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Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

12-2015

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Applied Economics: M.S.

Department

Economics

College

School of Public Affairs

First Advisor

Ming Chien Lo

Second Advisor

Artatrana Ratha

Third Advisor

Chukwunyere Ugochukwu

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Abstract

African countries export more primary commodities than anything else (Deaton, 1993). Those export are usually seen by scholars as both a hope and a curse. The purpose of this paper is to examine how commodity prices affect African economic welfare. I apply a panel modeling and construct impulse responses for the analysis using a panel data of 49 African countries from 1999 to 2014. The results will help us determine the effect of commodity price on Africa economic growth. The results are inconclusive and the estimates are statistically insignificant. Still, the impulse response functions indicate that an increase in commodity price is more likely to benefit the African economies than hurting them.

Comments/Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my committee members, Professors Ming Chien Lo, Artatrana Ratha, and Chukwunyere Ugochukwu for their continuous support. Also, I would like to thank the Economics Department Faculty at St. Cloud State University. They provided great education that helped me to earn the skills to work on this project. Special thanks to my family and friends for supporting me and encouraging me to do the best.

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