Persistence and trends in governance indicators in Sub-Saharian Africa

This paper focuses on the analysis of persistence and trends in various governance indices over the 47 countries that form the Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on fractional integration methods, we examine the order of integration of six indicators for each country along with the significancy of the time trends. The results indicate that Rwanda (and in a lesser extent Ethiopia) lead the countries with the highest coefficients for the time trend, while Eritrea, South Africa, Gabon, Mali and Sudan appear as those with the most significant negative trends. Overall, there is an overwhelmingly support for mean reversion of the governance indicators, with evidence of this feature in at least one indicator in 37 countries or 77% of the countries in the sample. On average, the lowest order of integration corresponds to PV (Political Stability and Absence of Violence or Terrorism) while the highest one to VA (Voice and Accountability) implying longer lasting effects of shocks in this latter indicator. The implications of the results are discussed in conclusion section.