During the second half of the 20th century Asia as a whole experienced a much higher increase in production per inhabitant than Africa, due to several factors which caused improvements in industrial development and moderation in the rates of population growth. We present a comparison, at area...

The rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the communist empire was one of the distinguishing events of the twentieth century. The 21 countries that made up the Warsaw Pact simultaneously made a transition from Communism to more market-based economic systems. These countries all shared a common...

This paper provides new evidence on the long-run relationship between trade and budget deficits in ten African countries over the quarterly period 1973:2 - 2005:4. Cointegration analyses are based on four approaches: Harris-Inder (1994), Shin (1994), Geweke and Porter-Hudak (1983) and Sowell...

Researchers have linked sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) poor growth performance in recent decades to several factors, including geography, institutions, and low returns to investment. This literature has not yet integrated the research that identifies linkages between gender, economic development,...

This paper puts sub-Saharan Africa's economic development into perspective. While much did not go as hoped for at independence, much of the region has been on a more promising development trajectory since the mid-1990s, as we illustrate using growth, poverty, and human development indicators. We...

Using comparable data sets for five African countries we estimate, and evaluate possible explanations for, the employer size wage effect across these. Our results indicate, just as has been generally found for other developing and developed nations, that apart from observable worker...

Pro-poor growth has been identified as one of the most promising pathways to accelerate poverty reduction in developing countries. The diagnostic pro-poor growth toolbox has so far focused on the income dimension as well as key non-income achievements in education and health. This article...

This paper has revisited the roles of agricultural sector development for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in responding to the twofold challenges – broadening the base of economic growth and sustaining growth momentum. Based on a holistic and long-term perspective on the mechanism of an economic...

This paper has revisited the roles of agricultural sector development for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in responding to the twofold challenges – broadening the base of economic growth and sustaining growth momentum. Based on a holistic and long-term perspective on the mechanism of an economic...

According to the World Bank, in 2011, 415 million, that is 41.5 percent of the world's extremely poor, living on less than $1.25 a day, live in Saharan Africa. A situation where more than 415 million people in a sub region of the world still live in abject poverty should be of global concern not...