tying and innovation a dynamic analysis of tying arrangements this paper analyses the effects of tying arrangements on r d incentives it shows that tying is a means through which a firm can commit to more aggressive r d investment in the tied goods market tying also has the strategic effect of reducing rivals incentives to invest in r d the strategy of tying is a profitable one if the gains via an increased share of dynamic rents in the tied goods market exceed the losses that result from intensified price competition in the market the welfare implications of tying and consequently the appropriate antitrust policy are discussed

currency misalignments and growth a new look using nonlinear panel data methods the aim of this article is to investigate the link between currency misalignments and economic growth relying on panel cointegration techniques we calculate real exchange rate rer misalignments as deviations of actual rers from their equilibrium values for a set of advanced and emerging economies estimating panel smooth transition regression pstr models we show that rer misalignments have a differentiated impact on economic growth depending on their sign whereas overvaluations negatively affect economic growth rer undervaluations significantly enhance it this result indicates that undervaluations may drive the exchange rate to a level that encourages exports and promotes growth

preemptive r d rent dissipation and the leverage theory this paper provides a new perspective on the validity of the so called leverage theory in a model of preemptive innovation in systems markets i examine the effect of bundling on r d incentives i find that bundling provides a channel through which monopoly slack in one component market can be shifted to another with the effect of mitigating rent dissipation in the systems market bundling can be profitable if this beneficial effect of reduced rent dissipation outweighs the negative effect of intensified price competition after demonstrating the private optimality of bundling its welfare implications are considered finally the results can be reinterpreted to analyze the relationship between compatibility decisions and r d incentives in mix and match models

installed base and compatibility innovation product preannouncements and predation a good is often more valuable to any user the more others use compatible goods the authors show that this effect may inhibit innovation if an installed base exists and transition to a new standard must be gradual early adopters bear a disproportionate share of transient incompatibility costs this can produce excess inertia the installed base however is stranded if the new standard is adopted this may create excess momentum these dynamic effects have strategic implications temporary price cutting can permanently prevent entry and product preannouncements can be critical in innovation these strategic actions have ambiguous welfare effects

tying in two sided markets with multi homing this paper analyzes the effects of tying on market competition and social welfare in two sided markets when economic agents can engage in multi homing by participating in multiple platforms to reap maximal network benefits the model shows that tying induces more consumers to multi home and makes platform specific exclusive content available to more consumers which is beneficial to content providers as a result tying can be welfare enhancing if multi homing is allowed even in cases where its welfare impacts are negative in the absence of multi homing the analysis thus can have important implications for recent antitrust cases in industries where multi homing is prevalent

optimal operation of a chp plant participating in the german electricity balancing and day ahead spot market abstract during the last years operators of combined heat and power chp plants are challenged by changing circumstances in the electricity markets while ensuring a stable heat and power supply for customers chp plant operators seek to maximise the profitability of the chp plant operation we propose a comprehensive concept and illustrate its potential for increasing the profitability when operating a chp plant with heat storage by participating in multiple electricity markets for this purpose the structure of the decision making process consisting of bid submission market clearing and chp plant operation planning is represented a multistage stochastic mixed integer linear programming milp model is developed that simultaneously optimises the operation of the chp plant with heat storage and bidding in sequential electricity markets price uncertainty is captured by means of stochastic processes the proposed concept is applied to the real case of a municipal energy supply company that participates in the german day ahead spot and balancing market results of the case study illustrate how trading in sequential electricity markets can result in an increased profitability of the chp plant operation where additional revenues from trading offset higher generation costs furthermore we exemplify how the optimal operation of the chp plant and heat storage device are adjusted according to revenue potential in multiple electricity markets

the impact of terms of trade and real exchange rate volatility on investment and growth in sub saharan africa abstract specialization in primary product exports reduces growth but why adverse trends in and the high variance of primary product prices are possible explanations the impact on investment and growth of the level and volatility of the terms of trade and the real effective exchange rate is estimated for a panel of 14 sub saharan african countries over 1980 1995 growth is negatively affected by terms of trade instability and investment by real exchange rate instability both growth and investment increase when the terms of trade improve and real exchange rate overvaluation is eliminated

