Gender and Entrepreneurial Performance in Democratic Republic of Congo

This document presents a study which aims to evaluate the influence of gender on the entrepreneurial performance in Democratic Republic of Congo. Data from a survey conducted in May-June 2012 to SMEs completed by data from the 2006 and 2010 World Bank's Enterprise Surveys are used

Simulation of an Economic Policy on Second Life Using a Conjunctural Analysis Approach

This paper intends to define an economic policy that does not compromise the coordination between the 4 main sectors of an economy: the real sector, the public sector, the exterior sector and the monetary sector. The subject is Second Life (SL) a totally virtual world that is starting to occupy a great economic place especially with e-commerce. For doing so, some data are arbitrarily chosen as done and projections are made from them. Data are expressed in billion of Linden dollars.economic policy, Second Life, importation, exportation, open monetary policy

HOW LONG CAN INFLATION TAX COMPENSATE FOR THE LOSS OF GOVERNMENT REVENUE IN WAR ECONOMIES? EVIDENCE FROM BURUNDI

The paper shows that civil war in Burundi in the 1990s has provoked an unprecedented decline in government revenue. Both foreign aid transfers and revenue from domestic sources dried up, inducing the government to rely more on inflation tax. Using quarterly data covering the period from 1980:1 to 2002:4 to measure the sensitivity of money demand to inflation we find that the long-run semi-elasticity of inflation to real money in circulation trebled between the pre-war to the war period. The remarkable increase of the semi-elasticity translates what is known in the literature as economic agents 'flight from domestic currency', a strategy that limits the government's capacity to use inflation tax to compensate for the loss in more traditional revenue sources. Shedding light on the behaviour of the demand for real money amidst persistent political and economic instability, illustrates the limits of using inflation and money creation as a dependable source of government revenue.

Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa’s Formal Banking

The analysis of reputation as a contract enforcement instrument where legal institutions, especially commercial courts, fail to enforce commercial contracts has focused on informal credit markets. The literature centres on the argument that lenders or co-borrowers in group lending can easily monitor each borrower, given the small size of an individual lender.s market. Verifiability allows the detection of opportunistic default and hence allows its punishment. This paper argues that in Africa, even formal credit markets rely on reputation. However, the modelling strategy is not based on monitoring and verifiability, given the potential for residual information asymmetry between a bank and a borrower after screening. Instead, the paper conceptualises the relationship between a bank and a borrower as an infinitely repeated game. The bank learns the type of the borrower through repeated interaction, a process by which a borrower builds his reputation as an honest partner. A defaulting dishonest borrower forfeits his access to future loans. The main result of the model is that the higher the reputation of a borrower, the lower his equilibrium payoff that is incentive compatible with debt repayment. Conversely, in the absence of any reputation, the payoff that is incentive compatible with repayment is equal to infinity meaning that credit trade is impossible without either a credible formal contract enforcement mechanism or some level of reputation.

How long can inflation tax compensate for the loss of government revenue in war economies? Evidence From Burundi

We explore the role of reciprocity in wage determination by combining experimental and survey data. The experiment is similar to Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe.s (1995) and is conducted with Ghanaian manufacturing workers. The survey relates to the same sample workers and the firms within which they are employed. We find a strong positive association between individual reciprocity and individual wages. However, the direction of causality is unclear. Various aspects of the distribution of the tendency to reciprocate within an employee.s workforce are also associated with that employee.s wage and, in this case, there are strong arguments for a causal link is from former to latter. In particular, the mean, median, and minimum levels of reciprocity have a positive effect on wages, while the spread in the distribution (standard deviation) has a strong significant negative effect. This suggests that homogenous behaviour, or convergence to a norm, is rewarded. The results underline the importance of behavioural characteristics and firm culture for the operation of the labour market.wages, reciprocity, field experiment

Credit Can Precipitate Firm Failure: Evidence from Kenyan Manufacturing in the 1990s

This paper models firm survival in Kenyan manufacturing with a particular emphasis on the effect of credit on firm resilience. The paper explores how firms coped with the challenging economic environment that prevailed in the 1990s particularly the effect of the dramatic increase in interest rates. The key finding is that the burden of past loans precipitated firm failure in the 1990s but overdrafts did not seem to have had a significant impact on firm failure. Furthermore, older firms appear to have resisted better than younger ones, but there is no evidence that large firms had higher survival rates. These results are robust to different specifications, namely probit models, Cox proportional hazard models and exponential, Gompertz and Weibull parametric hazard models. The main contribution of the paper is to highlight the role of credit in explaining firm failure in a shockprone developing economy. The study shows that the key factors explaining firm survival in developed economies, namely size and age, are not necessarily the most relevant determinants of firm survival in developing economies. Methodologically, this paper is one of the few that have applied hazard analysis to firms in developing economies.

Global axis shape of magnetic clouds deduced from the distribution of their local axis orientation

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are routinely tracked with imagers in the interplanetary space while magnetic clouds (MCs) properties are measured locally by spacecraft. However, both imager and insitu data do not provide direct estimation on the global flux rope properties. The main aim of this study is to constrain the global shape of the flux rope axis from local measurements, and to compare the results from in-situ data with imager observations. We perform a statistical analysis of the set of MCs observed by WIND spacecraft over 15 years in the vicinity of Earth. With the hypothesis of having a sample of MCs with a uniform distribution of spacecraft crossing along their axis, we show that a mean axis shape can be derived from the distribution of the axis orientation. In complement, while heliospheric imagers do not typically observe MCs but only their sheath region, we analyze one event where the flux-rope axis can be estimated from the STEREO imagers. From the analysis of a set of theoretical models, we show that the distribution of the local axis orientation is strongly affected by the global axis shape. Next, we derive the mean axis shape from the integration of the observed orientation distribution. This shape is robust as it is mostly determined from the global shape of the distribution. Moreover, we find no dependence on the flux-rope inclination on the ecliptic. Finally, the derived shape is fully consistent with the one derived from heliospheric imager observations of the June 2008 event. We have derived a mean shape of MC axis which only depends on one free parameter, the angular separation of the legs (as viewed from the Sun). This mean shape can be used in various contexts such as the study of high energy particles or space weather forecast.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure