The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy, with world output contracting at 3.5% in 2020, and no recovery likely before the fourth quarter of 2021. Similar to other developing regions, sub-Saharan Africa recorded a 2.6% decline, following strong growth of 3.2% in 2019. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when the region has been experiencing a surprising and very welcome manufacturing renaissance. Historically, industrialisation has been associated with rapid technological im...
"For two centuries or more new technology has impacted upon employment in manufacturing and other sectors. Technological developments have led most notably to the loss of jobs that required physical capabilities. In the past, however, these new technologies have ultimately created more jobs than have been lost due to the development of new sectors and new tasks within sectors. The new wave of technology that constitutes the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to be far more disruptive...
Indonesia has long aspired to become an upper-middle income economy and is now seeking ways to kickstart growth. The government is particularly interested in the role of the manufacturing sector and how to diversify and upgrade industry — which, in parallel, means reviewing industrial, fiscal and monetary policies in support of higher growth rates. Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) worked with the Asian Development Bank and a range of international expe...
A new report written by Dr. René Wintjes for the EU’s ‘Business Innovation Observatory’ looks at a range of new business, organisational and production models. These include successful new ways in which companies organise themselves, produce goods and services, and create new markets. Based on 12 case studies, the report highlights common issues and major trends before giving a raft of policy recommendations. The idea behind this approach is that good policy can increase the so...
In October 2013, Jun Hou successfully defended his PhD thesis on ‘Complementarity in Innovation and Development: A Cross-country Comparison’. Having analysed several thousand firms in more than 30 developing countries, he gives a range of recommendations. In particular, these are based on commonly found obstacles including competition, finance, skilled labour and tax regimes. In answering the questions for our blog, Hou explains the context of his research and how he made use of massive datasets...