TITLE:
Trade Openness, Inflation and GDP Growth: Panel Data Evidence from Nine (9) West Africa Countries
AUTHORS:
Gibbson Adu-Gyamfi, Emmanuel Nketiah, Bright Obuobi, Mavis Adjei
KEYWORDS:
Trade Openness, Inflation, Economic Growth, West Africa
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Business and Management,
Vol.8 No.1,
January
8,
2020
ABSTRACT: The underlying purpose of this study is to determine the effects of Trade openness and inflation on the GDP
growth for nine West-African Countries for the period from 1998 to 2017. The
data used in this study are secondary data sources derived from the World
Development Indicators (WDI) of the World Bank over the period 1998-2017.
This study employed pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Fixed Effects and
Random effects test with panel data in arriving at the results. This study
has Trade Openness (OPEN), Inflation (INFLA), Real Exchange Rate (REER) and
Investment (INVEST) as independent variables and GDP growth rate as a dependent variable. The results show that inflation has a negative and significant
impact on GDP growth in using pooled OLS and Random whiles having an insignificant
impact on GDP with the fixed effect test. Trade Openness has a significant
negative impact on GDP using the pooled OLS and an insignificant impact using
the fixed and Random effects tests. Real Exchange rate showed a positive significant impact in all the tests whiles investment
showed an insignificant impact in all
the tests.