Tag Archives: Growth

Agricultural Technology and Structural Change

Developing countries employ a relatively large share of their workers in agriculture, and the labor productivity of those agricultural workers is only a fraction of that found in the developed world. Together, these two facts account for a significant portion … Continue reading

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How to increase your GDP without anyone noticing

African GDP statistics have been in the news recently. Both Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa have seen revisions to their GDP which, in the case of Ghana, has made it a middle income country with per capita GDP, in … Continue reading

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How do African incomes compare to the rest of the world?

How poor are people in Sub-Saharan Africa compared to the rest of the World? International comparisons of GDP per capita do not provide an answer to this question because they ignore within-country inequality (i.e. every individual in a country is … Continue reading

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Africa in two recessions

Our spring term ended a few weeks ago. I teach an undergraduate course that focuses on the economic history of the twentieth century. Unsurprisingly, the Great Depression is a major focus. The current mainstream view is that monetary shocks were … Continue reading

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CSAE conference keynote: Ted Miguel on Conflict, Climate and African Development

This Monday at the 2013 CSAE conference, Edward Miguel, introduced by James Fenske, paid tribute to Paul Collier for inspiring and informing a lot of his work on Civil Wars in Africa. Since the early 1990’s there has been much … Continue reading

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Economic shocks and conflict: where is the literature headed?

I received news this weekend that the keynote speech for the upcoming CSAE conference will be on “Conflict, climate and economic development in Africa.” The speaker will be Berkley’s Ted Miguel. If you didn’t have a reason to attend the … Continue reading

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Is ethnicity deep?

I am teaching a short module in the M.Sc. In Economics for Development this term on “deep roots” of economic development. Enrico Spolaore and Romain Wacziarg provide an excellent summary of this literature here. One half of one of one … Continue reading

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What comes after the Millennium Development Goals?

In 2000 the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Declaration, which committed their members to a new global partnership to tackle poverty and other development challenges. In 2005, under the leadership of Jeffrey Sachs, a number of time-bound targets were … Continue reading

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