HOW LARGE IS THE PRIVATE SECTOR IN AFRICA? EVIDENCE FROM NATIONAL ACCOUNTS AND LABOUR MARKETS

In recent years, the private sector has been recognised as a key engine of Africa's economic development. Yet, very little is known about its size and characteristics. We present novel estimates for 50 African countries and show that the private sector accounts for about two thirds of total investments, four fifths of total consumption and three fourths of total credit. Countries with small private sectors include a sample of oil exporters and some of the poorest countries in the continent. Surprisingly, the size of the private sector does not appear to be significantly correlated with growth performance. Labour market data reinforce the idea of a large private sector, which provides about 90% of total employment opportunities. However, most of this labour is informal and characterised by low productivity: permanent wage jobs in the private sector account on average for only 10% of total employment. South Africa is the notable exception, with formal wage employment in the private sector representing 46% of total employment. Finally, we find evidence of negative private sector earning premiums (?13% on the average), suggesting that market distortions abound. These are likely to prevent the efficient allocation of human resources and to reduce the overall productivity of the African economies.     

THE ASEAN–CHINA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: POLITICAL ECONOMY IN INDONESIA

The ASEAN–China Free Trade Agreement has been the most consequential trade agreement for ASEAN in the past decade. In this article, I use partial equilibrium modelling to estimate the direct impacts of the agreement on Indonesia and China, and from these estimates draw political economy implications for Indonesia. Although the agreement has contributed to a modest trade surplus for Indonesia overall, it has led to a larger bilateral deficit with China. In addition, the shifts to surplus for Indonesia have mostly been in resource-based sectors, while the shifts to deficit have occurred in many manufacturing sectors that the government would like to see grow. I argue that pushback against the agreement has contributed to a resurgence of non-tariff trade barriers in the country, although other political economy forces also have been at work. The agreement ultimately provides a cautionary tale: cutting regional import tariffs can lead to pressures for more complex and less transparent trade policies.     

Supervision without regulation: Discount limits at the Austro–Hungarian Bank, 1909–13

We show that nineteenth century central banks could use credit limits for discount loans as a means to enforce supervisory standards long before they had any formal regulatory powers. Drawing on novel microdata from the Austro–Hungarian Bank's archives, we document that credit limits were continuously monitored and that their size was contingent on counterparties’ liquidity and capital position. Counterparties had an economic motive to abide by informal prudential ‘rules of the game’: higher credit limits enabled counterparties to streamline their day-to-day liquidity management. We exploit the heterogeneous exposure of counterparties to an exogenous liquidity shock to evidence that the Bank relaxed credit limits during crises to fulfil its role as a lender of last resort.     

DEVELOPMENT PRESSURES AND HERITAGE IN THE PERTH CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, 1950–90

This article examines the remaking of Perth's Central Business District (CBD) during the 1950–90 period. It traces the establishment of a modernist development ethos in Perth's planning, outlines the inadequacy of the City's planning regulations, and analyses the impact on St George's Terrace, the city's main commercial thoroughfare. The City Council was largely incapable of restraining excessive development and the extension of its system of plot ratios encouraged manipulation to increase the height of developments. Several important historic buildings were demolished because there were no legal means of safeguarding the city's heritage until 1990.     

Swedish iron and steel, 1600–1955

Abstract

The sources which may be used to shed light upon the history of the Swedish iron industry from the first half of the sixteenth century onwards are, by any criterion, very impressive. Well-preserved series of accounts give detailed information on the activities of a number of iron-works which the Crown began to establish during the reign of Gustav Vasa (1523–1560) and which were carried on until the opening decades of the 17th century. The Swedish kings energetically directed not only their own enterprises but also the production at the many small privately-owned furnaces and forges which continued to be responsible for the major share of the total output; they were also an important object of taxation of which the Crown kept detailed accounts. The state's own iron-working activities were abandoned in the 16205, but central direction of the industry continued and was shortly entrusted to a special department of state, the Board of Mining and Metallurgical Industries (Bergskollegium], The archives of Bergskollegium provide a fund of information on the history of the metallurgical industries looked at from the viewpoint of the central government. The customs' accounts offer primary material for the statistics of exports during the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th. Thereafter, however, the primary material has only been sporadically preserved. But as early as the 17th century customs' accounts were worked up into statistics of foreign trade in order to provide information for purposes of commercial policy.¹ After 1738 they continue as a most impressive series of uninterrupted statistics.     

