This paper critically reviews the empirical literature on growth, with a view to drawing some lessons for Africa. It illustrates the diversity of the results found by different authors, and calls for a more rigorous approach, paying attention to the identification of structural parameters and to simultaneity biases. It emphasizes the part played by openness and export orientation as the main policy variables affecting growth. Then, the choice of bad policies, which seems to be the main proximate cause of slow growth in Africa, is traced to the lack of social capital and deficient political institutions.Résumé: Cet article est une critique de la littérature empirique sur le développement dont le but est d'en tirer quelques leçons sur l'Afrique. L'article démontre la diversité des conclusions tirées par plusieurs auteurs et fait appel à une démarche plus rigoureuse, prenant en compte l'identification des paramètres structurels et des penchants simultanés qui existent. L'importance du marché et son orientation vers l'export sont soulignées comme étant les deux variables principales qui touchent directement la croissance. Les auteurs démontrent ensuite que le choix de mauvaises politiques, qui semble être la cause principale de la faible croissance africaine, est due en effet à un manque de capital social ainsi qu'aux institutions politiques défectueuses.

This paper analyses the dynamics of inflation in Kenya during 1974 -1996, a period characterised by external shocks and internal disequilibria. By developing a parsimonious and empirically constant model we find that the exchange rate, foreign prices, and terms of trade have long-run effects on inflation, while money supply and interest rate only have short run effects. Inertia is found to be important up until 1993, when about 40% of the current inflation was carried over to the next quarter. After 1993, inertia drops to about 10%. Moreover, inflation is also influenced by changes in maize-grain prices, indicating a non-negligible role for agricultural supply constraints in the inflation process.

Oil-dependent countries face a twin-shock: in addition to the COVID-19 outbreak, they are facing an oil price collapse. In this paper, we study the impact of this dual shock on the forecasted GDP growth in Africa using the COVID-19 outbreak as a natural experiment. We use the IMF World Economic Outlook's GDP growth forecasts before and after the outbreak. We find that COVID-19 related deaths result in -2.75 percentage points forecasted GDP growth loss in the all sample while oil-dependence induces -7.6 percentage points loss. We document that the joint shock entails higher forecasted growth loss in oil-dependent economies (-10.75 percentage points). Based on oil price forecasts and our empirical findings, we identify five recovery policies with high potential: social safety net policy, economic diversification, innovation and technological transformation, fiscal discipline, and climate-friendly * Acknowledgments: This study has benefited from lengthy comments of one anonymous referee and the editor Gary Campbell. We are grateful to Charles Kofi Owusu, Lorry Symington, and Marina Amoah for their valuable comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.

A monetarist model of inflation is estimated, incorporating recent developments in time series econometrics. The models compare the performance of both monetary base and a broader monetary aggregate, M3. It is shown that monetary base growth in the inflation model gives relatively stable results. Resum&:On fait l'estimation dlun modele monetariste de l'inflation en y incorporant les evenements de l'economie chronologiquement. Les modeles comparent la performance de la base monetaire et un agregat monetaire plus large, en l'occurence la masse monetaire M3. I ressort de l'estimation que la croissance de la base monetaire dans le modele d'inflation donne des resultants relativement stables.

This paper mainly analyses the drivers of economic growth in Kenya and the linkages to the labour market dynamics, with a focus on population growth, its structure, and the prospects of reaping a demographic dividend. This is in recognition that Kenya, as the ninth largest economy in Africa and the fourth largest in sub-Saharan Africa and with a locational advantage, presents some policy lessons and challenges that can boost its capacity for growth and take advantage of its location and the policy environment to drive growth in the region. The results show earnings to vary widely across sectors, reflecting barriers to labour mobility. The rising labour productivity (since 2009) indicates an improvement in the efficiency of labour use, although growth-employment elasticities have slightly declined in recent years. Whereas formal wage employment growth has closely tracked gross domestic product growth since 2004, such a relationship is absent with respect to employment in the informal sector, which dominates the economy.