Journal Article
Industry Switching in Developing Countries
Firm turnover (i.e., firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sector-level productivity growth. In contrast, the role and importance of firms that switch activities from one sector to another is not well understood. Firm switchers are...
Working Paper
Scoping Study on the Evolution of Industry in Ghana
This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to...
Working Paper
Development as Diffusion
We consider economic development of sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of slow convergence of productivity, both across sectors and firms within sectors. Why have ‘productivity enclaves’, islands of high productivity in a sea of smaller low...
Working Paper
The decline of the labour share in Mexico
This paper studies the decline of the labour share in Mexico during the period 1990–2015. It calculates the wage share and alternative measures of the labour income share (which includes labour income of the self-employed) for the whole economy, the...
Report
Myanmar Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Survey 2017
Myanmar’s transition to a market-based economy is accompanied by rapid development of the private manufacturing sector, which has large potential for improving economic growth. The overall success of the sector, however, should not be taken for...
Working Paper
Industry in Tanzania
Tanzania ranks among the leading stars of the ‘African growth miracle’, but a sector that has been largely absent from the Tanzania success story is industry. Although growth of manufacturing has outpaced economic growth over the past decade...
Working Paper
From manufacturing-led export growth to a twenty-first-century inclusive growth strategy
Success in development over the past half-century was based on manufacturing-led export growth. Because the share of global employment in manufacturing will decline, manufacturing won’t play the same role in the coming decades. An increase in...
Working Paper
Spatial Inequality for Manufacturing Wages in Five African Countries
This paper uses data on individual earnings in manufacturing industry for five African countries in the early 1990s to test whether firms located in the capital city pay higher wages than firms located elsewhere, and whether such benefits accrue to...
Book
Made in Africa
Over the past forty years, industry and business interests have moved increasingly from the developed to the developing world, yet Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from about 3 percent in 1970 to less than 2 percent in 2014. Industry...
Book Chapter
Development as Diffusion :
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
Journal Article
A manufacturing (re)naissance?
This study examines industrialization in developing countries. It introduces the GGDC-UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database, which provides consistent annual data of employment, real and nominal value added by 12 sectors in 51 economies for the...
Working Paper
Cash grants to manufacturers after Cyclone Idai
In March 2019, Cyclone Idai hit central Mozambique and caused widespread damage, including businesses in the enterprise sector. We use panel data and a randomized controlled trial to estimate the impact of unconditional cash grants on micro...
Report
Business Practice Intervention Survey
Myanmar’s manufacturing sector is at the heart of the country’s commercial landscape. From garment production for the international market to diverse food, furniture, gemstones, and metal provision, the more than 70,000 micro, small, and medium firms...
Working Paper
Does aid to the productive sectors cause manufacturing sector growth in Africa?
In recent decades, Africa has received a large share of official development assistance compared to other regions of the world. Using AidData for 2000–13, this paper examines the effects of aid to productive sectors on manufacturing growth in Africa...
Journal Article
Knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity
This paper is an empirical analysis of knowledge capital and performance heterogeneity at the firm level. We apply new econometric methods to extensive data on innovation and innovative activities in Swedish manufacturing. A number of interesting...
Working Paper
The effects of Chinese import penetration on firm innovation
This paper evaluates the impact of Chinese import penetration on the innovation of Vietnamese manufacturing firms from 2011 to 2015, exploiting variations in import exposure by industry specialization and instrumenting for Chinese import penetration...
Book
Manufacturing Transformation
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. While it is possible for...
Journal Article
The Determinants of Regional Manufactured Exports from a Developing Country
In this article, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Data from 354 magisterial districts in South Africa are used with a variety of estimators to identify the determinants of regional...
Journal Article
Productivity Growth, Efficiency and Outsourcing in Manufacturing and Service Industries
This paper is a survey of recent contributions to, and developments of, the relationship between outsourcing, efficiency and productivity growth in manufacturing and services. The objective is to provide a thorough and up–to–date survey that provides...
Journal Article
On the relationship between innovation and performance
We examine sensitivity of the estimated relationship between innovation and firm performance. In doing so, we rely on a knowledge production function approach and carry out comparisons in a number of ways. The sensitivity analysis is based on the...
Journal Article
Innovation and performance in manufacturing industries
The availability of the new internationally harmonized innovation survey data collected from OECD countries has created some interesting opportunities for studying the following two key areas: (1) The determinants of innovation behavior at firm level...
