The effect of world income on the economic performance of African countries

This paper examines how the output growths of 37 African countries’ are affected by the output growth of the world. The connection between the world output growth and that of each African country is represented by a block recursive VAR model allowing that world output growth affects each African countries’ output but not vice versa. The response of each African country’s output growth is analyzed when one standard deviation shock is given to the world’s output growth. Our results indicate that in 6 of the 37 countries, there exists a statistically significant and permanent effect for four periods (years), and the effect is positive for 5 of them. The statistically significant effect of the shock is observed starting from the first period for 16 countries, of which the effect is positive in 13. The initial (contemporaneous) effect of the shock can be observed in the output growths of 13 African countries of which the effect is positive in 9. For the output growths of 9 countries, a statistically significant effect could not be observed.