We build a data set on financial and human capital flight for 48 countries for the period 1970--98 and analyse capital flight as a portfolio choice. Financial capital flight is measured as the stock of capital flight relative to domestically held private net wealth and human capital flight as...

I use firm-level census data to study changes in the structure of Ethiopia's manufacturing sector between 1998 and 2008. Over this period, aggregate manufacturing value-added grew at the same rate as GDP, the number of manufacturing firms more than doubled, and average firm size fell by more...

The poor performance of many African economies has been associated with low growth of exports in general and of manufacturing exports in particular. In this paper, we draw on micro-evidence of manufacturing firms in five African countries, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria, to...

After briefly reviewing the new institutionalism, this article uses the history of political reform in Africa to test its key tenet: �that power, if properly organised, is a productive resource. It does so by exploring the relationship between changes in political institutions and changes in...

After briefly reviewing the new institutionalism, this article uses the history of political reform in Africa to test its key tenet: that power, if properly organised, is a productive resource. It does so by exploring the relationship between changes in political institutions and changes in...

As poor policies are blamed for dismal economic outcomes in many African countries and institutions and governance have assumed greater importance in explaining policy making, this article overviews a set of papers appearing in the current volume on 'institutions, governance and economic...

This paper considers why economic policies may need to be distinctive if a country is post-conflict relative to others which are equally poor but peaceful. Objectives should probably be distinctive because the risk of conflict is typically much higher. I argue that appropriate responses are job...

Modern theories of political economy analyze the sources of political power and their uses for economic ends. The key instruments are taxation and regulation. Although international political economy treats states as its unit of analysis, the number of states is endogenous. This is highly...