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on Africa |
| By: | Bensassi, Sami; Jabbour, Liza |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the effect of return migration on the performance of Egyptian household firms. A growing body of evidence suggests that return migrants are more likely to become and remain entrepreneurs (Marchetta, 2012; Wahba and Zenou, 2012). The length of the miration spell, the experience and the capital accumulated overseas may influence the ability of return migrants to establish and successfully manage their firms. We expand this literature by examining the impact of return migrants on the revenue of the business units they manage. We control for several layers of selection bias, from the migration decision to the pursuit of entrepreneurial activities. Our findings suggest that two determinants of firms' revenues favour return migrants: larger starting capital and the experience accumulated abroad. These results suggest that economic policies directed at attracting return migrants should consider expanding support schemes formerly limited to the most educated migrants or to some sectors of activity as the positive impact of return migration on entrepreneurial revenues is widespread. |
| Keywords: | Return Migration,Household firms |
| JEL: | F22 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:98&r=afr |
| By: | Bakari, Sayef |
| Abstract: | Despite the abundance of goods and natural resources that characterize South Africa, and despite the remarkable progress in the field of industry and manufacturing, it is still in the list of developing countries. The aim of this article is to re-examine the causes of this node by studying the basic pillars for the creation of solid economic growth as is the case for all developing countries by looking at the impact of domestic investment, exports and imports on South Africa's economic growth in the short and long term. Our empirical analyses show that imports present the main barrier of prosperity and progress in South Africa. |
| Keywords: | Domestic Investment, Exports, Imports, Economic growth, South Africa. |
| JEL: | E22 F11 F14 O47 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80763&r=afr |
| By: | Berman, Nicolas; Couttenier, Mathieu; Soubeyran, Raphael |
| Abstract: | We investigate how variations in soil fertility affect civil conflicts. We first present a model with heterogeneous land in which variations in input prices (fertilizers) affect appropriable rents and the opportunity costs of fighting. The theory predicts that spikes in input prices increase the likelihood of conflicts through their effect on income and inequality, and that this effect is magnified when soil fertility is naturally more heterogenous. We test these predictions using data on conflict events covering all Sub-Saharan African countries at a spatial resolution of 0.5 x 0.5 degree latitude and longitude over the 1997-2013 period. We combine information on soil characteristics and worldwide variations in fertilizer prices to identify local exogenous changes in input costs. As predicted, variations in soil productivity triggered by variations in fertilizer prices are positively associated with conflicts, especially in cells where land endowments are more heterogeneous. In addition, we find that the distribution of land fertility both within and across ethnic groups affects violence, and that the effect of between-group heterogeneity in soil quality is magnified in densely populated areas. Overall, our findings imply that inequality in access to fertile areas -- an issue largely neglected in the literature dealing with the roots of Sub-Saharan African civil wars -- constitutes a serious threat to peace at the local-level. |
| Keywords: | conflict; Fertility; inequality; Land |
| JEL: | C23 D74 Q34 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12211&r=afr |
| By: | Phiri, Andrew; Mukuka, Doreen |
| Abstract: | Our study investigates the cointegration relationship between suicides and unemployment in South Africa using annual data collected between 1996 and 2015 applied to the ARDL model. Furthermore, our empirical analysis is gender and age specific in the sense that the suicide data is disintegrated into different ‘sex’ and ‘age’ demographics. Our empirical results indicate that unemployment is insignificantly related with suicide rates with the exception for citizens above 75 years. On the other hand, other control variables such as per capita GDP, inflation and divorce appear to be more significantly related with suicides. Collectively, these findings have important implications for policymakers. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment; Suicide; Cointegration; Causality; South Africa; Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). |
| JEL: | C22 C51 E24 E31 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:80749&r=afr |
| By: | Afees A. Salisu (Centre for Econometric and Allied Research, University of Ibadan); Kazeem Isah (Centre for Econometric and Allied Research, University of Ibadan) |
| Abstract: | This study examines the spillovers between stock market and money market in Nigeria over the period January 2000 to July 2015. Based on relevant pre-tests, the VARMA-CCC-GARCH is selected and consequently employed to model the spillovers. The study finds significant cross-market return and shock spillovers between the two markets. Thus, a shock to one market is more likely to spill over to the other market. It is also observed that shocks have persistent effects on stock market volatility but transitory effects on money market volatility. In other words, shocks to the money market die out over time while shocks to stock market tend to persist over time. In addition, including lagged own shocks and lagged own conditional variance when forecasting the future volatility of both return series may enhance their forecast performance. |
| Keywords: | Return Spillover, Shock Spillover, Shork Persistence, VARMA-CCC-GARCH |
| JEL: | C58 G10 |
| Date: | 2017–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cui:wpaper:0023&r=afr |
| By: | Kitessa, Rahel Jigi (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | The standard economic theory predicts that collective action problem arise because the selfish agents have no incentive to contribute to public goods. However, considerable shares of mankind, conditional cooperators, contribute to public goods as revealed by numerous empirical and experimental findings. Ostrom (2000) revised collective action problems predicts that as time passes with proper social norm institution in place, and information about the types of agent is known, the share of such cooperators will grow in population and the cooperative behavior will be a dominant economic decision. This is because, the conditional cooperators are in general more trusted, whereas, selfish agents are less trusted which enables the cooperators to drive higher payoff. I tested this hypothesis in a setting that let participants who are members of collaborative forest management group (CFM), and non- members (non-CFM) to play a trust game. Using this experiment, the finding in this study support the hypothesis that high trust is placed on the cooperators than non-cooperators. Therefore, the cooperator type receives more money, but send and return less to non-cooperators which allow them to receive consistently higher pay off. |
| Keywords: | collective action; trust and trustworthiness; field experiment; forestry; public goods |
| JEL: | C12 C93 D64 D71 H41 O31 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiucen:1c4fc7fc-2e1d-4094-8b85-a95c07cecba6&r=afr |