Working Paper
New technologies create opportunities
This paper argues that new technologies—for communication, such as mobile phones and the internet, but also for manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and transport—have the potential to bridge many of the productivity gaps between sub-Saharan Africa...
Working Paper
Behavioral Design
Successful development programs rely on people to behave and choose in certain ways, and behavioral economics helps us understand why people behave and choose as they do. Approaching problems in development using behavioral economics thus leads to...
Report
Firm-level Competitiveness and Technology in Vietnam :
This report summarizes information from the 2012 round of the Vietnam Technology and Competitiveness Survey (TCS), collaboratively developed by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the General Statistics Office (GSO), and the...
Working Paper
Learning to Export and Learning by Exporting
In this study, we investigate the relationship between exporting and firm performance using a longer panel dataset of Ethiopian manufacturing firms for the period 1996−2009. We test two hypotheses regarding exporting: selection into exporting versus...
Report
Firm-level Competitiveness and Technology in Vietnam (in Vietnamese) :
This report summarizes information from the 2012 round of the Vietnam Technology and Competitiveness Survey (TCS), collaboratively developed by the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the General Statistics Office (GSO), and the...
Working Paper
Planning for Large-Scale Wind and Solar Power in South Africa
South Africa hopes to expand wind and solar power. Success depends on how and where to deploy the technologies. This study develops a 10-year database of expected power generation for these technologies across South Africa. A power system model...
Working Paper
Indo-Sri Lanka Economic Cooperation
The emerging trends in global trading patterns point to the increasing role and significance of regional economic cooperation in promoting the process of growth and development. The formation of the South-Asian Association for Regional Cooperation...
Report
Firm-Level Competitiveness and Technology in Vietnam :
This report is based on a survey module incorporated into the 2009 Vietnam Enterprise Survey conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam in 2010.1. The survey module was specifically designed by the Development Economics Research...
Working Paper
Selective Policies for Export Promotion
This paper considers the rationale for and limitations to selective export promotion policies in developing countries, with a focus on manufactured exports. It draws upon the experience of the most successful exporters in the developing world - the...
Working Paper
The Weightless Economy in Economic Development
Can the increasing significance of knowledge-products in national income— the growing weightless economy—influence economic development? Those technologies reduce “distance” between consumers and knowledge production. This paper analyzes a model...
Working Paper
Measurement of a Multidimentional Index of Globalization and its Impact on Income Inequality
In this paper we present two composite indices of globalization. The first is based on the Kearney/Foreign Policy magazine and the second is obtained from principal component analysis. They indicate which countries have become most globalized and...
Journal Article
Measuring industry coagglomeration and identifying the driving forces
Understanding industry agglomeration and its driving forces is critical for the formulation of industrial policy in developing countries. Crucial to this process is the definition and measurement of agglomeration. We construct a new coagglomeration...
Working Paper
Globalization, Technology, and Income Inequality
Much of the vast literature on changes in income distribution in advanced countries during the last two decades attributes these either to globalization (specifically in the form of trade liberalization with low-wage developing countries), or to...
Working Paper
Diffusion of Digital Mobile Telephony
Factors determining the diffusion of digital mobile telephony across 200 developed and developing countries in the 1990s are studied with the aid of a Gompertz model. The market size and network effects are found to play more important roles in the...
Journal Article
Consumption risk, technology adoption and poverty traps
Much has been written on the determinants of technology adoption in agriculture, with issues such as input availability, knowledge and education, risk preferences, profitability, and credit constraints receiving much attention. This paper focuses on...
Working Paper
What drives parental investments in early childhood?
This paper investigates the causal impact of a randomized video intervention designed to study the determinants of parental time investments in early childhood among low-income parents. We designed and screened a video that provided information and...
Working Paper
Domestic revenue mobilization and informality
Effective domestic revenue mobilization has gained renewed urgency, especially in the light of the need to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. In taxation debates, the ‘informal sectors’ have hitherto been assumed to be a part of the problem and...
Working Paper
Looking ahead to COP27—from climate pledges to action
The global energy transition is happening, but too slowly to limit climate change to acceptable levels, for diverse reasons. Carbon emissions policies and measures focus too little on absolute emission targets and too much on relative measures such...
Working Paper
Digital de-industrialization, global value chains, and structural transformation
Digitalization and shifting patterns of globalization are fast changing the rules of the game for countries embarking on a path of industrialization. In this study, we empirically examine the impact of digitalization and global value chains on...
Working Paper
India’s development cooperation in Africa
This paper examines multiple facets of New Delhi’s development cooperation with countries in Africa and argues that grassroots organizations in India that find innovative, low-cost technological solutions to developmental challenges can help...
Working Paper
Fintech in sub-Saharan Africa
This paper traces the development of fintech in sub-Saharan Africa, its evolution over time, and the unfolding benefits attained at each stage of its adoption and market evolution. From the onset, fintechs have revolutionized retail electronic...
Working Paper
Diffusion of agricultural innovations in Guinea-Bissau
This paper analyses the pathways of technology diffusion through social networks, following the experimental introduction of new technologies in Guinea-Bissau. In the context of an agricultural extension project, we document both the direct effects...
Working Paper
Technology and clientelist politics in India
This paper argues that new computer, smartphone, and universal ID technologies are reducing the incentives for political clientelism in the delivery of social programmes in India, especially by allowing party leaders to bypass local brokers to credit...
Journal Article
Productivity measurement in Swedish departments of gynecology and obstetrics
The rapid growth of public spending and the need to assess its impact on the welfare system has made the studies of productivity in the public sector an important subject. This paper is concerned with the specification and estimation of total factor...
Book Chapter
Does Lack of Innovation and Absorptive Capacity Retard Economic Growth in Africa?
This paper reviews the innovative capabilities and absorptive capacities of African countries, and investigates whether they have played significant roles in the region’s slow and episodic economic growth. Results from cross-country regressions...
Working Paper
Helping Poor Farmers to Help Themselves
This paper evaluates the impact of an integrated rural development programme on farming techniques and food security in the Gaza area of rural Mozambique. We examine the impact of a group-based approach, in a country with few impact evaluations of...
Working Paper
Comparing the development of agricultural technology and information technology in rural Vietnam
This paper presents a descriptive analysis on the ownership of different types of technology—both agricultural machinery and information technology—within households in rural areas of Vietnam. We find that there has been little development in the...
Working Paper
Smart classrooms and education outcomes
In this study, we explore the impact of a smart classroom (SCM) programme on student performance in science subjects in a high-stakes national exam for middle-high school students in Rwanda. To do this, we leverage plausibly exogenous variations in...
Book
Technological Transformation in the Third World
Offers information about how three developed countries have utilized technology in their advancement in the post-World War II period. Japan, Finland and Greece are assessed in terms of economic growth and structural factors, along with an examination...
Journal Article
Productivity Growth, Efficiency and Outsourcing in Manufacturing and Service Industries
This paper is a survey of recent contributions to, and developments of, the relationship between outsourcing, efficiency and productivity growth in manufacturing and services. The objective is to provide a thorough and up–to–date survey that provides...