Examining Factors Influencing Imports of Technology Goods in African Economies

Abstract

The study aims to investigate what determinants had an impact on the imports of different categories of technology goods and to verify whether the determinants such as level of sustainable development and quality of institutions had also an impact on the imports of different categories of technology goods. The study covers 53 African economies and 17 categories of technology goods. To investigate the determinants of the Chinese technology goods imports with the use of the trade gravity in levels approach in a panel data set covering the period 2016–2021, we have applied the semimixed effect method using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator. The study proved that most of the explanatory variables functioned in line with expectations and economic theory. Several anomalies were also identified in the behavior of variables such as productivity, quality of institutions and Internet technology advancement.