In Ghana there is a highly developed apprenticeship system where young men and women undertake sector-specific private training, which yields skills used primarily in the informal sector.  In this paper we use a 2006 urban based household survey with detailed questions on the background,...

The recent wave of randomized trials in development economics has provoked criticisms regarding external validity.  We investigate two concerns - heterogeneity across beneficiaries and implementers - in a randomized trial of contract teachers in Kenyan schools.  The intervention, previously...

The size of the informal sector is commonly associated with low per capita GDP and a poor business environment.  Recent episodes of reform and growth in several African countries appear to contradict this pattern.  From the mid 1980's onward, Ghana underwent dramatic liberalization and...

This paper addresses the question as to why we observe such large differentials in earnings in urban African labour markets after controlling for observable human capital.  We first use a three year panel across Ghana and Tanzania and find common patterns for both countries assuming that...

This paper investigates the role of learning - through formal schooling and time spent in the labor market - in explaining labor market outcomes of urban workers in Ghana and Tanzania.  We investigate these issues using a new data set measuring incomes of both formal sector wage workers and the...

This paper provides an overview of how African labor markets have performed in the 1990s. It is argued that the failure of African labor markets to create good paying jobs has resulted in excess labor supply in the form of either open unemployment or a growing self-employment sector. One...

In this note we make use of embryonic labour market panel surveys of the urban sectors of Ghana and Tanzania, and a longer term survey from Ethiopia, to address some aspects of the determinants of earnings across the wage and self-employed and provide preliminary evidence on transitions across...