We investigate the impact of 20th--century European colonization on growth in Africa. We find that in the 1960--88 period growth has been faster for dependencies than for colonies; for British and French colonies than for Portuguese, Belgian and Italian ones; and for countries with less economic...

Perhaps no question has attracted as much attention in the economics literature as “Why are some countries richer than others?� In this article, the author revisits the “development problem� and provides some estimates of the importance of human capital in accounting...

We investigate the impact of 20th-century European colonization on growth. We find that colonial heritage, as measured by the identity of the metropolitan ruler and by the degree of economic penetration, matters for the heterogeneity of growth performances in Africa. Colonial indicators are...

In this paper we note that the institutional context (and therefore the structure of incentives and organization) in developing and transition economies is quite different from those in advanced industrial economies, and this necessitates the literature on decentralization in the context of...

In the first macroeconomic empirical assessment of the relationship between mobile phones and finance, this paper examines the correlations between mobile phone penetration and financial development using two conflicting definitions of the financial system in the financial development...

This study investigates direct and indirect linkages between financial development and inclusive human development in data panels for African countries. It employs a battery of estimation techniques, notably: Two-Stage Least Squares, Fixed Effects, Generalized Method of Moments and Tobit...

Hitherto financial drivers of human development have been unexplored by the UNDP. This paper assesses determinants of human development from financial dynamics of depth, efficiency, size and activity on data from 38 developing countries. While the importance of financial activity, size and depth...

The study assesses the role of mobile phones and mobile banking in decreasing inequality in 52 African countries. The empirical procedure involves first, examining the income-redistributive effect of mobile phone penetration and then investigating the contribution of mobile banking services in...

In the first empirical assessment of the incidence of mobile banking on financial intermediary development in Africa, we use two definitions of the financial system: the traditional IFS (2008) and Asongu (2011) measures of financial sector importance. When the conception of a financial system is...

In the first macroeconomic empirical assessment of the relationship between mobile phones and finance, this paper examines the correlations between mobile phone penetration and financial development using two conflicting definitions of the financial system in the financial development...