Bazoumana Ouattara

Formal and informal sectors: is there any wage differential?

ABSTRACT The main objective of this paper is to investigate if a wage difference exists between formal and informal sectors in the case of the Turkish labour market using a sample of wageworkers. To this end, we use data for 2004 and 2009 and a novel definition of the informal sector. On the methodological front, we adopt three alternative decomposition techniques, namely, the Oaxaca-Ransom [(1994). On discrimination and the decomposition of wage differentials. Journal of Econometrics, 61, 5–21] decomposition in the context of mean regression, the Machado and Mata [(2005). Counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 20(4), 445–465] decomposition in the quantile regression framework and the non-parametric decomposition method proposed by Nopo [(2008). Matching as a tool to decompose wage gap. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(2), 290–299]. The results reveal the existence of a wage gap between the two sectors. We found education and experience to be key determinants of earnings. The findings of this paper have implications for policies, which might be directed towards developing approaches with a focus on education and experience.

Technology Transfer and National Efficiency: does absorptive capacity matter?

This paper explores the moderating effects of absorptive capacity on the role of technology transfer in explaining cross‐country differences in national efficiency. We used data from 18 sub‐Saharan Africa countries over the period 1970–2010 and adopted a stochastic frontier approach. The empirical results show that the coefficients of the interaction terms for measures of technology transfer (trade and machinery imports) and absorptive capacity (relative R&D) are negative and statistically significant. This suggests that absorptive capacity positively influences the degree to which technology transfer affects the efficiency of countries in sub‐Saharan Africa.

FDI Response to Political Shocks: What Can the Arab Spring Tell Us?

This paper examines the FDI response to political shocks. We first investigate whether political or institutional quality is an important determinant of FDI inflows using a panel VAR model in a dataset of 146 countries over the period of 1989-2015. Then, we exploit the Arab Spring incidence to measure the short-run effects of political shocks on FDI flows using the differences-in-differences (DiD) estimator for a sub-sample of nineteen countries in the MENA region. We account for possible bias of the DiD estimator resulting from dealing with heterogeneous group of countries by using the propensity score matching based on the countries economic development and political settings. Our findings show that a positive shock to political quality would increase FDI flows which lends evidence to the importance of political quality as an important determinant of FDI flows. In addition, we find that the Arab spring has led to a drop in FDI flows to the MENA region.

Global Financial Crisis, Credit Access and Children: Evidence from Tanzania

This paper investigates the relationship between the recent global financial crisis and child labour in Tanzania. Using the difference-in-difference methodological framework, we identify households access to credit as a possible transmission channel of the financial crisis to child labour. Unlike most of the existing studies that employ self-reported shocks, we exploit the incidence of the global crisis as an exogenous shock to compare households that were credit recipients before the crisis with households that were not recipients of credit either prior to the crisis or in its immediate aftermath. To deal with possible bias from the endogeneity of access to credit, this study proposes a new instrument that considers the regional concentration of available micro finance institutions and the number of households assets. Unlike instruments suggested by the existing literature, our proposed instrument incorporates information on both demand and supply sides of credit access irrespective of whether a household has actually received credit. To avoid the wealth effect which would violate the exogeniety condition, we suggest to count the number of the households assets no matter how much value they possess. By doing so, our instrument utilizes information on how risk averse a household is and therefore their chances of making a successful loan application. The empirical results reveal that a negative shock on credit-recipient households is associated with a significant increase in child labour in Tanzania.