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Trois essais sur la croissance, la pauvreté et les propriétés cycliques de la politique budgétaire
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Diallo, Oumar |
| Copyright Year | 2006 |
| Abstract | This thesis is a collection of three essays, each corresponding to a chapter. The first chapter investigates the causes of Africa's poor growth performance along the line of the policy argument. It therefore focuses on the strand of literature that highlights the role of policy instability and uses the dependent economy model as the main theoretical framework. It explores the potential effects of real exchange rate and public spending instabilities on growth dynamics as well as the transmission channels through which these effects unfold. Results from the empirical analysis indicate that public spending instability increases real exchange rate instability, which in turn exerts a negative impact on both investment and total factor productivity. In addition, the empirical investigation suggests partially that real exchange rate appreciation contributes to the decline of sectors with important positive externalities, thereby leading to persistent productivity losses and weak economic growth. These results can be interpreted as indicating that the stability of public spending and real exchange rate are keys to the region's long-term economic growth. The second chapter explores the relationships between economies policies and poverty, using again the dependent economy model as the main theoretical construct. Accordingly, it focuses on public spending and real exchange rate, with more emphasis on real exchange rate, and explores the links between these two variables and poverty. The empirical analysis, which is based on a sample of African and non-African countries, shows that real exchange rate depreciation favours the poor, provided that income is fairly distributed and institutions are sound. The main policy implication of this finding is that real exchange rate depreciation could be a powerful tool for poverty reduction if complemented by other policies. Such policies include facilitating the access of the poor to production factors and improving the quality of institutions. In line with the literature that links policy choices to political regimes, the third and last chapter looks into the implications of the democratisation process in Africa on the cyclical properties of fiscal policy in the continent. In particular, the main question that is investigated is whether democratic institutions have been conducive to more countercyclical fiscal policies in the region. The empirical investigation uncovers a positive association between democratic institutions and countercyclical fiscal policies. More importantly, formal institutions that impose restraints on the executive branch are found to be the key factor that explains why democracies can smooth business cycles better than autocracies. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00116961/file/Thesis_06-10-06_Oumar_DIALLO.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00116961/document |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
