In this paper the findings of a survey conducted in June 2001 in Armenia are summarised. The aim was to gain insight into the nature of the rural non-farm economy (RNFE) in the country. For that purpose, 21 rural communities in 3 regions (called marzes in Armenian) were non-randomly selected....

In this paper an effort has been made to unveil some hidden and implicit assumptions that has been used in different models dealing with analysis and measurement of contribution of human capital to economic growth. In order to do it we started from the general production function with...

We are more than a little bit surprised at the seeming reticence of the central bank's governor, Mr Derrick Latibeaudiere, to the idea of a monetary policy committee, being proposed by the private sector. The suggestion forms part of the package of proposals of the so-called Partners for...

In this paper, we evaluate four explanations for economic stagnation that have been proposed in the literature: coordination failures, ineffective mix of occupational choices, insufficient human capital accumulation, and politico-economic considerations. We calibrate models that embody these...

The article provides a fresh look at employee ownership as a method of privatization and discusses theoretical and incentives effects and recent experiences in Eastern and Central Europe.

This paper revisits the contested issue of the impact of agricultural extension on farm productivity. Often studies in this field suffer from a bias either due to self-selection of the best farmers for the extension services or to endogenous placement of the programme. The panel dataset...

This paper investigates the relationship between poverty and crime. Following a disputed presidential election, fuel supply to the highlands of Madagascar was severely curtailed in early 2002, resulring in a massive - if temporary - increase in poverty. Using original survey data collected in...

Most measures of vulnerability are a-theoretic and essentially static. In this paper we use a stochastic Ramsey model to find a household's optimal welfare and we measure vulnerability as the shortfall from the welfare attained if the household consumed permanently at the poverty line. The...

This paper uses survey data to investigate empirically the importance of corruption in determining firm performance in Africa. We allow for the possibility of perception bias on the part of the respondents and for corruption being endogenous. We find that corruption is linked to significant...

Recent reforms in most African economies of their trading and exchange rate regimes have eliminated much of the protection which previously limited competition. Despite these reforms, African manufacturing firms remain unsuccessful, particularly in international export markets. In this paper we...