Tanzania’s Pilot Rural Investment Climate Assessment (RICA) measures the economic environment of non-farm entrepreneurs. The pilot assessment has three key objectives: it aims to better understand the rural non-farm economy in Tanzania, shed light on rural enterprise dynamics and business...

The Rural Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is one of the first studies of small and informal firms in rural and semi-urban areas in Ethiopia. Little was known about the nature and size distribution of small, rural firms, the constraints they face when trying to expand or even to survive, the...

Mankiw et al. (1992) have extended the Solow (1956) model by augmenting the production function with human capital. Its empirical success is impressive and it showed a procedure to improve the explanatory power of the neoclassical growth model. This article suggests an empirical procedure to...

This paper compares and contrasts the performance of rural and urban manufacturing firms in Ethiopia to assess the impact of market integration and the investment climate on firm performance. Rural firms are shown to operate in isolated markets, have poor access to infrastructure and a...

We analyze short-run dynamics of inflation in Ethiopia, using a parsimonious error-correction model fitted with monthly observations. Our findings show that increased money supply and the nominal exchange rate significantly affect inflation in the short-run. Agricultural output shocks, proxied...

This paper uses uniquely matched household, enterprise and community survey data from four major regions in rural Ethiopia to characterize the performance, constraints and opportunities of nonfarm enterprises. The nonfarm enterprise sector is sizeable, particularly important for women, and plays...

This paper compares and contrasts the performance of rural and urban manufacturing firms in Ethiopia to assess the impact of market integration and the investment climate on firm performance. Rural firms are shown to operate in isolated markets, have poor access to infrastructure and a...

This paper presents new estimates of pass-through coefficients from international to domestic food prices by country in the Middle East and North Africa. The estimates indicate that, despite the use of food price subsidies and other government interventions, a rise in global food prices is...

This paper uses uniquely matched household, enterprise and community survey data from four major regions in rural Ethiopia to characterize the performance, constraints and opportunities of nonfarm enterprises. The nonfarm enterprise sector is sizeable, particularly important for women, and plays...