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Workers, Managers, Productivity: Kaizen in Developing Countries

This open access book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as “Kaizen.”

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Restrictive Trade Policies as Hurdle to Pass for Africa: Evidence from the European Union's Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures

An investigation of the impact of EU standard requirements (hurdles to pass before market access) on Africa's exports.

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Clusters, Knowledge and Firm Performance

The challenge facing Ghana is the need to transform from a resource-dependent economy to a dynamic, diversified industrial economy. This study examines the potential of industrial clusters in promoting industrial development in developing countries and in assessing the growth potential of clustered industries and firms in Ghana, using the wood processing cluster in Kumasi as a case study.

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Cocoa Sector in Côte D’ivoire: Are Public-Private Coordination Platforms Helpful?

The cocoa sector is the backbone of the Ivorian economy.  This paper shows that the Vision for Change program increases cocoa yields by up to 115 kilograms per hectare, income by up to 48% and the price of cocoa by up to 42 XOF (0.06 euros) per kg.

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Evaluating the Impact of Export Promotion Policy Incentives in the Ethiopian Manufacturing Sector

The results of the quantitative analysis show that the government’s intention to increase manufacturing’s share in total merchandize export, through improving the intensities and propensities of export sales of priority industries (textile, apparel, and leather and leather products), had only limited success.

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Urban Externalities in the Small Developing Countries of Asia and Latin America: A Comparative Case Study Analysis of Squatter Settlements in Nepal (Kathmandu) and Ecuador (Quito)

Urban squatter settlements contribute to economic growth, but what are their costs to society?  The primary objective of this study is to quantify the negative externalities of squatter settlements in Nepal and Ecuador in terms of incidence, intensity, and household costs.

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Urbanization Processes and Urban Morphology in the Periphery of Capitalism: São Paulo, Jakarta, Hanoi and Belo Horizonte

This study is an urban morphology comparative study between four southern cities: São Paulo, Jakarta, Hanoi and Belo Horizonte. It aims to disclose common spatial consequences of similar urban development processes, using urban morphology, or the study of the process of formation and transformation of human settlements.

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Location of the Poor: Neighborhood Versus Household Characteristics: The Case of Bogotá

This paper examines the behavioral drivers of location-decisions made by citizens of Colombia in Bogota, to attempt a definition of segregation without debating ethics.

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Trade and Growth Nexus in South Korea: Analysis Using Vector Error Correction Model and Granger Causality Test

This study examines the connection between trade and economic growth in South Korea, where trade has been an important sector of the country’s economy.

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Knowledge Economy Gaps, Policy Syndromes and Catch-up Strategies: Fresh South Korean Lessons to Africa

South Korea’s “economic miracle” was largely due to a knowledge-based development strategy that holds valuable lessons for African countries in their current pursuit towards knowledge economies. Africa’s overall knowledge index fell between 2000 and 2009. Using updated data (1996-2010), this paper presents fresh South Korean lessons to Africa by assessing knowledge economy gaps.

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Are Conditional Government Transfers a Politically Acceptable Form of Redistribution?

The paper presents evidence that the characteristics of the policy instrument can affect the level of support, even if they have no impact on its net-redistributive cost. It employs survey experiments in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Turkey to determine whether making government transfers conditional on the behavior of beneficiaries increases support for these transfers among non-beneficiaries.

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Reconnecting the Peripheral Wagons to the Euro Area Core Locomotive: Mission Impossible?

This paper investigates the drivers of shock synchronization using quarterly data for 27 European countries over the period 199-2013, comparing the “core” euro area  (the euro area locomotive) with non-core EU member states and EU candidate countries (the peripheral wagons).

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Resources mobilization by Self-Help approach to Rural Development Program in Vietnam: Lessons from Saemaul Undong in Korea

Since the introduction of the Doi Moi policy in 1986, Vietnam has witnessed high economic growth accompanied by rapid urbanization, but an increasing gap between rural and urban areas. This study compares and contrasts rural development in Vietnam with Korea.

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Land Reform and Poverty in Kenya

Land is the foundation of Kenya’s development, as recognized by two recent highly publicized government documents. This paper studies how land tenure reform has impacted on poverty reduction, using the Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey

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An Analysis of Poverty and Regional Inequalities in Ghana

This paper examines regional inequalities in Ghana based on the last three rounds of the Ghana Living Standard Survey, as well as other socio-economic variables across regions in Ghana.

