Climate change has been classed as the greatest and urgent global issue facing humanity today, yet the empirics of the debate remain largely muted, more so with reference to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the impact of warming global temperatures are forecasted to have the worst impact. This...

We develop a dynamic discrete choice model of an unchecked ruler making decisions regarding the development of a resource-rich country. Resources serve as collateral and facilitate the acquisition of loans. The ruler chooses either to stay in power while facing the risk of being ousted, or loot...

We estimate the impact on consumption of South Africa's Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development (LRAD) program, which provides capital and other forms of assistance to beneficiaries to enable market-assisted transfers of property rights from large landowners to the rural poor....

This study investigates the drivers of competitiveness in African economies. While the macroeconomic perspective focuses on the behavior of the real effective exchange rate (REER), and the international competition framework emphasizes export market shares (EXPS), the business strategy framework...

This paper revisits the currency crises model of Aghion, Bacchetta and Banerjeee (2000, 2001, 2004), who show that if there exist nominal price rigidities and private sector credit constraints, and the credit multiplier depends on real interest rates, then the optimal monetary policy response to...

We investigate in this paper the hypothesis that when democracies are young, or still fragile and unconsolidated, the size of government tends to increase, predictably in an attempt of redistribution, or to buy out the electorate, so that democracy becomes acceptable and "the only game in town"....

We investigate in this paper what are the main determinants of government and external debt in South America. Our sample purposely includes all nine South American countries that re-democratised in the last thirty years or so, and the data cover the period 1970-2007. The results, based on...

In this paper we investigate the role of inflation rates in determining economic growth in fifteen sub-Saharan African countries, which are all members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), between 1980 and 2009. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, suggest...

In this paper we investigate the role of inflation rates in determining economic growth in fifteen sub-Saharan African countries, which are all members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), between 1980 and 2009. The results, based on panel time-series data and analysis, suggest...

We investigate in this paper whether income growth has played any role on inequality in all nine young South American democracies during 1970-2007. The results, based on dynamic panel time-series analysis, suggest that income growth has played a progressive role in reducing inequality during the...