Importing, Productivity and Absorptive Capacity in Sub-Saharan African Manufacturing Firms

Neil Foster-McGregor, Anders Isaksson and Florian Kaulich

No 105, wiiw Working Papers from The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw

Abstract: Our study extends the recent literature on the importer-productivity relationship to a firm-level dataset for sub-Saharan Africa. Using a cross-section sample of 3090 firms in 19 countries, we find that importers are more productive than non-importers. The observed importer premium is found to be robust to firm-specific characteristics and to a number of alternative estimation methods. Furthermore, we examine the importance of absorptive capacity in enhancing the benefits from importing. Using recently developed quantile threshold regression methods, we find that higher levels of absorptive capacity, as measured by human capital, are associated with a stronger relationship between importing and productivity.

Keywords: importing; productivity; sub-Saharan Africa; absorptive capacity; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 F10 L10 M20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages including 8 Tables and 5 Figures
Date: 2013-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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