AN INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION IN AN EAST ASIAN MARKET ECONOMY? TOKUGAWA JAPAN AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE GREAT DIVERGENCE

This paper addresses a question raised by Jan de Vries' on the relationship between industriousness and the rise of the market in East Asia. Was the growing industriousness in Tokugawa Japan, as de Vries suggests, a substitute ‘for the absence of markets’? The examination refers to two versions of Chayanov's peasant farm model and their empirical relevance to the Tokugawa agrarian history, with special reference to the formation of labour‐intensive peasant farming (Akira Hayami's version of an industrious revolution), product specialisation, and the markets for production factors, land, and labour. Its implications for the Great Divergence debate are also discussed.     

INFRASTRUCTURE POLICY IN INDONESIA, 1965–2015: A SURVEY

This survey, first, provides an overview of the main developments in the infrastructure sector in Indonesia during the past five decades and, second, considers what the main policy and management bottlenecks in infrastructure appear to be. The overview of main developments indicates that, in broad terms, most parts of the sector have expanded considerably but that the needs remain acute for further expansion and for attention to the maintenance of existing facilities. Demand for infrastructure is high, especially since the regulated prices set for infrastructure services are often low. Access is often difficult, however, because of shortages of infrastructure, and quality is often unsatisfactory because of poor maintenance and indifferent management. These problems of access are exacerbated by the regulation of prices. This overview also points to the markedly different performances of industries in which pro-competitive policies have been applied and those in which more traditional policies of close regulation have restricted the operation of markets.     

SOURCES OF PRODUCTIVITY GAINS FROM FDI IN INDONESIA: IS IT EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT OR TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS?

This article investigates the spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on productivity growth in the Indonesian food-processing (ISIC 311) and electrical machinery industries (ISIC 383). Total factor productivity (TFP) growth is decomposed into efficiency change and technological change by using the Malmquist productivity index. The empirical results show that efficiency improvement is the major driver of TFP growth in the food-processing industry, whereas technological progress is the dominant contributor in the electrical machinery industry. There are positive spillovers on efficiency change but negative spillovers on technological change in the food-processing industry. However, FDI spillovers turn out to be negative in efficiency change while positive in technological progress in the electrical machinery industry. These findings demonstrate that different industries experience different sources of productivity gains, which are dependent on the characteristics of firms in the industry.     

ON THE PATH TO ECONOMIC GROWTH,DO REMITTANCES HELP? EVIDENCE FROM PANEL VARs

Despite the emergence of remittances studies, knowledge about their effect on economic development is still ambiguous. This paper investigates the impact of remittances at macroeconomic level in developing countries controlling for endogeneity problems with the use of panel vector autoregression (panel VAR). The findings suggest that remittances have a positive, albeit small, impact on economic growth even without considering the role of institutions. When institutions are included, the pattern of response remains unaltered. A distinction between low versus high remittances participation in economic activity evidences that, although the impact of remittances on growth is similar, appreciation of the exchange rate occurs in economies with high remittances participation. Finally, a distinction by geographical region reveals that Eastern European economies receive the greatest benefit from these flows, followed by the Americas and Asia; however, African economic growth does not appear to have a statistically significant impact.     

