"Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that … often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be … uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses, further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in Africa. Strikingly, the …

Firms in Africa report "regulatory and economic policy uncertainty" as a top constraint to their growth. We argue that … often firms in Africa do not cope with policy rules, rather they face deals; firm-specific policy actions that can be … uncorrelated with ex-post firm-level responses, further evidence that deals rather than rules prevail in Africa. Strikingly, the …

Recent work in the sociology of economic development has emphasized the establishment of a professional government … corruption of their subordinates as a byproduct of their efforts to implement their preferences using tax revenue. Within this …

Conventional wisdom proposes deep historical roots for authoritarianism in Africa: either colonial "decentralized …

We analyze the organization of corruption in a state agency. The dual mandate of the Democratic Republic of the Congo … profits and distortions beyond those that would be made possible via corruption by individual state officials …

Africa. But employment in African manufacturing has grown rapidly over the past 20 years. These employment gains have been … (iii) robust labor productivity growth in Africa's large firms. Limited employment growth in Africa's large manufacturing … manufacturing to raise living standards in Africa depends on indirect job creation by large firms through backward and forward …

As Africa's role on the global stage is rising, so does the need to understand the shadow of history on the continent …'s economy and polity. We discuss recent works that shed light on Africa's colonial and precolonial legacies. The emerging corpus … Africa's post-independence maladies, we first review works that uncover the lasting legacies of colonial investments in …

The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala … poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be …

the slave trades retarded subsequent economic development, in Africa ruggedness has also had a historical indirect … effect on income. However, in Africa rugged terrain afforded protection to those being raided during the slave trades. Since … for Africa the indirect positive effect dominates the direct negative effect. Looking within Africa, we also provide …