Statistical Analysis of the Impact of Globalization on Standards of Living in West African Countries

The growing integration of the economy and society around the world has been one of the most discussed topics in the international economics for several years now. Globalization means not only increasing trade openness, financial flows and foreign direct investments but also political, cultural and environmental integration of countries. In this study, the emphasis is on studying the impact of globalization on standards of living in developing countries since in developed countries with high standards of living the effect of globalization is less expressed. West Africa is chosen as a developing region. In a research world globalization processes have been analyzed, the system of globalization indicators has been studied. The impact of globalization on standards of living in West African countries has been studied using regression analysis based on panel data and panel cointegration analysis. For Ghana as for a more developed country among the developing West African countries, the ARIMA model of forecasting of globalization sub-indexes taking into account structural changes is implemented as well as the vector autoregression (VAR) model for studying the dynamic relationships between the indicators of globalization and standards of living.