The article aims to investigate the possibility of the convergence and catching up of life expectancy values observed in West African countries with those noted in North African countries. Following the theory of time series convergence, documented in Bernard and Durlauf (1996) and Greasley and Oxley (1997), more robust unit root tests, based on the Fourier nonlinearity and instantaneous breaks proposed in Furuoka (2017), are used in investigating the convergence of each pair of a West African country and its North African counterpart. As no unit root in the differences of the pairs implies convergence, the results obtained by means of the new statistical approach quite outperform those produced by classical unit root tests. The results provide general evidence of the convergence of life expectancy values recorded in West Africa and North Africa.
This paper investigates the mean reversion in household consumption expenditure in 38 African countries; the expenditure series used were the percentage of nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP), each spanning 1990 to 2018. Due to a small sample size of time series of household expenditure, with possible structural breaks, we used the Fourier unit root test approach, which enabled us to model both smooth and instantaneous breaks in the expenditure series. The results showed non-mean reversion in the consumption expenditure pattern of Egypt, Madagascar and Tunisia, while mean reversion was detected in the remaining 35 countries. Thus, the majority of African countries are on the verge of recession once shocks that affect the growth of GDP are triggered. Findings in this paper are of relevance to policymakers on poverty alleviation programmes in those selected countries.
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