Building on Smith (1989), we describe the social processes surrounding a new financial OTC derivatives market, the market for credit derivatives. We show that in contradiction with more traditional derivatives, credit derivatives generate ambiguities of a cognitive and political nature. By...

In this contribution, it is shown that the ambivalence of institutional factors relatively to financial instability appears early in Minsky's first works, more precisely in the late fifties. The argument is developed in two main steps. First, on the basis of Minsky's analysis, I investigate the...

We study the impact of transportation infrastructure on agriculture and development in colonial Ghana. Two railway lines were built between 1901 and 1923 to connect the coast to mining areas and the large hinterland city of Kumasi. This unintendedly opened vast expanses of tropical forest to...

In this paper, we study the determinants of rental values in urban housing markets in Kigali, Rwanda. In particular, we study the value of access to piped water; due to the high costs associated with installing new piped connections, renting a property with an existing connection is often the...

This paper aims to provide the first evidence concerning the relationship between time and risk preferences and illegal migration in an African context. Based upon our theoretical model and using a unique data set on potential migrants collected in urban Senegal, we evaluate a measure of time...

Major deficiencies in urbanisation and transportation systems are reinforcing patterns of social and urban segregation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city. Analysis of the 1993 Human Resources Development Survey shows that there are numerous obstacles to the daily travel of the city's...