Increased capital flows in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the growing relevance of multinational corporations are two characteristics of the most recent wave of globalization. This volume extensively discusses how these phenomena are interrelated, what determines FDI flows and...

A large literature claims that female labor force participation (FLFP) follows a U-shaped trend over the course of economic development. This feminization U hypothesis is motivated by secular patterns of structural change in combination with education and fertility dynamics. We show that...

Perceptions of Africa have changed dramatically. Viewed as a continent of wars, famines and entrenched poverty in the late 1990s, there is now a focus on “Africa rising” and an “African 21st century.” Two decades of unprecedented economic growth in Africa should have brought substantial...

Ghana has experienced a decade of solid and exceptionally high growth. Between 2005 and 2015, income nearly doubled. This paper analyzes the factors driving this impressive growth performance, using tools such as structural change decompositions and growth regressions. For the comparative...

Martin Ravallion ("Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?" American Economic Review, 102(1): 504-523; 2012) presents evidence against the existence of poverty convergence in aggregate data despite the conditional convergence of per capita income levels and the close linkage between growth and...

In this paper, we address in more detail the question raised in Wacker (2011b): why does foreign direct investment (FDI) generally have a positive impact on developing countries' terms of trade except in the case of South Asia? After arguing that such a negative relationship is generally...

Martin Ravallion ("Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?" American Economic Review, 102(1): 504-23; 2012) presents evidence against the existence of poverty convergence in aggregate data despite the conditional convergence of per capita income levels and the close linkage between growth and...