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Publications (99)
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The documented under-representation of marginalized groups in business ownership and the labour market is a concerning issue. This study explores how caste disparities in small-firm entrepreneurship impact on firm performance in India, focusing on the informal sector. Our examination shows a...
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Two well established stylized facts of economic development are a strong correlation between investment and income, and large differences in investment rates across countries. Construction is the largest component of investment. This paper examines the implications of heterogeneity in construction...
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– An interpretative survey
When India became a republic in 1950, the economy was primarily agrarian, with three-fifths of output originating from agriculture. In the sixty years since independence, there has been a significant transformation of economic activity away from agriculture, with less than one-fifth of output now...
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– A general equilibrium analysis
The structure employed is a small open economy, with one city and a rural hinterland, two traded goods, a transport sector, two specific factors, and mobile labour. A socially profitable programme will promote not only internal, but also external trade. Theory and numerical examples indicate that...
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In recent decades, Africa has received a large share of official development assistance compared to other regions of the world. Using AidData for 2000–13, this paper examines the effects of aid to productive sectors on manufacturing growth in Africa. Econometric results show that increased...
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We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s foreign trade using quarterly trade data for the period 2019 to the second quarter of 2021. The exploratory analysis shows that growth of Kenya’s merchandise exports remained resilient, largely supported by traditional exports of tea and...
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– An exploration based on a multidimensional measure of financial inclusion
Using a nationally representative household survey data set from Ghana, this paper provides empirical evidence regarding the role of financial inclusion or financial exclusion in household welfare. We first compute a multidimensional index of financial inclusion, and then we examine the effect of...
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– Insights from apparel firms in Lesotho and Eswatini
We explore how decent work varies across Southern Africa apparel firms participating in global value chains (GVCs) and regional value chains (RVCs), respectively. We draw on cross-section survey data from 135 workers in 31 firms across Eswatini and Lesotho, two large apparel exporters serving both...
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There exist a plethora of developing country value chain studies based on a variety of methodological approaches, both in the academic literature and through policy reports. However, there has been little systematic synthesis of the findings and approaches taken in these studies. This study presents...
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– Examining the role of conventional banks in deepening access to formal credit
Using a unique district-level panel dataset, we investigate the effect of banking system penetration on financial inclusion in Ghana. To purge potential endogeneity bias in the underlying relationship, we exploit a change in the policy environment of the Ghanaian banking system to instrument for...
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– Does domestic value added matter?
Is the emphasis placed in trade and industry policy-making in developing countries on the share of domestic value-added (‘value-added ratio’) in exports consistent with the objective of achieving economic development through an export-oriented development strategy? This paper examines the rationale...
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This paper examines the income inequality implications of a ‘premature deindustrialization’ trend in middle-income countries. To identify the premature deindustrialization phase, we arrive at five conditions based on the trends in employment and value-added share of manufacture. Among these five...
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– Do urban agglomeration economies matter?
In the presence of agglomeration economies, the effects of a rural roads programme depend not only on the reduction in transportation costs, but also on the form of labour mobility. When financed by a poll tax on rural households, the wage will rise, accompanied by some return migration, provided...
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Large-scale business subsidies tied to national industrial development promotion programmes are notoriously difficult to study and are often inseparable from the political economy of large government programmes. We use the Tunisian national firm registry panel database, data on treated firms, and a...
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– Evidence from a half-century analysis
This paper explores the contribution of structural change and the skill upgrading of the labour force to productivity. Our growth decomposition based on an original database we built for Tunisia and Turkey shows that productivity is mainly explained by intra-industry changes during the import...
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We look at how improving roads can affect jobs and structural transformation. We use a novel geocoded dataset covering the universe of Ethiopian roads and match this information with individual data to identify the effects of improvements in road infrastructure on the creation, quality, and sectoral...
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– The case of Kenya
The role of exports in promoting economic growth has been widely acknowledged. This paper analyses the link between exporting and growth performance in Kenya using time series data. Despite trade liberalization and export promotion policies pursued over time, Kenya’s export growth has been sluggish...
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This paper examines the connections of structural change and economic openness to labour productivity growth using a panel data set of 41 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1991–2015. A dynamic panel model of cross-country productivity growth is estimated using the least squares with...
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– New evidence on the relationship between structural transformation and inequality
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural transformation, being either structurally under-developed...
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– Empirical evidence from Indian manufacturing firms
This paper examines whether digitalization can be a driver of ‘upgrading’ in global value chains and help developing countries move into higher value-added activities. In particular, the paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of digital capabilities on product upgrading in Indian...
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– Experimental evidence on role models in Vietnam
How can development programmes reach out to remote communities? This paper presents experimental evidence on the impact of a role models intervention that aims to inspire ethnic minority households to start businesses and diversify income sources. The experiment took place in three provinces of the...
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– Evidence from an experimental study
Reducing gender inequality is a critically important development challenge, especially in countries with widespread and deep-rooted prejudices against women. In this study, we use a randomized control trial to examine whether facilitating Vietnamese men to reflect about gender equality can reduce...
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– Learning from regular, high-quality panel data
While many studies of welfare dynamics have been conducted using panel data sets with two or three waves, much richer insights can be obtained where more waves are available. This paper analyses this issue for the case of the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey, a carefully collected and...
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– New evidence from rural Vienam
Using the Vietnam Access to Resources Household Survey (VARHS) with a panel of households present from 2008 to 2016, the study investigates the impact of social capital on household vulnerability. The empirical results indicate that both commune shocks and household shocks are associated with the...
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– A quasi-experimental evaluation
We evaluate the impact on household income of Vietnam’s national target programme to build a new countryside for the period from 2010 to 2015. The purpose of the programme is to modernize rural Vietnam. Given the universal implementation of the programme, we use a quasi-experimental approach whereby...
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Structural transformation in rural areas is a key issue in economic development. While much of the literature on structural transformation has so far focussed on household- or commune levels or even higher aggregate levels, little is known about the individual member level. The paper aims at...
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This paper investigates the effect of commodity prices, in particular rice and coffee, on the individual decision of migrating in Vietnam. As most coffee production is sold by households for exports, we would expect that coffee price shocks would have a direct effect on the probability of migrating...
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– Evidence from rural Vietnam
Ethnic inequality remains a persistent challenge for Vietnam. This paper aims at better understanding this ethnic gap through exploring the formation of risk sharing networks in rural areas. It first investigates the differences in risk sharing networks between the ethnic minorities and the Kinh...
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The past 30 years have seen a consistent increase in agricultural commercialization in rural Vietnam, at the same time when rural residents have moved increasingly into non-agricultural activities. The contribution of the latter to welfare improvement and poverty reduction is well known; in this...
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– Evidence from a rural household survey
For years, the international development community has been considering poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon, which takes into account not only income or consumption of the poor, but also their access to basic needs (education, health, etc.) and resources (credit, social network, etc.). In...
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Using instrumental variable method and Vietnam Access to Resources Household Surveys of 2008–16, I examine the effect of land fragmentation on child outcomes. The study shows that higher land fragmentation decreases child school dropout. Land fragmentation has significant impacts on school dropout...
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– Evidence from rural Vietnam
This paper explores the impact of exposure to uninsured risks on the investment decisions of farmers. We distinguish between households’ perceived exposure to uninsured risk, measured as past exposure to deviations in average rainfall levels, and the actual realization of shocks. We examine how...
Displaying 32 of 99 results