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Ethiopia has experienced rapid economic growth since 2005. Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average rate of 10.5 per cent per annum for the period between 2004–05 and 2013–14. Public investment in key infrastructure and interventions in the agriculture sector have made important...
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This paper looks to uncover the growth traps and opportunities for the South African economy, with a focus on underlying labour market dynamics. We explore the potential of South Africa’s demographic dividend. We also consider the structure of the labour market and the growth-employment interactions...
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Ghana’s status as one of the African Lions is linked to the country’s remarkable growth performance, which culminated in the attainment of lower middle-income status. However, employment response to growth has been weak. Additionally, growth has been accompanied by substantial reduction in poverty...
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– Kenya country case study
This paper mainly analyses the drivers of economic growth in Kenya and the linkages to the labour market dynamics, with a focus on population growth, its structure, and the prospects of reaping a demographic dividend. This is in recognition that Kenya, as the ninth largest economy in Africa and the...
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This study examines the relationship between growth and employment in Nigeria to gain insights into the country's paradox of high economic growth alongside rising poverty and inequality. The methodology adopted is the Shapley decomposition approach, complemented with econometric estimation of the...
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Over the past twenty years, Mozambique has achieved remarkable progress in promoting macroeconomic growth and stability. Nonetheless, poverty rates remain high and labour market activity is dominated by smallholder farming. We use recent household survey data to dig into these trends and provide an...
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– An application to Tanzania
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-reversion consistency and sub-period additivity...
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– Are There Lessons for Countries in Africa?
Brazil’s recent growth has been intensely pro-poor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. It has been suggested that Brazil’s unexpected successes are the outcome of a new model of development. The paper argues that Brazil’s unique combination of economic...
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– Comparing Objective and Subjective Poverty Rates in South Africa
In this paper, we compare subjective and money-metric measures of poverty in South Africa using data collected in the 2008/09 Living Conditions Survey. In addition to collecting detailed information on expenditure, the survey asked respondents to provide an assessment of the economic status of their...
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This paper, using a new set of social development indices, explores the measurement of social development across Africa, and how this relates to broader development patterns and measurement. Development practitioners worldwide increasingly recognize the importance of informal institutions, such as...
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– Analysis with evidence from Swaziland
The shortages of entrepreneurial skills have lowered search effectiveness of potential young entrepreneurs and the rate of youth start-ups. Our paper contributes to closing the gap in the entrepreneurship and development literature with a model of costly firm creation and skill differences between...
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This paper examines the changing nature of occupational labour-market trends in South Africa and the resulting impact on wages. We observe high levels of demand for skilled labour that have intensified a trend already established before 1994. Over the period 2001-12 employment within the primary...
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– Evidence from a Panel Survey of Tanzania
This paper investigates the impact of income and non-income shocks on child labour using a model in which the household maximizes utility from consumption as well as human capital development of the child. Two types of shocks are considered: agricultural shocks as an income shock and the death of a...
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A cash transfer programme ‘Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty’ has been implemented with the aim of addressing poverty and vulnerability in Ghana. This study looks at the impact of this conditional cash transfer programme on households’ supply of labour for agriculture, paid employment, and non...
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– Micro-Level Evidence
This paper studies individual-level labour market transitions and their determinants in South Africa during the zenith and aftermath of the global financial and economic crisis using 2008 to 2010-2011 panel data from the National Income Dynamics Study and matched cross-sections of the Quarterly...
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– Interpreting Trends in the Data Over the Past Two Decades
This paper reviews the current problems of national accounting in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the current uneven application of methods and availability of data, any ranking of countries according to gross domestic product levels is misleading. It is increasingly acknowledged that the problems...
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This paper investigates inequalities across the major black ethnic groups in South Africa, accounting for 80 per cent of the country’s population. We demonstrate that there is an important ethnic gap in the poverty levels of the Xhosa and the Zulu with respect to the Sotho/Tswana. We also show that...
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In this working paper we provide an overview of two recent special journal issues on violent conflict and entrepreneurship. These are the special issue of the Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (2011) and the special issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (2013), devoted to the...
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Unlike in the past where industrial policy was either focused on creation and growth of state-owned firms or alternatively consisted merely of broadly functional policies without consideration for firm or entrepreneurial specifics, the requirement now is that future industrial policy ought to be a...
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Climate change is a phenomenon leading to randomly distributed disasters around the globe. Due to massive economic and technical asymmetry between the advanced North and the developing South efficient climate and industrial policy is particular difficult. Globally efficient policy would need to...
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– Impact on Waste Scavenging in Developing Countries
China has undergone remarkable economic growth spearheaded by industrialization. Chinese industry demands a wide variety of raw materials in increasing amounts in order to manufacture all kinds of products. Industrial demand exceeds domestic supply for several materials. Thus, China needs to import...
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This paper explores the implications of climate change for industrial policy (IP). Five implications are discussed, namely the need for international coordination of IPs; for putting human development, and not emission targets, as the overriding objective of low-carbon IP; of stimulating innovation...
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This study shows that China’s post-1949 state-led industrialization has closely followed an underlying path that began in the late nineteenth century. It was initiated by pressing national defence needs and has since been motivated by the same and strong incentives for a faster catch-up with the...
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This paper examines the theoretical and empirical evidence for the hypothesis that manufacturing is the main engine of growth in developing countries. The paper opens with an overview of the main arguments supporting the engine of growth hypothesis and then examines each of these arguments using a...
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In considering pathways to industrialization in the twenty-first century, cognisance needs to be taken of the fact that many countries have actually been deindustrializing. This paper analyses deindustrialization experiences internationally, by decomposing changes in the level and share of...
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– Challenges for the Future
Industrial policy has attracted considerable controversy in the development context. This paper makes a case for a pragmatic and limited approach to interventions as a means of stimulating industrialization in the context of current and future challenges facing newly industrializing economies. It...
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– A Latecomer Adjusting to Crises
This paper examines Indonesia’s industrialization performance and policies, including its latecomer status, its generally rapid growth since the mid-1960s, its pronounced policy and performance episodes, and its ambivalent embrace of globalization. Particular attention is accorded to the deep...
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This chapter analyses the main features of industrial policies carried out in Latin America since 1990. It studies these policies during import substitution industrialization and how they changed after the market-oriented economic reforms. It presents the main national strategies, policy lines and...
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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 1975 and 2005 the size, diversity and sophistication...
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In the past, research on changes in relative importance among broad three sectors—agriculture, industry, and service—showed general patterns of a country’s structural transformation along with economic development. However, there has been devoid of empirical studies investigating in the structural...
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Many international organizations, governments and academics concerned with economic development look to Asia’s success, recommending that other poor countries follow similar models and paths of development. This study argues that such Asian ‘lesson-making’ is a grave mistake in policy-thinking—and...
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Technological latecomer countries face a dilemma, they need to pursue pro-active industrial policies to compensate for manifold disadvantages vis-à-vis established competitors, but at the same time, due to neopatrimonial politics and capacity constraints, their institutions are rarely in a position...
Displaying 32 of 82 results