IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/40674.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Africa's statistical tragedy: best statistics, best government effectiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Kodila-Tedika, Oasis

Abstract

We analyze the effect of the Statistical Capacity on government effectiveness/efficiency, using a cross-sectional and panel data for a sample of 48 countries African for a period of 2003-2008.The results show that Statistical Capacity positively affects government effectiveness/efficiency. The positive effect of Statistical Capacity is robust to controlling for other determinants of institutional quality and number of estimation techniques.It follows that countries with higher Statistical Capacity levels enjoy institution of better qualitythan countries with low levels of Statistical Capacity.

Suggested Citation

  • Kodila-Tedika, Oasis, 2012. "Africa's statistical tragedy: best statistics, best government effectiveness," MPRA Paper 40674, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:40674
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/40674/1/MPRA_paper_40674.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/45719/8/MPRA_paper_45719.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/47295/16/MPRA_paper_47295.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/73486/16/MPRA_paper_47295.pdf
    File Function: revised version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morten Jerven, 2011. "Growth, Stagnation or Retrogression? On the Accuracy of Economic Observations, Tanzania, 1961–2001," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 20(3), pages 377-394, June.
    2. Johnson, Simon & Larson, William & Papageorgiou, Chris & Subramanian, Arvind, 2013. "Is newer better? Penn World Table Revisions and their impact on growth estimates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 255-274.
    3. Isaac Kalonda-Kanyama & Oasis Kodila-Tedika, 2012. "Quality of Institutions : Does Intelligence Matter?," WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 201206, University of Kansas, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2012.
    4. Kenneth Harttgen & Stephan Klasen & Sebastian Vollmer, 2013. "An African Growth Miracle? Or: What do Asset Indices Tell Us About Trends in Economic Performance?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59, pages 37-61, October.
    5. David E. Sahn & David Stifel, 2003. "Exploring Alternative Measures of Welfare in the Absence of Expenditure Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 49(4), pages 463-489, December.
    6. Angus Deaton & Alan Heston, 2010. "Understanding PPPs and PPP-Based National Accounts," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-35, October.
    7. Morten Jerven, 2011. "Counting the Bottom Billion," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 12(4), pages 35-52, October.
    8. Morten Jerven, 2010. "Random Growth in Africa? Lessons from an Evaluation of the Growth Evidence on Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, 1965-1995," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(2), pages 274-294.
    9. David Stifel & Luc Christiaensen, 2007. "Tracking Poverty Over Time in the Absence of Comparable Consumption Data," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 21(2), pages 317-341, June.
    10. Xavier Sala-i-Martin & Maxim Pinkovskiy, 2010. "African Poverty is Falling...Much Faster than You Think!," NBER Working Papers 15775, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Why you want good national statistics
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2012-08-27 19:50:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christian Otchia & Simplice Asongu, 2020. "Industrial growth in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from machine learning with insights from nightlight satellite images," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 48(8), pages 1421-1441, December.
    2. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis, 2013. "Poor Numbers: explanation of Africa's statistical tragedy [Pauvreté de chiffres : explication de la tragédie statistique africaine]," MPRA Paper 43734, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis & Asongu, Simplice & Azia-Dimbu, Florentin, 2015. "Statistics and IQ in Developing Countries: A Note," MPRA Paper 68323, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jerven, Morten, 2014. "African growth miracle or statistical tragedy? Interpreting trends in the data over the past two decades," WIDER Working Paper Series 114, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Janina Isabel Steinert & Lucie Dale Cluver & G. J. Melendez-Torres & Sebastian Vollmer, 2018. "One Size Fits All? The Validity of a Composite Poverty Index Across Urban and Rural Households in South Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 136(1), pages 51-72, February.
    3. Kenneth Harttgen & Stephan Klasen & Sebastian Vollmer, 2013. "An African Growth Miracle? Or: What do Asset Indices Tell Us About Trends in Economic Performance?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59, pages 37-61, October.
    4. Morten Jerven, 2014. "African Growth Miracle or Statistical Tragedy?: Interpreting Trends in the Data Over the Past Two Decades," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-114, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Harttgen, Kenneth & Vollmer, Sebastian, 2013. "Using an asset index to simulate household income," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 257-262.
    6. Mick Silver, 2010. "IMF Applications of Purchasing Power Parity Estimates," IMF Working Papers 2010/253, International Monetary Fund.
    7. J. Vernon Henderson & Adam Storeygard & David N. Weil, 2012. "Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 994-1028, April.
    8. Oulton, Nicholas, 2015. "Understanding the space–time (in)consistency of the national accounts," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 21-23.
    9. Deng, Kent & O'Brien, Patrick, 2017. "How Well Did Facts Travel to Support Protracted Debate on the History of the Great Divergence between Western Europe and Imperial China?," MPRA Paper 77290, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Gaddis,Isis, 2016. "Prices for poverty analysis in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7652, The World Bank.
    11. Kafle, Kashi & Jolliffe, Dean & Winter-Nelson, Alex, 2018. "Do different types of assets have differential effects on child education? Evidence from Tanzania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 14-28.
    12. Ahmed, Faizuddin & Dorji, Cheku & Takamatsu, Shinya & Yoshida, Nobuo, 2014. "Hybrid survey to improve the reliability of poverty statistics in a cost-effective manner," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6909, The World Bank.
    13. Angus Deaton & Bettina Aten, 2017. "Trying to Understand the PPPs in ICP 2011: Why Are the Results So Different?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 243-264, January.
    14. Oulton, Nicholas, 2015. "Space-time (In)consistency in the national accounts: causes and cures," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86285, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Duangkamon Chotikapanich & William E. Griffiths & Gholamreza Hajargasht & D. S. Prasada Rao & Charley Xia, 2018. "Inequality and Poverty in Africa: Comparing Panels of Income Distributions from Different Data Sources," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 2042, The University of Melbourne.
    16. Maxim L. Pinkovskiy & Xavier X. Sala-i-Martin, 2014. "Lights, camera,...income! Estimating poverty using national accounts, survey means, and lights," Staff Reports 669, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    17. Brückner, Markus & Gradstein, Mark, 2013. "Effects of transitory shocks to aggregate output on consumption in poor countries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 343-357.
    18. Angus Deaton, 2010. "Understanding the Mechanisms of Economic Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 3-16, Summer.
    19. Paul Johnson & Chris Papageorgiou, 2020. "What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 129-175, March.
    20. Robert Hill & Daniel Melser, 2015. "Benchmark averaging and the measurement of changes in international income inequality," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 151(4), pages 767-801, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sub-Saharan Africa; Institution; Statistical Capacity; Information; Government effectiveness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • P48 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • N17 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Africa; Oceania

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:40674. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.