Beta and sigma convergence: Are the 15 West African countries catching up with the developed world?

Abstract

Studies of economic growth convergence have focused on developed countries with less emphasis on developing countries. We therefore seek to contribute to filling that missing gap by assessing whether the 15 West African countries are converging or catching up with the developed or advanced countries. First, we explored conditional and unconditional beta convergence and secondly, we examined sigma convergence using the mean log deviation and the average GDP per capita relative to the richer USA. We found no evidence of unconditional convergence or sigma convergence between the West African countries and the USA. However, we found evidence of conditional convergence between the two given no variation in structural growth factors. For instance, controlling for investment and population growth, it will take 89 years to cut the gap between the West African countries and the USA into half. Controlling for investment, population growth and human capital accumulation rate, the number of years to cut the gap into half reduces to 78 whereas adding FDI and trade openness increases the speed of convergence to 2 % and reduces the number of years for halving the gap to 35.