There is a big debate among economists, why are the resource-rich economies growing slower than resource-poor economies? Which is making this puzzle more difficult, there are two groups of resources-rich abundance countries one group grow more than other ones. For instance, the Arabic Gulf, Nigeria, and Venezuela are growing slower than Botswanan, Norway, and Australia, but both groups are resources-rich countries. Is it the resources curse scenario? Or is it weak institutions? To study this puzzle, I have observed two groups of studies. The first group of old studies claim that the problem of low growth in resources-rich economics comes from the scenario of Dutch disease, but the second group or more recent studies strongly refuse the claim by the first group. They have debated that the problem comes from poor institutional quality. We totally agree with both groups, yet we have another scenario. The resources-rich countries suffer from Dutch diseases problem and from poor quality of institutions. We strongly criticize the most significant a series of studies by Sachs and Warner (1995, 1997a,1997b, 2001). They have debated that the Dutch Disease scenario is a possible mechanism of the resource curse, which is the labor factor and capital factor move from the manufacturing and service sectors to the natural resources sector. Thus, the negative effect of natural resources on economic growth is direct effect. We argue that there is a positive relationship between most types of natural resources (oil) and economic growth. We claim also this a positive relationship holds true even after controlling for significant variables found to be for economic growth. We are not only debating that the main symptoms of the resources curse come from the weakness of institutional quality, but also come from Dutch disease scenario. We see that the indirect effect of natural resources on economic growth. To prove this association, we have used multiple institutions and resources. However, we set up three chapters: The first chapter discusses how natural resources (oil rents) impact institutional quality (control of corruption) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We discuss that is there any possibility of interaction terms between oil rents and rule of law from one side, and between oil rents and democracy from another side to avoid high corruption in MENA countries? Our findings confirm: First, the oil rents can highly feed corruption. Second, our estimates confirm that the relationship between oil rents and corruption depends on the quality of institutions (rule of law), which oil rents avoid to feed corruption unless the mean of quality of law role is (0.33). Furthermore, our findings suggest that the autocracy is better policy in the region. In the second chapter, to approach to our goal, the main symptoms of the resource curse phenomenon in MENA. The findings confirm that the economic growth in MENA is greatly and positively influence by oil rents, but we have blamed poor institutions leading to the phenomenon of resources curse. When the weakness of institutions reaches to certain limits, oil rents will start to create a negative impact on growth. This result seems to confirm the theory of the natural resource curse and to confirm that resources-rich countries are associated with poor institutions. Moreover, the interaction terms between diversification and oil rent can promote economic growth. In the third chapter, we discuss how the interaction terms between various types of natural resources, petroleum, natural coal, and coal, and political stability influence economic growth? The findings have diagnosed there are dissimilar effects by petroleum, natural gas, and coal on economic growth.

This paper aims to see whether the EU enlargement was associated with positive, negative or non-effect on Poland’s economic growth. To be able to answer this question we use the econometric method, time series with data from 1997 to 2018. The determinants of economic growth in Poland are set of variables selected based on previous studies in the same field of our study. The findings of this study shows that there is no significant relationship between economic growth and the EU enlargement in the case of Poland. The result of our regressions did not demonstrate similar result of previous study which we believe are due to the small number of observation used in our models. However, if our findings reflect the economic reality in Poland, then this can open up a new strand of further research.

This thesis shows that the relationship between economic growth and expansions of telephone main lines and electricity generating capacity is two-way, when looking at the period of 1955 - 1995 and half of the world's countries. In other words, expansions of these two kinds of infrastructure seem to both initiate and be induced by economic growth, highlighting the problem of much previous research that does not account for a bi-directional relationship. Furthermore, this research suggests that the effect that these two kinds of infrastructure have on economic growth was during this period great enough to be of policy interest, and it is likely that it can explain part of the vast differences seen between countries in GDP per capita today. While the impact that these two kinds of infrastructure had during this specific time will surely not be the same in the future, the results still point to a potentially important role for infrastructure expansions in determining economic growth, even though the kinds of infrastructure that have most impact will vary with time and technological progress.

