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Publications (28)
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This study examines the effects of mining productivity shocks on the formal–informal duality in manufacturing and services. Using firm census data from 2014 for Ghana, we measure the rates of informality along extensive (unregistered firms) and intensive (registered firms hiring labourers 'off the...
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Using the Economic Transformation Database, this paper attempts to assess the magnitude of structural transformation and the effects of sectoral shifts due to structural transformation on the labour market performance of 18 sub-Saharan African countries over the period from 1990 to 2018. The first...
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– Temporary bandages to permanent wounds?
This paper provides a contextual analysis of the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. First, we outline the historical context and the political situation of the period 2019–24 that serve as context for the passage and implementation of the Bitcoin law (Decree No. 57). We identify the...
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There is a dearth of evidence on the evolution of occupational health in the developing world and on the extent to which it has been influenced by (1) the pattern of structural transformation in these economies and (2) integration with global markets.In this study, I compile a rich database on...
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Taxation can contribute to state-building through a tax bargain in which taxpayers are willing to increase compliance in return for improved government accountability. There is limited evidence for this in sub-Saharan Africa where it is argued that the fiscal state is weak, with low tax revenues and...
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Sub-Saharan African economies have experienced accelerated economic growth in the past two decades. In this paper we study the impact of trade-induced structural change on employment and value-added shares in sub-Saharan African economies. We find that sub-Saharan African economies have increasingly...
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The services sector is dominant and continues to experience unprecedented growth in many developing economies. However, in-depth empirical analysis of the drivers of services sector growth acceleration is limited. This paper examines and identifies the underlying factors that explain services sector...
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– Subnational insights
This paper aims to revisit the pace and patterns of structural change in Morocco with a renewed perspective focusing on subnational trends to document the macro patterns. In that perspective, we first build a within-country sectoral longitudinal dataset covering employment and value added (VA) that...
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This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the supply and demand side of structural transformation in Turkey. Using the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, we find that labour productivity improvements explain more than half of economic growth in the period 1980–2021. This is...
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– Empirical evidence from low- and middle-income countries
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 structural transformation using a cross-country panel of...
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– Evidence from the China shock
How does international trade affect structural transformation in developing countries? We use data on sectoral allocation of labour and value-added in 46 developing economies over the period 1995–2017 and exploit for identification plausibly exogenous variation in manufacturing imports from China...
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– Evidence from developing countries
Which structural reforms affect labour productivity growth in developing countries? This paper answers this question by combining the local projections method and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (LP-IPWRA) method. We find that financial reforms, trade reforms, and product...
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– Do structural reforms matter?
While the negative effects of the 2008 global financial crisis on labour productivity are still fresh in people’s minds, the COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns that productivity will continue to decline. To boost labour productivity and regain economic performance, there is an empirical consensus on...
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– Lessons from 19th-century America and 21st-century China
How do modern fiscal states arise? Perhaps the most dominant explanation, based on the European experience, is that democratic institutions that limited the extractive power of states—exemplified by the 1688 Glorious Revolution in England—paved the way for the rise of fiscal capacity and subsequent...
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We argue that tax revenues and political institutions placing constraints on the executive power may reinforce each other over time and so co-evolve in the long run. This may also bring a shift in the composition of revenues, from taxes levied on a narrow base to broadly levied taxes.To test these...
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The paper examines the legacy of pre-colonial centralization on tax compliance norms of citizens in contemporary Uganda. By combining geo-referenced anthropological data on pre-colonial ethnic homelands with survey data from several rounds of the Afrobarometer Survey, respondents from the...
Displaying 16 of 28 results