Exports,Inflation and Growth

This article seeks to identify some of the main determinants of exports and economic growth in cross-sectional data from the World Bank covering 160 countries for 1985–94. First, the linkages between the propensity to export and population, per capita income, agriculture, primary exports and inflation are studied by statistical methods. Then, the relationship between economic growth and some of the above-mentioned determinants of exports as well as investment are scrutinized the same way. The main conclusion is that, in the period under review, high inflation and an abundance of natural resources tended to be associated with low exports and slow growth.