The role of foreign aid in promoting economic growth and improving the social welfare of people has been the subject of much debate among development specialists, researchers, aid donors as well as recipients in general and Cameroon in particular. In spite of this, there are only few empirical studies that investigate the contributions of foreign aid to economic growth and development in Cameroon. This study explores the impact of foreign aid to economic growth and development in Cameroon using descriptive statistics for data that spans from 1997 to 2006. The results show that foreign aid significantly contributes to the current level of economic growth but has no significant contribution to economic development. The findings imply that Cameroon could enhance its economic development by effectively managing funds from aid and by strategically strengthening anti-corruption measures. The rest of the work is organized as follows: Chapter one consist of an introduction, chapter two is the literature review, chapter three constitute the research methodology, chapter four is the data presentation and analyses, chapter five summary of findings and recommendations and lastly chapter six conclusions,

The association between economic freedom and economic growth has been largely explored by researchers and the overall ndings indicate a signi cant and positive relationship. The empirical literature, however, is subject to suer from bias. In this paper we collect 16,070 estimates from 69 studies and using recently developed meta-analytic techniques investigate the eect of publication and speci cation biases on the reported results. While our baseline analysis re- ports some evidence for publication bias, but not very strong and robust, and con rms the speci cation bias reported by previous reviews, we also nd that these results are aected by the inclusion of three in uential outliers in the data set. Once we trim these studies, there is no evidence of speci cation bias anymore and we nd evidence of a robust and strong publication bias. Further, after controlling for the bias, we nd that the true eect of economic freedom on growth is substantially smaller than the eect reported by the empirical literature. JEL Classi cation O43; P10; P12; C52 Keywords 'economic freedom', 'economic growth', 'publi- cation bias', 'speci cation bias', 'meta-analysis' Title Economic freedom and economic growth: A Meta-Analysis

Magister Legum - LLM / Trade liberalisation, free-market system, privatisation and deregulation have become major steps taken by individual countries to accelerate economic growth. This trend has made competition law and its enforcement institutional framework pivotal, especially so with the advent of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA). A liberalised trade and a free market system without effective machinery to checkmate the activities of market participants would invariably give rise to anti-competitive practices such as monopolies, abuse of dominant position, cartels, and vertical restraints. These anti-competitive practices have an adverse effect on trade. Sierra Leone has made commitment to liberalise its market space, deregulating and developing the private sector to accelerate economic growth. This goal would be challenging, without an extant competition law statute and an independent enforcement institutional framework to address anti-competitive practices in the country.

This collection of papers originates from my interest in the reform efforts in transitional economies. Each of the chapters is self-contained. Chapter one presents a brief literature survey of those schools of thought that have contributed to our knowledge about privatization. In chapter two, a public firm model and a private firm model are compared based on agency approach, assuming that the owner of a firm has cost information but also bears the cost of production. I find that the question which type of ownership, private or public, is superior does not have a clear cut answer. Private ownership may induce higher work effort but suffers from a discrepancy of private and social goals. While production distortion is less serious, an obvious disincentive to work exists in the public firm. Chapter three examines how privatization can be considered as a threat to stimulate a public firm manager's work incentive when his effort level cannot be observed by the government. I find that, in the case when commitment to privatize is impossible, the government will set a strictly positive wage rate and a strictly positive investment subsidy to signal the government's determination to implement the privatization policy. In chapter four, I examine the role that public investment plays in a financial market with a credit rationing problem. Two kinds of borrowers co-exist in the economy, namely the public and the private. Public borrowers enjoy a "first mover" advantage to borrow money from banks. In this situation, the credit rationing is found escalating. But since the success of a public project (owned by a public borrower) can exert positive externality on the productivity of private projects, the adverse effect induced by credit rationing can be alleviated. We show that if the quality of the public projects is good enough, the economic growth rate can be higher than the case without public projects in the economy. / Ph. D.

