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Publications (49)
Working Paper
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The construction sector plays a critical role in delivering quality infrastructure, which in turn influences the use of natural resource revenues towards achieving structural change and industrial development. We use industrial organization and political economy lenses to describe and understand the...
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– Reflections on investment surges and new gas
This paper is a sequel to an earlier paper that looked in broad terms at many of the issues that Mozambique faces today in managing its new extractive resources. The paper first describes the investment surge that has already been prompted by new gas discoveries in Mozambique. It then summarizes...
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– Local content in Zambia—a faltering experience?
This paper traces the role of local content in Zambia’s mining sector in supporting industrialization and economic diversification. It assesses productive linkages and manufacturing competitiveness during import-substitution industrialization and post-1991 liberalization and privatization, and the...
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– An overview
The construction sector value added in Mozambique grew at an average annual rate of 12.8 per cent in 1993–2015. Investment in the basic infrastructure of health, education, and housing improved families’ and communities’ living conditions. Investment in roads, communications, and office facilities...
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This paper examines the relationship between poverty dynamics, causal pluralism, and mixed method research approaches. It reviews the nature and significance of the shift from the analysis of poverty status to poverty dynamics, discusses different approaches to causal reasoning and causal inference...
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Oil resources are neither a curse nor a blessing. The sound management of these resources can make them beneficial or otherwise. In order to translate Ghana’s oil resources into inclusive development amid high expectations, several laws and regulations have been passed and new institutions created...
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– Benefits for town and country?
Do urban agglomeration economies enhance the social profitability of rural roads? When all goods are traded at parametric world prices, lower transport costs benefit villagers. Urban activities and welfare are unaffected if labour is immobile, but their levels fall when rural workers move freely to...
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– Diversification in Africa’s resource-rich economies
The exploitation of natural resources is a huge opportunity, but one that carries considerable risks. Relative prices in resource-exporting economies tend to push them towards economic structures dominated by the resource sector. This paper explores ways to achieve diversification in a resource-rich...
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This paper introduces the origins and scope of humanitarian economics, a vibrant field of study and practice that deals with the economics and political economy of war, disaster, and humanitarian action. To illustrate the field’s scientific and policy relevance, the paper draws on various examples...
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– Recent research advances and future agendas
We survey selected parts of the growing literature on the microeconomics of violent conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where methodological and knowledge gaps remain. We focus our review on the role of civilian agency in conflict; on wartime...
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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 and more advanced developing and developed countries...
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– Which expected values are valid
This paper re-examines the validity of using expected values to evaluate the social profitability of public investments under uncertainty. Departing from the usual assumption of an aggregate good, the setting is a small open economy that faces stochastic world prices for tradable goods and...
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– A revival is long overdue
This paper makes the case for the systematic appraisal of public sector projects using shadow prices as the signals of social scarcities. In so doing, it attempts to redress the balance between estimating inputs and outputs, central though that task is, and valuing them correctly. The account of how...
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– A progress report
This paper reviews integration among the eight African Regional Economic Communities by comparing their characteristics and progress with three other South–South Regional Integration Arrangements. Three conclusions emerge: (i) slow progress towards meeting overly ambitious objectives; (ii) small...
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– The case of the mobile money transfer industry
The mobile money transfer industry has been the most successful information and communications technology-enabled service in Kenya, having recorded an exponential growth relative to its neighbours within the East Africa region. This could be attributed to Kenya’s status as a leading commercial and...
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– From devastation to services-first transformation
Since civil war and genocide left the country in ruins, Rwanda has undergone a remarkable transformation. Growth rates since 1995 have averaged 8 per cent annually, poverty rates have fallen, maternal and child health have improved, and infrastructure and public institutions have been rebuilt. This...
Displaying 16 of 49 results