The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is the flagship of U.S. commercial and development policy with Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper looks at the impact of the trade preferences that are the central element of AGOA on African countries' exports to the U.S. and puts them in the perspective...

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...

This paper uses World Bank survey data, including about 10,000 households in five countries -- Burkina Faso, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda -- to investigate the link between international remittances and households' financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper finds that receiving...