bundling as an entry barrier in this paper we look at the case for bundling in an oligopolistic environment we show that bundling is a particularly effective entry deterrent strategy a company that has market power in two goods a and b can by bundling them together make it harder for a rival with only one of these goods to enter the market bundling allows an incumbent to credibly defend both products without having to price low in each the traditional explanation for bundling that economists have given is that it serves as an effective tool of price discrimination by a monopolist although price discrimination provides a reason to bundle the gains are small compared with the gains from the entry deterrent effect i introduction in this paper we look at the case for bundling in an oligopolistic environment we show that bundling is a particularly effective entry deterrent strategy a company that has market power in two goods a and b can by bundling them together make it harder for a rival with only one of these goods to enter the market bundling allows an incumbent to defend both products without having to price low in each while it is still possible to compete by offering a rival bundle a monopolist can significantly lower the potential profits of a one product entrant without having to engage in limit pricing prior to entry we also show that bundling continues to be an effective pricing tool even if entry deterrence fails or if there is already an existing one product rival a company with a monopoly in product a and a duopoly in product b makes higher profits by selling an a b bundle than by selling a and b independently leveraging market power from a into b and accepting some one product competition against the bundle is better than using the monopoly power in good a all by itself since bundling mitigates the impact of competition on the incumbent an entrant can expect the bundling strategy to persist even without any commitment the traditional explanation for bundling that economists have given is that it serves as an effective tool of price discrimination by a monopolist see stigler 1968 adams and yellen

a model of biased intermediation this paper studies situations in which some consumers rely on a potentially biased intermediary to choose among downstream firms we introduce the notion that firms and consumers payoffs can be congruent or conflicting and show that this has important implications for the effects of bias under congruence the firm towards which the intermediary is biased invests more than its rival and consumers can be better off than under no bias under conflict bias hurts consumers and the favored firm charges higher prices we study various oft proposed policies for dealing with a biased intermediary and show that the efficacy of each intervention depends strongly on whether the environment exhibits congruence or conflict we discuss how the model relates to recent issues in online markets

wheat policy and economy wide reform in brazil abstract in recent years the wheat sector in brazil has moved from governmental protection and public intervention to a free market and privatization in this study those changes are analyzed through measures of governmental intervention on nominal rates of protection and on welfare of producers and consumers elasticities of demand and supply of wheat are estimated and the effects of changes in policies are analyzed under official and shadow exchange rates welfare measures indicate that almost us 8 billion were spent from 1970 until 1989 with policies to subsidize producers and consumers the policy induced stimulus to consumer demand exceeded the stimulus to domestic production and self sufficiency in wheat declined the reduction in wheat subsidies since 1989 was more than an isolated sector specific policy it was part of macroeconomic anti inflation policy and it coincided with other economy wide changes such as real appreciation and a decline in international commodity prices

optimal bidding in auctions from a game theory perspective abstract the game theoretic perspective in auction bidding has provided a powerful normative framework for the analysis of auctions and it has generated an impressive volume of research contributions tracing this research we review key recent advances which have greatly expanded our understanding of the operation of auctions and produced a more accurate analysis of mechanism design and optimal bidding we follow various experimental studies which have shown that the predictive power of auction theory remains in many cases limited for this reason we concentrate on research themes which enhance the applicability of auction theory leading to more realistic descriptions of bidding behaviors we identify important innovations which expand the environment of auction bidding and carry us beyond rational decision making we conclude providing directions of future research and discussing their implications

dutch disease government policy and import demand in nigeria the effects of sectoral changes and government policies on import demand in nigeria are examined in the context of the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s a two equation model is estimated to determine real import demand and the real exchange rate the results show that import demand increased significantly in response to the boom induced squeeze on the agricultural sector furthermore by inducing and sustaining real exchange rate overvaluation expansionary government policies contributed to higher import demand even after the collapse in oil prices

forecasting nord pool day ahead prices with an autoregressive model abstract this paper presents a model to forecast nord pool hourly day ahead prices the model is based on weron and misiorek 2008 but reduced in terms of estimation parameters from 24 sets to 1 and modified to include nordic demand and danish wind power as exogenous variables we model prices across all hours in the analysis period rather than across each single hour of 24 hours by applying three model variants on nord pool data we achieve a weekly mean absolute percentage error wmae of around 6 7 and an hourly mean absolute percentage error mape ranging from 8 to 11 out of sample results yields a wmae and an hourly mape of around 5 the models enable analysts and traders to forecast hourly day ahead prices accurately moreover the models are relatively straightforward and user friendly to implement they can be set up in any trading organization

