Dependence on agro-commodity exports amongst low-income economies mean that they are uniquely vulnerable to balance of payment shocks. They are often also dependent on the imports of food crops and energy, resulting in a double burden in the post-COVID-19 period. In this paper, we review new and...

The global spread of the corona virus is a massive challenge for countries in the Global South. Beyond the health crisis, many countries face economic turmoil linked to their dependence on commodities. Commodity markets have reacted strongly to the COVID-19 crisis with drastic price movements...

Many least developed countries (LDCs) face commodity dependence on the export and import side. This paper develops a structuralist computable general equilibrium model for commodity-dependent LDCs and simulates global commodity price shocks for Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Results show...

The economic integration process requires appropriate understanding of the degree of vulnerability of member states to various kinds of shocks as well as identification of appropriate measures to mitigate the impact of these shocks on macroeconomic performance. Consequently, this study seeks to...

The management of revenues from exhaustible natural resources involves a number of challenges. In this paper, we argue that the standard policy advice to managers of resource revenues has been dominated by short-termism and the lack of a perspective on economic development and structural...

This paper contributes to the debate on aid effectiveness by looking at the 'how' of aid effectiveness. In other words it provides an assessment of whether aid only filled a financing gap or whether it, in addition, helped influence the political economy in a way that engendered growth. Ghana...

The root cause behind the Chinese economy's slowing down in 2012 lies in a "one-size-fits-all" approach to macroeconomic management. This approach must be abandoned if domestic demand is to be effectively boosted. A superior approach would involve the introduction of policies tailored to the...

This paper focuses on the macroeconomic management of large inflows of foreign aid. It investigates the extent to which African countries have coordinated fiscal and macroeconomic responses to aid surges. In practice, we construct a panel dataset to investigate the level of aid 'absorption' and...

In economic models of crime individuals respond to changes in the potential value of criminal opportunities. We analyse this issue by estimating crime-price elasticities from detailed data on criminal incidents in London between 2002 and 2012. The unique data feature we exploit is a detailed...