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Publications (20)
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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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– Property, Politics and Development Trajectories
As institutional approaches have come to dominate the mainstream of development economics, they have outgrown earlier and simpler analyses of ‘property rights’. This paper focuses on the work of Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, which suggests that the distribution of property rights to a ‘broad...
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– The Successful Experience of Switzerland (1870-1950)
This research paper discusses the role of institutions in the rapid growth and successful international integration of Switzerland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In analysing the emergence and consolidation of the institutions whose existence was crucial, the paper looks...
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– Industrial Catching-up, Institutional Innovation and Financial Fragility
This paper seeks to explain the dynamics of Brazilian industrial catch-up in the last 60 years by discussing its background institutional conditions as well as its main macroeconomic features. After a brief introduction, the second section describes how after the institutional innovations introduced...
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– A Historical Perspective on Institutions and Uneven Development
This paper argues for an ‘ancient’ institutional school, predating Thorstein Veblen’s ‘old’ institutionalism. In this view, going back as far as the thirteenth century, institutions tended to be seen as specific to a mode of production. Here both institutions and development itself are context...
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– Development Strategies and Institutions in Taiwan and China
Conventional explanations of Taiwan and China’s economic success point to the shift from an import-substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to an export-oriented industrialization (EOI) strategy. This paper argues that the development strategies in Taiwan and China have always been a...
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New institutional economics lacks a theory of state formation which could help us to deal with the mega question of why some states became more efficient than others at establishing and sustaining institutions. Some kind of middle range theory could be formulated based upon historical case studies...
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Taxation provides one of the principal lenses in measuring state capacity, state formation and power relations in a society. This paper critically examines three main approaches (economic, administrative and political economy) to understanding taxation. It also examines differences in tax...
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– A Comparative Analysis of Mauritius, Botswana and Uganda
This paper examines the relationship between institution building and economic performance in Mauritius, Botswana and Uganda. The rationale for comparing these cases is simple. While the three have been super-economic stars in their own right, they have achieved substantially different outcomes...
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During its development into a continental empire, the US, like other countries relied on the investment of capital and labour from abroad; unlike other countries, the US had a peculiar political institution, federalism, which channeled these resources and also determined the course of protest...
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The notion that good corporate governance means maximizing shareholder value derives from the neoclassical theory of the market economy. I explain why this perspective is highly problematic for understanding the operation and performance of the business corporation and hence the institutions that...
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