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Persistence of the Misery Index in African Countries

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Abstract

This paper deals with the analysis of the misery index in a group of 55 African countries by using fractional integration or I(d) techniques. In doing so, we can measure the degree of persistence of the index in a more flexible way than with other methods that simply use integer degrees of differentiation (zero or one). Our results indicate a large degree of heterogeneity across the countries, with some showing short memory behaviour (d = 0); others long memory mean reverting behaviour (0 < d < 1) and others indicating the presence of unit roots (d = 1). Thus, shocks will have different effects depending on the country examined. Generally, we also find a positive relationship between the levels of persistence and income.

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Notes

  1. Allowing for autocorrelated erors throughout the model of Bloomfield (1973) produced qualitatively the same type of results as those reported in this work.

  2. In all these cases the 95% confidence intervals include the value d = 0.

  3. We have also tested the persistence of the weighted misery index proposed by Di Tella et al. (2001) and the results are qualitatively similar to the output obtained in Table 4. They are available from the authors upon request.

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Acknowledgements

Luis A. Gil-Alana gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología ((ECO2017-85503-R). Comments from the Editor and two anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Multimedia University, Bukit Beruang, Melaka, Malaysia

    Sakiru Adebola Solarin

  2. Faculty of Economics and ICS, University of Navarra, 31080, Pamplona, Spain

    Luis A. Gil-Alana

  3. University Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid, Spain

    Carmen Lafuente

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  1. Sakiru Adebola Solarin
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  3. Carmen Lafuente
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Correspondence to Luis A. Gil-Alana.

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Solarin, S.A., Gil-Alana, L.A. & Lafuente, C. Persistence of the Misery Index in African Countries. Soc Indic Res 147, 825–841 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-019-02184-y

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