Urbanisation and economic growth causal nexus: evidence from panel data analyses of selected positively urbanizing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

2022-12-26 23:51:03 Viewed: 2225 Downloads: 874
  • Urbanisation and economic growth causal nexus: evidence from panel data analyses of selected positively urbanizing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

      Solomon Ahimah-Agyakwah, Edward Nketiah-Amponsah and Frank Agyire-Tettey

     Publisher: African Review of Economics and Finance

    Pub: 2022-12-26 23:51:03

    Email it to me(Requires login) Download this PDF file
  • The urbanisation process in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has often been highlighted as a puzzle that deviates from the stylized facts in the literature. This study investigates the causal nexus between urbanisation and economic growth from the two dominant viewpoints in the literature viz. urbanisation-led economic growth and economic growth-led urbanisation. We employ the two-step system generalized methods of moments and the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) procedure for Granger-causality test in heterogenous panel on data from 30 countries in SSA with positive annual urbanisation rates between 1970-2019. The study finds evidence of positive bi-directional causality, and non-linear relationship between urbanisation and economic growth in both the short-run and the long-run. These findings which are in line with the ‘Africa on the rise’ discourse reappraise the popular literature that largely describes urbanisation in SSA as economically dysfunctional. However, the sustainability of the urbanisation process and its full social, political and economic benefits cannot be reaped automatically. This calls for substantial investment in urban planning, public services and infrastructure provisions in major cities across SSA.

    Email it to me(Requires login) Download this PDF file
  • Email it to me(Requires login) Download this PDF file

  • References are not ready for this file yet, please refer to reference from the PDF file

  • Keywords

    urbanisation, economic growth, elasticities, system GMM, Granger causality test, Sub-Saharan Africa


Other Informations

Top