Tanzania ranks among the leading stars of the 'African growth miracle', but a sector that has been largely absent from the Tanzania success story is industry. Although growth of manufacturing has outpaced economic growth over the past decade, relative to international norms and its ambitious...

We focus on special characteristics of the manufacturing sector, in terms of employment generation and productivity growth, that enable the rapid, resilient economic catch-up of developing countries. We consider the 'developer's dilemma' and the relationship between manufacturing value added or...

Industrial transformation of Asia arguably constitutes the most surprising and dramatic change in the global economy in the last fifty years. This paper provides an outline of some of the most important trends of this development and analyses selected national industrial policies that promoted...

Mozambique is among the world's least complex economies. By systematically accounting for both supply- and demand-side factors, we identify new products and sectors that can help to diversify and upgrade its economy. In a supply-side analysis, we use network methods from the literature on...

This paper evaluates structural change, inequality dynamics, and industrial policy in South Africa between 1960 and the present day. We find that South Africa experienced growth-enhancing structural transformation until the early 1970s, before entering a period of premature deindustrialization....

The management of revenues from exhaustible natural resources involves a number of challenges. In this paper, we argue that the standard policy advice to managers of resource revenues has been dominated by short-termism and the lack of a perspective on economic development and structural...

Recent research highlights the considerable potential of industrial policy to support structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. Given the importance of the state in industrial policy, this paper considers the implications for these discussions of recent work on state fragility. It argues...

We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960-2012. Countries are in different stages of structural transformation, being either structurally...

Developing countries face a trade-off between the twin objectives of structural transformation and inclusive growth. This is the 'developer's dilemma'. This study analyses the dilemma as it manifested itself in the Indian context, and identifies two distinct episodes over the post-independence...