This paper argues that both openness and poverty in a country are endogenously determined by the country’s long-term economic development strategy. Development strategies can be broadly divided into two mutually exclusive groups: (i) the comparative advantage-defying (CAD) strategy, which...

In this paper, we investigate the root cause for large MSMEs finance gap. We advance five propositions for the mechanism through which the distorted financial structure generated by a comparative-advantage-defying strategy leads to large MSMEs finance gap. We then use panel data from 115...

In this paper, we develop an endogenous growth model that combines structural change with repeated product improvements. There are two sectors in the present paper, one is traditional sector, and the other is modern sector. The technological progress in the traditional sector takes the form of...

Africa's economic performance has been widely viewed with pessimism. In this paper, we use firm-level data for around 80 countries to examine formal firm performance. Without controls, manufacturing African firms perform significantly worse than firms in other regions. They have lower...