Introduction: Globalization–Poverty Channels and Case Studies from Sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract

. The first conference was essentially conceptual in nature, meant to understand better the various mechanisms and channels through which globalization affects the poor either directly or indirectly. The other three conferences focused on each of the major regions of the developing world: Asia, Africa and Latin America.The objectives of this introduction are threefold: first, to review briefly how the forces of globalization influence poverty in general; second, to describe and discuss the main transmission channels and mechanisms; and third to analyze the impact of globalization on Africa and present an overview of the six Africa case studies included in this issue.

Globalization and Poverty Nexus: A Panel Data Analysis

“…The first channel through which globalization affects poverty is the relative prices of inputs and outputs (Nissanke and Thorbecke, 2008). In the literature, the effects of globalization on the poor are generally described through the implications of the Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) model.…”

“…Contrary to this, labour mobility in the current period of globalization differs substantially between unskilled and skilled labour (World Bank, 2002). Therefore, "wage equalization" theorem given by HOSS is perhaps, less likely to take place through labour migration in the current phase of globalization (Nissanke and Thorbecke, 2008).…”

“…Now an important question is, whether poor farmers can adopt biotechnology or not and if not, then what are the possible distributional and poverty consequences. It is argued that poor farmers of the developing economies cannot afford genetically modified (GM) seeds as they are mainly engaged in subsistence agriculture (Nissanke and Thorbecke, 2008).…”

“…There is a possibility of extreme fluctuations in output, income, and employment which are caused by global shocks. For example, the high volatility of consumption in Central and East Europe during 1990s is linked with trade shocks as a consequence of trade liberalization (Nissanke and Thorbecke, 2008). Culpeper (2005) argues that the poor families suffer disproportionally more during the period of contraction than they gain during the periods of expansion.…”

Inequality, Poverty and Quality of Institutions: Which Freedom Channels of Globalization Matter for Africa?

“…Unfortunately, despite over two decades of globalization reforms, poverty and inequality in Africa have remained stubbornly high (Asongu, 2013d). As far as we have reviewed, while a substantial bulk of the literature has examined the impact of global reforms on financial development and growth (Cho, 1986;Arestis et al, 2002;, the current bulk of studies that have investigated the pro-poor globalization channels in Africa have either been theoretical or limited to appraising first generation reforms for the most part (Nissanke & Thorbecke, 2005, 2008Sindzingre, 2005).…”