Firm Productivity and Infrastructure Costs in East Africa

Iimi, Atsushi ; Humphrey, Richard Martin ; Melibaeva, Sevara

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: TARIFFS;    VEHICLE OPERATING COSTS;    WATER SERVICES;    TRANSPORT SECTOR;    EQUIPMENT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7278
RP-ID  :  WPS7278

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Infrastructure is an important drivingforce for economic growth. It reduces trade and transactioncosts and stimulates the productivity of the economy. Africahas been lagging behind in the global manufacturing market.Among others, infrastructure is an important constraint inmany African countries. Using firm-level data for EastAfrica, the paper reexamines the relationship between firmperformance and infrastructure. It is shown that labor costsare by far the most important to stimulate firm production.Among the infrastructure sectors, electricity costs have thehighest output elasticity, followed by transport costs. Inaddition, the paper shows that the quality of infrastructureis important to increase firm production. In particular,quality transport infrastructure seems to be essential. Thepaper also finds that agglomeration economies can reducefirm costs. The agglomeration elasticity is estimated at 0.03–0.04.