We document that structural change accounts for approximately one-fifth of the total change in labor productivity in Nigeria between 1996 and 2009. Labor moved out of the agricultural and wholesale and retail trade sectors into manufacturing, transportation and communications, business services,...

Public Expenditures, Growth, and Poverty assesses the efficacy of poverty reduction programs in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by synthesizing studies conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute over the past ten years. Overall, the studies find that investments in...

Foreign inflows are important sources of income that many African governments use to finance public investments and to support the development of manufacturing or export-oriented service sectors. Yet the recent growth experience of many African economies shows that domestic-oriented industry...

"In the context of on-going market reform in developing countries, there is a need for an improvement in the existing methods of spatial market efficiency analysis in order to better inform the debate toward designing and implementing new grain marketing policies, institutions, and...

"Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and the share of the population within the rural or agricultural sector is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. The pattern in developing...

"Encouraging signs of growth acceleration in Africa may herald a new development era of rapid transformation. In an effort to promote the future success of African transformation, we herein provide an extensive literature review on development economics and empirical observations from...

Africa’s recent economic growth is at a historical high, the patterns associated with this growth appear to be quite different from the Asian experiences where rapid growth was fueled by labor intensive, export-oriented manufacturing. Because this pattern differs with our typical view of...

Ghana has made considerable progress over the last 20 years in sustaining economic growth and reducing poverty. The Government of Ghana has declared its new development goal of reaching middle-income status by 2015. Achieving this goal will require Ghana to double its per capita income over the...

There is rising skepticism about the potential positive environmental impacts of first generation biofuels. Growing biofuel crops could induce diversion of other crops dedicated to food and feed needs. The relocation of production could increase deforestation and bring significant new volumes of...

South Africa's high involuntary unemployment and small informal sector are attributed to an underperforming formal sector and barriers to entry in the informal sector. This paper examines the economywide linkages between the formal and informal economies while accounting for different types of...