Female Access and Rights to Land,and Rural Non‐farm Entrepreneurship in Four African Countries

This paper examines the relationship between female access to land, rights to such land, and engagement in non‐farm entrepreneurship in rural Africa. We used data from the four countries (Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Malawi) that were featured in the Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys in Agriculture dataset for the period 2013–15. To estimate the relationship, we compute the marginal effect from the logistic regression, while controlling for other important covariates that explain non‐farm activities at the individual/household level. We find that overall, women's access to land and rights to such land significantly explain their likelihood to engage in non‐farm enterprises. However, this relationship is not seen across the sampled countries. In Nigeria, for instance, we find that though the relationship is positive, it was not significant. While for Ethiopia, Tanzania and Malawi, we find a positive and significant relationship. We explain our result based on two important perspectives. The policy implications of our result are included in the paper.     

The Long‐run and Short‐run Effects of Foreign Direct Investment on Financial Development in African Countries

This paper contributes to the understanding of the other neglected effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) by analysing how FDI affects financial development in the short run and long run for a panel of 49 African countries over the period 1990–2016. The empirical evidence is based on a pooled mean group approach. With three panels differentiated by income level, the following findings are established: first, while there is a positive and significant long‐run relationship between FDI and financial development in Africa, in the short run the effect of FDI on financial development is negative. Second, the effect of FDI is positive and significant in the long run in the three sub‐samples. However, in the short run, the effect of FDI is negative and significant in lower‐income countries and non‐significant in lower‐middle‐income and upper‐middle‐income countries. Overall we find strong evidence supporting the view that FDI promotes financial development in African countries in the long run.     

Fertility in Sub‐Saharan African Countries with Consideration to Health and Poverty*

Abstract: Fertility has begun to fall in sub‐Saharan Africa but it remains high on average and particularly for a few countries. This paper examines African fertility using a panel data set of 47 sub‐Saharan countries between 1962 and 2003. Fixed and random country effect estimates are made in models where the explanatory variables are suggested by the theory of the demographic transition as modified by Caldwell (1982) . Special attention is paid to the economic status of women, urbanization, the poverty level, and the health of the population including total health expenditures and the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. The results support Caldwell's hypothesis and are generally supportive of hypothesis that a fertility transition is occurring. HIV/AIDS is found to have a negative impact on fertility.     

Measurement of Capital Flight: Methodology and Results for Sub‐Saharan African Countries*

Abstract: This paper presents the methodology for the computation of capital flight and reports new estimates of the magnitude and timing of capital flight from 33 sub‐Saharan African countries from 1970 to 2004. Our methodology calculates capital flight as the residual difference between inflows and outflows of foreign exchange recorded in the balance of payments, with corrections for the magnitude of external borrowing, trade misinvoicing, and unrecorded remittances. We find that total capital flight from these countries in this period amounted to $443 billion (in 2004 dollars). With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of flight capital amounted to $640 billion. These numbers exceed these countries’ external debts, which in 2004 amounted to $193 billion, indicating that sub‐Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world.     

Ethnic Diversity,Political Stability and Productive Efficiency: Empirical Evidence from the African Countries

While ethnic diversity has been shown to produce numerous negative effects on the economic performance due to disagreement on the production of the public good, nepotism in making employment decisions, increased corruption and rent‐seeking behaviour, its positive effects appear to have received much less attention. We hypothesise and test several explanations why higher levels of ethnic diversity may be associated with better socio‐economic outcomes. We find that productive efficiency will be higher in the societies where ethnicities can benefit from the complementarity of skills. Incentives to engage in an ethnic conflict will be lower and the extent of political stability higher in those countries where the opportunity costs of ethnic conflict are more substantial. We also find some evidence in support of the political aspirations hypothesis that attributes the negative effects of ethnic diversity to the strife by ethnic groups for more political influence.     

Measuring the Foreign Exchange Premium and the Premium for Non‐Tradable Outlays for 20 Countries in Africa

In this paper, we develop an analytical general equilibrium framework to measure the foreign exchange premium and the premium for non‐tradable outlays for a country. The framework allows us to capture in a consistent manner the impacts of the sourcing of funds and their expenditure on tradable and non‐tradable goods and services of investment projects. An application of the model is carried out for 20 countries in Africa. The results show that the foreign exchange premiums range from 2.4% to 9.0% and the premium for non‐tradable outlays from ?0.7% to 2.9%. The empirical values depend on a number of factors, including the indirect taxes, production subsidies and international trade distortions of a country. These premiums should be incorporated into the economic evaluation of investment projects.     

