Front Cover -- African Arguments -- About the Author -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Tables and Figures -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- From Explaining Slow Growth to Explaining Low Income -- How Economists Have Misunderstood Growth in Africa -- 1: Misunderstanding Economic Growth in Africa -- Correlation Is Not Causation -- Garbage In, Garbage Out -- The African Dummy Variable -- Misrepresenting the African Economic Growth Record -- The Subtraction Approach -- Aid Dependency -- Deficient Public Services -- Bad Policies -- Bad Governance -- A Leap of Faith -- 2: Trapped in History? -- The Historical Evidence of Growth -- Explaining Variation in Income 'Today' -- Root Causes of African Underdevelopment -- Initial Conditions: Bad Geography and Wrong Technology -- Ethnicity -- Settlers and Institutions -- 'Causal History' or 'Compression of History'? -- Ceteris Paribus: History Matters -- 3: African Growth Recurring -- The Political Economy of Episodic Growth in Africa -- The Importance of Economic Growth -- From Slavery to Cash Crops: Growth in Precolonial and Colonial Africa -- Growth in Africa Since 1950 -- Prospects for Growth -- World Markets -- Political Conditions -- The Factors of Production -- Poverty, Inequality and Economic Growth: Some Precautions -- 4: Africa's Statistical Tragedy? -- Benchmark Years -- How Much Do We Know About Income and Growth in Africa? -- Correlates of Growth -- Interpreting the Growth Evidence -- The Politics of African Economic Statistics -- Conclusion -- How We are Misled by Mainstream Economics -- Learning from History -- Getting African Economies Right -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Back Cover.

An accessible, eye-opening account that fundamentally challenges mainstream accounts of economic growth in Africa.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.