Firm turnover (i.e., firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sector-level productivity growth. In contrast, the role and importance of firms that switch activities from one sector to another is not well understood. Firm switchers are likely to be unique, differing from both newly...

In this paper we first validate the use of the synthetic panels technique in the context of the 2014/15 intra-year panel survey data for Mozambique, and then apply the same technique to the 1996/97, 2002/03, 2008/09, and 2014/15 cross-sectional household budget surveys for the same country. We...

Why is there so little industry in Africa? Over the past forty years, industry and business interests have moved increasingly from the developed to the developing world, yet Africa's share of global manufacturing has fallen from about 3 percent in 1970 to less than 2 percent in 2014. Industry is...

What are the macroeconomic prospects for South Africa until the new millennium? Two methods of macroeconomic modelling, associated with the World Bank and IMF, are used here to generate three scenarios, based on moderately optimistic projections. The methodology used can be applied to other...

Firm turnover (i.e., firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sector-level productivity growth. In contrast, the role and importance of firms that switch activities from one sector to another is not well understood. Firm switchers are likely to be unique, differing from both newly...

For a growing number of countries in Africa the discovery and exploitation of natural resources is a great opportunity, but one accompanied by considerable risks. This book presents research on how to better manage the revenues and opportunities associated with natural resources.

This volume provides a comprehensive analytic contribution to a crucial topic within development economics based on 15 years of continued data collection and research efforts. It brings together nine up-to-date studies on SME development in a coherent framework to help persuade national and...

Inequality has emerged as a key development challenge. It holds implications for economic growth and redistribution and translates into power asymmetries that can endanger human rights, create conflict, and embed social exclusion and chronic poverty. For these reasons, it underpins intense...

This survey paper discusses the Cointegrated Vector AutoRegressive (CVAR) methodology and how it has evolved over the past 30 years. It describes major steps in the econometric development, discusses problems to be solved when confronting theory with the data, and, as a solution, proposes a...

A theory-consistent CVAR scenario describes a set of testable regularities capturing basic assumptions of the theoretical model. Using this concept, the paper considers a standard model for exchange rate determination with forward-looking expectations and shows that all assumptions about the...