Capital Flight Repatriation: Investigation of its Potential Gains for Sub‐Saharan African Countries*

Abstract: Despite the substantial recent increase in capital flows to sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA), the sub‐continent remains largely marginalized in financial globalization and chronically dependent on official development aid. The current debate on resource mobilization for development financing in Africa has overlooked the problem of capital flight, which constitutes an important untapped source of funds. This paper argues that repatriation of flight capital deserves more attention on economic as well as moral grounds. On the moral side, the argument is that a large proportion of the capital flight legitimately belongs to the African people and therefore must be restituted to the legitimate claimants. The economic argument is that repatriation of flight capital will contribute to propelling the sub‐continent on a higher sustainable growth path while preserving its financial stability and independence and without mortgaging the welfare of its future generations through external borrowing. The anticipated gains from capital repatriation are large. In particular, this paper estimates that if only a quarter of the stock of capital flight was repatriated to SSA, the sub‐continent would go from trailing to leading other developing regions in terms of domestic investment. The paper proposes some strategies for inducing capital flight repatriation, but cautions that the success of this program is contingent on a strong political will on the part of African and Western governments and effective coordination and cooperation at the global level.     

Earnings Non‐Synchronicity and Voluntary Disclosure

Earnings non‐synchronicity reflects the extent to which firm‐specific factors determine a firm's earnings. Prior research suggests that high earnings non‐synchronicity impedes corporate outsiders' ability to process information. This study examines the impact of earnings non‐synchronicity on managers' decisions to provide earnings forecasts. We propose that high earnings non‐synchronicity motivates managers to issue earnings forecasts to reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors and to preempt costly information acquisition by outsiders. Consistently, we find a positive relation between earnings non‐synchronicity and managers' propensity to issue earnings forecasts, particularly long‐horizon forecasts. This positive relation is weaker when earnings are easier to predict based on the firm's earnings history and is stronger when the firm has higher institutional ownership and greater analyst following. We also find that the market's reaction to management forecasts increases with earnings non‐synchronicity. Overall, the evidence suggests that managers voluntarily provide earnings forecasts to alleviate the adverse consequences of earnings non‐synchronicity. These findings provide a more complete picture about the impact of earnings non‐synchronicity on a firm's information environment, and highlight the effect of the nature of information asymmetry on voluntary disclosures.     

Debt Sustainability and the Ongoing Financial Crisis: The Case of IDA‐only African Countries*

Abstract: The ongoing financial crisis has raised concerns in many circles about a potential future wave of sovereign defaults spreading among developing countries and, therefore, the need for additional rounds of debt relief in poor indebted countries. This paper addresses this issue for a group of 31 International Development Association (IDA)‐only African countries, which are in a fragile debt situation. Using the most recent debt sustainability analyses (DSAs) undertaken for these countries by the World Bank and the IMF, this paper studies the potential adverse effect of the ongoing financial crisis on the countries’ debt burden indicators, as a function of the depth and length of the crisis. The latter is measured by the fall and the duration of such fall in exports revenues, and by the terms at which each country can obtain financing to muddle through the crisis period. The analysis underscores the importance of concessional financing for these countries, especially if the crisis proves to be a protracted one. This, because the likelihood of countries being able to muddle through the crisis without defaulting on their external debt decreases with the hardening of the financial conditions faced by them — alternatively, the size of the downsizing in domestic (fiscal) expenditures needed to ensure the service of their foreign debts increases with the tightening of financial conditions.     

