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on Africa |
| By: | Djemaï, Elodie |
| Abstract: | This paper questions the positive relationship between HIV prevalence and income in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we hypothesize that a greater economic instability would reduce the incentives to engage in self-protective behaviors inducing people to increasingly take the risk of HIV-infection and hence causing a rise in HIV prevalence. We provide a simple model to stress on the effects of an increase in income risk in the incentives for protection. We test the prediction using a panel of Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2001. It is shown that the epidemic is widespread in countries that experience a great instability in gross domestic product over the whole period. When introducing income instability, GDP per capita is devoid of predictive power and the puzzle of the positive relationship between income and prevalence in Africa is lifted. Additional finding states that the risk taking of HIV-infection increases when the individuals are facing frequent and large crop shocks. |
| Keywords: | HIV/AIDS epidemic; incentives; self-protection; macroeconomic instability; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | J10 I12 C23 |
| Date: | 2008–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:11740&r=afr |
| By: | Kohnert, Dirk |
| Abstract: | About fifty years after the independence of most former colonies on the African continent, books on African nationalism again rank high on the agenda of the international academic discussion. A selection of three recent publications demonstrates the advances made in scholarly analysis in the meantime as well as the wide range of related subjects. The new nationalism in Africa and elsewhere shows remarkable differences both in its roots and its impact, compared with that of the national independence movements of the early 1960s. Review article of: * Chipkin, Ivor (2007), Do South Africans Exist? Nationalism, Democracy and the Identity of the “People”. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, ISBN 1868144453, 261 pages. * Dorman, Sara, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent (eds.) (2007), Making Nations, Creating Strangers. States and Citizenship in Africa. African Social Studies Series, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 9004157905, 282 pages. * Simpson, Andrew (ed.) (2008), Language and National Identity in Africa. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199286751, 448 pages |
| Keywords: | Nationalism; nation building; democratization; civil society; national identity; xenophobia; Africa; |
| JEL: | F52 O24 O15 N00 P48 J78 Z13 K33 F5 I38 N17 A14 |
| Date: | 2009–05–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:15621&r=afr |
| By: | Amavilah, Voxi Heinrich |
| Abstract: | I estimate and compare the effects of globalization, governance, and conventional factors and forces on the economic performance of Sub-Saharan African countries. The analysis finds that both physical and human capita as well as unexplained technical residuals affect economic performance, although human capital and technical change do not always have statistically significant impacts. The policy implication of these results calls for improvement of all three variables. Economic performance also varies with measures of globalization, suggesting that globalization is good for economic performance, but it is social globalization rather than economic globalization that is most beneficial. On average the quality of institutions are important to economic performance, but, when disaggregated, different measures of institutional quality have different effects on performance. The results are reasonable, even as there remains a need to improve them. |
| Keywords: | Globaliztion; governance; economic performance; Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | O55 O47 O43 F43 |
| Date: | 2009–06–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:15600&r=afr |
| By: | Martine Mariotti |
| Abstract: | Conventional wisdom holds that international political pressure and domestic civil unrest in the mid-1970s and 1980s brought an end to apartheid in South Africa. I show that, prior to these events, labor market pressure in the late 1960s/early 1970s caused a dramatic unraveling of apartheid in the workplace. Increased educational attainment among whites reduced resistance to opening semi-skilled jobs to Africans. This institutional change reflected white economic preferences rather than a relaxation of attitudes toward apartheid. I show that whites benefited from the relaxation of job reservation rules and that this is the primary cause of black occupational advancement. |
| JEL: | N37 J71 |
| Date: | 2009–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2009-503&r=afr |
| By: | Vadlamannati, Krishna Chaitanya |
| Abstract: | The relationship between globalization and human rights remains highly controversial in African context. Neoliberals argue that globalization lead to growth and development generating respect for human rights. While skeptics contend that globalization process always tends to be ‘exclusive of poor’ increasing inequality leading to social unrest and economic insecurity. This leads to domestic violence and conflicts, allowing governments to resort to repressive measures. We unpack both these arguments and test several dimensions of human rights under the conditions of globalization. Previous studies have examined this issue for global sample with single indicators, such as trade openness and FDI. We however make use of Axel Dreher’s comprehensive measure of globalization index capturing the extent of globalization along the three dimensions of economic, political, and social globalization, to assess the propositions. Using the sample of 33 African countries for the period 1981 – 2005, our findings reveal a strong positive association between globalization and government respect for basic human rights, political terror scale. In contrast to the arguments of dependency school of thought, we also find positive relationship between disaggregated components of globalization and government respect for human rights. Of particular interest is that these results are reiterated for a sample of 28 Sub-Saharan African countries. |
