Essays in Development Economics

Abstract

The first paper examines the crop composition effects in 50 African countries from 1960 to 2013. The paper aims to assess the effects of climate extremes and other non-climate-related factors on major agricultural outputs across African countries. The estimation results, using fixed effect regression and ordinary least square both individually and jointly for all African countries, shows that climate extremes are not altogether bad news as it increases hectares planted of some crops. The policy recommendations for the paper are for crop mix and/or substitutability of crops owing to relative changes in the climate-and non-climate-related factors, effective fertilizer policies and increasing agricultural workers productivity in the African countries. The second paper contributes to the policy debate on the role of political institutions as an intervening factor for the relationship between natural resource abundance (of different types) and growth performance in African countries. Using panel data econometrics for 28 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1960 to 2012, the research finds that good quality institutions can aid economic growth, and natural resource endowments are beneficial in the selected countries and not a curse. The research culminates with discussions on improving executive constraints, political participation and political openness, as these are intrinsic in the institutional measure adopted, in other to optimise the benefits of natural resource endowments. The third paper compares the results of Datta and Reimer (2013) which is based on 100 countries over 17 years with a similar but expanded analysis of 43 African countries over 22 years. Using various econometric techniques and model specifications, the paper finds a statistically significant reciprocal relationship between income and malaria using both database. This research further finds that income is the largest driver of the negative reciprocal relationship between income and malaria using both database, and lastly that the magnitude of the effect of income on malaria is higher using the Datta and Reimer (2013) database than in the database of 43 African countries. The research culminates with recommendation on increased economic growth for the African countries and effective distribution of insecticide-treated nets in countries where malaria is rife.