By considering yearly production growth rates for several manufacturing industries in more than one hundred countries during (roughly) the last forty years, we show that industries that are more dependent on external finance are hit harder during recessions. The observed difference in the...

The paper provides three principal results. First, we benchmark South African infrastructure performance in terms of access, pricing, and quality against key comparator groups of countries using the most recent World Bank benchmarking data base (2005). Second, we establish clear empirical links...