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...
This paper examines the income inequality implications of a ‘premature deindustrialization’ trend in middle-income countries. To identify the premature deindustrialization phase, we arrive at five conditions based on the trends in employment and...
In this paper, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Based on insights from new trade theory, the new economic geography (NEG) and gravity-equation modelling, an empirical model is specified...
This study sought to examine the main constraints to manufacturing export competitiveness in Tanzania. Using panel data for the period 1997–2018, the study established that supply-side factors dominate demand-side factors in explaining manufacturing...
In March 2019, Cyclone Idai hit central Mozambique and caused widespread damage, including businesses in the enterprise sector. We use panel data and a randomized controlled trial to estimate the impact of unconditional cash grants on micro...
Myanmar’s manufacturing sector is at the heart of the country’s commercial landscape. From garment production for the international market to diverse food, furniture, gemstones, and metal provision, the more than 70,000 micro, small, and medium firms...
Using a novel panel survey of enterprises in Myanmar, we compare the performance of manufacturing firms by three different informality definitions. The first is binary, based on whether firms pay taxes. The second captures five categories of...
This paper examines industrialization trends in developing countries. It uses the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides time series of employment and real and nominal value added annually by 12 sectors in 51 countries for...
Manufacturing industry expansion is a central part of Ethiopia’s growth and transformation agenda due to its potential for accelerated economic development and large-scale job creation, in particular for women. However, the industry is experiencing...
This article provides empirical evidence on the impact of digitalisation on product upgrading in global value chains (GVCs). Analysis is done for a sample of Indian manufacturing GVC firms in the period 2001–15 from the firm-level database Prowess...
Much has been written on India as an outlier in Global Value Chains (GVC). Despite being one of the largest and fastest-growing markets located in...
Success in development over the past half-century was based on manufacturing-led export growth. Because the share of global employment in manufacturing will decline, manufacturing won’t play the same role in the coming decades. An increase in...
This paper uses data on individual earnings in manufacturing industry for five African countries in the early 1990s to test whether firms located in the capital city pay higher wages than firms located elsewhere, and whether such benefits accrue to...
This paper examines whether digitalization can be a driver of ‘upgrading’ in global value chains and help developing countries move into higher value-added activities. In particular, the paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of digital...
The latest firm survey of Mozambique, the Inquerito ás Indústrias Manufactureiras (IIM) 2017, draws a concerning picture of the manufacturing sector. However, it is not obvious whether this is true for the population of manufacturing firms in...
The purpose of this report is to give a nuanced picture of the SME business environment in Myanmar as a complement to the 2017 MSME quantitative survey conducted within the project ‘Towards Inclusive Development in Myanmar’. This project is a...
This paper provides a retrospective assessment of the effects of trade policies on South African manufacturing since the transition to democracy, examining the differences and commonalities in the views of economists in favour of and against an...
We present a new approach for the empirical investigation of agglomeration patterns. We examine the clustering of manufacturing firms by identifying patterns of spatial network formation that deviate from randomly generated networks. Using firm-level...
This paper examines the theoretical and empirical evidence for the hypothesis that manufacturing is the main engine of growth in developing countries. The paper opens with an overview of the main arguments supporting the engine of growth hypothesis...
South Africa’s current electricity crises have worsened, placing the country on an uncertain and turbulent economic trajectory.To identify the manufacturing sub-sectors that are most vulnerable to this crises, we use the input–output matrices for the...
Firm turnover (i.e., firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sector-level productivity growth. In contrast, the role and importance of firms that switch activities from one sector to another is not well understood. Firm switchers are...
This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to...
We consider economic development of sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of slow convergence of productivity, both across sectors and firms within sectors. Why have ‘productivity enclaves’, islands of high productivity in a sea of smaller low...
Adam Szirmai Since the late 18th century, the manufacturing sector has been the main engine of growth and catch up. Presently, however, service sector...
Mozambique’s manufacturing industry is facing many challenges. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate its linkages to the rest of the economy and...
Tanzania ranks among the leading stars of the ‘African growth miracle’, but a sector that has been largely absent from the Tanzania success story is industry. Although growth of manufacturing has outpaced economic growth over the past decade...
This week I attended the 28th Africa Industrialization Day at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Even sympathetic readers may reasonably ask...
The question ‘why is there so little industrialization in Africa?’ has been a key focus of UNU-WIDER researchers and research partners for the last...
This paper traces the role of local content in Zambia’s mining sector in supporting industrialization and economic diversification. It assesses productive linkages and manufacturing competitiveness during import-substitution industrialization and...
During the past week, I participated in two international conferences. The first was the WIDER Development Conference in Helsinki: Think development -...
Using a specially designed survey instrument in combination with a representative sample of Vietnamese enterprises, we explore firm-level efficiency effects of corporate social responsibility. We find a positive relationship between adoption of...