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Lessons for ASEAN Countries Stuck in a “Middle-Income Trap” from Korea’s Economic Development & Institutions

This paper analyzes this phenomenon, known as the middle-income trap (MIT), with a particular focus on the select ASEAN countries of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.

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Impacts of Price Changes on Poverty: The Nigerian Experience

The proportion of people living in extreme poverty, especially in Nigeria, fell only marginally between 1990 and 2006. The primary objective of this study is to systematically capture the impact of price changes on poverty in Nigeria.

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Role of Copper in the Chilean and Zambian Economies: Main Economic and Policy Issues

The paper examines the existing differences between the problems of abundance and dependence on natural resources by considering the cases of copper in Chile and Zambia.

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Economic Growth, Employment Generation and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria

This study attempts to critically examine the interconnection between income inequality, employment and poverty reduction in the process of economic growth in Nigeria.

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A Contribution to the Public-Private Wage Inequality Debate: The Iconic Case of Romania

In Romania, the public sector still employs about 30 percent of the workforce, and the wage bill is around 20 percent of the current budget expenditures. The purpose of the research is to shed light on the determinants of the public-private wage differential and on the dynamics and decomposition of wage inequality between the private and public sector in 2004 and 2009.

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Subgroup and Shapely Value Decompositions of Multidimensional Inequality: An Application to South East European Countries

This paper attempts to construct a multidimensional inequality index with three variables – in addition to the usual one of income – by including health, education and housing quality in the context of three large South-East European countries – Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia – for which comparable Household Budget Surveys were available.

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Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in Ghana

This paper investigates the determinants of female labor force participation in Ghana at two points in time, 1991 and 2006. It examines individual and household attributes that affect female labor force participation and whether motherhood and the presence of children at home have the tendency of reducing a woman’s propensity to engage in paid work.

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Do Social Transfers “Crowd-Out” Remittances: Evidence from Bosnia

This paper attempts to investigate the presence of the “crowding out” effect in Bosnia by analyzing a model of interaction between social transfers – such as pensions or health care services – and remittances, using the two-stage Heckman’s selection method.

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Sources of Income Inequality: Empirical Evidence from Bulgaria

Bulgaria was affected by various adverse economic and demographic processes, which were particularly severe during the first half of the 1990s. This paper analyzes the extent to which socio-demographic characteristics of the household could be considered as sources of income inequality.

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Models for Stability and Growth, Structural Reforms, Conditionality, and EU Surveillance Criteria

This review paper represents the policy part of a report on financial risks in Southeast Europe. It aims to propose a set of surveillance mechanisms and criteria that European Union (EU) could use to assess the stability and sustainability of economic progress of the Future Member States (FMS).

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Subgroup and Shapley Value Decompositions of Multidimensional Inequality: An Application to South East European Countries

Inequality is often discussed along a single dimension like income. This is reflected in the various decomposition approaches of inequality indices

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Effectiveness of Foreign Aid on Poverty Reduction in Kenya

Does Oversees Development Assistance (ODA) – foreign aid in common parlance – reduce poverty? This study explores this question in the Kenyan context. 

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Women’s Self-employment in Poland: A Strategy for Combining Work and Childcare?

This study investigates whether self-employment, which generally offers greater flexibility with respect to the hours and place of work

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Wage Dynamics and Workers’ Mobility During Deep Recessions

This paper analyzes the effects of wage rigidity, on both labor market dynamics and unemployment volatility, by comparing two European economies, Spain and Latvia, with very different wage dynamics.

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Measuring Inequality in CIS Countries: Theory and Empirics

This paper focuses on robust analysis of distributions and heavy-tailedness characteristics for data on income and wealth for the World, Russia and post-Soviet Central Asian economies. 

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Congestion Charge in Sao Paulo city: Likely Traffic Effects

This report aims to estimate the welfare and traffic effects of a hypothetical congestion charge in Sao Paulo.

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Location of the Poor: Neighborhood Versus Household Characteristics: The Case of Bogota

In Latin American cities there is a high correlation between the location chosen by poor households and their income level; however, it is difficult to identify to what extent they live there by choice

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