THE IMPACT OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY ON ECONOMIC GROWTH IN SUB-SAHARA AFRICAN COUNTRIES

1. Original Submission
   1. Recommendation

Major revision

1. Comments to Author

Title: THE IMPACT OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Overview and general recommendation:

The authors addressed the monetary and fiscal policy interaction and their impact on economic growth in a panel of 35 sub-Saharan African economies from 1980 to 2018. Using a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) approach, the author shows that an expansionary fiscal policy through tax revenue and an unexpected expansionary monetary policy via broad money supply have a positive effect on gross national income, whereas an expansionary fiscal policy through the government spending has a contractionary impact on gross national income. It is interesting and worthwhile topic. However, there are some issues that should be revised by the authors.

1. 1. Major comments:
2. There is no page numbering for the present paper.
3. The English writing does not influence, in all the paper. There are a lot of grammatical errors which should be revised by the authors. So, the paper needs a professional English revision.
4. The innovations of the paper are not clear.
5. The author’s guide should be considered by the authors in the writing style in all the paper.
6. All the paper needs re-paraphrasing, besides a better writing style.
7. The paper is too long. It should be presented shorter.

Abstract:

1. There is a poor abstract section which has not been mentioned the necessity of the problem.
2. The abstract doesn’t include the importance of the problem.
3. The keywords should be chosen based on the popularity in the academic papers.

Introduction & Literature review:

1. The authors should be explained more the main contributions and research gap of the paper, in particular, in the introduction section, more than the present explanations.
2. There are some sentences that have not been referred by the authors to a certain reference. For example, see: “The effect of macroeconomic policy, …” in the first paragraph on page 1.
3. There is no framework as a figure which shows the relationship between the described concepts. The problem statement should be explained under a graphical schematic in the introduction section.
4. General assumptions should be mentioned by the authors in the manuscript.
5. The non-relevant references should be removed from the paper. The number of references is so much.
6. The research gap is unclear. A comprehensive table should be presented by the authors to show the literature review based on their assumptions, methods, and results.

Main body:

1. All the tables and figures must have title and citation in the text, according to the author’s guide of the journal. For example, they should be embedded as near as possible to the related text.
2. Section 4.2.1.1 should be enriched.

Analysis & Discussions:

1. I cannot see enough discussion and results on the mentioned propositions and numerical studies.
2. In section 4, managerial insights and policies should be added to the paper. In other words, the authors should be presented no-included mathematical phrases that can help the readers who use the results, directly, as a managerial tool.

Conclusions:

1. I cannot see future research in the conclusions section.
2. The limitations of the problem solving should be mentioned by the authors.
3. Conclusions section is too long. It should be concise and clear. The findings can be explained in a different section such as the discussions section.
4. The conclusion should be free from the notations.
5. In the conclusions section, the findings should be explained clearly.

1. Minor comments:
2. A notations list should be added to the paper.
3. All of the titles should be explained by the authors in the paper (for example see the title of section 2).
4. The caption of figures should be embedded below of them.
5. Resolution and size of the represented figures should be increased, based on the journal’s guidelines.
6. There are many equations which have no citations in the main text (for example Eqs. 1-3).