africa

Africa at a Fork in the Road: Taking Off or Disappointment Once Again?
While the risk of reverse causality 14 is minimal, we remain keenly aware of the possible
impact of excluded variables. As expected, the IMF dummy enters positively
and significantly in columns 1-2. There is an additional concern, however: that IMF
agreements may not be randomly distributed across countries. We therefore estimate
a two-stage model in which we, like others such as Easterly (2005), instrument for
IMF agreements using each country’s level of US military assistance and previous
colonial status. 15 We report the results in columns 3 and 4. 16
Political reform, policy choice and economic performance
Table 12.4 closes the circle. We evaluate these relationships with the growth of TFP
at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles of the distribution of rural population share.
While RRA fails to provide a medium through which electoral competition affects
TFP growth when the share of rural population is small. But at the 75th percentile,
RRA accounts for nearly 14 percent of the total effect of electoral competition on
TFP growth.
217