International poverty estimates for countries in Africa commonly rely on national consumer price indexes to adjust trends in nominal consumption over time for changes in the cost of living. However, the consumer price index is subject to various types of measurement bias. This paper uses Engel...

This paper examines spatial heterogeneity in the impacts of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban household incomes in Ethiopia and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Combining new panel household surveys with spatial data, the fixed-effects regression analysis for Ethiopia finds...

Absent actual panel household survey data, this paper constructs, for the first time, synthetic panel data for more than 20 countries accounting for two-thirds of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this process, the analysis employs repeated cross sections that span, on average, a six-year...

International poverty estimates for countries in Africa commonly rely on national consumer price indexes to adjust trends in nominal consumption over time for changes in the cost of living. However, the consumer price index is subject to various types of measurement bias. This paper uses Engel...

As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. The experience was largely a...

This paper examines the main features of real growth per capita of Sub-Saharan Africa over the past six decades, before uncovering the sources of growth-including those of growth miracles. Three distinct growth phases before the recent "lost decade" are observed. The swinging pattern of income...