Firm Productivity and Investment Climate in Developing Countries: How Does Middle East and North Africa Manufacturing Perform?

Patrick Plane (), Marie-Ange Véganzonès and Tidiane Kinda
Additional contact information
Patrick Plane: Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Développement International(CERDI)

No 201126, Working Papers from CERDI

Abstract: Firm productive performances in five Middle East and North African (MENA) economies and eight manufacturing industries are compared to those in 17 other developing countries. Although the broad picture hides some heterogeneity, enterprises in MENA often performed inadequately compared to MENA status of middle-income economies, with the exception of Morocco and, to some extent, Saudi Arabia. Firm competitiveness is a more constant constraint, with a unit labor cost higher than in most competitor countries, as well as investment climate (IC) deficiencies. The empirical analysis also points out how IC matters for firm productivity through the quality of infrastructure, the experience and education of the labor force, the cost and access to financing, and different dimensions of the government-business relationship. These findings bear important policy implications by showing which dimensions of the IC, in which industry, could help manufacturing in MENA to be more competitive in the globalization context.

Keywords: Manufacturing firms; Middle East and North Africa (MENA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 O14 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-cse, nep-dev and nep-eff
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2011/2011.26.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2011/2011.26.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://publi.cerdi.org/ed/2011/2011.26.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: FIRM PRODUCTIVITY AND INVESTMENT CLIMATE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: HOW DOES MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA MANUFACTURING PERFORM? (2011)
Working Paper: Firm Productivity and Investment Climate in Developing Countries: How Does Middle East and North Africa Manufacturing Perform? (2011)
Working Paper: Firm Productivity and Investment Climate in Developing Countries: How Does Middle East and North Africa Manufacturing Perform? (2011)
Working Paper: Firm productivity and investment climate in developing countries: how does Middle East and North Africa manufacturing perform? (2011)
Working Paper: Firm Productivity and Investment Climate in Developing Countries: How Does Middle East and North Africa Manufacturing Perform? (2011)
Working Paper: Firm Productivity and Investment Climate in Developing Countries: How Does Middle East and North Africa Manufacturing Perform? (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdi:wpaper:1282

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from CERDI Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vincent Mazenod ().