Losing to Blackouts: Evidence from Firm Level Data

Daniel Gurara and Dawit Tessema

No 2018/159, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Many developing economies are often hit by electricity crises either because of supply constraints or lacking in broader energy market reforms. This study uses manufacturing firm census data from Ethiopia to identify productivity losses attributable to power disruptions. Our estimates show that these disruptions, on average, result in productivity losses of about 4–10 percent. We found nonlinear productivity losses at different quantiles along the productivity distribution. Firms at higher quantiles faced higher losses compared to firms around the median. We observed patterns of systematic shutdowns as firms attempt to minimize losses.

Keywords: WP; production function; productivity loss; Power disruption; Shutdowns; time index; productivity shock; firms shutdown; grid-power consumption; firm age; panel data; state utility company; Productivity; Total factor productivity; Electricity; Labor productivity; Capacity utilization; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2018-07-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=46032 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:imf:imfwpa:2018/159

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().