It has been argued that Africa will not be able to export manufactures as it lacks the necessary skills. This study uses panel data from Ghana to ask how skills have impacted on manufacturing investment and exports in the 1990s. Two dimensions of skills are defined and measure. The first is that...

Empirical work in labour economics has focused on rent sharing as an explanation for the observed correlation in cross-sections between wages and profitability. The alternative explanation of risk sharing between workers and employers has not been tested. Using a unique panel data set for four...

Apprenticeships are the most common form of non-academic training in sub-Saharan Africa. Most apprenticeships are provided by the private sector, for a fee, and lead to self-employment rather than to wage jobs. Where the effects have been measured, they show that earnings are not higher, on...

In this paper we investigate if the predictions of three different models of capital adjustment costs are consistent with the observed investment patterns among manufacturing firms in five African countries. We document a high frequency of zero investment episodes, which is consistent with both...

In this paper we ask how technological differences in manufacturing across countries can best be modeled when using a standard production function approach. We show that it is important to allow for differences in technology as measured by differences in parameters. Of similar importance are...

In this paper, we use a three-period panel of Tanzanian households to explore the determinants of earnings and earnings growth from 2004 to 2006. In doing so, we draw particular attention to the role of education and to the importance of heterogeneity between more and less formal occupations....

The Ghana cocoa market has been extensively liberalised over the period since the mid 1980s. Three issues have been prominent in microeconomic research on the effects of liberalisation on agriculture. The first has been the size of any supply response, the second has been the effect on producers...

Recent reforms in most African economies of their trading and exchange rate regimes have eliminated much of the protection which previously limited competition. Despite these reforms, African manufacturing firms remain unsuccessful, particularly in international export markets. In this paper we...