A tale of industrial stagnation from Africa

Original article can be found at: http://www.tandfonline.com/ Copyright Taylor & FrancisMany African economies have experienced rather dismal industrial development since the 1980s. The consensus is that African firms lack competitiveness in a world with increasing trade openness. What determines competitiveness? A well-known explanation is that resource endowments in Africa favour land not labour, which results in high wages, especially in comparison with 'labour abundant' Asian economies. This paper examines the validity of this view on the basis of the case of Sudan. We demonstrate that the lack of competitiveness of manufacturing industries is not caused by high wages. Assuming a direct relationship between labour productivity and international competitiveness, we argue that acute capacity underutilisation, caused by supply-side constraints, lowers manufacturing productivity, which in turn negatively influences competitiveness.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Patterns of technical change: a geometrical analysis using the wage–profit rate schedule

In this paper we examine some basic stylized facts of economic growth according to the modern restatement of the classical theory of income distribution. In particular, we make use of a wage–profit frontier in order to explore the patterns of technical change experienced by a set of 18 industrialized economies, during the last 40 years. Our main purpose is to document the evolution of technical change. Using empirical evidence from the Italian industry, we also make an attempt to provide an explanation to data from a classical perspective, alternative to the standard approach founded on the aggregate production function.fossil production function, Marx‐biased technical change, wage–profit rate schedule, E11, O40, O52,

Testing Kaldor’s Growth Laws Across the Countries of Africa.

One of the strong factors reflecting Africa's economic backwardness is the low level of industrial development. Not only does the industrialization process appear to have bypassed the continent, there is evidence of de-industrialization in the case of several countries. This paper seeks to address a set of interrelated questions: To what extent is the growth performance of African economies related to these structural characteristics? More precisely, is there any discernible evidence that GDP growth and overall labour productivity growth of African countries is positively related to how fast their industrial sector is growing? We test out Kaldor's three growth laws: first, that the growth of GDP is positively related to the growth of manufacturing output not simply in a definitional sense (because manufacturing output is a part of GDP) but in a fundamental causal sense related to the production characteristics of manufacturing activity; secondly, that the growth of labour productivity in manufacturing is positively related to manufacturing output growth because of static and dynamic increasing returns to scale (Verdoorn's Law); and thirdly, that there will be a negative relation between labour productivity growth in the economy as a whole and the rate of growth of employment in the non-manufacturing sector because most activity outside the manufacturing sector is subject to diminishing returns, particularly in land-based activities such as agriculture and many service activities. The authors' conclusions are that there is some empirical support for Kaldor's growth laws in respect of the countries of Africa. The growth of GDP seems much more closely associated with the growth of the manufacturing/industrial sector than the agricultural or service sectors. Structural change in favour of industrial activities would almost certainly help to accelerate the growth of GDP and living standards in Africa

Marx on Public Debt: Fiscal Expropriation and Capital Reproduction

Marx devoted little attention to the functions of the State (and, particularly, to the role of public debt) in the capitalist system, and in more recent times, little attention has been devoted to this issue on the part of Marxist scholars. Starting from a reconstruction of Marx’s view on this issue, this article aims to analyze the effects of the expansion of public debt on capital reproduction in Marx’s thought and to derive a criterion of public debt sustainability consistent with Marx’s view

Investigation of nonlinear effects in glassy matter using dielectric methods

We summarize current developments in the investigation of glassy matter using nonlinear dielectric spectroscopy. This work also provides a brief introduction into the phenomenology of the linear dielectric response of glass-forming materials and discusses the main mechanisms that can give rise to nonlinear dielectric response in this material class. Here we mainly concentrate on measurements of the conventional dielectric permittivity at high fields and the higher-order susceptibilities characterizing the 3-omega and 5-omega components of the dielectric response as performed in our group. Typical results on canonical glass-forming liquids and orientationally disordered plastic crystals are discussed, also treating the special case of supercooled monohydroxy alcohols.Comment: 26 pages, 20 figure