Explaining Africa's (Dis)advantage

Ann Harrison, Justin Lin (justinlin@nsd.pku.edu.cn) and Lixin Xu

No 6316, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Africa's economic performance has been widely viewed with pessimism. In this paper, firm-level data for around 80 countries are used to examine formal firm performance. Without controls, manufacturing African firms perform significantly worse than firms in other regions. They have lower productivity levels and growth rates, export less, and have lower investment rates. Once geography, political competition and the business environment are controlled for, formal African firms lead in productivity levels and growth. Africa's conditional advantage is higher in low-tech than in high-tech manufacturing, and exists in manufacturing but not in services. The key factors explaining Africa's disadvantage at the firm level are lack of infrastructure, access to finance, and political competition.

Keywords: Labor Policies; Environmental Economics&Policies; E-Business; Economic Theory&Research; Banks&Banking Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Explaining Africa’s (Dis)advantage (2014)
Working Paper: Explaining Africa's (Dis)advantage (2013)
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