Drawing on the 2007 and 2010 Swaziland Labor Force Surveys, this paper provides first systematic evidence on recent youth employment challenges in Swaziland, a small, land-locked, middle-income country with one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Africa. The paper first documents the...

This paper investigates the policy trade-off between inflation volatility and output volatility, also referred to as the Taylor curve. In so doing, the paper assesses whether the Taylor curve has shifted over time, how demand and supply shocks affect the volatilities of inflation and the output...

This paper examines macroeconomic trends, drivers and impact of remittances in Africa. First, it documents the increasing share of remittances relative to other foreign capital flows to Africa, distribution of remittance inflows across countries, and some key properties. This is followed by some...

Using new data from 42 African countries, we investigate the effects of public and private credit registries on firms’ access to finance as well as the effect of public credit registries’ design on the severity of the financing constraint. Our results show that access to finance is on...

The increasing number of literatures investigating on the impact of trade openness on firm efficiency has not yet provided a definite prediction on the direction of causality (Rodrik, 1988, 1992, and Tybout 1992). We investigate the relation between exporting and productivity on the Senegalese...

This paper describes how Africa’s wind energy markets have evolved over the years and the structural characteristics affecting the development of wind energy projects on the continent; providing what we believe is the first mapping of the continent’s wind energy market. Results from our...

Structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models were used in this study to investigate how unexpected increases in euro area bond yields and monetary stimulus are transmitted to the South African economy using data from January 1999 to June 2008. Firstly, evidence is found that this is consistent...

The focus of microcredit for the bottomof the pyramid segment in urban areas isincreasingly becoming an area of focus asdevelopment policy-makers worktowards improving the lifestyles of urbanpoor. Previous research has had a keenfocus on the impacts of financial servicesto business...

An increasing amount of publicspending in Africa is allocated toper-diems as acore instrument ofthe incentive structure. These aremainly given to provide financialincentives to employees in order toincrease their motivation to attendmeetingsor travel for workmissions. Anecdotal as well...