技术创新能力及其评价方法的发展变化

本文基于目前国内外学者关于技术创新能力的研究,对技术创新能力理论进行了分析整理,探讨了技术创新能力评价指标及其方法的发展与变化。并进一步提出当前技术创新能力研究的新发展:技术创新能力评价方法日趋丰富,开始注重技术创新能力与环境、时间的关系。     

Financial Development and Economic Growth in Sub‐Saharan African Countries: Evidence from Time Series Analysis

Abstract: This paper seeks to empirically explore the causal link between the level of financial development and economic growth in 13 sub‐Saharan African countries. The empirical investigation is carried out in a vector autoregression (VAR) framework based on the theory of cointegration and error‐correction representation of cointegrated variables. The results of the cointegration analysis provide evidence of the existence of a long‐run relationship between financial development and economic growth in almost all (12 out of 13) of the countries. With respect to the direction of long‐term causality, the results show that financial development plays a causal role on economic growth, again in eight of the countries. At the same time, evidence of bidirectional causal relationships is found in six countries. The findings imply that African countries can accelerate their economic growth by improving their financial systems.     

Trends in Agricultural Production Efficiency and their Implications for Food Security in Sub‐Saharan African Countries

The main objective of this paper is to estimate the agricultural sector production efficiency using data envelopment analysis based on a cross‐section of 49 African countries over the 1995–2012 period in order to analyze the determinants of annual efficiency scores to assess the impact of agricultural efficiency on food security. We find that agriculture aid, agricultural sector infrastructure, sanitation, and good governance serve the main drivers of agriculture efficiency and its growth. Our findings also suggest that a large portion of Africa's agricultural sector growth can be attributed to technical progress as opposed to efficiency changes.     

外商直接投资与我国技术创新能力

本文利用1999-2002年我国各省市的相关数据,对外资在我国技术创新能力上的溢出效应进行了分析。实证分析表明,外商直接投资在整体上对我国工业企业的研发和创新能力无非常明显的溢出效应,对东中西部各地区的效应则存在较大差异。我国必须努力促进外资的技术溢出效应,同时注重培育本地企业的自主创新能力。     

The Revenue–Expenditure Nexus: The Experience of 13 African Countries

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to investigate the causal relationship between government revenue and government expenditure for 13 African countries within a multivariate framework using a modified version of the Granger causality test due to Toda and Yamamoto (1995) . The empirical evidence suggests that there was a bi‐directional causality running between expenditure and revenue for Mauritius, Swaziland and Zimbabwe; no causality in any direction for Botswana, Burundi and Rwanda; unidirectional causality running from revenue to expenditure for Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali and Zambia; and a uni‐directional causality running from expenditure to revenue for Burkina Faso only.     

Non‐farm employment and incomes in rural Cambodia

Rural households in Cambodia derive income from various sources. On average, non‐farm income accounts for more than 60 per cent of total household income. However, the average masks the substantial heterogeneity of non‐farm employment. We account for this heterogeneity and find significant differences in non‐farm participation and incomes across segments of the income distribution. The poor and the less well‐educated participate less in the non‐farm sector, and when they do work in the non‐farm sector, they work in low‐paid jobs and earn lower incomes. Accounting for endogeneity and sample selection issues, we conduct an empirical enquiry of the determinants of participation in non‐farm activities and of non‐farm incomes. As expected, we find that education plays a major role in accessing more remunerative non‐farm employment. Interestingly, we do not find evidence that women, ethnic minorities, or the land‐poor are disadvantaged in access to the non‐farm sector. Geographical location plays a role in access to and income from non‐farm employment, indicating the importance of local context.     

Controls and Cooperation in Interactive and Non‐Interactive Settings

Prior research finds that controls that induce cooperation among collaborators on a project increase trust, and that this increased trust increases subsequent cooperation among collaborators. We extend this work by investigating how controls influence cooperative behavior in two settings. The first is an interactive setting where people work together and can benefit from each other's work. The second is a non‐interactive setting where people do not work together directly but where behavior can be observed. We propose that because controls are likely to engender greater trust and reciprocity in interactive settings than in non‐interactive settings, the effect of controls on future cooperative behavior will be greater for controls in interactive settings than for controls in non‐interactive settings. We find that controls in both settings increase future cooperative behavior, but the effect is significantly greater in interactive settings (where reciprocity and trust are more likely to develop). Furthermore, this increased cooperation is observed in an uncontrolled task, suggesting that the control fosters trust in others rather than trust in the control. These findings suggest that the benefits of controls are more substantial in work environments characterized by extensive teamwork and where employees benefit from each other's work.