social welfare effects of removing multiple exchange rates evidence from the rice trade in iran in order to encourage the involvement of the private sector in importing rice the iranian government plans to relax the system of multiple foreign exchange rates applied to importers wishing to supply the domestic market in this article the welfare effects of removing the current controls on the rice trade and a domestic rice coupon program are evaluated by applying a partial equilibrium analysis to 1961 1999 data the results show that as far as foreign exchange is concerned liberalization of the rice market causes an increase in rice imports mainly due to a decrease in domestic supply in welfare terms the loss in producer surplus from rice market liberalization is relatively high but most rice consumers and the iranian taxpayer would gain overall gains to consumers and taxpayers are estimated to be higher than the losses incurred by domestic suppliers and therefore net social welfare at national level can be improved by rice market liberalization in iran issues for further discussion include residual food security roles for the state and supply side adjustments in terms of resource use and higher quality production

pricing of reserves valuing system reserve capacity against spot prices in electricity markets this paper models the interdependencies between markets for secondary reserve capacity and spot electricity to derive the pricing of reserves under equilibrium conditions starting with the indifference condition between offering in both markets the reservation price is derived from the opportunity cost consideration and the unit commitment conditions in a fundamental interrelated market framework the reserve market examined compares widely to the german market for secondary reserves but the general approach may also be used to investigate other reserve markets the approach explores and formalizes the influence of reserve capacity on the spot market supply function a numerical solution procedure is provided to this non trivial case of market interaction the model is used to estimate the expected reservation price development over the last years in germany

the simple economics of research portfolios this article identifies biases in market portfolios of parallel research projects arising from the noncongruence of social goals and private aspirations occasioned by those circumstances where the market rewards only the winner and where the winner is awarded the entire social surplus it is shown that under risk neutrality this noncongruence implies that t he market encourages the development of too many discoveries too lar ge a spread in the distribution of the quality of discoveries and an excessive occurrence of multiple discoveries copyright 1987 by royal economic society

innovation rent extraction and integration in systems markets author s farrell joseph katz michael abstract we consider innovation incentives in markets where final goods comprise two strictly complementary components one of which is monopolized we focus on the case in which the complementary component is competitively supplied and in which innovation is important we explore ways in which the monopoly may have incentives to confiscate efficiency rents in the competitive sector thus weakening or destroying incentives for independent innovation we discuss how these problems are affected if the monopolist integrates into the competitive sector

tying compatibility and planned obsolescence according to the hypothesis of planned obsolescence a durable goods monopolist without commitment power has an excessive incentive to introduce new products that make old units obsolete and this reduces its overall profitability in this paper i reconsider the above hypothesis by examining the role of competition in a monopolist s upgrade decision i find that when a system add on is competitively supplied a monopolist chooses to tie the add on to a new system that is only backward compatible even if a commitment of not introducing the new system is available and socially optimal tying facilitates a price squeeze

antitrust and regulation essays in memory of john j mcgowan this collection of original essays by economists and lawyers addresses important aspects of antitrust and regulation such as the u s government s merger guidelines antitrust in regulated industries the connection between profitability and market share and the question of what constitutes anticompetitive behavior the book combines economic and legal analysis to inform policymaking with theory as well as the lessons of experience in the petroleum electric power computer retail food and telecommunications industries antitrust and regulation opens with john mcgowan s previously unpublished background paper mergers for power or progress for the merger guidelines taskforce which recommended the rules adopted by the antitrust division of the justice department in 1982 this is followed by competition and antitrust in the petroleum industry an application of the merger guidelines by george a hay and robert j reynolds anticompetitive mergers prevention and cure by william j kolasky jr philip a proger and roy t englert jr industrial markets another look at the sic approach by james w mckie profitability and market share by morris a adelman and bruce e stangle non price anticompetitive behavior by dominant firms toward the producers of complementary products by j a ordover a o sykes and r d willig market conduct when is it anticompetitive by robin c landis and ronald s rolfe can exclusive franchises be bad by f m fisher mixing regulatory and antitrust policies in the electric power industry the price squeeze and retail market competition by paul l joskow preferences of policy makers for alternative allocations of the broadcast spectrum by forrest nelson and roger noll the financial interest and syndication rules in network television regulatory fantasy and reality by f m fisher and borrowing from peter to pay paul more on departures of price from marginal cost by almarin phillips and gary l roberts

