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Purpose
Contrary to the gender gap in favour of men in entrepreneurial activity elsewhere, in Ghana more women own businesses. This paper aims to examine the correlates between women's business ownership and household welfare in Ghana and the socio-economic factors that affect business size.


Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a nationally representative survey data and ordinary least squares and IV regression methods.


Findings
The findings reveal that more businesses are owned by women and their business ownership is associated with improved welfare for the household, yet still there exists size gap in favour of men. The implication is that potentials exist for poverty reduction and economic growth if policy invests in the size of women businesses. Also, while unpaid work limits entrepreneurial activity for women, older children help to reduce the time constraint.


Originality/value
The study uses individual-level business ownership data on a developing country (Ghana) to examine the link between women entrepreneurship and household welfare. This is new in the literature, when individual level data is readily not available in developing countries.

This book is the first compilation of its kind that brings together discussions of the evolution of scholarship in different branches of the Social Sciences. It presents a comprehensive multi-disciplinary text exploring the changing dynamics of the Social Sciences in Ghana, offering a broader perspective from which to view the evolution, theory, methods, substance and relevance of each of the Social Science disciplines and their multiple interfaces. The introduction and the conclusion are devoted to the theoretical, comparative and empirical debate over the Social Sciences from historical and analytical perspectives.Written by acknowledged experts, the 15 chapters span the following disciplines: Archaeology and Heritage Studies; History; Geography; Psychology; Sociology and Anthropology; Social Work; Economics; Political Science; International Affairs; Information Studies; Communication Studies; African Studies; Development Studies; Women's and Gender Studies; and Adult and Continuing Education. Changing Perspectives on the Social Sciences in Ghana offers sophisticated perspectives for comparing and appreciating the synergies, differences, trends and nuances among and between the Social Science disciplines in Ghana, in a holistic and scholarly manner

This paper provides a preliminary survey of the educational attainment of Ghana's adult population. It describes patterns and trends and makes some allusions to possible associations between educational attainment and outputs and outcomes.

Since 1983 the Ghanaian government has pursued an economic recovery programme (ERP) and substantial growth of output has been achieved. After years of decline, export volumes have also been expanding, but it is disputed how much of this expansion can be attributed to the ERP. This book studies the question of the extent to which non-traditional exports have responded to the policies of the ERP. After reviewing overall export performance and policies towards non-traditional exports, the report draws upon the results of a special survey to examine the incentive structure facing the sector and how its output has responded to this. The nature of remaining constraints on exporters is also examined. The report concludes with policy recommendations. (DÜI-Hff)

This paper uses firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries to estimate the effect of exporting on efficiency. Estimating simultaneously a production function and an export regression that control for unobserved firm effects, it finds both significant efficiency gains from exporting, supporting the learning-by-exporting hypothesis, and evidence for self-selection of more efficient firms into exporting. The evidence of learning-by-exporting suggests that Africa has much to gain from orientating its manufacturing sector towards exporting. (InWent/DÜI)