a fresh look at Africa's dismal growth performance by using the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) methodology. We estimate the posterior probability of a large number of potential explanatory variables and cross-country regression models. In a nutshell, we find that determinants of growth in Africa are strikingly different from the rest of the world. In addition, growth regression models that best explain global growth do poorly in explaining African growth, and vice versa