Explaining Africa's (Dis)advantage

Harrison, Ann E. ; Lin, Justin Yifu ; Xu, L. Colin

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTABILITY;    ACCOUNTING;    ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS;    ADVERSE EFFECT;    ADVERSE EFFECTS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6316
RP-ID  :  WPS6316

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Africa's economic performance hasbeen widely viewed with pessimism. In this paper, firm-leveldata for around 80 countries are used to examine formal firmperformance. Without controls, manufacturing African firmsperform significantly worse than firms in other regions.They have lower productivity levels and growth rates, exportless, and have lower investment rates. Once geography,political competition and the business environment arecontrolled for, formal African firms lead in productivitylevels and growth. Africa's conditional advantage ishigher in low-tech than in high-tech manufacturing, andexists in manufacturing but not in services. The key factorsexplaining Africa's disadvantage at the firm level arelack of infrastructure, access to finance, and political competition.