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Showing all Projects in Uganda
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Project
Misallocation or mismeasurement? Collecting new panel data to improve production function estimation
SMEs tend to show substantial differences in productivity even within narrow industries and geographical regions. In order to design effective industrial policies, it is important to quantify such differences in the productivity of SMEs, identify what constraints drive these differences, and to understand what are the benefits of reducing them through external policy...
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Reducing comparison frictions in the Ugandan credit market
Many first-time borrowers tend to find out about loans exclusively from providers — unaware of the total cost. Financial institutions obscure prices especially for new and naive consumers to maximise profits (Atuhumuza et al. 2020), preventing many consumers from making well-informed borrowing decisions. Therefore, credit markets are characterised by substantial price...
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Informal clustering, firm growth, and the impact of the COVID-19 shock
In Kampala, firms are heavily concentrated in the Central Business District (CBD), where they operate next to one another in high-density, informal clusters (UBOS 2011). Manufacturing firms operating in these clusters are smaller than in terms of number of employees and do not grow over time. Demand shocks that arise from COVID-19 are likely to be more severe in denser...
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Recovery from the COVID-19 shock and the informal labour market in urban Uganda
As COVID-19 cases continue to escalate across developing countries, many governments reimposed harsh lockdown policies, reversing months of gradual economic recovery. In Uganda, public transport and non-essential businesses were suspended for 42 days, echoing a prior shutdown through April-June 2020. These restrictions significantly impacted the informal economy, where...
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Investigating FDI linkages in developing countries
Foreign investment into Uganda has been increasing in recent years. However, the extent to which this investment is yielding significant returns for the local economy is uncertain. To date, there is little known about the differential performance and impact of foreign firms in Uganda, and therefore limited evidence from which to design policies to make the most of Foreign...
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Cross-sectoral movements of labour in a low-income country: Evidence from Uganda
In this project we plan to employ a newly sourced matched employer-employee dataset in Uganda to explore the cross-sectoral and cross-firm movement of labour in a low-income country. Using this data, we aim to shed light on: The extent to which workers are able to progress up the job ladder and match with good and productive employers; The relative importance of...
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Policy implementation in Uganda
Implementing government policies is essential to recover from the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and to foster economic growth through evidence-based policies. Anecdotal evidence and broad-based indices (e.g., World Bank Governance Indicators) strongly suggest that policy implementation is lacking in most sub-Saharan African countries. Reasons possibly...
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Network measure of bottlenecks in Ugandan firms markets
In Uganda, several supply-chains are characterised by a structure of a few very large firms and a large fringe of small firms (Spray and Wolf, 2017). These large firms anchor the economy together by providing a focal point for supply-chains to operate around. Without these anchor firms, output would drop substantially. On the other hand, these firms could exploit their...
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Vocational training, on-the-job training, and resilience to COVID-19: Evidence from Uganda
Throughout 2020, governments around the world put in place restrictions to economic activity to curb the spread of COVID-19. In Uganda, the Government implemented one of Africa’s strictest lockdowns, which lasted for two months from late March. As a result, economic activity halted throughout the country. In this project, we study how the labour market outcomes of...
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The impact of COVID-19 and flexible credit on SMEs: Evidence from Uganda
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the engines of the Ugandan economy, comprising over 90 % of the private sector, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 2011. This project will re-survey a sample of 2,400 SMEs in Uganda with the purpose of: Better understand the long-term consequences of increased flexibility in loan repayments, in particular: does...