external disturbances domestic policy responses and debt accumulation in nigeria abstract this paper provides a case study of the link between external shocks domestic policy responses and external debt accumulation in nigeria the indonesian experience during 1970 1989 is provided as a contrast for policy comparison a significant part of the increase in external debt in the two countries corresponds to financing of capital flight after 1981 current account deficits assumed greater importance in the accumulation of external debt the growth in external debt was caused in part by adverse external conditions the results of this study show that the nigerian debt crisis was exacerbated by inappropriate policy responses indonesia avoided a crisis by applying prudent real exchange rate management and fiscal restraint

bidding in sequential electricity markets the nordic case abstract for electricity market participants trading in sequential markets with differences in price levels and risk exposure it is relevant to analyze the potential of coordinated bidding we consider a nordic power producer who engages in the day ahead spot market and the hour ahead balancing market in both markets clearing prices and dispatched volumes are unknown at the time of bidding however in the balancing market the market participant faces an additional risk of not being dispatched taking into account the sequential clearing of these markets and the gradual realization of market prices we formulate the bidding problem as a multi stage stochastic program we investigate whether higher risk exposure may cause hesitation to bid into the balancing market furthermore we quantify the gain from coordinated bidding and by deriving bounds on this gain assess the performance of alternative bidding strategies used in practice

tying foreclosure and exclusion in recent years the leverage theory of tied good sales has faced heavy and influential criticism in an important sense though the models used by its critics are actually incapable of addressing the leverage theory s central concerns here the author reconsiders the leverage hypothesis and argues that tying can indeed serve as a mechanism for leveraging market power the mechanism through which this leverage occurs its profitability and its welfare implications are discussed in detail copyright 1990 by american economic association

real exchange rate behavior and economic performance in ldcs in recent years policy discussions have included increasing references to real exchange rate rer stability and correct exchange rate alignment as crucial conditions to improve economic performance in less developed countries ldcs 1 evidence from latin american asian and african countries is often quoted to support the view that the link between rer behavior and economic performance is strong it is argued that while unstable rers inhibited export growth in some of latin america their stability was fundamental in promoting east asian expansion in many african countries on the other hand persistently misaligned local currencies harmed the development of agriculture reducing domestic food supply 2 but in spite of its importance no empirical work has been attempted either to test the relationship between rer behavior and performance indicators at a broad multicountry level or to investigate the sources of rer variability and misalignment in ldcs the theoretical literature on rer determinants has been recently surveyed by sebastian edwards 3 he distinguishes between equilibrium and disequilibrium rers and between external and domestic rer determinants although domestic policies are often said to account for significant rer variations empirical work has only concentrated on the effect of nominal devaluations4 or speculative crises arising from expansionary monetary policies in a system of fixed ex

a framework for analyzing food subsidies abstract budgetary pressures and foreign exchange scarcities are increasingly forcing countries to review the costs and benefits of food subsidy programs this paper is intended to help policymakers to assess alternative food subsidy policies and to draw out their more important implications a number of alternative policies are analyzed including both rationing and market clearing schemes these schemes are assessed according to 1 their effectiveness in restricting program benefits to the most nutritionally at risk segment of the population 2 their effect on the level and composition of demand for other goods particularly imports 3 consequences for domestic agricultural price and 4 the long run implications of economic growth for the size of the subsidy bill the conclusions highlight the importance of the demand characteristics of the subsidized good

arima models to predict next day electricity prices price forecasting is becoming increasingly relevant to producers and consumers in the new competitive electric power markets both for spot markets and long term contracts price forecasts are necessary to develop bidding strategies or negotiation skills in order to maximize benefit this paper provides a method to predict next day electricity prices based on the arima methodology arima techniques are used to analyze time series and in the past have been mainly used for load forecasting due to their accuracy and mathematical soundness a detailed explanation of the aforementioned arima models and results from mainland spain and californian markets are presented

tying investment and the dynamic leverage theory the idea that an incumbent supplier may tie two complementary products to fend off potential entrants is popular among practitioners yet is not fully understood in formal economic theory this article makes sense of the argument by formally deriving a dynamic version of the old leverage doctrine we show that when an incumbent monopolist faces the threat of entry in all complementary components tying may make the prospects of successful entry less certain discouraging rivals from investing and innovating tie in sales may reduce consumer and total economic welfare copyright 2001 by the rand corporation

