Ghana is experiencing its third gold rush, and this paper sheds light on the socioeconomic impacts of this rapid expansion in industrial production. The paper uses a rich data set consisting of geocoded household data combined with detailed information on gold mining activities, and conducts two...

Over the past decade Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a remarkable turnaround in economic performance. After years of stagnation, economic growth has spurted gross domestic product (GDP) grew from an annual average rate of less than 2 percent in 1978-95 to nearly 6 percent over 2003-08. Inflation is...

Africa’s Pulse is a biannual publication containing an analysis of the near-term macro-economic outlook for the region. It also includes a section focusing on a topic that represents a particular development challenges for the continent. It is produced by the Office of the Chief Economist for...

A multiethnic country like Côte d’Ivoire, which was relatively stable until the late 1980s, has been mired in crisis in the last two decades and experienced large-scale violence. This paper undertakes a disaggregated analysis of the civil war at sub-national levels in Cote d’Ivoire for the...

In this paper we estimate the causal effects of conflict on dietary energy supply in Côte d’Ivoire. To identify the true impact of conflict, we use (1) pre-war and post-war household data, (2) the specific counts of conflict events across departments and (3) self-reported victimization...

In this paper we estimate the causal effects of conflict on dietary energy supply in Côte d’Ivoire. To identify the true impact of conflict, we use prewar and post-war household data bracketing the conflict period and the spatial variation in the prevalence of conflict between the North and...

In this paper we estimate the causal effects of conflict on dietary diversity in Côte d’Ivoire. To identify the true impact of conflict, we use (1) pre-war and post-war household data, (2) the specific counts of conflict events across departments, and (3) self-reported victimization...

Our hypothesis is that Nigeria is going through a process of economic polarization. An analysis of this type is new for Nigeria; the limited availability of comparable data has hindered an investigation that requires data series not too close in time. The

This paper estimates the causal effects of civil war on years of education in the context of a school-going age cohort that is exposed to armed conflict in Cote d'Ivoire. Using year and department of birth to identify an individual's exposure to war, the difference-in-difference outcomes...

Recent studies on Côte d'Ivoire show a four-fold increase in poverty rates between 1985 and 2008. However, multiple revisions in the survey design questions the validity of the Ivorian poverty trend. In this paper, we follow two simple steps to recover the comparable poverty trend. First, we...