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Publications (37)
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– The role of firm-level relationships in knowledge transfers in Africa and Asia
This study combines evidence from interviews in seven countries with (i) government institutions responsible for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), (ii) 102 multinational enterprises (MNEs), and (iii) 226 domestic firms linked to these foreign affiliates as suppliers, customers, or...
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– The case for Special Economic Zones in Africa
Firms tend to cluster in close geographic proximity to each other to benefit from reduced transport costs, shared inputs, and productivity spillovers due to learning and technology transfers. Evidence from low-income countries suggests that such agglomeration economies may be substantial in...
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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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– Evidence from Senegalese Manufacturing Plant
The increasing quantity of literature investigating the impact of trade openness on firm efficiency has not yet provided a definite prediction of the direction of causality. This paper investigates how the relationship between exporting and productivity impacts on manufacturing sectors in Senegal...
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– Implications for the Long Run
Productivity gains are the prime engine of economic growth. This paper uses a rich amount of firms’ accounting information from the Single Information Collecting Centre in Senegal over the period 1998-2011. To investigate the two main obstacles to growth, poor education and poor access to...
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Senegal is a typical sub-Saharan economy, which conducted an import substitution policy over 1960-86, followed by a policy of support for the private sector and liberalization of the economy. It suffers from a low level of economic development, hindering the process of economic diversification, and...
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Three major policy regimes, namely import substitution, market liberalization and export promotion have greatly influenced Kenyan industrialization since independence in 1963. Overall, import substitution strategy was successful in establishing some primary industries but led to reduced domestic...
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– Africa’s Presidential Investors’ Advisory Councils
Recent writing on industrial policy stresses the need for coordination between the public and private sectors. This paper examines the performance of one such coordination mechanism, Presidential Investors’ Advisory Councils, in Ethiopia, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. It finds that the councils...
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– The Case of Ethiopian Manufacturing
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 learning by exporting. According to the selection...
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– Evidence from the Tunisian Manufacturing Sector
In this paper, we explore the link between firm productivity and exporting using three firm level datasets of 1323 Tunisian manufacturing firms from 2004 to 2006. In particular, we examine whether more productive firms self-select into export markets, and whether exporters achieve productivity...
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– Challenges and the Way Forward
Tanzania’s industrial sector has evolved through various stages since independence in 1961, from nascent and undiversified to state-led import substitution industrialization, and subsequently to de-industrialization under the structural adjustment programmes and policy reforms. The current...
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This paper addresses the issue of poor data on Mozambican manufacturing firms. A new dataset (the merged manufacturing database) is merged from provincial industrial databases from each of Mozambique’s 11 provinces. The new dataset is assessed by comparing it to the latest manufacturing enterprise...
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– Cambodia’s Experience
One feature of exporting firms in Cambodia is that they are not of domestic origin but are foreign firms that export from the moment they are established in Cambodia. In this paper we examine the extent to which the presence of foreign-owned export firms impacts on the productivity of domestic firms...
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The transfer from an import-substitution to an export-orientation strategy has been in effect in Vietnam since the reform process, Doi Moi, necessitating the reformulation of macroeconomic, trading and sectoral policies. As a result, the industry sector has experienced gradual growth as the country...
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This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to the private sector-led accelerated industrial...
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In this scooping paper on the Tunisian economy we review the historical background of the economy which has undergone substantial structural change since independence in 1956. In particular we emphasize that past record of consistent growth has often masked inequality, regional disparities and high...
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– Further Evidence from Ghana
This paper provides evidence on the nature of returns to education in Ghana and confirms the emerging empirical literature on the convexity of returns to education in Ghana. Using a basic Mincerian, model we find that returns to education more than triples from primary to secondary level or higher–...
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In this paper, we examine the pattern of spatial concentration of manufacturing industries observed in Tunisia and explore the factors driving firms’ choices of location at the provincial level. We consider specialization and competition indicators as the driving forces and also examine the extent...
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– Evidence from Vietnam
In this paper we explore the extent to which firms experience productivity spillovers from clustering using a rich data source from Vietnam for 2002 to 2007, a period of significant transition. We address issues of simultaneity, self-selection and endogenous location choice of firms in an estimation...
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– The Role of Ownership and Innovation in the Case of Vietnam
In this paper, we investigate the relationship between exporting and productivity in the case of Vietnam using an extensive firm level panel dataset for the period 2005-11. We separate out productivity effects of exporting due to self-selection allowing us to identify the extent to which firms learn...
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– The Case of Mozambican Manufacturing
In this paper, we aim to analyse the learning by exporting hypothesis in the Mozambican context. Due to the presence of the born-global phenomenon among exporters, we address the endogeneity introduced by self-selection by combining a generalized BO approach with results from traditional matching...
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– Evidence from Cambodia
The potential benefits of the geographical clustering of economic activity have been well documented in the literature, yet there is little empirical evidence quantifying these effects in developing country contexts. This is surprising given the emphasis in industrial policy on productivity growth...
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After the Second World War, Mozambique went through a series of transformations, from an incipient industrializing colonial society to an independent country with a central planned economy, plus a regional and internal war, and finally from 1994 onwards, a multi-party democracy with a mix of market...
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The paper looks at the evolution of industry in Uganda examining drivers and constraints since the pre-colonial period in the 1940s to date. It is argued that the state played a central role in industrialization during the pre-colonial and immediate post-colonial period. The paper further looks at...
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– Lessons and Challenges
The structure of the Nigerian economy is typical of an underdeveloped country. The primary sector, in particular, the oil and gas sector, dominates the gross domestic product accounting for over 95 per cent of export earnings and about 85 per cent of government revenue between 2011 and 2012. The...
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The industrialization which started in 1953 had been completely disrupted by the chronic civil war and closed-door policy of successive communism/socialism regimes. Since 1993 Cambodia has embraced a market economy heavily dependent on foreign capital and foreign markets. As a result, the economy...
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– Evolution and Present Experimentation
There has recently been a resurgence of interest in industrial policy. This paper examines the choices, implementation processes, and outcomes of the Ethiopian present industrial policy. The country represents an excellent case study of recent industrial policy experimentation in Africa as it is one...
Displaying 32 of 37 results