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
9 May 2013 Lorraine Telfer-Taivainen and Roger Williamson Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century, (edited by Adam Szirmai, Wim...
Tony Addison With the end of the year fast approaching, we bring you the last Angle of 2011. Here in Helsinki, the shortest day of the year is nearly...
This paper studies the decline of the labour share in Mexico during the period 1990–2015. It calculates the wage share and alternative measures of the labour income share (which includes labour income of the self-employed) for the whole economy, the...
Myanmar’s transition to a market-based economy is accompanied by rapid development of the private manufacturing sector, which has large potential for improving economic growth. The overall success of the sector, however, should not be taken for...
Over the past forty years, industry and business interests have moved increasingly from the developed to the developing world, yet Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from about 3 percent in 1970 to less than 2 percent in 2014. Industry...
Using firm-level tax administrative data from 2010 to 2017, we study the impact of Chinese import penetration on the performances of manufacturing firms in South Africa, and whether firms investing in capabilities development are more resilient to...
This working paper is the fourth in a series that forms part of the project ‘Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development’, a three-year partnership between UNU-WIDER and the South African government aimed at generating a better...
The manufacturing sector is an important source of productivity growth and exports. Manufacturing firms are generally more productive than firms in the agricultural or services sectors and are an important source of job creation. Little is known...
Traditionally, firms in India have shown a low preference towards debt financing, despite its advantages. Using panel data from 450 firms during 1992-93 and 2003-04, we attempt to identify factors which could explain the pattern of financing of...
Firm turnover (i.e. firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sector level productivity growth across developing and developed countries. In contrast, the role and importance of firms switching activities from one sector to another is...
In the past, research on changes in relative importance among broad three sectors—agriculture, industry, and service—showed general patterns of a country’s structural transformation along with economic development. However, there has been devoid of...
This paper is an empirical analysis of knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity at the firm level. We apply new econometric methods to extensive data on innovation and innovative activities in Swedish manufacturing. A number of interesting...
It's imperative to demolish myths around the economic achievements of China and India and get a better sense of the real challenges. The author of the...
18 December 2014 Roger Williamson At the UN headquarters in New York on 18 November 2014, Peter Timmer, emeritus professor from Harvard, showed how...
25 June 2014In this interview Dr Margaret McMillan outlined the theory of structural transformation, which analyzes the underlying structure of the...
27 August 2014 In this interview Justin Lin, Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, talks about how the state can enable the process of...
This paper evaluates the impact of Chinese import penetration on the innovation of Vietnamese manufacturing firms from 2011 to 2015, exploiting variations in import exposure by industry specialization and instrumenting for Chinese import penetration...
The increasing quantity of literature investigating the impact of trade openness on firm efficiency has not yet provided a definite prediction of the direction of causality. This paper investigates how the relationship between exporting and...
Part of Journal Special Issue Learning to Compete
Part of Book Golden Age of Capitalism
The 2019 descriptive report of the Myanmar Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Survey is the second quantitative report of the Myanmar Enterprises Monitoring System (MEMS) project. MEMS is a four-year project, and is implemented by the Central...
Since the end of apartheid, South Africa’s economic challenges have disrupted efforts to establish a society of inclusive growth and prosperity. Understanding how South Africa can break the pattern of sluggish growth, high unemployment, inequality...
Part of Book Inequality in the Developing World
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural...
Using a representative sample of more than 5,000 Vietnamese enterprises, we explore the firm-level productivity effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The data enables us to create 12 quantitative CSR measures, which can be grouped into...
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural...
Countries’ economic complexity, and the associated diversification and sophistication of their exports, is a key determinant of economic growth. Understanding how South African firms learn to export more sophisticated products is, therefore, an...
This article is currently available on early view. The paper studies the decline of the labor income share (LIS) in Mexico during the period 1990–2015. The decline is mostly explained by reductions within the economy’s major sectors (including...
This paper proposes an empirical framework that relates poverty reduction to production growth. We use the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database to measure the contribution to growth of productivity improvements within sectors and...
In recent decades, Africa has received a large share of official development assistance compared to other regions of the world. Using AidData for 2000–13, this paper examines the effects of aid to productive sectors on manufacturing growth in Africa...
This study examines industrialization in developing countries. It introduces the GGDC-UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides consistent annual data of employment, real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 economies for the...
Part of Journal Special Issue What sustains informality
Part of Book Pathways to Industrialization in the Twenty-First Century
This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable industrial sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show...
This paper seeks to build on theory, to develop new methods for understanding the nature and basis of sectoral and national competitive advantage, and to do so with a temporal perspective. Neo-Schumpeterian and evolutionary economics perspectives...
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. While it is possible for...
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