The ECOWAS countries’ growth rates: what makes them similar and what makes them different? A quantile regression analysis

This paper uses a quantile regression analysis to investigate differences across the ECOWAS countries of the engine of growth. Specifically, we want to see whether differences in the growth rates are related to domestic factors of economic growth (investment, human capital and financial intermediation), policy variables (inflation and government consumption) and institutional factors (degree of bureaucracy, accountability, corruption and property rights). Our empirical investigation provides evidence of heterogeneity in the determinants of economic growth depending upon the location of countries in the conditional distribution of per-capita GDP growth. We find that in the upper tails of the distribution, governance and institutional variables are more crucial in impacting growth than the standard determinants of growth in the neoclassical growth models. Conversely, for the lower tails of growth distribution, the economic growth seems to depend more heavily on the accumulation of physical capital and on education. ResumeCet article compare les moteurs de croissance economique des pays de la CEDEAO, en regardant specifiquement si les differences dans les taux de croissance sont liees a des facteurs internes, a des enjeux de politiques publiques et a des facteurs institutionnels. Notre recherche empirique montre que les determinants de la croissance varient en fonction de la position du pays dans la distribution conditionnelle de la croissance du PIB par habitant. Dans la queue superieure de la distribution, la gouvernance et les variables institutionnelles sont davantage importantes pour la croissance que les determinants habituels trouves dans les modeles neoclassiques, tandis que dans la queue inferieure la croissance economique semble dependre davantage de l'education et de l'accumulation de capital physique.