In this paper, we contribute to existing literature on financial development and openness by, sampling twenty-nine African countries with data spanning from 1987 to 2008. Using panel empirical techniques, we provide evidence of bi-directional causality between trade openness and financial...

The business of this study is to investigate what role openness play in bank efficiency with respect to income levels. From a panel of 29 countries spelling from 1987 to 2008, we provide evidence that; trade and financial openness, breed less bank efficiency in low income countries; justifying...

I test Bates' view that trade across ecological divides promoted the development of states in pre-colonial Africa. My main result is that sub-Saharan societies in ecologically diverse environments had more centralized pre-colonial states. I use spatial variation in rainfall to control for...

Using a panel of 29 African middle and low income countries with data spanning from 1988 to 2007, we analyze linkages between openness and financial intermediary development when income levels matter. Main findings are four: firstly, openness in the last two decades has not been the effect of...

Polygyny rates are higher in Western Africa than in Eastern Africa. The African slave trades explain this difference. More male slaves were exported in the trans-Atlantic slave trades from Western Africa, while more female slaves were exported in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea slave trades from...

Africa continues to be marginalised in world trade of manufactured goods, despite reductions in tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This paper investigates whether high business and trade costs associated with Africa’s trade-related infrastructure, trade institutions and the regulatory...

Water service to the urban poor presents challenges to political leaders, regulators and managers. We identify technology mixes of yard taps, public water points (with and without pre-paid meters) to meet alternative constraints, and reflecting populations served and investment requirements....

We combine the date-of-observation found in Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas and a newly-constructed dataset on the date-of-colonization at the ethnic-group level to study the effects of the duration of colonial rule on a variety of political, economic, and social characteristics of ethnic groups...

From the economic literature on the relationship between economic growth and environment pioneered by Grossman and Krueger (1991) and Shafik and Bandyopadhyay (1992) we first conduct a theoretical and critical reflection on the existence of a Kuznets curve for biodiversity. It appears that...

There have been increased attention on how man’s activities affect the environment negatively especially in developed countries. However, there are countless number of activities such as charcoal production and electricity generation from oil in developing countries that have potential carbon...