Do African Manufacturing Firms Learn from Exporting?

We use firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to investigate whether exporting impacts on efficiency, and whether efficient firms self-select into the export market. Based on simultaneous estimation of a production function and an export regression, our preferred results indicate significant efficiency gains from exporting, which can be interpreted as learning by exporting. We show that modelling unobserved heterogeneity by a flexible approach is important for deriving this conclusion. A policy implication of our results is that Africa would gain from orientating its manufacturing sector towards exporting.     

The Effects of Competition Policy on Development – Cross-Country Evidence Using Four New Indicators

Over the last two decades, many developing countries have introduced competition policies. This paper introduces four new indicators on various aspects of competition laws and competition agencies to make competition policies comparable. These indicators are used to estimate the effects of competition policies and all four contribute at least marginally to explaining differences in total factor productivity. This is also true if developing countries are analysed separately. In addition to the direct effects of competition policy on total factor productivity, an indirect effect is identified: countries scoring high with regard to competition policy suffer less from corruption.     

Changing Living Standards in Southern Indian Villages 1975–2006: Revisiting the ICRISAT Village Level Studies

We study changes in living conditions using longitudinal data covering 30 years in six villages in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, initially surveyed during 1975–1984, and resurveyed in recent years, as part of the ICRISAT Village Level Studies. Monetary welfare indicators (such as incomes, assets, consumption and poverty) and non-monetary indicators of well-being (such as basic literacy, education, health and subjective well-being) have improved considerably. Consumption growth is linked to literacy and education at baseline. Other assets, such as land, have a neglible impact, suggesting that labour and human capital have been instrumental for growth in these villages.Change involved a large increase in various off-farm activities.     

The Making and Remaking of Agro-Industries in Africa

This article introduces the special section on the making and remaking of agro-industries in Africa. It examines what the contributions tell us about how agro-industries work, but also why national industries work the way they do, how they came to be that way and what factors and forces drive or hinder their dynamism.     

Post-Hospital Medical Respite Care and Hospital Readmission of Homeless Persons

Medical respite programs offer medical, nursing, and other care as well as accommodation for homeless persons discharged from acute hospital stays. They represent a community-based adaptation of urban health systems to the specific needs of homeless persons. This article examines whether post-hospital discharge to a homeless medical respite program was associated with a reduced chance of 90-day readmission compared to other disposition options. Adjusting for imbalances in patient characteristics using propensity scores, respite patients were the only group that was significantly less likely to be readmitted within 90 days compared to those released to Own Care. Respite programs merit attention as a potentially efficacious service for homeless persons leaving the hospital.     

The African national congress and its critics: ‘predatory liberalism’, black empowerment and intra-alliance tensions in post-apartheid South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by centralized, neo-liberal policymaking that perpetuates, and in some cases exaggerates, socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) leadership's alignment with powerful international and domestic market actors produces tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and between government and civil society. Consequently, several characteristics of ‘predatory liberalism’ are evident in contemporary South Africa: neo-liberal restructuring of the economy is combined with an increasing willingness by government to assert its authority, to marginalize and delegitimize those critical of its abandonment of inclusive governance. A new form of oligarch power, combining entrenched economic interests with those of a new ‘black bourgeoisie’ promoted by narrowly implemented Black Economic Empowerment policies, diminishes prospects for broad-based socio-economic transformation. Because the new policy environment is failing to resolve tensions between global market demands for increasing market liberalization and domestic popular demands for poverty-alleviation and socio-economic transformation, the ANC leadership is forced increasingly to confront ‘ultra-leftists’ who are challenging its credentials as defender of the National Democratic Revolution which was the cornerstone in the anti-apartheid struggle.     

De-idealizing the democratic civil peace: on the political economy of democratic stabilization and pacification in Argentina and Ecuador

In the liberal concept of a ‘democratic civil peace’, an idealistic understanding of democratic stabilization and pacification prevails: democracy is seen to guarantee political stability and social peace by offering comprehensive representation and participation in political decisions while producing outcomes broadly in accordance with the common interest of society. This contrasts with the procedural quality and the material achievements of most, if not all, really existing democracies. South America is paradigmatic. Here, the legitimation of liberal democracy through both procedure and performance is weak and yet ‘third wave democracies’ have managed to survive even harsh economic and political crises. The article presents a conceptual framework to analyse historically specific patterns of democratic stabilization and pacification. Analyses of the processes of socio-political destabilization and re-stabilization in Argentina and Ecuador since the late 1990s show how a ‘de-idealized’ perspective on the democratic civil peace helps explain the viability of democratic regimes that systematically deviate from the ideal-type conditions for democratic survival that have been proposed in the literature.     

Prevalence of rhabdomyolysis in drug deaths

Rhabdomyolysis has repeatedly been reported as a possible consequence of illicit drug consumption especially in clinical literature. In order to investigate the prevalence of rhabdomyolysis in cases of drug deaths, immunohistochemical staining of kidney sections with a myoglobin antibody was performed at 103 consecutive fatal drug poisonings. The control group consisted of 107 unselected forensic autopsies. With regard to the presence of intratubular myoglobin, 33% of the study group were categorized as "strongly positive", 17.5% as "slightly positive" and 49.5% as "negative". No single substance showed a particularly high incidence of rhabdomyolysis nor were there correlations to special combinations of substances. In the control group a "strongly positive" result after myoglobin staining was observed in only 10.3% of 107 cases, a "slightly positive" result in 13.1% and a "negative" result in 76.6%. The findings suggest that rhabdomyolysis is a frequent consequence of illicit drug consumption and that it is not promoted by a single factor, but by a combination of several factors.