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.

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 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 programmes contribute to poverty alleviation. – investment ; employment ; poverty reduction ; labou

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

Rental Housing Assistance for the 21st Century

Current rental housing assistance programs are not designed to provide a safety net for people whose lives are volatile, or to encourage poor people to live in good locations. These failings can be corrected. HUD should establish a program of rental insurance-like mortgage insurance, but for renters. Low income housing assistance formulas should be revised to reward good neighborhood features, and punish bad

Boosting quality education with inclusive human development: empirical evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

This study examines the importance of inclusive human development in promoting education quality in a panel of forty-nine Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2000-2012. The empirical evidence is based on Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Fixed Effects (FE) and Quantile Regression (QR) estimations. It is apparent from the OLS and FE findings that inclusive human development has a negative effect on the outcome variable. This negative effect implies that inclusive human development improves education quality. This result should be understood in the light of the fact that the adopted education variable is a negative economic signal given that it is computed as the ratio of pupils to teachers. Therefore, a higher ratio reflects diminishing education quality. From QR, with the exception of the highest quantile, the tendency of inclusive human development in reducing poor quality education is consistent throughout the conditional distribution of poor education quality. Policy implications are discussed