Business incubators are a policy tool for spurring and supporting entrepreneurial businesses. In recent years, many African countries have established many of them.
With increasing access to mobile phones across the world, mobile money services have been growing in popularity, enabling users to deposit, transfer, and withdraw funds from a digital account without owning a bank account.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is considered by policymakers as an important driver of local economic development. For example, foreign investors may establish supply chain linkages with domestic firms, enhancing their productive capacities (e.g.
Informal actors often compete with formal or regulated ones. Regulated actors therefore can be natural allies in government attempts to enforce laws and regulations. Yet they often are not.
The rise of China in the global economy has been linked with negative impacts on employment across many high and middle-income countries. However, evidence for African countries is limited.
We document differences in the experiences of firms and firm owners by gender during the early COVID-19 crisis in Ghana. Female-owned firms are more likely to close during the Spring of 2020, but equally likely to be open by July 2020.
Most low- and middle-income countries are characterised by a large informal sector, which implies that a substantial fraction of economic activity in these countries is completely unregulated.
