POLITICAL INSTABILITY AND ECONOMIC-GROWTH - EVIDENCE FROM SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Argues that political instability (PI), defined as instability of governments, regimes, and communities within a nation, is likely to affect economic growth adversely. Using recently available unpublished data on successful coups d'etat, attempted coups, and coup plots, an index of "elite' PI is constructed for a sample of 31 sub-Saharan African countries over the 1956-85 period. On the basis of this index, the sample is classified into "high'- and "low'-PI countries. Multiple regressions based on an augmented production-function framework, which includes as functional arguments labor, capital, and exports, as well as a dichotomous variable measuring PI, PD, lend support to the basic hypothesis that PI on average has deleterious impact on economnic growth. -from Author