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This paper examines the relationship between capital mobility and economic growth in African countries. It analyzes the degree of capital mobility using heterogeneous panel unit root and cointegration tests. The findings suggest that capital is relatively mobile in Africa, with significant variations between different country groups. The study also shows that non-CFA countries and common law countries have higher economic growth compared to their counterparts. These results have important policy implications for fostering economic development in Africa.
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CSAE CONFERENCE 2010, 21-23 March 2010, OXFRD (U Saving, Investment and capital mobility: lessons from African countries and implications for economic growth Chrysost BANGAKE Jude EGGOH Laboratoire d’Economie d’Orléans Second Congress of African Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire November 24-25, 2011
Motivations of the paper The degree of international capital mobility determines the efficience of capital allocation in the world economy. African countries keep significant legal restriction over capital movements and have limited financial markets. Consequences: low saving rate, weak economic growth, capital flight from the region. Understanding the extend to which domestic saving finances domestic investment in Africa is an important aspect for economic policy makers and firms One test proposed by Feldstein and Horioka (1980) for capital mobility is to examine the relationship between saving and development
Motivations of the paper Most previous studies focused on cross section and times series of data. Problems with these studies: - low power of conventional univariate unit root tests - Further, the traditional cointegration has also the problem of low power Analyse consistently the relationship between saving and development using a battery of new heterogeneous panel unit root and cointegration tests. We use Full Modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS and Pool Mean Group (PMG) estimators to analyse long-run relationships. The results allow us to make economic policy for African countries
Outline Related emprirical literature Methodology Data and results oo Conclusion and key policy implications
Related empirical literature Feldstein and Horioka (1980) proposed assessing the degree of capital mobility by measuring the correlation between saving and investment. They estimate the following cross-section regression : where and are respectively the saving and investment rates of country i, is the saving-ratio retention and is the error term.
Related empirical literature Some recent empirical literature on OECD countries or developed countries: Krol (1996), Coiteux and Olivier (2000), Jansen (2000), Ho (2002), Coakley and al. (2003), Kim and al. (2005). However, there is a limited number of empirical attempts to verify the presence of capital mobility using the FH approach for African countries. Among these studies: Payne and Kamazawa (2005), De Wet and Van Eyden (2005), Adedeji and Thornton (2006). Bangake and Eggoh (2011). Unfortunately, These studies have several shortcomings.
Methodology Panel unit root tests We used first generation tests of panel unit due to Im, Pesaran and Shin (2003) and Maddala and Wu (1999) and second generation of unit root of Pesaran (2005). Panel cointegration tests We apply Pedroni’s cointegration tests methodology Panel cointegration estimation. Although Pedroni’s methodology allows us to test the presence of cointegration, it could not provide estimation of long-run relationship. In this paper we consider three estimators with error correction: Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), dynamic OLS (DOLS) and Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator.
Data and results The data are taken from the World Development indicators (WDI, 2008) CD-ROM for 37 African countries for the period 1970-2006. Saving is defined as gross domestic saving as a percentage of GDP while investment is measured by gross fixed capital formation divided by GDP The three panel unit test root tests reveal that the null hypothesis cannot be rejected in level. However, this hypothesis is rejected when series are in first difference. These results imply that saving and investment in level are non-stationary and stationay in first difference The results of Pedroni’s cointegration show that the ratios of saving and investment are cointegrated for the panel of all countries and for the panels of country groups.
Data and results Panel cointegration estimation Notes: the value in parenthesis denotes the t-value for zero coefficients. *** significant at 1%. • The saving retention coefficients estimated by FMOLS, DOLS and PMG are respectively 0.38, 0.58, 0.36 for the pool of all countries. • This results imply that capital is relatively mobile in Africa. • There are marked differences in retention ratios between country groups (CFA versus non CFA; oil versus non-oil countries ; common versus civil law countries).
Data and results Mobility of capital and growth: comparison in African - The non CFA experienced higher economic growth than CFA countries during the period 1970-2006. - The growth performance was slighty lower in civil law countries compared to common law countries. - The volatility of growth is also higher in countries with higher economic growth.
Conclusion and policy implications The prevalence of capital mobility relatively high has several policy implications. - These results could be due to economic reforms and structural adjustments, which are aimed at liberalization of markets, taking place in many these countries during the two decade. Such reforms must be pursed. - The prevalence of moderate capital mobility also implies that in the countries, the prospects for economic growth need not to be severely constrained by the prevailing low level of domestic savings.
