In this paper we investigate the implications of labour and capital market imperfections for the relationship between firm size and earnings. To establish that such a question is of interest we need to show that the firm size-wage effect cannot be explained by either the observed or unobserved...

We use micro data on manufacturing employees in Kenya and Tanzania to estimate returns to education and investigate the shape of the earnings function in the period 1993-2001. In Kenya, there have been long-run falls in the returns to education while for Tanzania there is evidence of rising...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as...

Recent reforms in most African economies of their trading and exchange rate regimes have eliminated much of the protection which previously limited competition. Despite these reforms, African manufacturing firms remain unsuccessful, particularly in international export markets. In this paper we...

Three dimensions of the performance of firms in Ghana’s manufacturing sector are investigated in this paper: their technology and the importance of technical and allocative efficiency. We show that the diversity of factor choices in not due to a non-homothetic technology. Observable skills are...

In this paper we ask what can account for the continuing strong preference for academic education in Africa where the level of development is so low and there are few wage jobs and which form of educational investment, the academic or vocational, is most profitable.  We argue that the answers...

In this paper we ask how the returns to academic education compare with the return to two types of training drawing on labour force data from Tanzania`s manufacturing sector. The first is vocational training or attending a technical college as part of schooling, the second is on-the-job training...

Summary In this paper we ask what can account for the continuing strong preference for academic education in Africa where the level of development is so low and there are few wage jobs and which form of educational investment, the academic or vocational, is most profitable. We argue that the...