This paper discusses some issues on how to evaluate the impact of HIPC debt relief in the cases of Tanzania and Zambia using two computable general equilibrium models. Within our relatively simple model framework, we found that the macroeconomic impact of debt relief is modest. One reason for...

In an experimental study we investigated effects of information amount and legal training on the judgment accuracy in legal cases. In a two (legal training: yes vs. no) x two (information amount: high vs. low) between-subjects design, 90 participants judged the premeditation of a perpetrator in...

Criminal procedure is organized as a tournament with predefined roles. We show that assuming the role of a defense counsel or prosecutor leads to role induced bias even if people are highly motivated to give unbiased judgments. In line with parallel constraint satisfaction models for legal...

Can African countries learn from the development experiences of other regions? Or are the continent’s development challenges unique? This paper looks at the development experience of the Nordic countries, especially Sweden, from the nineteenth century and discusses the extent to which the...

Limited access of entrepreneurs to credit constrains the creation and growth of private firms. In Africa, access to credit is particularly limited for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) due to unclear property rights and the lack of assets that can be used as collateral. This paper presents a...

This paper examines trends in income distribution and its linkages to economic growth and poverty reduction in order to understand the prospects for achieving poverty reduction in Africa. We examine the levels and trends in income distribution in some African countries and calculate pro-poor...

In this paper, we explore the argument that one of the causes for the limited growth effects of trade openness in Africa may be the weakness of institutions. We also control for several major factors and, in particular, for export diversification, using a newly developed dataset on Africa....