Trade unions vs. statistical discrimination: Theory and application to post-apartheid South Africa

A simple model of statistical discrimination is analyzed, which captures some stylized facts of the South African labor market. It shows that this type of discrimination disappears when the wage rates are determined by efficient bargaining between a representative firm and a union, with endogenous membership. This may explain why the wage gap between Black and White workers in post-apartheid South Africa is smaller among unionized workers than among non-unionized ones.     

Assessing the Impact of District Primary Education Program in India

We examine the impact of India's District Primary Education Program (DPEP) introduced in the mid‐1990s. We exploit the fact that the DPEP was targeted towards primary school age children and was introduced in phases to different districts in India, and many of the districts never got the program to implement a difference‐in‐difference strategy to find the causal impact of the program on probability of attended primary school, probability of completed primary education and years of schooling. We find that the DPEP program increased the probability of attended primary school and completed primary school by about 2 percentage points. Similarly, the program increased the years of schooling by 0.16 years.     

Board Committee Meetings and Firm Financial Performance: An Investigation of Australian Companies

This article examines how the frequency of board committee meetings impacts on Australian firms' financial performance. Data were collected from 118 Australian listed companies – including 26 financial firms and 92 nonfinancial firms – for the period 1999–2007. Analysis of that data shows that the frequencies of audit committee meetings and remuneration committee meetings are positively and significantly associated with return on equity and return on assets. The frequencies of risk committee meetings do not show any significant effects on the financial performance of Australian firms. Estimated results are found to be robust after controlling for internal as well as external governance mechanisms that might affect Australian firm performance.     

An Analysis of Tax Incentives to Attract FDI in Bangladesh： An Empirical Study

The purpose of the study is to understand whether it is still viable to use tax incentives to attract foreign direct investment （FDI） considering their effectiveness and costs to the country, and if not, what should be the alternative, effective, and viable means of promoting the vital FDI inflow. The study investigated various incentives provided by BOI, and other relevant sources available as secondary sources. However, the multinational enterprises （MNEs） are not attracting for investment in Bangladesh always with tax incentives and there are alternative means of attracting FDI such as direct financial grants, subsidies loan guarantees, etc. This paper focuses on tax incentives and the debate against the effectiveness and efficiency in attracting FDI.     

Explaining Caste Differences in Private School Attendance

Using a nationally representative education survey, we explore caste differences in private school attendance in India. We find lower private school attendance among the disadvantaged castes—Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Castes (OBCs)—when compared with the non‐disadvantaged group (non‐SC/ST/OBC). Controlling for geographical location, household and individual level factors reduces the gaps in private school attendance considerably; however, the gaps remain quite large. We find that variation in parental education and household consumption expenditure explains a significant proportion of the observed gaps. For ST students, geographical location remains important in explaining the gap in private school attendance.     

Explaining Slow Growth in Africa

This paper critically reviews the empirical literature on growth, with a view to drawing some lessons for Africa. It illustrates the diversity of the results found by different authors, and calls for a more rigorous approach, paying attention to the identification of structural parameters and to simultaneity biases. It emphasizes the part played by openness and export orientation as the main policy variables affecting growth. Then, the choice of bad policies, which seems to be the main proximate cause of slow growth in Africa, is traced to the lack of social capital and deficient political institutions. Cet article est une critique de la littérature empirique sur le développement dont le but est d’en tirer quelques leçons sur l’Afrique. L’article démontre la diversité des conclusions tirées par plusieurs auteurs et fait appel à une démarche plus rigoureuse, prenant en compte l’identification des paramètres structurels et des penchants simultanés qui existent. L’importance du marché et son orientation vers l’export sont soulignées comme étant les deux variables principales qui touchent directement la croissance. Les auteurs démontrent ensuite que le choix de mauvaises politiques, qui semble Átre la cause principale de la faible croissance africaine, est due en effet à un manque de capital social ainsi qu’aux institutions politiques défectueuses.     

Inflation and Macroeconomic Instability in Madagascar

The relationships between inflation and macroeconomic instability are discussed analytically, using a simple monetary model with rational expectations, with an application to the case of Madagascar. The recent macroeconomic history of this country suggests that high inflation is correlated with high volatility of the inflation rate and the real effective exchange rate. The relevance of this observation is confirmed by an empirical analysis of the relationships between inflation, competitiveness and instability in Madagascar.