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on Africa |
| By: | Batista, Catia (Trinity College Dublin); Vicente, Pedro C. (Trinity College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | This paper tests the hypothesis that international migration experiences may promote better institutions at home by raising the demand for political accountability. In order to examine this question, we use a simple postcard voting experiment designed to capture the population’s desire for better governance. Using data from a tailored household survey, we examine the determinants of voting behavior in our experiment, and isolate the positive effect of international emigration on the demand for political accountability. We find that this effect can be mainly attributed to the presence of return migrants, particularly to those who emigrated to countries with better governance. |
| Keywords: | international migration, governance, political accountability, institutions, effects of emigration in origin countries, household survey, Cape Verde, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| JEL: | F22 O12 O15 O43 P16 |
| Date: | 2010–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4688&r=afr |
| By: | Bargain, Olivier (University College Dublin); Kwenda, Prudence (University College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | The informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of labor markets in emerging economies. To characterize better this highly heterogeneous sector, we conduct a distributional analysis of the earnings gap between informal and formal employment in Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, distinguishing between dependent and independent workers. For each country, we use rich panel data to estimate fixed effects quantile regressions to control for (time-invariant) unobserved heterogeneity. The dual nature of the informal sector emerges from our results. In the high-tier segment, self-employed workers receive a significant earnings premium that may compensate the benefits obtained in formal jobs. In the lower end of the earnings distribution, both informal wage earners and independent (own account) workers face significant earnings penalties vis-à-vis the formal sector. Yet the dual structure is not balanced in the same way in all three countries. Most of the self-employment carries a premium in Mexico. In contrast, the upper-tier segment is marginal in South Africa, and informal workers, both dependent and independent, form a largely penalized group. More consistent with the competitive view, earnings differentials are small at all levels in Brazil. |
| Keywords: | quantile regression, earnings differential, informal sector, salary work, self-employed, fixed effects model |
| JEL: | J21 J23 J24 J31 O17 |
| Date: | 2010–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4711&r=afr |
| By: | Collier, Paul; Vicente, Pedro C.; Fafchamps, Marcel |
| Date: | 2009–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:oxford:http://economics.ouls.ox.ac.uk/14316/&r=afr |
| By: | Annegret Maehler (GIGA Institute of Global and Area Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the oil-violence link in the Niger Delta, systematically taking into consideration domestic and international contextual factors. The case study, which focuses on explaining the increase in violence since the second half of the 1990s, confirms the differentiated interplay of resource-specific and non-resource-specific causal factors. With regard to the key contextual conditions responsible for violence, the results underline the basic relevance of cultural cleavages and political-institutional and socioeconomic weakness that existed even before the beginning of the “oil era.” Oil has indirectly boosted the risk of violent conflicts through a further distortion of the national economy. Moreover, the transition to democratic rule in 1999 decisively increased the opportunities for violent struggle, in a twofold manner: firstly, through the easing of political repression and, secondly, through the spread of armed youth groups, which have been fostered by corrupt politicians. These incidents imply that violence in the Niger Delta is increasingly driven by the autonomous dynamics of an economy of violence: the involvement of security forces, politicians and (international) businessmen in illegal oil theft helps to explain the perpetuation of the violent conflicts at a low level of intensity. |
| Keywords: | Nigeria, natural resources, oil, political economy, violence, context sensitivity |
| Date: | 2010–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gig:wpaper:120&r=afr |
| By: | Juan Camilo Cárdenas; Luz Ángela Rodríguez; Nancy Johnson |
| Abstract: | The dilemma of collective action around water use and management involves solving both the problems of provision and appropriation. Cooperation in the provision can be affected by the rival nature of the appropriation and the asymmetries in the access. We report two field experiments conducted in Colombia and Kenya. The Irrigation Game was used to explore the provision and appropriation decisions under asymmetric or sequential appropriation, complemented with a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism experiment which looks at provision decisions under symmetric appropriation. The overall results were consistent with the patterns of previous studies: the zero contribution hypotheses is rejected whereas the most effective institution to increase cooperation was face-to-face communication, and above external regulations, although we find that communication works much more effectively in Colombia. We also find that the asymmetric appropriation did reduce cooperation, though the magnitude of the social loss and the effectiveness of alternative institutional options varied across sites. |
| Date: | 2009–11–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:006649&r=afr |