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.     

Engaging Customers through Social Media to Improve Industrial Product Development: The Role of Customer Co-Creation Value

This study aims to investigate the effect of social media on customer loyalty with the mediation of customer co-creation value and to build a customer engagement model through co-creation value, which is supported by product improvement perceived in increasing customer loyalty. The data collection employed a survey method with structured questionnaires which were distributed to 150 respondents who were the members of social media product communities in Indonesia. The findings showed that interactions through social media are able to increase customer engagement, facilitaitng collaboration in co-creation value, allowing the company to improve and develop products based on customers' needs and desires, which will eventually increase customer loyalty.     

Emerging capital markets: A case study of equity markets in Pakistan

The Pakistan financial system displays all the classic characteristics of an emerging market: market capitalisation amounts to only 5.5% of GNP; less than 0.3% of the population are shareholders, resources mobilised through the capital market are insignificant compared to that through the banking system, and equities account for about 4% of the assets of the financial system.The pricing of both equity and debenture capital is administratively set by the Government. This has resulted in the shares of well-managed companies being issued at below market clearing price. Consequently, new shareholders benefit at the expense of original shareholders. Underwriters are denied any useful function and underwriting commission does not reflect perceived issue risk.There is a paucity of stock of well-run companies. The market also suffers from inadequate information flow and faces some fundamental institutional weaknesses. If the share buying habit is to increase and if savings are to be channelled into financial markets, appropriate mechanisms need to be developed for both broker and investor protection.The views expressed in this paper are those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the International Finance Corporation. The information presented here in has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but is not guaranteed as to completeness or accuracy.     

Sources of change in U.S. manufactured exports during the eighties

Bowen and Pelzman (1984) used a Constant Market Share model to analyze the performance of the U.S. in manufactured exports over the years 1962 to 1977. Their findings indicated continued erosion of U.S. competitiveness in the world market. During the eighties, the U.S. performance in exporting manufactured goods has been dismal and has raised concern about the nation's ability to compete in the world market. In this paper, we present estimates of the CMS components of the export growth of the U.S. for the years 1979 to 1987. We find that the decline in export competitiveness reported by Bowen and Pelzman (1984) has continued and worsened during the eighties. Bowen and Pelzman (1984) reported the world-trade effect to be the major positive source of growth and the competitive effect to be the major retarding factor of growth. We find that in addition to the poor competitive effect during the eighties, the United States traded in sluggish export markets and within an environment of volatile growth of exports and demand in the industrialized world.     

Private Tutoring: Evidence from India

Drawing on the nationally representative “Participation and Expenditure in Education” surveys, we document the incidence and cost of private tutoring at different stages of schooling over the last two decades in India. As private tutoring involves two decisions: (1) whether to take private tuition or not, and (2) how much to spend on private tutoring conditional on positive decision in (1), we analyze the determinants of the two decisions separately using a Hurdle model. We find that private tutoring is not a new phenomenon in India: a significant proportion of students at each stage of schooling took private tutoring even in 1986/87, and there has been no dramatic increase in those proportions. Students from urban areas, private schools, and from better economic backgrounds are more likely to take private tutoring. Furthermore, the demand for private tutoring is inelastic at each stage of schooling, which implies that private tutoring is a necessary good in the household consumption basket. We also find evidence of pro‐male bias in both decisions regarding private tutoring.     

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.     

Corporate social responsibility and Islamic banks: a systematic literature review

Although CSR is an extensively studied topic, a systematic, comprehensive and diverse review in the domain of CSR and Islamic banking is missing. This paper intends to present a broad review of this domain. Through a state-of-the-art review, we have divided the paper into different sections, the first two are general i.e. CSR measurement, it deals with measuring methods of CSR in Islamic banking, and CSR theories, it gives a brief overview of theories referred in under-review studies. While, the other three sections are separated according to the nature of studies i.e. CSR narrative under the Islamic paradigm, CSR disclosure by Islamic banks, and CSR exposition in Islamic banks. At the end of each section, we have included a ‘commentary’ to discuss and summarize major points, highlight trends and issues, provide insights into limitations and suggest future research directions.

     

A Theory of Poverty Aversion and Civil Society Development

A simple model is used to discuss the political economy of the emergence of relative poverty as a foundation for redistribution policy in rich countries, as opposed to the dominant concept of absolute poverty, which prevails in the rest of the world. This issue is analyzed in connection with that of the development of civil society and its role relative to the state in fighting poverty.