Do growth spells in Africa end because of bad realizations of the same factors that influence growth spells in the rest of the world, or because of different factors altogether? To answer this question, we examine determinants of growth spells in Africa and the rest of the world using Bayesian...

This paper examines empirically the determinants of financial market development in Africa with an emphasis on banking systems and stock markets. The results show that income level, creditor rights protection, financial repression, and political risk are the main determinants of banking sector...

This paper presents a novel framework to estimate the elasticity between nighttime lights and quarterly economic activity. The relationship is identified by accounting for varying degrees of measurement errors in nighttime light data across countries. The estimated elasticity is 1.55 for...

The inclusiveness of growth depends on the extent of access to economic and social opportunities. This paper applies the concept of social opportunity function to ascertain the inclusiveness of growth episodes in selected African countries. Premised on the concept of social welfare function,...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. SOME STYLIZED FACTS -- III. DETERMINANTS OF PRIVATE INVESTMENT -- IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS -- APPENDIX: A CANONICAL MODEL OF CORPORATE INVESTMENT -- References.

The boundary between the public and private sectors can be defined on the basis of ownership of institutional units. Nonmarket government-owned entities and corporations that are owned or controlled by government units belong to the public sector. "Economic ownership" is more important than...

This paper provides new evidence on the role of IMF programs in stimulating private sector investments. Using detailed firm-level data on tangible fixed assets and a local projection methodology, we first estimate the dynamic response of firm investments to the approval of an IMF arrangement. We...

We quantify the extent to which public-sector employment crowds out private-sector employment using specially assembled datasets for a large cross-section of developing and advanced countries, and discuss the implications for countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus and Central Asia....

We compile a novel database on average public and private sector wages and public-private wage differentials, which we use to analyze how average public-private wage differentials vary according to gender and skill level as well as over time. We further examine the dynamic relationship between...