| Keywords: | Globalization; Human rights; Africa. |
| JEL: | F15 O55 |
| Date: | 2009–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:15290&r=afr |
| By: | Kundishora, Phillip |
| Abstract: | This paper reviews the decentralization process in Eastern and Southern Africa. It begins with an analysis of the socio-economic as well as the political challenges confronting most countries in the region. This analysis places the decentralization debate into context as these challenges have a bearing on the outcome of any reforms undertaken. The paper goes on to define decentralization and local democracy in order to come up with a clear understanding of the different forms of decentralization as well as the tenets of local democracy. |
| Keywords: | decentralization; local governance; democracy. |
| JEL: | H77 H7 |
| Date: | 2009–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:15701&r=afr |
| By: | Okey, Mawussé Komlagan Nézan |
| Abstract: | This paper analyze the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth,as well as the relationship between energy sources for a panel of four WAEMU countries; Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Togo, for the period 1970-2005. Econometric analysis results indicate that there are: a bi-directional causality between oil consumption and economic growth, for the panel as a whole, but no causality between electricity and economic growth, and no substitution between energy sources at the short run. At the long run, there is a bi-directional causality between economic growth and both the energy sources which become substitutable. These results not only underline the energy dependence of the economic growth, and the rigidity of energy consumption behaviors of these four countries at the short run, but also support regional energy policies which must take account some countries specificities. |
| Keywords: | energy consumption; economic growth; panel; WAEMU |
| JEL: | O13 Q40 C33 |
| Date: | 2009–06–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:15521&r=afr |
| By: | Arnaldo MAURI |
| Abstract: | The study is concerned with a crucial period of the banking history of Ethiopia, almost untouched so far by the specializing literature, in which the banking industry was affected by important changes. The paper describes and analyses the reconstruction process of the banking system and the reorganization of the monetary setting in Ethiopia started in 1941, when the Italian colonial rule came to an end and the country regained independence, during World War II. The terminal date of the study is the beginning of 1964, when a one-tier banking system, based on a state-owned financial institution, the State Bank of Ethiopia, gave way to a two-tiers banking system. The monetary banking reform in Ethiopia after liberation in 1941 was an event logical, inevitable and predictable. Different paths, however could had be followed at that moment. The choice in money matter was to establish a national monetary unit, the Ethiopian dollar, instead of keeping the country inside the East African shilling area. On the other hand, as far as concerns banking, it was opted for establishing a state-owned financial institution enjoying a monopolistic position in the credit market rather than for setting up a system of private banks, possibly expatriate. |
| Keywords: | Ethiopia, African Banking, Banking History, Monetary Reform |
| JEL: | E42 G21 N27 |
| Date: | 2008–05–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2008-11&r=afr |
| By: | Admasu Shiferaw |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the investment behavior of firms under uncertainty. Its main focus is the heterogeneity of firm level investment responses to both demand and supply side sources of uncertainty. Accordingly, the investment-uncertainty relationship is examined across groups of firms with varying degrees of investment irreversibility defined on the basis of market structures and access to secondary markets for capital goods. Consistent with theories of irreversible investment, we find evidence that uncertainty undermines the investment responses of firms in less competitive markets and in industries with little or no secondary markets for capital goods. In comparison with small firms, investment by large firms is more responsive to changes in demand and more in-line with models of partial irreversibility. |
| Keywords: | Investment, Uncertainty, Irreversibility, African Manufacturing, Ethiopia |
| JEL: | D21 D81 O16 |
| Date: | 2009–04–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:got:gotcrc:2&r=afr |
| By: | Dorothée Boccanfuso (GREDI, Faculte d'administration, Université de Sherbrooke); Antonio Estache (European Centre for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics at the Free University of Brussels); Luc Savard (GREDI, Faculte d'administration, Université de Sherbrooke) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we present an analysis of distributional impact analysis of climate change policies envisaged or implemented to reduce greenhouse gasses emissions on Senegal. We consider policies implemented in developed countries (namely the ones engaged in the Kyoto protocol) and their impact on a developing country. Moreover, we simulate a diminishing productivity of land used in agriculture as a potential result of CC for Senegal. This country is exposed to the direct consequences of CC and is vulnerable to changes in world prices of energy given is lack of substitution capacity. According to Winters et al (1998), countries with this profile will bear the greatest burden of CC and its mitigating policies. Our results reveal slight increases in poverty when world price of fossil fuels increase and the negative impact are amplified with decreases in land productivity. However, subsidizing electricity consumption to protect consumers for price world price increases in fossil fuels provides a weak cushion to poverty increase. |
| Keywords: | Global warming, environmental policies, income distribution, developing countries |
| JEL: | Q53 D58 Q54 Q58 I32 |
| Date: | 2009–05–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shr:wpaper:09-11&r=afr |