This paper compares reform ownership in Ghana and Tanzania over the past two decades. It finds that on several dimensions, Ghana’s early economic reforms enjoyed a high degree of ownership. That ownership was not embedded, however, in a politico-institutional framework that ensured that...

This study critically reviews the education sector in Kenya and the challenges facing the sector in achieving universal primary schooling. The study argues that the introduction of cost-sharing system in Kenya has resulted in high dropout and repetition rates, low transition and completion...

This paper uses data on individual earnings in manufacturing industry for five African countries in the early 1990s to test whether firms located in the capital city pay higher wages than firms located elsewhere, and whether such benefits accrue to all or only certain types of workers. Earnings...

A group of low-income countries classified as HIPCs have continued to experience difficulties in managing and servicing their huge stocks of external debt. Most of these countries including Kenya are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The relatively high level of Kenya’s external indebtedness and rising...

An almost accidental by-product of the enhanced HIPC initiative, the process of producing poverty reduction strategy papers represents at least potentially a non-trivial change in the way international finance interacts with poverty reduction efforts at the national level. This paper reports the...

Kenya’s external debt has continued to swell over the years, and despite the country meeting its debt commitment through regular servicing, this has been done at the expense of key social services such as health, education, water and sanitation. Although good health is a pre-requisite to...

Capital is central to efficient intermediation and is a core indication of the financial health of a bank. Recent shifts in monetary policy, economic shocks and contextspecific events in interbank liquidity flow in Kenya call for a revisit of banks' response through the lens of their...

This paper examines the effect of board gender diversity on bank risk. The empirical analysis is conducted using 21 sample Kenyan commercial banks during the period 2010-2022 in a panel regression framework. Two key results are documented: first, that the share of women in Kenyan bank boards is...

Using a Panel VAR model and annual bank level data for the period 2008-2022, this study investigated banks risk taking behaviour amid monetary policy tightening considering the role of banks' non-interest-bearing deposits and equity levels. Estimation results found monetary policy tightening and...

Effective policies to stabilize macroeconomic conditions are essential for economic growth. In the context of this study, policymakers pursue these macroeconomic stability objectives by adjusting fiscal and monetary policy. The study used impulse response functions (IRFs) derived from vector...