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This paper empirically examines the extent to which a country's economic growth is influenced by the economies of its trading partners. Panel estimation results based on four decades of data for more than 100 countries show that trading partners' growth has a strong effect on domestic growth, even after controlling for the influence of common global and regional trends. The results are robust to instrumental variable estimation and other robustness tests. Trading partners' relativeincome levels are also positively correlated with growth, suggesting that the richer a country's trading partners, the stronger is conditional convergence. A general implication of the results is that countries benefit from trading with fast-growing and relatively more developed countries. [JEL F43, F15]

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This paper measures the extent to which South African economic growth is an engine of growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Results based on panel data estimation for 47 African countries over four decades suggest that South African growth has a substantial positive impact on growth in the rest of Africa, even after controlling for other growth determinants. The estimates are robust to the effects of global and regional shocks, changes in model specification, and sample period. Copyright 2005 Economic Society of South Africa.