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Showing all content in Africa
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Person
Katrina Kosec
Katrina Kosec is a Senior Research Fellow in the Development Strategy and Governance Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) where she is Theme Leader for Public Investment. She is an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of development economics, political economy, and public economics. Her research focuses on the linkages between...
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Project
A study of the constraints to civil servant productivity in Ethiopia
State institutions are fundamental drivers of economic growth (Besley and Persson, 2010), and in many developing countries, a high proportion of national income is spent through the state. In Ethiopia, around one-fifth of national income is directed towards public-expenditure (World Bank Public Expenditure Review, 2016). At the same time, our understanding of the drivers...
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Person
Ravi Somani
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Publication - Synthesis paper
Regulating mobile money to support scale-up
High transaction costs are one of the most significant barriers to financial access in developing countries. Mobile money has dramatically reduced transaction costs and has extended a more affordable payments system to historically unbanked households, beginning to integrate them into the wider financial system. This brief looks at how mobile money can broaden and deepen...
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Project
Preferences or possibility? Understanding the labour supply decision in an LIC context
The number of high-skilled workers in developing countries has been on the rise in recent years as spending on tertiary education expands, yet labour markets have not been able to create jobs to keep up with new skilled workers entering the labour market. The result has been a combination of underemployment and unemployment. Despite this pressing issue, we are not fully...
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Person
Jamelia Harris
Jamelia holds a BSc in Economics and Actuarial Science from the University of Southampton and an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. After completing her MSc, she was posted as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow in Sierra Leone, where she worked as an economist in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, and lectured...
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Project
Mapping informal financial flows in the artisanal mining sector: The cases of Sierra Leone and Liberia
In recent years, the economic importance and formalisation of artisanal gold mining has taken centre stage in policy discussions on rural economic development in West Africa. Research has shown that despite being associated with a host of environmental, health and safety and social concerns, the sector provides a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of poor people in the...
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Project
Fishing for votes? Income shocks and the opportunity cost of voting
While economists have long argued that the opportunity cost of voting exceeds the private benefits – that is an individual vote is unlikely to affect the outcome of an election in a meaningful way – policies or events that affect the opportunity cost of voting at a more aggregate level have the potential to shape election and policy outcomes. This is especially the case...
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Person
Sebastian Axbard
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Person
Teevrat Garg