China's leading position in high-tech exports is a myth created by outdated trade statistics, which are inconsistent with the trade based on global supply chains. Assembled high-tech products, made with imported key parts and components, accounted for 82% of China's high-tech exports. Current...

In the late 2000s, the world grain markets experienced severe turbulence with rapid crop price rises caused by bad crops, oil price hikes, export restrictions, and the emergence of biofuels as well as financial speculation. We review the impacts of the first four real-side factors using a world...

This paper measures the productive efficiency of the municipal-solid-waste (MSW) logistics by applying the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to the cross-sectional data of prefectures in Japan. Either through public operation or by outsourcing private waste-collection operators, prefectural...

The existence of localized knowledge spillovers found by Jaffe, Trajtenberg and Henderson (1993) has recently been challenged by Thompson and Fox-Kean (2005). To settle this debate, we develop a new approach by incorporating their concepts of control patents into the distance-based test of...

This paper examines the incidence of public education subsidies in Ghana. Since the late 1990s, Ghana’s government has increasingly recognised human capital as a cornerstone to alleviating poverty and income inequality, causing dramatic increases of government expenditures to the education...

This paper provides a case study of the Ethiopian flower export industry which successfully emerged at time when the EU market (main destination) was already characterized by increasingly stringent standards and delivery requirements. Entering this market required a multitude of capabilities at...

This paper examines the incidence of public health subsidies in Ghana using the Ghana Living Standards Survey. Using a combination of (uniform) benefit incidence analysis and a discrete choice model, our results give a clear evidence of progressivity with consistent ordering: postnatal and...

Although there are many studies on the environmental Kuznets curve, very few of them address municipal solid waste cases, and there is still controversy concerning the validity of the waste Kuznets curve hypothesis. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the waste Kuznets curve...

In industrial clusters, transaction costs are kept low and free riding is discouraged by a community mechanism developed through dense and repeated interactions among entrepreneurs. In such environments, new entrants without established reputations and connections are put at a distinct...

The vast majority of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in developing countries are located in industrial clusters, and the majority of such clusters have yet to see their growth take off. The performance of MSE clusters is especially low in Sub-Saharan Africa. While existing studies often...