The Productivity Gaps of Female-Owned Firms: Evidence from Ethiopian Census Data

Dennis Essers, Kelbesa Megersa and Marco Sanfilippo

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2021, vol. 69, issue 2, 645 - 683

Abstract: This paper provides new empirical evidence on the relative productivity disadvantage of female-owned firms compared with male-owned firms in a developing country setting. We rely on a large panel of manufacturing firms based on an annual census run by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia. Our preferred estimation shows a 12% difference in levels of total factor productivity between female- and male-owned firms. Drawing on novel quantile approaches to formally compare productivity distributions, we also dig deeper into some of the potential mechanisms underlying this gender-based firm productivity gap. Our findings suggest that various forces are at work. Most female-owned firms seem to concentrate in certain less productive subsectors, and only very few succeed in standing out. Moreover, lower productivity of female-owned firms is shown to relate to a combination of observed firm characteristics and unobserved structural factors that varies according to a firm’s position in the overall productivity distribution.

Date: 2021
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