The current study explores the role of economic integration in catalyzing structural change. Specifically, it addresses the question of how reductions in transportation costs affect patterns of production specialization over time. Drawing upon the New Economic Geography literature (Krugman, 1991;...

We use the concept of the product space to analyze the key features of the transformation process in Africa with a focus on the agricultural sector. Between 1962 and 2008, we find that both specialization and diversification occur for the overall economy and across sectors. Our findings also...

Approximately 75% of all water used by humans goes towards food production, much of which is traded internationally. This study formally models how this works in the case of crop agriculture, making use of recent advances in international trade theory and new data on the productivity by which...

Using structural equation models and data from three provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we assess the factors affecting external linkages among rural producer organizations and determinants of performance in agricultural service provision in a post-conflict setting. Environmental...

Spatial price integration among five major Bangladesh rice markets is examined in the presence of threshold effects to account for the impact of transaction costs in the price adjustment process. Hansen and Seo (2002) threshold cointegration tests and threshold vector error correction models...

Applying John R. Commons institutional economic framework, this paper analyzes the evolution of the key institutions in the Malian cotton sector starting with the CFDT contract following the country‘s Independence in 1960; the nationalization of the cotton gin company, CMDT, in 1974; the completion of...

Several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) embraced the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) suggested by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1980s. SAPs entail three main transitions: (1) from state control to market-led development; (2) from authoritarianism to...