Labour Economics
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- ItemFacilitating Regional Trade: Lessons from WAEMU and EAC on How to Increase Trade in CEMAC(African Economic Research Consortium, 2023-06) Nguenkwe, Ronie BertrandThis study explores the ways of facilitation and enhancing intra-CEMAC (Central African Economic and Monetary Community) trade, which has remained structurally weak over more than 20 years, by focusing on the East African Community and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). The study uses a descriptive analysis of trade and the indicators of facilitation of trade in those three communities. An econometric analysis of factors underlying the level of trade in those three communities is conducted using an augmented gravity model. The econometric results demonstrate that the number of documents and the number of days required to export has a negative and significant impact on trade in EAC and WAEMU, but a positive impact in CEMAC. Infrastructure services, notably the use of the Internet have a negative impact on intra-zone trade in EAC.
- ItemIdentification and Estimation of Quadratic Food Engel Curves: Evidence from Cameroon(African Economic Research Consortium, 2023-07) Wirba, Ebenezer LemvenIn this paper we estimate quadratic food Engel curves using data from the 2001, 2007 and 2014 Cameroon household consumption surveys. To address potential mismeasurement of regressors, we employ the heteroscedasticity-based identification strategy. Exploratory non-parametric analyses suggest quadratic forms for the food Engel curves. The regression results in this study confirm these patterns. At lower spending levels, unit increases in total spending increase the food budget share, while at levels above the spending thresholds, unit increases in total spending reduce the food budget share. We also find evidence of major shifts in the quadratic food Engel curves over time. These findings suggest that reducing taxes on food items would be more beneficial to poor households.
- ItemThe Impact of Armed Conflicts on Child Health in the Central African Republic(African Economic Research Consortium, 2023) Tchakounte, Dimitri; Loic, Molambo SambiFor several decades, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been the scene of a succession of coups that have been accompanied by armed conflicts in many prefectures of the country. Children often suffer high rates of acute malnutrition during these armed conflicts. This study aims to analyse the impact of the 2003-2008 and 2012-2014 armed conflicts on child health using data from the 2010 and 2018 Multiple Cluster Surveys of the Central African Republic. Our identification strategy relies on exploiting both temporal and spatial variation across birth and prefectures cohorts to measure child exposure to the conflicts. From the difference-in-difference estimation, we find that height-for-age Z-scores and weight-for-age Z-scores are, respectively, 0.518 and 0.242 standard deviations lower for children born during the war. We also examine the impact of the total duration of exposure to conflicts, and the results indicate that an additional month of exposure significantly reduces both height-for-age and weight-for-age z-scores. We further perform robustness analysis, and the findings suggest that the effects are robust to considering the level of internally displaced persons across prefectures and the level of household wealth. As economic losses appear to be the most relevant mechanisms paired with the decline in child nutritional health in the CAR, interventions must promote agricultural empowerment of internally displaced persons, and initiate cash transfers and employment programmes aimed at rebuilding household assets in the absence of agricultural income. Moreover, rehabilitating basic social services, especially health infrastructure, can help alleviate the negative effects of conflict on child health through access to adequate health care during illness.
- ItemGlobal Value Chains and Industrialization in Africa(African Economic Research Consortium, 2023) Nguekeng, Bernard; Mignamissi, DieudonnéThe objective of this study is to analyse the main effects of the integration of African countries in the global value chains (GVCs) on their industrialization level. To this effect, we have specified an industrialization equation that takes into account the economic characteristics of the continent. We have then estimated that equation by the system GMM estimator method on a sample of 51 African countries with panel data spanning the period 1996‒2018 sourced from international organization databases. The findings of the estimations are the following: (1) the participation and the position of African countries in GVC positively contribute to their industrialization. The imports of intermediate goods facilitate the access to foreign machinery and technologies, which stimulate local production. Furthermore, the position in value chains that are limited to assembling activities would also allow for achievement of significant industrial progress; (2) the main factors influencing the indirect transmission of GVC to industrialization are the human capital and the physical capital; (3) the results are stable as shown by several robustness check tests related to different modalities of integration in GVC, to the conception of a new participation indicator in GVC, and to sub-regional specificities. On the basis of these results, we recommend policy actions to enhance participation, but also to improve the position in GVC, while at the same time an appropriate strategy would be designed to accumulate human capital and physical capital in the long term.
- ItemHabits, Rule-of-Thumb Consumption and Useful Public Consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa: Theory and New Evidence(African Economic Research Consortium, 2023) Francois, John NanaI derive and estimate a structural consumption model for a panel of 34 sub-Saharan Africa countries from 1960–2018 to uncover three important aggregate consumption behaviours: habit formation, rule-of-thumb consumption and the complementarity of government consumption in private utility. The following findings emerge: (1) There is evidence of habit formation in consumption. (2) Approximately 38% of consumers follow the rule of thumb of consuming their current income. This rule of-thumb consumption behaviour in the data is driven by the period before the mobile money era that emerged post-2000s. (3) Public consumption complements private consumption in an Edgeworth-Pareto sense. This suggests that increases in government consumption can stimulate aggregate demand via a positive marginal utility channel.