This paper examines systematically the growth effects of trade integration in Sub-Saharan Africa. It complements and improves upon the empirical literature in two aspects: first, it jointly estimates the impact of different dimensions of trade integration, namely, trade volumes, export/trade...

The climate change challenge and the growth of the Islamic finance industry, together with the increase in socially responsible investing, could position green sukuk as a key instrument for financing clean energy and resilient infrastructure projects as well as shorter-term energy efficiency...

This paper investigates the costs and benefits of concluding double tax treaties with investment hubs. Based on a sample of 41 African economies from 1985-2015, the results suggest that signing treaties with investment hubs is not associated with additional investments; yet, these treaties tend...

Women's ownership, use, and control over property matter for their well-being and agency and can influence outcomes for the second generation -- women's daughters and sons. Additionally, gender gaps in property ownership induce allocative inefficiencies and foregone economic output, thus having...

Improving electricity access in low-income countries is a challenging problem because of the high costs of grid extension and low demand for grid electricity in rural areas. This study elucidates these constraints by analyzing poor households' willingness-to-pay for different types of...

This paper assesses the relation between access to markets and cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa. Making use of a geo-referenced panel over three decades (1970-2005) during which the road network was significantly improved, the analysis finds a modest but significant positive association...

This paper provides new empirical insights on the joint distribution of consumption, income, and wealth in three of the poorest countries in the world ? Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda ? all located in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The first finding is that while income inequality is similar to that of...

In recent years there has been a rapid increase in the presence and growth of greenfield microfinance institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper uses regressions to benchmark those African greenfields relative to other microfinance providers and finds that greenfields grew faster in terms of...