Based on household survey data, this paper investigates the impact on coffee and non-coffee households of the pronounced coffee price fluctuations in Uganda during the 1990s. As expected, the price boom of the early 1990s was associated with substantial poverty reduction for coffee farmers. More...

Small-scale economic activities in the informal sector usually account for an important share of production in developing countries. Classical theories of structural change and economic growth assume that the modern sector would sooner or later absorb the workers employed in the informal sector....

The ‘resource curse’ hypothesis claims that abundance in natural resources, particularly oil, encourages especially civil war. Natural resources provide both motive and opportunity for conflict and create indirect institutional and economic causes of instability. Contrarily, the...

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the design of a post-2015 development framework by proposing indicators to monitor employment outcomes. Our analysis of the current MDG employment indicators shows that measurement problems, the inappropriate use of aggregate...

The informal sector is typically characterized as being very heterogeneous and possibly composed of two clearly distinct segments, sometimes called the lower and upper tier. However, empirical evidence shows that even among lower tier entrepreneur's profitability can be quite high. The authors...

This paper investigates the patterns of capital entry barriers and capital returns in informal Micro and Small Enterprises (MSE's) using a unique micro data set seven West-African countries. The author's findings support the view of a heterogeneous informal sector that is not primarily host to...

In the past two decades, research on the informal sector has emphasized the heterogeneity of this part of the economy, example in terms of entry costs, firm size, and access to credit, forward- and backward linkages as well as human and physical capital endowments. Yet, not much research has...

Small entrepreneurs in poor countries achieve relatively high marginal returns to capital but show only low re-investment rates. The literature is rather inconclusive about the possible causes. We explore whether ‘forced redistribution’, i.e. abusive demands by the kin, affects the...

We study the determinants of households' choices of lighting fuels in Kenya including the option of using solar home systems (SHS). Our goal is to add new evidence on the factors that influence the introduction and adoption of decentralized and less carbon-intensive energy sources in developing...