The increasing quantity of literature investigating the impact of trade openness on firm efficiency has not yet provided a definite prediction of the direction of causality. This paper investigates how the relationship between exporting and productivity impacts on manufacturing sectors in...

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 about the productivity performance of the sector...

Misallocation of labour and capital can greatly reduce aggregate productivity. In this study, we use tax administrative data to examine the extent of resource misallocation in the South African context. In addition, we zoom in on how different government incentives affect the allocation (or...

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The severity of climate-change impacts is related to the geographic and ecological particularity of the region. The majority of countries in the MENA region belong to the hydraulic poor regions located...

In this paper, we explore the link between firm productivity and exporting using three firm level datasets of 1323 Tunisian manufacturing firms from 2004 to 2006. In particular, we examine whether more productive firms self-select into export markets, and whether exporters achieve productivity...

Existing South African work on firm-level data has been limited by access to large datasets that track firms over time. This paper overcomes this by analysing a new dataset of the population of manufacturing firms that are matched to their export transactions. South African firm-level exporting...

This paper explores the relationship between imports and firm productivity, focusing on imported intermediates. Using firm-level data on over 20,000 manufacturing firms in Viet Nam, we find evidence for competition-induced productivity gains from trade. We show that gains in intermediate sectors...

In this study, we investigate the relationship between exporting and firm performance using a longer panel dataset of Ethiopian manufacturing firms for the period 1996 - 2009. We test two hypotheses regarding exporting: selection into exporting versus learning by exporting. According to the...

Productivity gains are the prime engine of economic growth. This paper uses a rich amount of firms' accounting information from the Single Information Collecting Centre in Senegal over the period 1998-2011. To investigate the two main obstacles to growth, poor education and poor access to...

An often-neglected potential negative consequence of tariffs is the impact they may have on the misallocation of factor inputs. Trade protection can provide space for domestic firms to increase prices and mark-ups, allowing low-productivity firms to survive, thereby leading to a sub-optimal...