BLASTING OUT: EXPLOSIVES PRACTICES IN QUEENSLAND METALLIFEROUS MINES, 1870–1920

The use of explosives in mines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was notoriously unsafe. In Queensland's underground metalliferous mines, explosive practices could be dangerous not only because of the attitudes of miners and managers, but because of problems inherent to the technology, conditions underground, economic fluctuations, and the persistence of outmoded practices. Some limited specialisation of labour occurred in the interests of safety, and although newer technology had the potential to deskill the work of miners, these developments were quite dissimilar to the highly specialised work practices that were adopted for large-scale mining in the United States during the same period.     

PEOPLING THE VICTORIAN GOLDFIELDS: FROM BOOM TO BUST, 1851–1901

Victoria experienced a surge of migration after the discovery of gold in 1851. I explore the social and geographic background of migrants lured to the colony by opportunities opened up by gold mining. When alluvial gold was exhausted, the skills of migrants enabled them to exploit the more difficult deep lead and quartz reef gold deposits and to establish cities and towns. Urban growth was encouraged by high marriage and birth rates in the 1860s. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century goldfields communities generally suffered economic and demographic declines.     

FIRM PRODUCTIVITY AND INVESTMENT CLIMATE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: HOW DOES MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA MANUFACTURING PERFORM?

Firm productive performances in five Middle East and North African (MENA) economies and eight manufacturing industries are compared to those in 17 other developing countries. Although the broad picture hides some heterogeneity, enterprises in MENA often performed inadequately given the middle‐income status of the MENA economies, with the exception of Morocco and, to some extent, Saudi Arabia. Firm competitiveness is a more constant constraint, with a unit labor cost higher than in most competitor countries, as well as investment climate (IC) deficiencies. The empirical analysis also points out how IC matters for firm productivity through the quality of infrastructure, the experience and education of the labor force, the cost and access to financing, and different dimensions of the government–business relationship. These findings bear important policy implications by showing which dimensions of the IC, in which industry, could help manufacturing in MENA to be more competitive in the globalization context.     

THE 200 KM CITY: BRISBANE,THE GOLD COAST,AND SUNSHINE COAST

Since the 1970s, several Southeast Queensland coastal towns in areas marketed as the ‘Gold Coast’ and the ‘Sunshine Coast’ have merged with each other and joined with Brisbane to become one of the world's longest urban coastal strips. The population of this 200 km long city is fast approaching three million. This urban pattern reflects the preferences of many Australians about where and in what type of housing they would like to live. The unplanned nature of this growth raises several policy challenges relating to resource use and traffic congestion.     

Fuelling the urban economy: A comparative study of energy in the Low Countries, 1600–1850

What was the role of energy in shaping modern economies and fuelling the transition to sustained economic growth? In the historiography on the industrial revolution, the transition to fossil energy carriers plays a central role. Despite recent efforts to gather new empirical evidence, long-term comparative studies on energy transitions and their economic impact before and during the first industrial revolution remain rare. As a contribution to this literature, this article presents new quantitative data on energy consumption from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries in the Low Countries. To explore differences in the chronology and impact of energy transitions, we compare the total levels of energy consumption, the energy mix, and the prices of fuels between two cities in the northern and southern Low Countries: Leiden and Ghent. This analysis enables us to explore more clearly which factors played a key role in the interaction between energy, economic growth, and industrialisation. The transition towards a cheap-energy economy in Holland was associated with economic growth, but not with mechanisation. On the other hand, the rapid mechanisation process in Ghent was associated not with a cheap-energy economy (relative to that of Leiden), but more specifically with a cheap-coal economy.     

OCCUPATIONAL STRUCTURE AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN INDONESIA, 1880–2000

Osamu Saito's pioneering research into the long-term changes in occupational structure of Japan has inspired scholars to take a fresh look at structural change in other countries. This article offers a case study of Indonesia. We find a rather slow pace of structural transformation until the 1970s – the immediate post-war period even saw a reversal of trends. After 1970, during a growth spurt, employment growth in manufacturing was not impressive, and services were an even more important source of employment. The role played by by-employment is also analysed, demonstrating that in 1905 the economy was quite diversified.