Tourism and economic growth: African evidence from panel vector autoregressive framework

Using a panel vector autoregressive model this paper investigates the dynamic and endogeneous contribution of tourism to output based on a sample of 40 African countries for the period 1990 - 2006. Results from the study confirm tourism to be an important ingredient of African development although private investment, openness, and human capital remain the main drivers. Further analysis reveals the existence of a reverse causation from national income to tourism development, thus confirming both tourism-led economic development and economic-driven tourism growth. Tourism is also observed to enhance private investment and the presence of bicausality between private investment, education, and income level is observed

Do training funds raise the pace of training? The case of Mauritius

Many developing countries have tried to increase firm provision of training by providing subsidies funded by taxes proportional to the firm\u27s wage bill. These training funds, however, may backfire if the adverse effect of the tax on training incentives outweighs the positive effects of the subsidy. We show that the value of these training funds depends critically on the extent to which firms are liquidity constrained. If the effective firm discount rate is low, the disincentives outweigh the benefits. Using an administrative dataset on the Mauritius training fund, we show that larger, high-wage and more capital intensive firms are the most likely to offer to training without the subsidy, but that the subsidy creates an increased incentives for small firms to train. As a result, the largest firms pay more in taxes than they gain in subsidies while the smallest firms receive more benefits than they pay in taxes. Consequently, the program shifts net training investments away from the firms that would normally have the greatest return from training and toward smaller firms that would normally have the lowest return from training. It is doubtful that the program actually raises the incidence of training overall

Globalisation, accounting and developing countries

Accounting is an instrument and an object in globalisation but its impact and manifestation is not uniform across Northern developed countries and Southern developing countries (DCs). This paper reviews contributions on globalisation and its influence on accounting in DCs, and identifies important research gaps. It examines the role of accounting in changing development policies, from state capitalism through neo-liberal market-based to good-governance policies. It then considers specific accounting issues, namely the diffusion of International Accounting Standards (now International Financial Reporting Standards) and how they promote global neo-liberalism; the development of the accounting profession in DCs in the face of competition from Northern global accounting firms and professional associations; accounting issues in state-owned organisations, and privatised and multinational corporations; government accounting reforms and the resurrection of the state in DCs; social and environmental accounting issues; and the rise of non-governmental organisations and their accounting and accountability. The discussion and conclusions reflect on achievements to date and important areas requiring further development

COMESA trade potential: a gravity approach

The aim of this study is twofold: first, to find out whether COMESA is a building or stumbling bloc; and second, to estimate trade potentials within the COMESA region for COMESA members. In addressing the issue of regionalism, the gravity model can be used to simulate trade potentials corresponding to any regional integration scheme. This study uses a panel data analysis to estimate export flows from 147 exporting countries for a period of 21 years (1980-2001). The equation is estimated using a Tobit model. The coefficients on the observable effects determining bilateral trade, except real effective exchange rate, are as expected and highly significant. COMESA seems to be a building bloc; that is, the bloc liberalized trade more internally than it diverted trade from the rest of the world. These results suggest that COMESA's trade potential within the region is limited. In fact, the results suggest that members of COMESA trading bloc are overtrading within the region. Potentials for more trade exist for Angola and Uganda.

From unilateral preferences to Reciprocity: Impact of the ACP – EU EPA on ESA countries

This paper attempts to analyze the welfare impact of the creation of the EU-ESA Economic Partnership Agreement, on ESA members against a benchmarked scenario which is the multilateral liberalization scenario. Ten regions by ten sectors aggregation of the GTAP model is used. The sector aggregation takes care of sensitive products which ESA countries decided not to liberalise for obvious reasons. While the EPAs is implemented as from 2008 and all the data, including the protection data, in the GTAP database version 6.1 has the common reference year of 2001, the dataset is updated to reflect (i) the EU enlargement and (ii) the phase out of the Multi Fibre Agreement. Four different experiments are simulated. Results show that (i) although under all scenarios welfare effect increase, Uganda and Madagascar tend to benefit the least and (ii) for some countries, such as Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe, the required overall structural adjustment is low

From unilateral preferences to Reciprocity: Impact of the ACP – EU EPA on ESA countries

This paper attempts to analyze the welfare impact of the creation of the EU-ESA Economic Partnership Agreement, on ESA members against a benchmarked scenario which is the multilateral liberalization scenario. Ten regions by ten sectors aggregation of the GTAP model is used. The sector aggregation takes care of sensitive products which ESA countries decided not to liberalise for obvious reasons. While the EPAs is implemented as from 2008 and all the data, including the protection data, in the GTAP database version 6.1 has the common reference year of 2001, the dataset is updated to reflect (i) the EU enlargement and (ii) the phase out of the Multi Fibre Agreement. Four different experiments are simulated. Results show that (i) although under all scenarios welfare effect increase, Uganda and Madagascar tend to benefit the least and (ii) for some countries, such as Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe, the required overall structural adjustment is low

Training funds and the incidence of training: the case of Mauritius

Training funds are used to incentivize training in developing countries, but the funds are based on payroll taxes that lower the return to training. In the absence of training funds, larger, high-wage and more capital-intensive firms are the most likely to offer training unless they are liquidity constrained. If firms are not liquidity constrained, the fund could lower training investments. Using an administrative data set on the Mauritius training fund, we find that the firms most likely to train pay more in taxes than they gain in subsidies. The smallest firms receive more benefits than they pay in taxes.This is a working paper of an article from Education Economics 24 (2016): 280, doi: 10.1080/09645292.2015.1009418.</p