Three issues are addressed in this paper. First, we use both household and macro data to establish how fast per capita consumption and incomes grew in Ghana in the 1990s. Second, we ask how much of the rise in incomes was due to rises in the level of human capital and how much reflected...

In this paper data from a school survey in India is used to ask if there is evidence for the payment of performance related pay and whether such pay structures do impact on student achievement. It is shown that - after controlling for student ability, parental background and the resources...

In this paper, we use firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to estimate the effect of exporting on efficiency. Estimating simultaneously a production function and an export regression that control for unobserved firm effects, we find both significant...

The Ghana cocoa market has been extensively liberalised over the period since the mid 1980s. Three issues have been prominent in microeconomic research on the effects of liberalisation on agriculture. The first has been the size of any supply response, the second has been the effect on producers...

This paper uses survey data to investigate empirically the importance of corruption in determining firm performance in Africa. We allow for the possibility of perception bias on the part of the respondents and for corruption being endogenous. We find that corruption is linked to significant...

Do openness to trade and higher levels of human capital promote faster productivity growth? That they do is a key implication of several versions of endogenous growth theory. To answer the question we use panel data on 93 countries spanning the 1970-2000 period. Controlling for fixed effects as...

This paper uses survey data to investigate empirically the importance of corruption in determining firm performance in Africa. We allow for the possibility of perception bias on the part of the respondents and for corruption being endogenous. We find that corruption is linked to significant...

Recent reforms in most African economies of their trading and exchange rate regimes have eliminated much of the protection which previously limited competition. Despite these reforms, African manufacturing firms remain unsuccessful, particularly in international export markets. In this paper we...

Three dimensions of the performance of firms in Ghana’s manufacturing sector are investigated in this paper: their technology and the importance of technical and allocative efficiency. We show that the diversity of factor choices in not due to a non-homothetic technology. Observable skills are...

The returns to education remain a central concern for development policy. In developed countries there is evidence that the returns to education have been rising.Evidence for changes over this period for developing countries is limited. In this paper we use data from Kenya and Tanzania to...