A fundamental macroeconomic problem in Zimbabwe is that the sum of public-sector projects is greater than the resources available to finance them. The government’s difficulty in discerning the macroeconomic limitations on new initiatives was greatly increased by the unusual circumstances of...

A striking feature of South Africa's trade liberalisation is that, until 2995, it did not involve any import liberalisation. The focus of earlier liberalisation wsa the reduction of the anti-export bias, and, on the import side, the replacement of QRs with equivalnet tariffs and other duties....

We introduce a new ‘supply-push’ instrument for foreign aid, to be used together with an instrumental variable estimator that filters out interactive fixed effects. We use this instrument to study the effects of aid on macroeconomic ratios, and especially the ratios of consumption,...

The present study employs recent World Bank data to shed light, in a global context, on the transformation of income and inequality changes to poverty reduction for a large number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study begins by shedding light on SSA’s progress on poverty. Next,...

Job creation is a central part of the policy of almost all African countries. The problems are particularly acute in Nigeria where over the period of the early 2000s there was a substantial decline in the number of private wage jobs. While policy discussion focuses on the extent of unemployment...

Using data from a randomized control trial in Sri Lanka, this paper explores whether cash and in-kind grants helped microenterprises approach the productivity level of SMEs. The paper first estimates production functions and subsequently treatment effects on TFP levels. Most significantly, more...