Corruption and anxiety in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the relationship between individuals’ experience of corruption and their anxiety using microeconomic data from the Afrobarometer surveys. The results show a statistically significant and economically meaningful relationship in probit models using both an experience of corruption index and a simple dummy variable. Having to pay a bribe to obtain documents and permits, to avoid problems with the police or to access medical care are the scenarios in which this relationship is strongest. Some evidence is presented that an individual needs to experience such corruption more than ‘once or twice’ for these relationships to become evident.     

The role of the informal sector in investment in Sub-Saharan Africa

For a long time economic researchers condemned the existence of a huge informal sector in economies, viewing it as a deterrent to investment, growth and development. This view is however being confronted with intense criticism particularly in developing countries where formal unemployment is rapidly growing and poverty widely spreading, which in turn is leading to an expanding informal sector. Thus alternative schools of thought that view the informal sector as a source of livelihood to the unemployed and poor have subsequently been developed. However, not much empirical work has been carried out to validate any of these theoretical claims, particularly in African economies. This paper attempts to fill this gap. The findings of the study indicate that there is a positive relationship between informal sector activities and investment. These results suggest a review of the standard thinking towards the role of the informal sector in development.     

Political Instability and Economic Growth: Implications of Coup Events in Sub-Saharan Africa

The study examines the differential roles of various elite political instability (PI) events—successful coups d'etat, abortive coups, or coup plots—in the growth of Sub-Saharan Africa. It analyzes World Bank economic statistics and data on the incidence of coups d'etat for 31 countries in a cross-country augmented production function framework that incorporates PI events as well as labor and capital as arguments. It finds that abortive coups, rather than successful coups, had the greatest adverse impact on economic growth over the 1960–1986 period. Coup plots were also observed to be growth-inhibiting. This deleterious "direct" effect of PI is observed to be channeled via the deterioration in the marginal productivity of capital, regardless of coup event. While abortive coups negatively influenced economic growth monotonically, however, the impacts of successful coups and coup plots appeared to be non-monotonic: negative generally but positive at very low levels of investment.     

Transferring Marketing Concepts to Sub-Saharan African Countries:

The drive towards market-oriented economies is accelerating in many sub-Saharan African countries, resulting in numerous opportunities for teachers, scholars and educators to disseminate the business knowledge of a free market economy. Since the macroenvironmental variables (culture, politics, socioeconomic conditions, etc.) within many sub-Saharan African countries often do not lend themselves to teaching marketing as it is practiced in Western societies, a framework for an adaptive approach to lransferring marketing howledge is proposed. Realizing the significance of the local environment, a model was applied that further illustrates two broad categories involved in the teaching approach: the content to be transferred (the knowledge itself), and the rocess by which such transfer taku place. Lastly, implications for the transference of Western marketing concepts are discussed along with suggestions on how to improve the teaching of marketing knowledge in sub-Saharan Africa.     

重新想象非洲

自尝试＂走出去＂以来,非洲是令中国公司最有成就感的大陆,但本地化磨擦亦频发不断。本刊特派非洲报道小组,一行四人,实地深入调查非洲六国,为期35天。我们最深刻的感受——如果不重新审视与调整自己,中国将不能在这片大陆获得更多     

Economic integration in Africa

There is a renewed interest in the debate on integration in Africa since the creation of the African Union in 2002. This study investigates the feasibility of a full-fledged economic union in Africa. Towards this goal, we examine the short- and long-term relationships among key macro-variables in eight largest African economies during the period from 1976 to 2005. We observe the existence of common long-term trends in real output, price level, private consumption, government consumption, investment and trade flows among these eight countries. In addition, we observe that there exists common cycles (short-term relationships) in real output, investment and trade flows for these countries. These two critical findings indicate the presence of macroeconomic interdependence among these countries which is a crucial factor for the success of integration in Africa led by these eight countries.     

China Africa Industrial Forum

Held under the banner of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation,the China-Africa Industrial Forum(CAIF)is committed to promoting development and cooperation between China and African countries.It aims to encourage rapid and sound economic development in China as well as African countries and boost exchanges and cooperation in politics,the economy,culture,science and technology,and tourism.     

Multilateral trade agreements in Africa

This paper explores the motives behind the formation of intra-African regional integration agreements (RIAs). We focus specifically on rents because they can explain the drive for integration even in the absence of a positive effect on welfare. Whether they are meant to foster rent-seeking or to suppress it, the level of corruption is posited to have a positive effect on the willingness to enter into RIAs. However, empirical studies into this effect have come to contradictory conclusions. We find that corruption has a positive effect on the willingness of African countries to join trade agreements. This result remains significant when controlling for endogeneity and heteroskedasticity, as well as the indicator of corruption used. While small, the effect of corruption outperforms most economic variables. Nevertheless, distance and other geographical factors remain the strongest explanatory forces of African integration.     

改革三十而立

<正>北京亿方物业管理有限责任公司(以下简称"北京亿方物业"),是北京城市开发集团旗下的第一家物业服务企业,其前身是"北京市城市建设开发房屋管理公司",1983年3月5日成立,至今已经走过了26年     

The Swiss Solution for South Africa

The example of Switzerland in devolving decision-making away from a central state towards community bodies with reduced powers offers a readily adaptable solution to the political turmoil in South Africa. FrancesKendall, co-author with Leon Louw of the best-selling South Africa: The Solution, presents her proposals forreform.     

Significant drivers of growth in Africa

We employ bootstrap techniques in a production frontier framework to provide statistical inference for each component in the decomposition of labor productivity growth, which has essentially been ignored in this literature. We show that only two of the four components (efficiency changes and human capital accumulation) have significantly contributed to growth in Africa. Although physical capital accumulation is the largest force, it is not statistically significant on average. Thus, ignoring statistical significance would falsely identify physical capital accumulation as a major driver of growth in Africa when it is not.     

我亲历的变革 风口浪尖30年

以铜为镜,可以正冠。以史为镜,可以正己。透过11位财经名人亲历的变革,我们将与读者共同回忆改革开放这30年。让我们永远记住那些摸着石头过河的年代,以及那些在理论、制度、观念方面大潮般日益创新的澎湃的30年。     

Growth,productivity and diversification in Africa

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship among economic growth, productivity and diversification. Our results have shown that deepening diversification leads to improvements in total factor productivity among other determinants in African economies. The significance of the link between diversification and economic growth in the case of African economies cannot be gainsaid. It means that African countries can scale up their economies’ growth by raising their total factor productivity through pursuing policies that enhance diversification.