Using the most recent purchasing power parity data for 44 sub-Saharan African countries, this paper examines the characteristics of long run growth in Africa between 1975 and 2005. The authors investigate the following issues: cross-country income structure, income convergence, the country level...

Low and highly volatile growth define Africa's growth experience. But there is no evidence that growth volatility is associated to long term economic performance. This result may be misleading if it suggests that volatility is not important for economic and social progress. In this paper we use...

The empirical literature on the impact of unions on wages has stressed two major conclusions. Firstly, unionised workers earn a wage premium when compared to comparable nonunionised workers. Secondly, the dispersion of wages within the union sector is lower than in the nonunion sector. We...

One of the established findings in the literature on inter-industry wage differentials is the long-term stability of the wage structure. In this paper, we examine how market-oriented and other economic reforms undertaken by an industrialising country affect the dispersion and structure of wages....

This paper investigates the impact of market-oriented economic reforms on union behaviour in Brazil. Previous work shows that openness, deregulation and similar measures constrain union power. In contrast, our results show that insider power has increased in the more competitive environment...