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

Summary 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.