Book
New Economy in Development
Within the last three decades, industrialization, and manufacturing in particular, has decreased in importance as the principal driver of economic growth and development in the world economy. The expansion of the service sector in industrialized...
Working Paper
Natural resources, structural change, and industrial development
This paper traces the role of local content in Zambia’s mining sector in supporting industrialization and economic diversification. It assesses productive linkages and manufacturing competitiveness during import-substitution industrialization and...
Working Paper
Dancing with dragons
Using firm-level tax administrative data from 2010 to 2017, we study the impact of Chinese import penetration on the performances of manufacturing firms in South Africa, and whether firms investing in capabilities development are more resilient to...
Research Brief
Dancing with dragons
China’s growing edge in export manufacturing has caused concern for low-income and middle-income countries seeking to develop robust manufacturing sectors. China’s recent transition from an exporter of lower-tech goods, such as garments, to more...
Working Paper
Assessment of demand in agro-processing machinery in the SADC region
This working paper is the fourth in a series that forms part of the project ‘Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development’, a three-year partnership between UNU-WIDER and the South African government aimed at generating a better...
Working Paper
Total factor productivity in South African manufacturing firms
The manufacturing sector is an important source of productivity growth and exports. Manufacturing firms are generally more productive than firms in the agricultural or services sectors and are an important source of job creation. Little is known...
Working Paper
Was Kuznets right?
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural...
Journal Article
Corporate social responsibility in a competitive business environment
Using a representative sample of more than 5,000 Vietnamese enterprises, we explore the firm-level productivity effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The data enables us to create 12 quantitative CSR measures, which can be grouped into...
Journal Article
Was Kuznets Right?
We examine the Kuznets postulate that structural transformation leads to higher inequality using comparable panel data for a large number of developing and developed countries for 1960–2012. Countries are in different stages of structural...
Working Paper
The Corporate Debt Market
Traditionally, firms in India have shown a low preference towards debt financing, despite its advantages. Using panel data from 450 firms during 1992-93 and 2003-04, we attempt to identify factors which could explain the pattern of financing of...
Working Paper
Turnin’ it up a notch: how spillovers from foreign direct investment boost the complexity of South Africa’s exports
Countries’ economic complexity, and the associated diversification and sophistication of their exports, is a key determinant of economic growth. Understanding how South African firms learn to export more sophisticated products is, therefore, an...
Working Paper
Corporate social responsibility in a competitive business environment
Using a specially designed survey instrument in combination with a representative sample of Vietnamese enterprises, we explore firm-level efficiency effects of corporate social responsibility. We find a positive relationship between adoption of...
Working Paper
What is the state of the manufacturing sector in Mozambique?
The latest firm survey of Mozambique, the Inquerito ás Indústrias Manufactureiras (IIM) 2017, draws a concerning picture of the manufacturing sector. However, it is not obvious whether this is true for the population of manufacturing firms in...
Working Paper
Digital technologies and ‘value’ capture in global value chains
This paper examines whether digitalization can be a driver of ‘upgrading’ in global value chains and help developing countries move into higher value-added activities. In particular, the paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of digital...
Report
Myanmar Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises 2018 Qualitative Study
The purpose of this report is to give a nuanced picture of the SME business environment in Myanmar as a complement to the 2017 MSME quantitative survey conducted within the project ‘Towards Inclusive Development in Myanmar’. This project is a...
Working Paper
Trade liberalization and South African manufacturing
This paper provides a retrospective assessment of the effects of trade policies on South African manufacturing since the transition to democracy, examining the differences and commonalities in the views of economists in favour of and against an...
Working Paper
Industry Switching in Developing Countries
Firm turnover (i.e. firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sector level productivity growth across developing and developed countries. In contrast, the role and importance of firms switching activities from one sector to another is...
Working Paper
Emerging Patterns of Manufacturing Structural Change
In the past, research on changes in relative importance among broad three sectors—agriculture, industry, and service—showed general patterns of a country’s structural transformation along with economic development. However, there has been devoid of...
Working Paper
Are Spatial Networks of Firms Random?
We present a new approach for the empirical investigation of agglomeration patterns. We examine the clustering of manufacturing firms by identifying patterns of spatial network formation that deviate from randomly generated networks. Using firm-level...
Working Paper
Manufacturing and Economic Development
This paper examines the theoretical and empirical evidence for the hypothesis that manufacturing is the main engine of growth in developing countries. The paper opens with an overview of the main arguments supporting the engine of growth hypothesis...