Untangling the Quality of Governance from the Level of Income: Are Sub-Saharan African Countries Governed Differently?

Authors

• Gundlach
• E.
• Hartmann
• S.

Publication Date

DOI

10.1080/09578810701667441

JEL Classification

This paper considers the argument about whether Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are mainly poor because they are governed worse than other countries, as suggested by recent studies on the leading role of institutions. Our empirical results show that the supremacy of institutions does not hold: SSA countries appear to face specific development problems in addition to weak institutions. Given their geographic and economic constraints, we conclude that SSA countries are on average no worse governed than other comparable countries. Our finding supports the basic argument of the UN Millennium Project report (2005).