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International audienceThis paper focuses on the effects of financial factors on manufacturing firms’ export participation ina panel of Egyptian manufacturing firms over the 2003–2008 period. Our main results show that financialconstraints reduce export participation of Egyptian firms, while financial liquidity improves it. Moreover,financial constraints have a negative impact on alternative measures of export activity, namely, export intensityand the time the firm takes before starting to export. Consequently, adding to the scarce literature on developingcountries, our results support an important impact of financial factors on Egyptian firms’ participation ininternational trade

In this study we address the issue of access to drinking water in rural areas related to agricultural productivity performance. Considering an agricultural household model as our basic conceptual framework, we analyze the theoretical aspects of increasing the access rate to drinking water on agricultural productivity. First, we show that the increased access rate to drinking water is conducive to agricultural productivity due to increased intrinsic productivity of individuals and additional gain in time for agricultural production. Second, it transpires that the constraints on the access to drinking water may be costly in terms of decreased productivity and well-being of rural people. Furthermore, based on a sample of 27 African countries over the period 1990-2010, estimation results do not reject the assumption that increasing access to drinking water has a positive effect on rural productivity growth. This positive effect is reinforced by the presence of a better sanitation system, even after controlling for country-specific effects and for the characteristics of rural areas.

International audienceThe financial liberalization in the 1980s and early 1990s led the CFA Franc Zone countries todeepen reforms in their financial systems. These reforms fostered financial development, which inturn may have reduced income poverty, as emphasized by several theoretical arguments in theliterature. This study aims at estimating the contribution of financial development to povertyalleviation in the CFA Franc Zone. Results based on a panel of CFA Franc Zone countries showthat financial development is associated with a drop in the proportion of poor population. Next,financial development reduces the extent to which the income of individuals falls below thepoverty line. Moreover, in some cases, the effect of financial development on poverty may besubject to nonlinearities. Finally, financial instability or unstable financial development leading tocrises may mitigate the favourable effect of financial development on poverty reduction. Thesefindings are robust to the use of alternative measures of financial development and hold aftercontrolling for a potential simultaneity and a small sample biases

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