World Bank Economic Review, Vol. 31, No. 3

What Is Considered Development Economics? Commonalities and Differences in University Courses around the Developing World - David McKenzie and Anna Luisa Paffhausen

Does Financial Education Impact Financial Literacy and Financial Behavior, and If So, When? -Tim Kaiser and Lukas Menkhoff

A First Step up the Energy Ladder? Low Cost Solar Kits and Household’s Welfare in Rural Rwanda -Michael Grimm, Anicet Munyehirwe, Jörg Peters, and Maximiliane Sievert

The Cost of Fear: The Welfare Effect of the Risk of Violence in Northern Uganda - Marc Rockmore

Identifying Gazelles: Expert Panels vs. Surveys as a Means to Identify Firms with Rapid Growth Potential -Marcel Fafchamps and Christopher Woodruff

On Minimizing the Risk of Bias in Randomized Controlled Trials in Economics - Alex Eble, Peter Boone, and Diana Elbourne

Donor Competition for Aid Impact, and Aid Fragmentation - Kurt Annen and Luc Moers

The Impacts of India’s Food Security Policies on South Asian Wheat and Rice Markets - Nelson Benjamin Villoria and Elliot Wamboka Mghenyi

Effect of Lengthening the School Day on Mother’s Labor Supply -Dante Contreras and Paulina Sepúlveda

Can Agricultural Interventions Improve Child Nutrition? Evidence from Tanzania - Anna Folke Larsen and Helene Bie Lilleør

The Impact of Positive and Negative Income Changes on the Height and Weight of Young Children - Thomas Buser, Hessel Oosterbeek, Erik Plug, Juan Ponce, and José Rosero

The Effect of a Transfer Program for the Elderly in Mexico City on Co-Residing Children’s School Enrollment - Emilio Gutierrez, Laura Juarez, and Adrian Rubli

Africa Tourism Monitor

The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) is delighted to present the 5th edition of Africa Tourism Monitor, which highlights travel and tourism as one of the fastest-growing and most interconnected sectors in the global economy.

The State of Tourism in Africa

This second issue of The State of Tourism in Africa continues to tell the story of how tourism not only drives economic growth and development, but also contributes to economic recovery.

GreenApps: A Platform for Cellular Edge Applications

This paper presents the design, implementation and deployment of GreenApps, a ground-up platform that enables off-grid, near off-line and highly available cellular applications in rural contexts. The GreenApps platform has been deployed in two rural regions in Kumawu, Ghana and Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua and supports different community-centric applications.

Computing the Rate of Disappearance of Cropland Using Satellite Images

Apart from human-led development, changing climate is also leading towards a change in the land pattern. In both scenarios, a solution to the problem can be a monitoring tool, which can identify the change in land pattern over the years. In this paper, we present a tool that can monitor this change through satellite images.

Review of “The Economy of Ghana Sixty Years after Independence”

An independent central bank has the ability to set monetary policy free of political influence…

Transforming Rural Africa - Economics, Technology and Governance

AFEA/ASSA Luncheon Speech

Food price Volatility and its Consequences: Introduction

Commodity prices are in the news. Oil prices have dropped 65% since June 2014…

Mobility, Human Capital, Remittances, and Economic Transformation

Migration and its related remittances is now an important feature of many economies, both the source countries and many destination countries.

Actors of Change in Africa: Human Capital and Markets

In this paper I will be presenting two ideas that I think are critical to economic development. The two ideas are markets and human capital.

Sustaining High Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: Knowledge and the Structure of the Economy

This paper discusses the role of knowledge and the structure of the economy in sustaining high economic growth, with an emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa and the Indian Ocean: Trade, Investments, Global Partnerships, and Lessons

The relationships between African and the Indian Ocean span millennia. Between nations in Africa and those on the Indian Ocean there are opportunities for greater trade, for increased investments and for enhanced geo-political cooperation.

Africa and the Arab Gulf: A New Economic and Political Alliance?

Does the relationship between the Arab Gulf and Africa hold the promise of greatly enhanced and mutually beneficial trade and investment?

Is the Brain Drain Good for Africa?

We build upon recent literature to do several exercises to assess benefits and costs of the brain drain to Africa. Contrary to a lot of the worries expressed in the media and in aid agencies, the brain drain is probably a net benefit to the source countries…

The New Growth Theory

This paper very briefly summarizes some of the new growth theory in economics. The emphasis will be on the role of knowledge in the growth process.

Optimal Growth with Unobservable Resources and Learning

This paper examines the problem of choosing optimal resource consumption from an imperfectly observable aggregate capital, wealth, or resource stock with the decision-maker learns about over time.

The Bayesian Foundations of Learning by Doing

This paper explores a one-agent Bayesian model of learning by doing and technological choice. To produce output, the agent can choose among various technologies…

Research and Productivity

We model research as a signal on an unknown parameter of a technology. We distinguish applied from basic research and show that firms in the same industry can optimally choose different research portfolios, and that basic research van seem to have a higher rate of return than applied research, even though it really doesn’t - essentially, firms on a “fast track” upgrading policy opt for basic research but fast and slow-track upgrading policies can coexist in a long-run equilibrium.

A Bayesian Learning Model Fitted to a Variety of Empirical Learning Curves

Where does technological progress come from and what determines its rate of advance? In answering these questions, it is useful to decompose technological progress into the invention of new techniques and products and the improvement of existing ones.

The Transfer of Human Capital

Most of our productive knowledge was handed down to us by previous generations. The transfer of knowledge from the old to the young is therefore a cornerstone of productivity growth.

Stochastic Growth When Utility Depends on Both Consumption and the Stock Level

This paper examines the dynamic behavior of optimal consumption and investment policies in the aggregate stochastic growth model when utility depends on both consumption and the stock level.

Stochastic Dynamic Models with Stock-Dependent Rewards

We examine the behavior of optimal consumption and investment policies in aggregate stochastic growth models when utility depends on both consumption and the stock level…

On the Existence of Optimal Processes in Non-Stationary Environments

We consider an aggregative model of intertemporal allocation under uncertainty, in which the utility and production functions are allowed to be time dependent, the random shocks occurring in each period are entirely arbitrary…

Dynamic Optimization under Uncertainty: Non-Convex Feasible Set

The object of the book is refinement, not reconstruction; it is study in ‘pure theory.’ The motive back of its presentation is twofold…

On Characterizing Optimality of Stochastic Competitive Processes

A condition is provided to replace the transversality condition in characterizing the optimality of competitive processes…