Perhaps no question has attracted as much attention in the economics literature as “Why are some countries richer than others?� In this article, the author revisits the “development problem� and provides some estimates of the importance of human capital in accounting...

We investigate the impact of 20th--century European colonization on growth in Africa. We find that in the 1960--88 period growth has been faster for dependencies than for colonies; for British and French colonies than for Portuguese, Belgian and Italian ones; and for countries with less economic...

We investigate the impact of 20th-century European colonization on growth. We find that colonial heritage, as measured by the identity of the metropolitan ruler and by the degree of economic penetration, matters for the heterogeneity of growth performances in Africa. Colonial indicators are...

Much of Africa has been ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. There, heterosexual contactis the primary mode of transmission for the HIV virus. Even when access to condomsis good and their price low, a large fraction of young Africans continue to engage inunprotected sex. In this paper, we propose a...

The study assesses the role of mobile phones and mobile banking in decreasing inequality in 52 African countries. The empirical procedure involves first, examining the income-redistributive effect of mobile phone penetration and then investigating the contribution of mobile banking services in...

The employment of financial development indicators without due consideration to country/regional specific financial development realities remains an issue of substantial policy relevance. Financial depth in the perspective of money supply is not equal to liquid liabilities in every development...

In the first empirical assessment of the incidence of mobile banking on financial intermediary development in Africa, we use two definitions of the financial system: the traditional IFS (2008) and Asongu (2011) measures of financial sector importance. When the conception of a financial system is...

In the first macroeconomic empirical assessment of the relationship between mobile phones and finance, this paper examines the correlations between mobile phone penetration and financial development using two conflicting definitions of the financial system in the financial development...

In the first empirical assessment of the incidence of mobile banking on financial intermediary development in Africa, we use two definitions of the financial system: the traditional IFS (2008) and Asongu (2011) measures of financial sector importance. When the conception of a financial system is...

Hitherto financial drivers of human development have been unexplored by the UNDP. This paper assesses determinants of human development from financial dynamics of depth, efficiency, size and activity on data from 38 developing countries. While the importance of financial activity, size and depth...