This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

Determinants of economic growth: A cross-country empirical study.

Kuznets (Simon) - Modem Economie Growth.

国民経済核算体系 : System of National Accounts

Designed for the general reader and students of law, this is a concise history and analysis of the civil law tradition, which is dominant in most of Europe, all of Latin America, and many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This new edition deals with recent significant events& such as the fall of the Soviet empire and the resulting precipitous decline of the socialist legal tradition& and their significance for the civil law tradition. The book also incorporates the findings of recent important literature on the legal cultures of civil law countries.

The Civil Law Tradition. An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Western Europe and Latin America.

This note introduces the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database (ETD), which provides time series of employment and real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 countries for the period 1990–2018. The ETD includes 20 Asian, 9 Latin American, 4 Middle-East and North African, and 18 sub-Saharan African countries at varying levels of economic development. The ETD is constructed on the basis of an in-depth investigation of the availability and usability of statistical sources on a country-by-country basis. The ETD provides researchers with data to analyse the variety and determinants of structural transformation and supports policies aimed at sustained growth and poverty reduction.

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The Economic Transformation Database (ETD): content, sources, and methods

This paper examines industrialization trends in developing countries It uses the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides time series of employment and real and nominal value added annually by 12 sectors in 51 countries for the period 1990-2018 Until the early 2000s de-industrialization was widespread, but then the trend reversed Regressions that control for income and demographic trends suggest significant employment industrialization in developing Asia and sub-Saharan Africa We explore the nature of this manufacturing renaissance

/pdf/a-manufacturing-renaissance-industrialization-trends-in-the-1yrcmt0n4c.pdf

A manufacturing renaissance? Industrialization trends in the developing world

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between banking sector efficiency and economic growth in Africa.

Methodology/approach – The paper used the stochastic frontier approach stating the banking sector cost function as a Fourier flexible to estimate bank efficiency. We then used the Arellano–Bond GMM estimator to investigate the relationship between banking sector efficiency and economic growth. Annual data for banking sector financial statements were used in estimating efficiency scores.

Findings – The study found banking sector efficiency in the sample to be 69%. We also found a positive relationship between banking sector efficiency and economic growth, confirming the critical role banks play in the economy.

Practical implications – Banking sector efficiency score of 69% implies banks in Africa could save up to 31% of their total cost if they were to operate efficiently. Policy direction should therefore focus on policies and incentives that will improve the efficiency of the banking sector and hence economic growth. The study brings to the fore the importance of the qualitative aspect of the banking sector in allocating financial resources in the real economy. Focus in the real economy should not be only on the size of the banking system but also on the quality with which resources are allocated.

Originality/value of paper – This study is among the first dedicated solely to African countries. It does set the pace for future research in the area and also confirms in Africa the Schumpeterian hypothesis that the banking sector is key in allocating resources in the real economy.

Enhancing the Economic Growth of Africa: Does Banking Sector Efficiency Matter?

Exposure to import competition can either help or hurt domestic employment creation. There is, however, a dearth of cross-country empirical evidence assessing labor market effects of import penetration in Africa. This paper fills this gap. Using manufacturing industry and establishment-level data across 20 African countries and estimating a conditional and unconditional labor demand model, we find an unambiguous employment creation effect of intermediate good import penetration, whilst final good import penetration has a negative, or at best, an insignificant effect on employment. Splitting intermediate good import penetration into their origins, we find that intermediate good import penetration from developed (developing) countries is employment increasing (reducing). Further analyses reveal that the positive employment effects of intermediate import penetration from developed countries disproportionately benefit the skilled workforce. We also find that industries with higher absorptive capacity stand to gain more from intermediate good import penetration from developed countries, with the negative effects of intermediate good import penetration from developing countries also diminished for these industries. We discuss the implications of our findings.

Import Penetration and Manufacturing Employment: Evidence from Africa

This paper combines a standard decomposition of labour productivity with a decomposition of labour market turbulence to study the role of structural change and job reallocation in the economic growth performance of African countries over the past fifty years using an updated and expanded version of the Africa Sector Database (ASD) developed by the Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC) The results show that productivity growth has been generally low since the 1960s with moderate contributions from structural change across the entire period Although productivity growth from structural change is generally low, a regional comparison shows that structural change is more rapid in East Africa than in the other regions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) While structural change accounts for more than half of the labour productivity growth in East Africa, within-sector productivity growth accounts for more than half of the labour productivity growth in West Africa and Southern Africa Structural change is characterised by a net reallocation of workers across different sectors As such, we compute the labour market turbulence effect of structural change The turbulence effect of structural change has been mostly felt in the Service Sector due to volatile demand and the high level of informality The paper further makes the first attempt to estimate the effect of labour market flexibility on job reallocation in Africa The results show that more rigid labour markets reduce job reallocation across sectors impeding structural change and productivity growth in Africa

Emmanuel Mensah

Papers

The Economic Transformation Database (ETD): content, sources, and methods

A manufacturing renaissance? Industrialization trends in the developing world

Enhancing the Economic Growth of Africa: Does Banking Sector Efficiency Matter?

Import Penetration and Manufacturing Employment: Evidence from Africa

Structural change, productivity growth and labour market turbulence in Africa