do panel data permit the rescue of the balassa samuelson hypothesis for latin american countries this paper tests empirically the balassa samuelson bs hypothesis i e rapid economic growth is accompanied by real exchange rate appreciation because of differential productivity growth between tradable and non tradable sectors using annual data for twenty latin american countries the paper applies new panel data unit root tests proposed by im et al discussion paper university of cambridge june 1997 and new panel data cointegration techniques suggested by pedroni oxford bulletin of economics and statistics 1999 and the results are compared with those obtained with conventional time series unit roots and cointegration tests the main finding is that whereas a standard time series approach rejects the balassa samuelson hypothesis for 11 countries out of 20 new panel cointegration techniques permit the rescue of this hypothesis for latin american countries as well as for central american and south american groups of countries considered separately

a strategic motivation for commodity bundling the analytical literature on commodity bundling explains the practice of selling two or more differentiated products in a single package as a surrogate for direct price discrimination in contrast this paper shows that imperfect competition creates a strategic incentive to bundle the profitability of bundling whether it adversely affects rival producers and whether it yields an overall efficiency gain depends inter alia on the nature of product market competition the role of complementarity in explaining why firms bundle is also explored copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

dutch disease real effective exchange rate misalignments and their effect on gdp growth in eu abstract in this article we study the impact of real effective exchange rate misalignments based on determinants including different types of foreign capital inflows on gdp growth in the eu for this analysis we use a panel of 27 eu countries for the period 1994 2012 with annual frequency core countries have been only slightly undervalued from the crisis onwards while the periphery was overvalued however the gap for the periphery has reduced in the last two years as regards the new member states these were overvalued for the entire time span the results seem to be generally driven by the inflows of bank loans the misalignments are associated with lower long run growth the exchange rate volatilities are not robust in affecting gdp growth while spillovers and global factors seem to matter in all the specifications both in the short and long run

is there curvature in the slutsky matrix d o the poor substitute among commodities more flexibly than the rich when relative prices change even when compensated for the income effects of the price changes is it necessary to add a third dimension to the slutsky substitution matrix to identify household income in short do the terms of the slutsky elasticity matrix curve smoothly from poor households to rich households in such a way that equation 1 is meaningful

real exchange rate levels and economic development theoretical analysis and econometric evidence according to the development approach to exchange rates competitive currencies have been a key factor in most east and southeast asian successful growth strategies there is also today an important empirical literature that relates overvaluations to low per capita growth rates while the econometric literature on this issue is relatively rich theoretical analysis of channels through which real exchange rate levels could affect economic development are very scarce this paper intends to contribute to the debate by bringing more theoretical elements and providing new econometric evidence to the connections between real exchange rate levels and development

equilibrium product bundling this article offers an equilibrium theory of product bundling by rival firms in several models where a primary good is produced in a duopoly market and one or more other goods is produced under perfectly competitive conditions bundling is shown to emerge as an equilibrium strategy of one or both of the duopolists for its role as a product differentiation device when the rival firms can commit to bundling sales their profits are higher but social welfare is reduced copyright 1997 by university of chicago press

aid real exchange rate misalignment and economic growth in sub saharan africa generating sustained growth in sub saharan africa is one of the most pressing challenges in global development as the region needs foreign assistance to jump start its development foreign aid becomes crucial however aid booms can also lead to exchange rate overvaluation curtailing exports and growth this paper provides new evidence on the impact of aid and overvaluation on growth and exports using a sample of 83 countries from 1970 to 2004 we find that aid fosters growth with decreasing returns but induces overvaluation overvaluation reduces growth but the effect is ameliorated by financial development finally we find new evidence on the negative impact of overvaluation on export diversification and sophistication

spatial dependencies of wind power and interrelations with spot price dynamics abstract wind power has seen strong growth over the last decade and increasingly affects electricity spot prices in particular prices are more volatile due to the stochastic nature of wind such that more generation of wind energy yields lower prices therefore it is important to assess the value of wind power at different locations not only for an investor but for the electricity system as a whole in this paper we develop a stochastic simulation model that captures the full spatial dependence structure of wind power by using copulas incorporated into a supply and demand based model for the electricity spot price this model is calibrated with german data we find that the specific location of a turbine i e its spatial dependence with respect to the aggregated wind power in the system is of high relevance for its value many of the locations analyzed show an upper tail dependence that adversely impacts the market value therefore a model that assumes a linear dependence structure would systematically overestimate the market value of wind power in many cases this effect becomes more important for increasing levels of wind power penetration and may render the large scale integration into markets more difficult

