This paper uses firm-level data from company tax declarations to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and manufacturing firm performance in South Africa. There are three main findings. The first is on firm heterogeneity, showing that...

Enterprise development, especially expansion into export markets, is essential to create employment and unlock growth potential in many economies, including in sub-Saharan Africa. However, both firm and product survival (mainly in the export market) is not sufficiently documented to inform...

We develop a poverty decomposition method that is based on a consumption regression model. Because this method uses an integral of the partial derivatives of a poverty measure with respect to time, the resulting poverty decomposition satisfies time-reversion consistency and sub-period...

This study evaluates the effects of the informal sector on Nigerian workers' livelihoods and analyses workers' transitions within the informal sector and between informal and formal employment. A binary logit model is applied to General Household Survey panel data for the periods 2010/11,...

This study uses data collected from school students in Mumbai to investigate how they perceive subjective expected returns for different levels of education in an environment that includes labour market discrimination. We are particularly keen to observe subjective returns to education for...

This paper estimates returns to schooling in Thailand, applying a regression discontinuity approach to the change in the compulsory schooling law in 1978. This law helped to enhance human capital investment on the eve of rapid structural transformation. The returns to schooling based on our...

Cameroon's informal labour market largely harbours female workers, engaged mainly in low-productivity and low-paying jobs. We investigate the sticky floor and glass ceiling phenomena in the informal labour market as a whole and across its segments. We use the 2010 Cameroon labour market survey,...

Although microfinance started as a movement to improve women's economic wellbeing through increased female entrepreneurship in particular, its impact on women's attitudes toward and participation in the labour market is not fully understood. We fill this gap by combining data on branch locations...

The arrival of European settlers at the Cape in 1652 marked the beginning of what would become an extremely unequal society. Comparative analysis reveals that certain endowments exist in societies that experience a 'persistence of inequality'. This paper shows that the emphasis on endowments may...

The United Nations Millennium Declaration commits to halving extreme poverty between 2000 and 2015. The South African government has set a goal of halving poverty by 2014, although the meaning of this goal has not yet been defined. This article specifies government's stated target of halving...