This study focuses on innovation in a cluster of informal shoemaking firms in Ethiopia - namely the Mercato footwear cluster. It examines how differently those firms are embedded in networks and how heterogeneous they are in absorptive capacity, and how this heterogeneity affects their...

This paper examines the rate of return to education in Sudan. One advantage and interesting element in our analysis in this paper is that we explain three stylised facts on the rate of return to education using new primary data in Sudan: first, positive but low rate of return to education and...

This paper addresses the issue of self-selection of individuals in international labour migration, non-agricultural and agricultural employment in Tajikistan and its link to earnings from these activities. Unlike most empirical studies, we could attribute selection bias on unobservable...

This paper develops a framework to understand the role of interpersonal interactions in the labor market including task assignment and wages. Effective interpersonal interactions involve caring, to establish cooperation, and at the same time directness, to communicate in an unambiguous way. The...

Mobile remittances have a high development potential as they hold the promise of providing quick, easy and cheap money transfers. In Africa mobile phone usage has increased sharply and mobile banking providers are extending their services, enabling greater opportunities for mobile remittances....

The paper analyses the contribution of 'golden papers' - seminal works whose ideas remain as fresh and relevant today as when they were first published decades ago - and which continue to dominate academic discourse among successive generations of scholars. The authors analyse why two works...

In this paper, we test the Rodrik et al (2004) framework to explain differences in development levels across countries by using a broader set of definitions for institutions, geography and economic variables. We use a multi-faceted database to measure institutions in an attempt to go beyond the...

In this paper we briefly review social enterprise in the context of India before developing a conceptual framework highlighting the different components that make up a regional social enterprise ecosystem including entrepreneurs, financial and non-financial support, education and research,...

"Innovation is good for you" appears actually the common feature of most science, technology and innovation studies over the last decades. This appears, however surprising given the fact that innovation failure rather than innovation success appears a much more common feature. Hence the simple,...

The core of this paper consists of two case studies of 'grassroots' innovation led by innovative smallholder farmers in a village in South Africa - one about developing an alternative production practice for growing potatoes, and the other about introducing a new cash crop (cherry peppers) and...