The transition from a hunter-gather economy to agricultural production, which made possible the endogenous technological progress that ultimately led to the industrial revolution, is one of the most important events in the thousands of years of humankind’s economic development. In this paper...

The Zambian economy has grown relatively fast over the last decade up to the current global financial crisis. This paper discusses the challenge of using these growing resources effectively to improve the welfare of the population and to reduce poverty. The poverty head count index is found to...

The paper investigates the poverty impact of growth in Ethiopia by analysing panel data covering the period 1994 to 1997, a period of economic recovery driven by good weather, peace, and much improved macro economic management. Unlike mostdeveloping countries, urban and rural poverty in Ethiopia...

The most important event in human economic history before the Industrial Revolution was the Neolithic transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture, beginning about 10,000 years ago. The transition made possible the human population explosion, the rise of...

The three “spheres” of society (governments, markets, and communities) are widely acknowledged yet the overall organization is analyzed only rarely, and interactions between the spheres have perhaps never been modeled. Fiske’s four relational models (community-sharing, authority-ranking,...

A rapidly increasing share of firms in Kenya consists of not only small but also informal establishments. This paper investigates the role of ethnicity and other factors in the choice of formality status at start-up. Differences in productivity, investment and growth across the formality and...

This paper investigates the hypothesis that the association between property rights institutions and income is weaker in countries with high social divisions. It argues that social divisions should have a negative effect on perceived institutional inclusiveness, which in turn should depress...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of island status and country size on institutional quality, and to determine if these institutional effects can explain the relatively strong economic performance of islands and small countries. One of the main findings of this paper is that...

Should Swedish used-clothes exports continue to be subsidized as development aid? Theoretical analysis and review of empirical evidence regarding effects of both commercial and charitable (subsidized) used-clothes imports in LDCs. Includes statistics on the world used-clothes trade, including...

This paper reviews the recent literature dealing with the relationships between economic growth, income distribution, and poverty. This generally fails to find any systematic pattern of change in income distribution during recent decades. Neither does it find any systematic link from fast growth...