AERC Working Paper Series

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Browsing AERC Working Paper Series by Author "Afi Balaki"

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    Effects of Human Capital (Health) on Economic Growth in Africa: Role of Trade, Analysis by Gender Health and Income Level
    (AERC, 2026) Essotanam Mamba; Afi Balaki
    The paper examines the effects of human capital (health) on economic growth by highlighting the complementary role of trade, the effect of women’s and men’s health on growth, and comparing the effect of health on growth in low-income countries (LICs) to that in lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) between 1980 and 2021 in Africa. The instrumental variables (IV) approach with fixed effects (IV-FE) is used to control for the endogeneity issue, such as omitted variables and error measurement. The findings reveal that health significantly enhances growth in Africa, but only in LMICs. Also, health of both male and female significantly increase growth in Africa. Furthermore, adult survival is more relevant for growth than life expectancy. Finally, the marginal effect (ME) of life expectancy at birth increases with the level of trade above a certain threshold; above the level of trade equal to 38.745 % of GDP this ME becomes positive and statistically significant. Also, the ME of adult survival growth rate increases with the level of trade above and below certain thresholds; between the interval 71.952 and 136.319, the ME of adult survival growth rate is positive and statistically significant. These findings imply that health improvements and better alignment of health and trade policies are needed to stimulate growth in Africa.
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    Effects Of Trade Policies on External Trade Performances of Ecowas Countries (1996- 2017)
    (AERC, 2026) Essotanam Mamba; Afi Balaki
    The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional economic community supported by the African Union, has adopted a common trade policy through the implementation of the Trade Liberalization Scheme (TLS) instituted in 1979. One of the essential steps of this TLS is the entry into force of the ECOWAS common external tariff on January 1, 2015, a necessary step for the integration of the countries of this Community into the African Continental Free Trade Area. The objective of the paper is to analyze the effects of trade policies on foreign trade performance of ECOWAS countries between 1996-2017. Unlike most studies on the subject, the paper uses a new continuous trade policy index captured by the implementation of the TLS to analyze the direct and indirect effects of trade policies on manufacturing exports and imports. Controlling for the endogeneity of the variables of interest, the findings indicate that the TLS implementation significantly contributes to the growth of imports but much more exports. These findings are robust to different estimation techniques. Furthermore, the analysis of the multiplicative interaction model reveals that the effects of TLS on manufacturing trade performance increase with financial development and the rate of cellular mobile subscriptions. These findings have implications for economic policies.