Blog
Youth Unemployment in the Arab World: What Do We know? What is the Way Forward?Imed Drine Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing...
Imed Drine Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing...
Three major policy regimes, namely import substitution, market liberalization and export promotion have greatly influenced Kenyan industrialization since independence in 1963. Overall, import substitution strategy was successful in establishing some...
The transfer from an import-substitution to an export-orientation strategy has been in effect in Vietnam since the reform process, Doi Moi, necessitating the reformulation of macroeconomic, trading and sectoral policies. As a result, the industry...
In this paper we explore the extent to which firms experience productivity spillovers from clustering using a rich data source from Vietnam for 2002 to 2007, a period of significant transition. We address issues of simultaneity, self-selection and...
In this paper, we investigate the relationship between exporting and productivity in the case of Vietnam using an extensive firm level panel dataset for the period 2005-11. We separate out productivity effects of exporting due to self-selection...
Productivity gains are the prime engine of economic growth. This paper uses a rich amount of firms’ accounting information from the Single Information Collecting Centre in Senegal over the period 1998-2011. To investigate the two main obstacles to...
The Republic of South Africa faces the imperative of escaping economic stagnation. This paper seeks to synthesize results from a series of research efforts, including but not limited to the work conducted under the UNU-WIDER project on ‘Regional...
Employment in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia has grown more slowly than GDP over the last several decades. This means GDP per capita is rising. Vietnamese policymakers, however, are concerned that ongoing structural transformation is creating too few...
The effect of computer technology on Finnish economic growth in 1983-96 is examined to shed light into the famous productivity paradox. Using the neoclassical growth accounting framework, the contribution of computer hardware, software and labor to...
Despite the fast catching-up in ICT diffusion experienced by most EU countries in the last few years, information technologies have so far delivered little productivity gains in Europe. In the second half of the past decade, growth contributions from...
This paper explores the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the productivity of host country domestic firms. We rely on a specially designed survey of over 4000 manufacturing firms in Vietnam, and separate out productivity gains...
This paper uses panel data at commune, household, and plot levels to study the causes and effects of agricultural land fragmentation in rural Vietnam. We focus on both inter-farm fragmentation (the division of land into many small farms) and intra...
Improvements in productivity are necessary to effectively increase economic growth in the long term. The literature emphasizes a positive correlation between firm-level innovation and productivity gains. It is unsurprising, then, that policy makers...
In the preceding pages we have attempted a detailed rebuttal of the view that, given the prevailing structural constraints imposed by the unequal distribution of land and other assets, growth through Green Revolution must impoverish, or at best by...
Using a rich panel dataset of small and medium scale manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) active in the manufacturing sector in Viet Nam, this paper investigates the drivers of firm productivity, focusing on the role played by international management...
This paper explores the impacts of information technology investment on economic growth in a cross-section of 39 countries in the period 1980-95 by applying an explicit model of economic growth, the augmented version of the neoclassical (Solow)...
Despite the fast catching up in the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) experienced by most EU countries in the last few years, information technologies have so far delivered few productivity gains in Europe. In the second...
An often-neglected potential negative consequence of tariffs is the impact they may have on the misallocation of factor inputs. Trade protection can provide space for domestic firms to increase prices and mark-ups, allowing low-productivity firms to...
The situation of Afghanistan has drawn a picture of a poor, conflict-prone, doomed country. But this does not have to be the case. We have examples of...
We look into the relationship between business practices and enterprise productivity using panel data with matched employer and employee information from Myanmar. The data show that micro, small, and medium-size enterprises in Myanmar typically do...
The financial intermediation-growth nexus is a widely studied topic in the literature of development economics. Deepening financial intermediation may promote economic growth by mobilizing more investments, and lifting returns to financial resources...
The quality of people’s jobs is a fundamental determinant of their well-being, and judging the state of a labour market on the basis of job quantity alone delivers a very partial picture. This study is an attempt to place the spotlight on the working...
The lingering policy dilemma facing many governments in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years is what can be done in the short to medium term to boost the output and incomes of individuals and enterprises in the informal sector, given the size and...
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, including Morocco, currently record the lowest rates of female labour force participation (FLFP) in the world. These rates — between 20-30% in 2019 — appear substantially low in comparison to Western...
We update Kreuser and Newman’s (2018) total factor productivity estimates for the South African manufacturing sector using administrative data from 2009–17. We use standard implementations of the Ackerberg et al. (2015) and Wooldridge (2009)...
This paper explores agricultural performance of Mozambique, its institutional weaknesses, and the underlying factors that underpin an unsatisfactory performance during many decades. We point to the role of systemic political instability and violence...
The rapid growth of public spending and the need to assess its impact on the welfare system has made the studies of productivity in the public sector an important subject. This paper is concerned with the specification and estimation of total factor...
This paper deals with a dynamic adjustment process in which adjustment of a key variable input (labor) towards its desired level is modeled in a panel data context. The partial adjustment type model is extended to make the adjustment parameter both...
This article is part of UNU’s “17 Days, 17 Goals” series, featuring research and commentary in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development...
UNU-WIDER had a busy September. We celebrated our 30th birthday with some 600 people at our three-day conference on ‘Mapping the Future of Development...
The ReCom—Research and Communication on Foreign Aid—programme produced 240 original studies. Some 300 researchers from 60 countries came together and provided evidence on what does and could work in development, and what can be transferred and scaled...
Using a rich panel dataset of SMEs active in the manufacturing sector in Vietnam, this paper investigates the drivers of firm productivity, focusing on the role played by international management standards certification. We develop and test the...
Using a unique panel survey of final-year undergraduates at six of the largest universities in Mozambique, we study the wage premium associated with completing an undergraduate degree. Conditional on a very rich set of controls, including pre-degree...
This paper discusses the livelihood dynamics in the fragile landscape of the semi arid tropics (SAT) of Andhra Pradesh. SAT is home to the poorest of the poor who live in conditions of persistent drought, subsistence agriculture and poor access to...
by Kevin J Stiroh The strength of the U.S. economy in the second half of the 1990s has led many observers to assert that something fundamental had...
This paper is a survey of recent contributions to, and developments of, the relationship between outsourcing, efficiency and productivity growth in manufacturing and services. The objective is to provide a thorough and up–to–date survey that provides...
We examine sensitivity of the estimated relationship between innovation and firm performance. In doing so, we rely on a knowledge production function approach and carry out comparisons in a number of ways. The sensitivity analysis is based on the...
Within the last three decades, industrialization, and manufacturing in particular, has decreased in importance as the principal driver of economic growth and development in the world economy. The expansion of the service sector in industrialized...
The world economy is undergoing a fundamental structural change driven by the globalization of business on the one hand and by the revolution in information andcommunication technology on the other. The New Economy is the superior economic structure...
We examine important changes in agriculture in Vietnam in the context of ongoing structural changes in the economy. We use a household-level panel dataset and a quantitative framework to document the extent and consequences of factor misallocation in...
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...
One account of spatial concentration focuses on productivity advantages arising from market size. We investigate this for 40 regions of Japan. Our results identify important effects of a region’s own size, as well as cost linkages between producers...
This study explores the effects of macroeconomic factors on total factor productivity (TFP) in 34 sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1980-2002. The econometric analysis shows that external debt is negatively and significantly related to TFP...
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...
In recent decades, absolute poverty incidence declined in most countries of Southeast Asia, even though in some of these countries inequality increased at the same time. This paper examines the relationship between these outcomes and the rate of...