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...
Using a firm-level panel dataset on private small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Viet Nam’s manufacturing sector, this paper examines productivity dynamics of formal and informal firms. We decompose productivity changes into changes within...
Using the South African Revenue Service and National Treasury firm-level panel data for 2009–17, this paper investigates how global value chain-related trade affects the export performance of manufacturing firms in South Africa. In particular, the...
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...
Imed Drine Many observers see youth unemployment as the major reason behind the recent popular uprisings in a number of Arab countries. Increasing...
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...
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...
Recent years have witnessed important structural changes around the world as a result of the globalization process, the creation of new economic blocks and the liberalization of financial sector in many countries. Responding to these changes many...
This paper offers a critical review of the conventional economic classification, measurement and valuation of output, and related performance indicators, for the service sector. The paper also explores and contrasts long-standing views on the service...
Misallocation of labour and capital can greatly reduce aggregate productivity. In this study, we use tax administrative data to examine the extent of resource misallocation in the South African context. In addition, we zoom in on how different...
The share of the least developed countries (LDCs) in global foreign investments is less than one percent. But positive developments have taken place...
Two well established stylized facts of economic development are a strong correlation between investment and income, and large differences in investment rates across countries. Construction is the largest component of investment. This paper examines...
This study explores how competition-induced productivity gains from imports in intermediate producing sectors transmit through the supply chain. Based on firm-level panel data from Vietnam, we show that in addition to the productivity premium...
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...
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 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...
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...
The benefits from the New Economy should accrue as improvements in productivity and economic growth. But while the use of information and communication technology (ICT) seems to have had a substantial impact on the performance of the United States...
Rwanda is one of the countries with the best strategies for women empowerment and gender equality in Africa and globally. Nonetheless, some inequalities exist especially in education attainment. This study investigates the gender gaps in business...
How have economic development, employment, and labour markets in Asian countries interacted since the publication of Myrdal’s Asian Drama? Myrdal rejected, the western approach to and definition of employment and emphasized the role of ‘informal’...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The benefits from the New Economy should accrue as improvements in productivity and economic growth. But while the use of information and communication technology seems to have had a substantial impact on the performance of the United States economy...
The paper identifies and analyses the factors that influenced the export performance of firms in the post-liberalization era of the Indian economy. The study is based on primary data collected from fifty-one firms located in the national capital...
The contribution of the ‘new economy’ to economic growth in developing countries has so far been minimal. Despite the recent hype, the ‘old economy’ will for long be the fundamental force behind economic growth in transition economies. Nonetheless...
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...
26 March 2014 Roger Williamson Africa is growing, with The Economist noting that 6 out of 10 of the world’s fastest growing economies for 2000-10 were...
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...
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...
This study provides an analysis of the aid-private capital flows-growth nexus for Ghana. It is premised on the argument that Ghana’s new status as a middle income country plus the start of oil production is bound to result in a reduction in ODA...
by Matti Pohjola The popular view is that information technology will change the world by boosting productivity and income. But while IT has many...
This paper reviews the role of services in development and growth, the potential role of trade in services as a driver of the productivity performance of sectors that use services as inputs, and the links between services policies and domestic trade...
This paper investigates the factors influencing participation in non-farm work and the effect of participation on farmers’ productivity, using survey data from 300 smallholder farm households in northern Ghana. The study employs an endogenous...
Part of Journal Special Issue Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
Part of Journal Special Issue Southern Growth Engines and Technology Giants
This paper explores the contribution of structural change and the skill upgrading of the labour force to productivity. Our growth decomposition based on an original database we built for Tunisia and Turkey shows that productivity is mainly explained...
Part of Journal Special Issue Understanding agricultural development and change
This paper is a review of the institutions and the performance of the agricultural sector in Mozambique, using an analysis table adapted to the assessment of the connections between the institutions and economic development. In the first part...
Existing South African work on firm-level data has been limited by access to large datasets that track firms over time. This paper overcomes this by analysing a new dataset of the population of manufacturing firms that are matched to their export...
Resource mobilization continues to be an important policy challenge for developing economies, raising questions as to what determines differences in saving behaviour across countries. Using a panel of 47 economies with at least 40 years of continuous...
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...
This paper studies the distribution of output per worker between the years 1980 and 2000 in different country groups. The study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to decompose the changes in the distribution of labour productivity into changes in...
This paper discusses some issues on how to evaluate the impact of HIPC debt relief in the cases of Tanzania and Zambia using two computable general equilibrium models. Within our relatively simple model framework, we found that the macroeconomic...
Climate change may damage road infrastructure to the potential detriment of economic growth, particularly in developing countries. To quantitatively assess climate change’s consequences, we construct a climate-infrastructure model based on stressor...
This paper proposes an alternative approach to investigate the non-linear effect of external debt on growth. In the theoretical part, we develop an endogenous growth model with formal and informal sectors to analyse the effect of the public external...
This paper explores the relationship between imports and firm productivity, focusing on imported intermediates. Using firm-level data on over 20,000 manufacturing firms in Vietnam, we find evidence for competition-induced productivity gains from...
Part of Journal Special Issue Climate Change and Economic Development
Part of Book Vulnerability in Developing Countries
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...
Part of Book Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
We compare economic efficiencies in Brazil, India, and China, where economic efficiency measures the gap between potential and actual output for a given input combination and technological factor. We use stochastic production frontier models to...
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...
This paper analyses the patterns of export productivity and trade specialization profiles in the China, Brazil, India and South Africa, and in other regional groupings. In doing so, the investigation calculates a time varying export productivity...
Using a panel of 139 countries over the period 1992-2003, we analyse the links between export productivity, economic growth and financial development indicators. We then investigate whether the links observed in China, India and Brazil systematically...
Following the economic liberalization in India, the service sector has gained prominence in the economy as it accounts for the largest share of GDP and, also that the share of this sector in GDP has been growing very rapidly. Empirical data reveal...
Can we use neoclassical growth model to single out the important transmission channels through which external factors or ‘primitives’ affected the Indian economy and caused the remarkable growth of the period 1982–2002? In this paper, we answer the...
As the experience of the 20th century has shown, implementing policies that increase agricultural productivity among smallholders is a particularly promising strategy to achieve pro-poor growth. However, history also reveals major political...
By definition, the 'New Economy' is an economy where business firms have learnt to take advantage of both the ICT revolution and the globalization of business activities in ways which improve productivity. First, by surveying recent research findings...
From the book: Jobs For Development: Challenges and Solutions in Different Country Settings
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Part of Book Financial Development, Institutions, Growth and Poverty Reduction
Robert Darko Osei As the country’s oil production shifts into gear, Ghana’s new status as a middle-income country is bound to see a reduction in...
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
We investigate the marginal productivity of investment across countries. The aim is to estimate the return on investments financed by foreign aid and by domestic resource mobilization, using aggregate data. Both returns are expected to vary across...
Part of Book Spatial Inequality and Development
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...
Part of Book Trade Policy, Industrialization, and Development
Part of Book Trade Policy, Industrialization, and Development
Part of Book Trade Policy and Industrialization in Turbulent Times
Part of Book New Economy in Development
Part of Book New Economy in Development
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Part of Book Information Technology, Productivity, and Economic Growth
Part of Book The Impact of EMU on Europe and the Developing Countries
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...
Part of Book The Rocky Road to Reform
As the country’s oil production shifts into gear, Ghana’s new status as a middle-income country is bound to see a reduction in official development assistance (ODA) in the medium to long term. This emerging oil industry will most likely provide a...
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...
by Anthony P. D’Costa The last three decades have witnessed a sea change in the character and functioning of the world economy. With the speeding up...
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