Economic Fluctuations in Sub-Saharan Africa

Download or read book Economic Fluctuations in Sub-Saharan Africa written by Mr.Giovanni Melina and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We compare business cycle fluctuations in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Our main results are as follows: (i) African economies stand out by their macroeconomic volatility, which is is reflected in the volatility of output and other macro variables; (ii) inflation and output tend to be negatively correlated; (iii) unlike advanced economies and emerging markets (EMs), trade balances and current accounts are acyclical in SSA; (iv) the volatility of consumption and investment relative to GDP is larger than in other countries; (v) the cyclicality of consumption and investment is smaller than in advanced economies and EMs; (vi) there is little comovement between consumption and investment; (vii) consumption and investment are strongly positively correlated with imports.