Is Investment in Africa Too Low or Too High? Macro and Micro Evidence PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Is Investment in Africa Too Low or Too High? Macro and Micro Evidence PDF full book. Access full book title Is Investment in Africa Too Low or Too High? Macro and Micro Evidence by Howard Pack, Shantayanan Devarajan, William Russell Easterly. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Howard Pack, Shantayanan Devarajan, William Russell Easterly
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 42
Get Book
Book Description
Many analysts decry the level of investment in Africa, saying it is too low. But there is no evidence, in cross-country data or in microeconomic data from Tanzania, that private and public capital is productive in Africa. In that sense, investment in Africa may be viewed as too high.
Author: Howard Pack, Shantayanan Devarajan, William Russell Easterly
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 42
Get Book
Book Description
Many analysts decry the level of investment in Africa, saying it is too low. But there is no evidence, in cross-country data or in microeconomic data from Tanzania, that private and public capital is productive in Africa. In that sense, investment in Africa may be viewed as too high.
Author: William Easterly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Get Book
Book Description
Many analysts decry the l ...
Author: Shantayanan Devarajan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book
Book Description
January 2001 Many analysts decry the level of investment in Africa, saying it is too low. But there is no evidence, in cross-country data or in microeconomic data from Tanzania, that private and public capital is productive in Africa. In that sense, investment in Africa may be viewed as too high. Devarajan, Easterly, and Pack investigate the relationship between weak growth performance and low investment rates in Africa. The cross-country evidence suggests no direct relationship. The positive and significant coefficient on private investment appears to be driven by Botswana's presence in the sample. Allowing for the endogeneity of private investment, controlling for policy, and positing a nonlinear relationship make no difference to the conclusion. Higher investment in Africa would not by itself produce faster GDP growth. Africa's low investment and growth rates seem to be symptoms of underlying factors. To investigate those factors and to correct for some of the problems with cross-country analysis, Devarajan, Easterly, and Pack undertook a case study of manufacturing investment in Tanzania. They tried to identify why output per worker declined while capital per worker increased. Some of the usual suspects--such as shifts from high- to low-productivity sub-sectors, the presence of state-owned enterprises, or poor policies--did not play a significant role in this decline. Instead, low capacity utilization (possibly the byproduct of poor policies) and constraints on absorptive capacity for skill acquisition seem to be critical factors. If Tanzania is not atypical, the low productivity of investment in Africa was the result of a combination of factors that occurred simultaneously, not any single factor. What does this tell us? First, we should be more careful about calling for an investment boom so that Africa can resume growth. Unless some or all of the underlying problems are addressed, the results may be disappointing. We should also be more circumspect about Africa's low savings rate; it may be low because returns to investment were so low. The relatively high level of capital flight from Africa may have been a rational response to the lack of investment opportunities at home. Second, there is probably no single key to unlocking investment and GDP growth in Africa. All of the factors contributing to low productivity should be addressed simultaneously. This paper--a joint product of Public Economics and Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to study growth and development in Africa. The authors may be contacted at
[email protected],
[email protected], or
[email protected].
Author: Shantayanan Devarajan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Inversion extranjera - Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 35
Get Book
Book Description
Author: Vijayendra Rao
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 30
Get Book
Book Description
The author examines the paradox of very poor households, spending large sums on celebrations. Using qualitative, and quantitative data from South India, the author demonstrates that spending on weddings, and festivals can be explained by integrating an anthropological understanding of how identity is shaped in Indian society, with an economic analysis of decision-making under conditions of extreme poverty, and risk. The author argues that publicly observable celebrations have two functions: they provide a space for maintaining social reputations, and webs of obligation, and, they serve as arenas for status-making competitions. The first role is central to maintaining the networks essential for social relationships, and coping with poverty. The second is a correlate of mobility that may become more prevalent as incomes rise. Development policies that favor individual over collective action, reduce the incentives for the networking function, and increase the incentives for status-enhancing functions - thus reducing social cohesion, and increasing conspicuous consumption. Market-driven improvements in urban employment, for example, could reduce a family's dependence on its traditional networks, could reduce incentives to maintain these networks, and could reduce social cohesion within a village, and thus its capacity for collective action. In contrast, micro-finance programs, and social funds try to retain, and even build a community's capacity for collective action.
Author: Lawrence Bouton
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821347850
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 64
Get Book
Book Description
This discussion paper examines in its first part, the role of private investment in economic growth. While theoretical growth models developed in the economics literature, make no distinction between private, and public components of investment, there is an emerging appreciation that private investment is more efficient, and productive tan public investment. Results from the recent empirical literature, updated here with the recent data on private investment, suggest that private investment has a stronger association with long run economic growth than public investment. The second part shows trends in private, and public fixed investment in fifty developing countries. On average, the ratio of private investment to GDP continued its upward trend, reaching record levels in 1998, the most recent year for which comparable data exist. That year, average private investment reached 14.3 percent of GDP, but public investment, fell to only 7.0 percent of GDP, its lowest level since 1974.
Author: Andrés Solimano
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781845428228
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Get Book
Book Description
Economic growth in Latin America and the rise of material welfare has lagged behind that of more dynamic areas of the world economy. In a region prone to policy experiments, the policies of the Washington Consensus applied since the 1990s failed to bring sustained growth to most of Latin America. Andres Solimano and an impressive set of contributors analyze the last 40 years in order to determine the role of economic reforms, external conditions, factor accumulation, income inequality, political instability and productivity in explaining GDP increases. The book also looks at cycles of growth, identifying periods of rapid growth and contrasting them with periods of stagnation and collapse.
Author: Shanti Jagannathan
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Education, Primary
Languages : en
Pages : 62
Get Book
Book Description
Nongovernmental organizations working in education in India are professional resource centers and innovators able to reach children who are educationaly disadvantaged. The Indian government could improve the effectiveness of primary education by increasing its collaboration with such organizations.
Author: Michael Lokshin
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Get Book
Book Description
February 2001 An analysis of a field survey to investigate household decisions about schooling in rural Pakistan suggests that hiring more female teachers and providing more primary schools for girls closer to villages will improve the chances of rural Pakistani girls entering school and staying enrolled. Human capital investments in Pakistan are performing poorly: school enrollment is low, the high school dropout rate is high, and there is a definite gender gap in education. Sawada and Lokshin conducted field surveys in 25 Pakistani villages and integrated their field observations, economic theory, and econometric analysis to investigate the sequential nature of education decisions--because current outcomes depend not only on current decisions but also on past decisions. Their full-information maximum likelihood estimate of the sequential schooling decision model reveals important dynamics affecting the gender gap in education, the effects of transitory income and wealth, and intrahousehold resource allocation patterns. They find, among other things, that in rural Pakistan: * There is a high educational retention rate, conditional on school entry, and that male and female schooling progression rates become comparable at higher levels of education. * A household's human and physical assets and changes in its income significantly affect children's education patterns. Birth order affects siblings' competition for resources. * Serious supply-side constraints on village girls' primary education suggest the importance of supply-side policy interventions in Pakistan's rural primary education--for example, providing more girls' primary schools close to villages and employing more female teachers. This paper--a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to study the role of gender in the context of the household, institutions, and society. The authors may be contacted at
[email protected] or
[email protected].
Author: Maurice Schiff
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Integracion regional
Languages : en
Pages : 32
Get Book
Book Description