Small to medium scale enterprises (SMEs) arguably drive economic growth and job creation in developing countries, but factors that hinder their growth are generic or specific to sectors and remain a crucial area of research. This study examines factors constraining SMEs from optimally contributing to economic growth of Zambia. The study answered the following research questions; what factors act as constraints for SMEs to contribute towards economic growth; how conducive are the policy and institutional infrastructure for the SMEs to operate efficiently and to establish whether the evidence presented by these factors are specific to Zambia or apply elsewhere. For research design, the study adopted the mixed research approach. Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches were implored in order to produce the findings outlined in this report. Simple random sampling was used to draw a total of 250 SMEs to which structured questionnaires were administered. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with three major stakeholders. The study used the statistical package of social science (SPSS) to analyse the quantitative data while qualitative data was analysed thematically- by identifying key themes and summarizing related information under each theme- for perspectives around SMEs contribution to economic growth. The study findings identify internal and external factors that constrain SMEs from contributing efficiently to economic growth and these include; 1) poor access to finance, 2) competition, 3) lack/inadequate infrastructure, and 4) lack of skills and training and these are similar across regions and other countries. On the other hand, it was stated that the high cost of production (as a result of high/multiple taxes and tariffs) prevent SMEs ability to effectively contribute to economic growth. The findings further show that institutionalised efforts created to ensure the SMEs flourish contribute effectively to economic growth. However, the correlation between targeting and segmentation of the SMEs for funding key areas of economic activities is not clear. Results show that the major factors according to the survey were the failure to access finance as attested by 160 of the 250 respondents who put this as the biggest impediment in success of their business and 65 of the respondents gave high taxes as the factor affecting them the most. The rest of the respondents gave competition and the absence of appropriate infrastructure to support business growth as a reason for poor performance and contribution to wider economic growth. Additionally, the findings show that there is no significant relationship between internal and external constraining factors and enterprise contribution to economic growth. To ensure greater SME contribution to economic growth, this study emphasises government interventions in financial services and infrastructure development, clarity in the implementation of policy and institutional provisions, encouragement of SME value-chain and market linkages as well as creation of knowledge hubs.

Income inequality is in a majority of earlier studies more or less affirmatively agreed to be negatively related to economic growth. The underlying complexity of the connection lacks well-tried backing in the modern time. The main purpose of this research is to identify the relationship between income inequality and economic growth, but also the effects of other factors, such as human capital and investment. This is conducted with a panel data approach on 34 OECD countries with data over the period 1990-2010. Aggregate income inequality, represented by the Gini coefficient is used in the empirical estimation, together with two other variables to control for the income inequality at the bottom and top end of the income distribution. The results indicate the aggregate inequality level to be significantly and positively related to growth, while bottom end and top end inequality is seen to have a significant and negative relationship with growth. The level of GDP per capita, education and population growth is also seen to have an impact on economic growth.

Objectives: The main objectives of the study include, to identify whether there is any direct impact of labor, capital/investment, technological advancement and institutional quality on economic growth; understanding the marginal effect of capital and technological advancement for different levels of institutional quality; determining how these relationships vary on the group of countries based on their income groups – poorer to richer. Method: Panel data for the period 2006–2020 and 40 countries was considered for the analysis. In order to examine the relationships for all the countries, fixed effect OLS was applied. In addition, to identify the nature of the relationships for the countries based on their income group, quantile fixed effect regression was conducted. To control the time effect, the variable, year, was considered as dummy variable. Findings: The study finds that the rate participation of the labor force negatively impacts economic growth whereas institutional quality, capital formation, and advancement of technology positively impact economic growth. The study also finds that the relationship between economic growth and labor, capital, R&D and institutional quality vary across the income group of countries. In case of the 10th quantile, that is the lowest income group countries, none of the independent variables have been found to be impacting the dependent variable, economic growth. This statement has been found true for the two subsequent upper groups of countries – that is for 25th and 50th quantile – as well. However, in the case of 75th and 90th quantile, institutional quality has been found to impact economic growth positively.The positive impact, however, has been found decreasing with increasing of income group of countries. On the other hand, the findings of the study implies that the impact of capital on economic growth will likely to be significant with gradual improvement in the quality of institutions and it has been the case for all the income group countries. In addition, the study finds, the impact of advancement of technology on economic growth gradually decrease with the improvement of institutional quality. Other than this lowest income group of countries, for all other income group countries, the impact of technological advancement tends to have a positive impact with the gradual improvement of the quality of institutions of an economy.