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Publications (33)
– Natural gas as a key
Plastics are universal and integrated into different sectors of the economy. Industrial policy requires countries to look at moving up the value chain and producing progressively more sophisticated products to contribute to improved economic development. The input materials that are used for...
– Blueprint, experiences, and outcomes
East Asia’s successful experience in accelerating the process of industrial development with SEZs paved way for the use of SEZs as policy instruments in Africa. In southern Africa, Zambia and South Africa instituted SEZs in legal and institutional frameworks in the 2000s as mechanisms for catalysing...
It is important to understand how working conditions faced by workers in Vietnamese SMEs affect levels of compensation. This is salient given the scope of SMEs in Vietnam — they contribute to approximately 45% of the country’s GDP and 60% of its employment. There are no clearly defined financial or...
– Transnational growth corridors as a solution
Comprehensive harmonization is crucial to eliminate inefficiencies that hamper free movement of goods and services in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Territorial collaboration between metropolitan clusters and rural areas connected by transport corridors is a potential key...
Special economic zones (SEZ) in Africa are generally regarded as underperforming relative to their peers in the rest of the world. To explain this underperformance and to support success in the future it is important to analyse the key features and what is lacking in the design of African special...
– Can foreign direct investment help South Africa increase the complexity of its exports?
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa’s economic challenges have disrupted efforts to establish a society of inclusive growth and prosperity. Understanding how South Africa can break the pattern of sluggish growth, high unemployment, inequality and poverty is a pressing policy issue. The overall...
Given the weight of micro, small, and medium size enterprises (MSMEs) in total employment in Vietnam, and because the long-awaited development process is occurring through productivity gains, there is value in understanding the mechanisms that foster or limit their expansion. In particular there has...
Service exports are the fastest growing portion of world trade and now account for nearly a quarter of global exports. Tradable services contribute to economic growth and development by bolstering industrial capabilities, facilitating productivity growth and investment, and contributing directly to...
– Are they persistently high-growth firms?
The analysis of firm growth has been a topic of consistent economic interest as a growing body of literature has lent support to the possibility that the majority of growth and new employment creation is the result of a small sub-sector of high-growth firms (HGFs). While this has been demonstrated...
– Can South African firms compete with Chinese imports?
China’s growing edge in export manufacturing has caused concern for low-income and middle-income countries seeking to develop robust manufacturing sectors. China’s recent transition from an exporter of lower-tech goods, such as garments, to more advanced products, such as components for high-tech...
Regional integration is making steady progress in Southern Africa, leading to the development of regional value chains (RVCs) that could strengthen the competitiveness of the region. Importantly, the development of RVCs also creates pressure for further integration. While integration brings major...
– Are non-farm jobs the driver or a brake?
The increasing proportion of non-agricultural work in rural India has commonly been associated with widening income inequality. However, our simulations from the village of Palanpur in the north suggest that without this diversification inequality might well have increased even more. From the mid...
– Will local content do the trick?
Extractives and interlinked industries are expecting a boom in Mozambique. This could be good news for the country’s economy, in theory. But can extractives really work as a driver to diversify the Mozambican economy? It is unlikely that the extractives sector can any time soon be used to finance...
As with many other developed and emerging economies, in recent decades Mexico has experienced a long-term decline in the labour income share. The decline is observed in both the share of wages in value added and in more comprehensive measures that include the labour income of the self-employed. What...
– Success and failure in the extractive sector
A central difficulty for extractive activity is that benefits accrue at the national level but disruptions are highly localized. Companies recognise that these imbalances need to be addressed and adopt active programmes to improve local benefits. These programmes have had mixed past success, partly...
Research Brief
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What types of businesses benefit or suffer due to geographic clustering? Data available from Cambodia on competition and spillovers—at both village- and commune-level—is useful to answer a number of questions about the effects of clustering and the possible benefits or drawbacks of encouraging the...
Displaying 16 of 33 results