Why Does cargo spend weeks in African ports ? the case of Douala, Cameroon

This paper investigates the main factors explaining long container dwell times in African Ports. Using original and extensive data on container imports in the Port of Douala, it seeks to provide a basic understanding of why containers stay on average more than two weeks in gateway ports in Africa while long dwell times are widely recognized as a critical hindrance to economic development. It also demonstrates the interrelationships that exist between logistics performance of consignees, operational performance of port operators and efficiency of customs clearance operations. Shipment level analysis is used to identify the main determinants of long cargo dwell times and the impact of shipment characteristics such as fiscal regime, density of value, bulking and packaging type, last port of call, and region of origin or commodity group on cargo dwell time in ports is tested. External factors, such as performance of clearing and forwarding agents, shippers and shipping line strategies, also play an important role in the determination of long dwell times. Cargo dwell time distribution has many specificities, including broad-tail, high variance or right-censoring, which requires in-depth statistical analysis prior to any design of policy recommendations.Common Carriers Industry,Transport and Trade Logistics,Transport Economics Policy&Planning,E-Business,Customs and Trade

Transnational Economic Behavior of Muslim Diasporas in the West: The Case of French Muslims

The number of international migrants is estimated to be almost 272 million globally (IOM, 2020), with nearly two-thirds being labor migrants. A significant proportion of these migrants are Muslims who have left their native countries to live in the West. For the specific case of France, this population ranges between 4.7 to 5.1 million according to recent surveys, i.e. about 8% of the total population of the country. This paper is concerned about the present and future of these communities and aims at answering the specific question of their changing transnational economic behavior in today’s world economy. The paper hypothesizes that the international economic decisions of migrants are no longer explained by origin and destination country pairs only but also in relation to other countries with both higher and lower wages. A simple microeconomic framework is proposed to explain how these migrant populations make rational choices about their decision to permanently stay, migrate back to their country of origin or migrate to a third country. The model identifies successive waves of migrants with differentiated economic behavior. In particular, a specific class of migrants is identified for which wage differentials are not the main driver of migration or remigration decisions due to the inelasticity of their labor demand to wages. These migrants rather seek to create and manage their own companies and invest in a better comfort of living in countries other than France. Descriptive statistics demonstrate the potential for such framework to explain simultaneously the observed increasing migrations of French Muslims to high-income countries driven by wage differentials, a rapidly expanding migration to Turkey and Malaysia, and a resurgence of migration to former colonies which had previously experienced a consistent reduction in migration flows since the 1980s. The paper also estimates the economic impact of remigrations of Muslims from France, which represents today a minimum of €5.5 billion on annual basis, and calls for more research in these hybrid migration decisions to better analyze and map the future economic behaviors of Muslim populations in the West

"Après nous, le déluge" towards a shock theory of Islamic green finance

International audienceDespite considerable progress in the ratification and implementation of the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda (SDG Agenda) and Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Paris Agreement) since 2015 the world has not committed enough resources to implement these two strategic agendas for humanity and achieve their crucial targets for the development of current and future generations. As the COVID-19 global pandemics started unfolding at the beginning of 2020, both the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda were not on the track, and this was attributed to a large extent to the significant funding gaps for both agendas, especially for the most vulnerable countries. On the other hand, the recent economic crises (COVID-19 pandemics, 2008 global financial crisis) have profoundly disrupted the global economy and demonstrated the heightened vulnerability of the global financial and economic system to climate, health, financial or socioeconomic risks. Geopolitical events further challenged the foundations of the global financial architecture, in particular, due to unprecedented sanctions against Russia in the United States, the European Union, and allies, and the unexpected response of Russian authorities to these sanctions. In this context, the world is perceived as even more exposed in the short-term future to a major crisis, potentially far more reaching than the 2008 global financial crisis, a crisis that will arguably determine the fate of most vulnerable nations in the next decades. In this dual context of failed achievement of global agendas and heightened risks of major global financial shock, this paper addresses the positioning and potential evolution of the Islamic finance (IF) sector. In particular, the paper posits that despite solid growth in the last four decades, IF institutions have not adopted a clear strategy with regards to rapidly aligning with SDG and climate action agendas, or developing relevant mechanisms and policies to face external shocks of the magnitude expected with the unfolding global financial crisis and IF will therefore face an existential crisis when the major global financial shock occurs. The current global IF institutions are not equipped with the capabilities and resources to adopt packages of reforms radical enough to bring rapidly enough the sector back on track before the crisis hits. In consequence, the IF sector is likely to become marginalized in the short-term due to capital flight and institutional obsolescence and despite positive developments, sustainable or Islamic green finance remain constrained in their current infancy stage. The central idea of this paper is therefore that the best opportunity to develop a global Islamic green finance architecture that substantially contributes to building a better, greener, and more inclusive world lies in building a radically transformed Islamic economic system in the aftermath of the expected major shock forthcoming. Using the framework of shock theory, the paper argues that seven critical conditions (government stability, mass urban relocations, de-commoditization of consumption, state control over unsustainable industries, dematerialization of the economy through technology and state planning, large-scale reconstruction financing program tied to the mobilization of human capacities and natural resources and interventionist policy to salvage and consolidate the banking sector and transition to Islamic Green Finance) would best support this needed transition for the benefit of present and future generations