Research Brief
The effect of clustering in Tunisia
The clustering of industries in specific areas has improved industrial productivity in a number of countries. Since the mid-1990s in Tunisia, concerted policies have been introduced which focus on improving the efficiency of the labour force, and...
Policy Brief
The Significance of Transport Costs in Africa
The success of Africa's exports, as well as its spatial development, depends on lowering transport costs. In this Policy Brief, we address a number of pertinent questions on transport costs in Africa, such as 'what are transport costs?', 'do...
Working Paper
Optimized Reservoir Operation Model of Regional Wind and Hydro Power Integration
The present study develops a reliability assessment method of wind resource using optimum reservoir target power operations that maximizes the firm generation of integrated wind and hydro power. A combined water resources model for a system of...
Working Paper
The Economic Impact of Climate Change on Road Infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa Countries
Climate change scenarios for many Sub-Saharan African countries including Ghana indicate that temperatures will increase while rainfall will either increase or decrease. The potential impact of climate change on economic systems is well-known...
Working Paper
The Main Obstacles to Firms’ Growth in Senegal
Productivity gains are the prime engine of economic growth. This paper uses a rich amount of firms’ accounting information from the Single Information Collecting Centre in Senegal over the period 1998-2011. To investigate the two main obstacles to...
Working Paper
The Scale and Nature of International Donor Assistance to Housing, Basic Services and Other Human-Settlements Related Projects
This paper describes the scale and nature of development assistance to projects that sought to improve housing and living conditions for low income groups, including housing-related infrastructure and services such as water supply, sanitation and...
Book Chapter
Lessons for Japanese foreign aid from research on aid’s impact
Japan has provided foreign aid for some 60 years. Japan’s aid has grown and evolved as it became richer and as the developing world changed too. Japan is a strong supporter of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and revised its ODA Charter in...
Working Paper
Component Trade and China’s Global Economic Integration
China’s engagement in the so-called international fragmentation of production – namely ‘cross-border dispersion of component production/assembly within vertically integrated manufacturing industries’ – has become an increasingly important form of its...
Working Paper
Poverty decomposition by regression
We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Because this method uses an integral of the partial derivatives of a poverty measure with respect to time, the resulting poverty decomposition satisfies time...
Working Paper
The European Investment Bank
The paper considers the experience of the European Investment Bank and addresses policy lessons for developing countries as they seek finance for development. The paper argues that the key lesson for developing countries is that the traditional role...
Working Paper
Infrastructure and Poverty Reduction
The paper investigates the impact of infrastructural development on poverty reduction in Nigeria. Specifically, the relative effects of physical and social infrastructure on living standards or poverty indicators are examined, with a view to...
Working Paper
Globalization and Marginalization in Africa
Increased openness is seen by some as a panacea for development while for others it is a recipe for disaster for the poor. Using the example of Ethiopia, this paper discusses some of the key challenges faced by some of the poorest African countries...
Book
Making Peace Work
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for post-conflict countries as well as the international community. Countries and their donor partners face multiple priorities – rebuilding infrastructure, assisting...
Working Paper
Geography and Development in Africa
Geography causes African countries to experience a ‘proximity gap’. To overcome this gap a ‘big push’ may be needed in infrastructure. The cross-border nature of such infrastructure requires regional cooperation in at least four issues: transport...
Working Paper
Getting Infrastructure Priorities Right in Post-Conflict Reconstruction
In this paper, an attempt is made to identify some key challenges for infrastructure sectors in post-conflict reconstruction. In spite of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, infrastructure can be damaged in conflicts, and reconstructing infrastructure...
Working Paper
Pacific Islands' Bilateral Trade
Bilateral trade of geographically distant countries is likely to be negatively affected by the distance separating them from their trading partners and positively affected by their remoteness, defined as the average weighted distance between two...
Working Paper
Externalities in Rural Development
The paper tests for external effects of local economic activity on consumption and income growth at the farm household level using panel data from four provinces of post-reform rural China. The tests allow for nonstationary fixed effects in the...
Working Paper
Adaptation Advantage to Climate Change Impacts on Road Infra-structure in Africa through 2100
The African continent is facing the potential of a US$183.6 billion liability to repair and maintain roads damaged from temperature and precipitation changes related to climate change through 2100. As detailed, the central part of the continent faces...
Working Paper
Public-Private Co-operation for Gas Provision in Poor Neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires
This study examines the programme Redes Solidarias, a public-private initiative that connected to natural pipelined gas 4,000 households in the Great Buenos Aires Area during 2005. The main features of the institutional framework are described and...
Working Paper
Should Africa Industrialize?
Africa should industrialize. Without structural change it cannot sustain recent growth. Economies with more diverse and sophisticated industrial sectors tend to grow faster. But since 1980 Africa has deindustrialized. The paper shows that between...
Working Paper
Convergence Club Empirics
This paper documents the convergence of incomes across Indian states over the period 1965 to 1998. It departs from traditional analyses of convergence by tracking the evolution of the entire income distribution, instead of standard regression and...
Working Paper
Taxation, infrastructure, and firm performance in developing countries
This paper investigates the relationship between taxation and firm performance in developing countries. Taking firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys (WBES) and tax data from the Government Revenue Dataset (ICTD/UNU-WIDER), our...