antitrust innovation and competitiveness the essays in this book explore how the us antitrust laws especially the sherman act have affected the ways in which us corporations can form alliances to compete in world markets the editors start from the premise that current antitrust laws needlessly and unwisely restrain innovation because they inhibit communication and co operation between firms although not all the contributors agree with them about the extent of this effect

meat imports in sierra leone analysis constraints and policy implications abstract this article examines the factors contributing to the shortages of meat and other livestock products in sierra leone and analyses the import market for meat in sierra leone a two stage least squares procedure is used to determine the import demand responses for meat in sierra leone the empirical estimates suggest that real exchange rates income trade restrictions domestic production and prices of meat and competing products are the key determinants of import demand responses for meat in sierra leone the relative sizes of the estimates reveal that policies targeted at domestic meat production income trade and real exchange rate adjustments have more significant effects than pricing policies

upgrades switching costs and the leverage theory of tying this article investigates the role of product upgrades and consumer switching costs in the tying of complementary products previous analyses have found that a monopolist of one product will not increase its profits and reduce social welfare by tying and leveraging its monopoly position into a complementary market if the initial monopolised product is essential where essential means that all uses of the complementary good require the initial monopolised product we show that this is not true in settings characterised by product upgrades and consumer switching costs we also discuss various extensions including the role of the reversibility of tying

impacts of world prices transmission to domestic rice markets in rural iran abstract this paper attempts to assess the degree to which iranian rural households have responded to the change in price of imported rice due to exchange rate unification and to examine the extent to which the policy has affected the economic welfare of various household income groups particularly the poor utilizing samples of 2472 households selected from national expenditure survey data of 2002 and 2003 armington and pass through elasticities were calculated as two measures of substitutability and are discussed separately for each household group in these areas the findings of this study indicate that domestic rice prices are associated differently with imported rice prices among the households however a price increase in imported rice that is mainly consumed by the poor worsens their position much more severely than for the rich people who mainly prefer domestic rice the findings contribute to the understanding of how price changes resulting from trade liberalization may affect various groups of households and the ways they respond to such changes in prices

multiproduct monopoly commodity bundling and correlation of values through what selling strategy can a multiproduct monopolist maximize his profits when his knowledge about individual consumers preferences is limited one possibility extensively studied in the context of a single good monopoly is to use quantity dependent pricing as a means of discriminating among customers with differing tastes see for example oi 1971 and maskin and riley 1984 an alternative technique for price discrimination first suggested by stigler 1968 and analyzed further by adams and yellen 1976 is for the monopolist to package two or more products in bundles rather than selling them separately through a series of examples adams and yellen illustrate that bundling can serve as a useful price discrimination device even when all consumers willingnesses to pay for each of the goods individually are unaffected by whether they are also consuming the other product a typical example is illustrated in figure i adapted from figure iv in adams and yellen where there are two goods three consumers ab c who consume at most one unit of each good with reservation values for each good that are independent of whether the other good is consumed and zero costs of production there a bundle offered at a price of 100 fully extracts all potential surplus which would be impossible pricing the goods independently unfortunately though these authors do not provide any general characterization of the circumstances in which bundling is actually a multiproduct monopolist s optimal strategy their examples however such as figure i create the impression that the profitable use of bundling

multimarket optimal bidding for a power producer this paper considers a profit maximizing thermal producer that participates in a sequence of spot markets namely day ahead automatic generation control agc and balancing markets the producer behaves as a price taker in both the day ahead market and the agc market but as a potential price maker in the volatile balancing market the paper provides a stochastic programming methodology to determine the optimal bidding strategies for the day ahead market uncertainty sources include prices for the day ahead and agc markets and balancing market linear price variations with the production of the thermal producer results from a realistic case study are reported and analyzed conclusions are duly drawn

economic growth in africa abstract this paper draws on the recent endogenous growth methodology to study the factors behind differences in per capita growth rates across africa the results indicate that various economic factors including initial conditions investment population growth trade orientation inflation financial development and the growth of the government sector contribute significantly to economic growth in addition to economic variables we find the degree of political freedom to be a significant contributor to economic growth finally we find some evidence that economic growth by the members of the cfa franc zone has not fared well in comparison to other african countries