O55

We study the relationship between outreach and the financial performance of 479 microfinance institutions (MFIs) in 37 countries of sub-Saharan African (SSA), covering the period 1998 to 2012. This study builds on earlier literature on the relationship between outreach and the financial performance...

We study the effect of trade openness on fertility rates in fifty African countries during the1962 - 2010 period. By disaggregating the trade openness data in novel ways, and allowing for country and time fixed effects, our results indicate that trade openness and imports of manufactured goods are...

The existing literature is clear that low income economies tend to suffer from foreign exchange shortages exacerbated by their exports. Most importantly, the concentration of their exports renders these countries susceptible to international price fluctuations. This frequently affects the level of...

Policymakers need better information regarding wellbeing inequality to ascertain the contributing factors and to determine whether policy has been successful in improving the spread over time. In this paper, we construct a multidimensional composite wellbeing measure, at a micro level, which...

Does ethnic favouritism in administrative governments affect public infrastructure provision? While previous literature has studied the effects of ethnic favouritism on economic growth and development determinants, there has been limited empirical evidence on ethnic favouritism in public...

The majority of African states continue to be regarded as extractive states. We use the Cape Colony's public expenditure to account for the emergence of extractive states in Africa. With a sub-imperial role for Southern African colonial expansion, the Cape Colony became a template for extractive...

Background: Since the early 1980s, many governments have investigated the possibility of utilising access to microloans as a pathway to grow economies out of unemployment and thereby improve people's quality of life. Studies that have previously investigated the impact of microloans found a...

The purpose of this study is to add to the empirical literature regarding quality of life convergence dynamics. It achieves this by analysing and comparing income and income-independent quality of life (IIQoL) convergence dynamics across South Africa's 234 municipalities for the period 1996-2014...

This study examines the effect of financial structure on economic growth in Sub Saharan Africa. The sample consists of both low and middle income countries, whose financial systems range from poorly developed to relatively well- developed in the context of developing countries. Using dynamic panel...