The textile industry's political power stemmed from its importance in southern states plus the power of the Southern delegation in the U.S. Congress in the 1960s. The strongest resistance to the industry's pressure for protection came from the foreign policy interests of the Executive branch. A...

Africa's economic performance has been widely viewed with pessimism. This paper uses firm-level data for 89 countries to examine formal firm performance. Without controls, manufacturing African firms do not perform much worse than firms in other regions. But they do have structural problems,...