As efforts at economic integration gain ground at the regional and multilateral level, Africa's trading relations with the United States, the European Union and other partners are under the most comprehensive review since the colonial era. Those African countries in the vanguard will see the...

This paper argues that understanding the mechanisms of growth requires going beyond the reduced form, and demonstrates important differences in the mechanisms of growth in Africa. Certain policy distortions and exogenous factors are more costly to growth in Africa than elsewhere, while the...

Southern Africa is strongly tied to the European economy, but their bilateral trade occurs in the context of a global economy. Any change with respect to one trading partner will have repercussions for other partners. This study aims to inform trade negotiations between South Africa and the...

The purpose of this study is to assess the economic performance of African countries according to their exchange rate regimes. The methodology is based on the estimation of an empirical growth model that controls for labor productivity, investment share, initial income per capita, and changes in...

This paper examines the potential for success for trade-focused regional integration agreements in Sub-Saharan Africa, with particular focus on Southern Africa. The paper surveys the existing literature on regional integration, and attempts to distill the most relevant lessons about success and...

Competitiveness is a hotly-debated topic among policy-makers and businessmen throughout the world. Yet it has been the subject of surprisingly little rigorous economic analysis. The paper presents a method which draws on economic theory to measure competitiveness and its sources at the firm- and...

In 1997 the World Bank's two vice-presidents for Sub-Saharan Africa attributed a significant improvement in Africa's growth prospects to the advent of a new generation of leaders, replacing their "once largely statist and corrupt" predecessors. This paper begins by tracing the evolution of...