The Effect of the Liberalization of Investment Policies on Employment and Investment of Multinational Corporations in Africa

There has been a remarkable shift in the attitudes towards globalization. Specifically, the discussion among academics and policymakers has shifted from whether globalization should be encouraged to how countries can position themselves to benefit from globalization. This paper focuses on one aspect of globalization – the liberalization of investment policies – and analyzes its impact on employment and investments by multinational corporations in Africa. We use data for 33 countries over the period 1984-2003 and we employ a dynamic panel estimator for our analysis. There are two major findings. First, liberalization has a significant and positive effect on investment. Second, liberalization does not have a direct impact on multinational employment – the effect is indirect: liberalization stimulates multinational investments which in turn increases multinational employment. By increasing investment and employment from multinational firms, these liberalization programs contribute to poverty alleviation.Africa, employment, foreign direct investment, U.S. multinationals.

Civil Wars and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa1

This paper uses panel data from a sample of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the 1960-96 period and both Instrumental Variables (IV) and dynamic panel data (DPD98) estimator to investigate the effect of the incidence and severity of civil war on the growth rate of per capita income. We find that both factors have a robust, negative and statistically significant effect on the growth rate of per capita income. We find that civil war affects the growth rate of income partly through reduced investment in physical capital. However, if one does not control for the correlation between civil war incidence and other growth factors, the estimated effect of civil war on economic growth is not robust. We are unable to find any significant relationship between the level of income and the incidence of civil war in SSA countries after controlling for other variables that are correlated with income level

Production of Education: Are Socioeconomic Characteristics Important Factors?

Education

Is bilateral aid responding to good governance in Africa?

This paper investigates whether aid flows from traditional donor countries to African countries have responded to improved governance in African countries, whether aid has been used by donors to improve the quality of governance in the last two decades; it also investigates alternative sources of development financing, especially from the Global South, as well as researchesnewmodalities of aid delivery. Using the insights provided by several alternative approaches, the paper finds that at the aggregate level, aid flows to African countries respond positively to improved governance. However, there are wide variations in country experiences while aid flows to some countries respond positively to improved governance, aid flows to other countries are not in any way related to changes in governance. The paper finds that while all donor countries purport to increase aid flows in response to improved governance, donors generally tend to follow their national interests and focus on aspects of governance that are consistent with their foreign policy interests but not necessarily the governance as more broadly conceived. Although some donors respond positively to improved governance and may withhold aid for egregious violations of human rights, most donors give aid to further their strategic interests even in the face of poor governance records of recipient countries. While some donors provide aid to support activities that improve governance, donors have generally not used increased resources to support activities to improve governance. Africa countrieson the other hand have learnt to take advantage of the ambivalence of donors towards governance reforms by promising to reform governance in exchange for aid without following through with the promises. The paper also finds that there are several sources of alternative development financing, available especially from the Global South. While these sources provide relatively small amounts of financing, they are rapidly increasing in importance and it behooves African countries to seek these sources not only as additional sources of development financing but also as a way of diversifying funding sources. In addition, the delivery mode of development financing from these sources is different from those of the traditional sources and may be more suitable to African needs. Finally, the paper finds that a new mode of aid delivery cash on delivery may not be easily implantable in African countries. Key words: donors, bilateral aid, governance, cash-on-delivery, Afric

Characteristics of education production functions, an application of canonical regression analysis.

Abstract -This paper uses data from the State of Michigan and canonical regression analysis to investigate the effects of socioeconomic characteristics (SEC) of communities in the production of high school education. We find that SEC have positive and significant impacts -impacts that are independent of school resources-on the output of education. However, these independent effects are very hard to ascertain because of the high degree of correlation between SEC and school resources. We also find that education of uarents is the onlv variable that can be used as a proxy for all SEC without I misspecifying the education production function

Health system strengthening—Reflections on its meaning, assessment, and our state of knowledge

Sophie Witter - ORCID 0000-0002-7656-6188 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7656-6188Comprehensive reviews of health system strengthening (HSS) interventions are rare, partly because of lack of clarity on definitions of the term but also the potentially huge scale of the evidence. We reflect on the process of undertaking such an evidence review recently, drawing out suggestions on definitions of HSS and approaches to assessment, as well as summarising some key conclusions from the current evidence base. The key elements of a clear definition include, in our view, consideration of scope (with effects cutting across building blocks in practice, even if not in intervention design, and also tackling more than one disease), scale (having national reach and cutting across levels of the system), sustainability (effects being sustained over time and addressing systemic blockages), and effects (impacting on health outcomes, equity, financial risk protection, and responsiveness). We also argue that agreeing a framework for design and evaluation of HSS is urgent. Most HSS interventions have theories of change relating to specific system blocks, but more work is needed on capturing their spillover effects and their contribution to meeting overarching health system process goals. We make some initial suggestions about such goals, to reflect the features that characterise a “strong health system.” We highlight that current findings on “what works” are just indicative, given the limitations and biases in what has been studied and how, and argue that there is need to rethink evaluation methods for HSS beyond finite interventions and narrow outcomes. Clearer concepts, frameworks, and methods can support more coherent HSS investment.Department for International Development, Grant/Award Number: Supported by the ReBUILD and ReSYST RPCshttps://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.288234pubpub