Firm Productivity and Exports: Evidence from Ethiopian manufacturing

Arne Bigsten () and Mulu Gebreeyesus

No 303, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the causal relationship between exporting and productivity using a ten years long plant-level panel data set from an annual census of Ethiopian manufacturing, rarely available in the sub-Saharan Africa. We exploited its length to trace the trajectory of TFP and other productivity measures of groups of firms classified by their export history. We then tested learning-by-exporting using a one-step system-GMM approach with the export-status included directly in the production function. We addressed potential endogeneity problems by using instrumental variables, and also applied a matching analysis to address potential selection bias. We found strong evidence of not only self-selection but also learning-by-exporting. Depending on the specification previous exporting appears to have shifted the production function by 15-32 %. Exporters had on average three times more employees, and paid 1.6 times higher average wage than those of non-exporters.

Keywords: Productivity; exports; Ethiopia; manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 F14 L60 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2008-04-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-eff and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Journal Article: Firm Productivity and Exports: Evidence from Ethiopian Manufacturing (2009)
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