Working Paper

Explaining African Economic Growth Performance: The Case of Ghana

“This paper has the following structure: In section 2, “macroeconomic policies and economic growth” is discussed which allows the presentation of the growth record of Ghana and explains it in light of the Collins-Bosworth characterisation of African growth. Also discussed is the macroeconomic policies that produced the growth. Observing that Ghana’s economic history can be broadly placed into two distinct periods that reflect major policy regimes, that is, interventionist and liberal, in section 3 the micro factors underlying the
macro structure is discussed. Following is a consideration of specific policies and how they affected the market structure and institutions of the economy. This includes the political economy situation underlying
policies and their outcomes. This analysis is repeated in section 4 for the liberal policy regime. Section 5 concludes the attempt to explain the growth record of Ghana.”