The Oxford Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon

Cameroon's suboptimal economic experience since independence (1960) sheds light on broader issues of Africa's development narrative, and provides valuable economic and policy knowledge. While Cameroon's large informal economy is diverse and resilient and rooted in old business traditions, its formal economy has exhibited low productivity and employment growth for over 60 years. This has brought anger, disappointment, and violent conflict in several regions of the country. The Oxford Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon examines the reasons of Cameroon's unsatisfactory economic performance and draws lessons from successful development experience to help tackle these issues. The Handbook provides a critical assessment of the history, patterns, and strategies of economic development in Cameroon, and outlines new approaches to economic enquiry for prosperity and social change. Through Cameroon's governance story, the handbook analyzes the evolving conceptions of economic policy, takes stock of intellectual progress, documents the challenges of implementation, and outlines the intellectual and policy agenda ahead. For a developing country increases in per capita income arise from advances in technology arise from closing the knowledge and technology gap with those at the frontier. And within any country (especially one like Cameroon), there is enormous scope for productivity improvement simply by closing the gap between best practices and average practices. Standards of living can therefore be improved through the implementation of pertinent learning strategies. In this Oxford Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon, an international team of leading development economists and researchers address the wide range of issues facing Cameroon and provide guiding principles on how best the country (and other developing nations) could move human, capital, and financial resources from low- to high-productivity sectors in a constantly changing global economy. Cover Half Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Contributors Introduction: The Economics and Poetics of Sorrow PART I CONTEXT, LEGACIES, AND MINDSETS 1 The Cameroon Economy: Historical Overview 2 Cameroon as Part of Central Africa’s Political Economy 3 The Interplay Between Colonial History and Postcolonial Institutions: Evidence from Cameroon 4 The Political Economy of Ethnicity 5 The Political Economy of Reform Consensus (or Lack thereof) in Cameroon 6 The Homo Economicus in Cameroon: A View from Below 7 Untold Perspectives about Cameroon’s Economy PART II ECONOMIC STRUCTURE AND STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION 8 Monetary and Multidimensional Poverty in Cameroon: Measurements, Determinants, and Policy Implications 9 Cameroon’s Economic Assets and Production: Documenting and Analyzing a Mismatch 10 The Economics of Infrastructure in Cameroon: State, Challenges, and Policy Reforms 11 Structural Transformation and Productivity Growth in Cameroon 12 Economic Diversification in Cameroon: A Trade–DSM analysis 13 Cameroon: Trade Costs, Trade Facilitation, and Regional Integration 14 The Political Economy of Contemporary Youth in Cameroon 15 Cameroon’s Labor Market Dynamics and Prospects 16 Cameroon’s Informal Labor Market 17 Drivers of Earnings Inequalities in Urban Cameroon 18 Education: The Hypothesis of Negative Returns 19 Early Human Capital Accumulation and Decentralization 20 Comments on Decentralization in Cameroon 21 Determinants of the Performance of the Education System: The Role of Institutions 22 Health Outcomes and Health Care Financing in Cameroon 23 Economic Evaluations of Health Financing Programs 24 Agriculture Transformation PART III MACROEC ONOMIC POLICIES AND INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES 25 Fiscal Policy Effectiveness through the Lenses Useful of Government Consumption 26 Fiscal Decentralization, Entrepreneurship, and Firm Productivity in Cameroon 27 Public Debt: Beyond Accounting 28 Withholding Trust: Business Taxpayers and the Value-Added Tax in Cameroon 29 The CFA Franc: The Financial Sector and Economic Growth in CEMAC 30 The Monetary and Financial Sector in Cameroon: Structure, Performance, and Vulnerabilities 31 Financing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Cameroon 32 Female Entrepreneurship in Africa: Characteristics and Determinants in Cameroon 33 Models of Governance in Cameroon’s Public Administration PART IV LOOKING FORWARD 34 The Economy of Corruption in Cameroonian’s Cartoons 35 The Analytics of Natural Resource Management 36 Testing the Dynamic Efficiency of Extraction of Nonrenewable Resources 37 Oil Revenue Management: Cameroon’s Experience 38 Comparing Nonrenewable Resources Stocks and Capital Goods 39 Electricity Supply and Manufacturing Exports 40 A Blueprint for Employment Creation 41 The Economics of Migration and Remittances: New Opportunities 42 Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Analytics in Cameroon: Challenges, Benefits, and Potential Applications 43 The Economy of Humanitarianism 44 When Kamerun Will Awaken... Index "The [Oxford] Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon examines the reasons of Cameroon's unsatisfactory economic performance and draws lessons from successful development experience to help tackle these issues. The Handbook provides a critical assessment of the history, patterns, and strategies of economic development in Cameroon, and outlines new approaches to economic enquiry for prosperity and social change. Through Cameroon's governance story, the handbook analyzes the evolving conceptions of economic policy, takes stock of intellectual progress, documents the challenges of implementation, and outlines the intellectual and policy agenda ahead. In this [Oxford] Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon, an international team of leading development economists and researchers address the wide range of issues facing Cameroon and provide guiding principles on how best the country (and other developing nations) could move human, capital and financial resources from low- to high-productivity sectors in a constantly changing global economy"-- Provided by publisher