Suchergebnisse

AbstractUsing panel data from three nationwide surveys in Zimbabwe, an error components model is estimated to explore the factors that drive the small‐enterprise sector. Among labour‐intensive industries in urban areas, entry of new enterprises appears to be driven by surplus labour. This is supported by low barriers to entry and the negative relationship between economic growth and entry rates. In contrast, entry in capital‐intensive industries is unrelated to economic growth and it is characterized by significant barriers to entry, including capital, working capital, and proprietor experience. With the exception of labour‐intensive industries in rural areas, entry in all other small‐enterprise industries is positively correlated with agricultural income. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractUsing data from 448 microenterprises in Zimbabwe, this paper examines five alternative measures of profits and five alternative measures of net worth. The results show that the single‐question proxies are too difficult for proprietors to answer, whereas the most complex profit measures generate many negative estimates. The best measure of profits, based on three questions, could be answered by all proprietors and it avoids recall problems associated with sales and expenses. Among the net worth proxies, all of the measures are positively correlated. Nonetheless, the proxy based on fixed assets, accounts receivable, debt, and inventory, showed the highest correlation with the full measure of net worth. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractOne of the most universal patterns in the spatial distribution of poverty in developing countries is that the incidence of poverty is lower in urban areas than in rural areas. It is widely accepted, though less well documented, that remote rural areas tend to be poorer than areas with good market access. Furthermore, there is concern that remote rural areas may not benefit equally from economic growth. In this paper, we examine poverty trends in rural Uganda to test whether remote rural areas benefit from economic growth to the same degree as better connected rural areas. Applying a variant of small‐area estimation methods to household survey data and several Demographic and Health Surveys carried out over 10 years, we confirm that remote rural areas are poorer than better connected rural areas, but find no evidence that they have fallen further behind over this period.