How does innovation impact on development? How, and under what conditions, do entrepreneurs in developing countries innovate? And what can be done to support innovation by entrepreneurs in developing countries? This policy brief addresses these questions and explains the relationship between...

This article analyses the determinants of individuals' choice for self-employment and entrepreneurial success in Cote d'Ivoire. Entrepreneurial activity is found to be undertaken by individuals who succeed in increasing their entrepreneurial abilities and reducing the risk of starting a business...

How does innovation impact on development? How, and under what conditions, do entrepreneurs in developing countries innovate? And what can be done to support innovation by entrepreneurs in developing countries? This policy brief addresses these questions and explains the relationship between...

This paper examines the effects of international standards certification (ISC) on both productivity and sales performance for firms from a wide set of countries exhibiting different degrees of institutional development. Against a large dataset of manufacturing firms operating in 59 countries we...

Using firm-level data from five developing countries--Brazil, Ecuador, South Africa, Tanzania, and Bangladesh--and three industries--food processing, textiles, and the garments and leather products--this article examines the importance of various sources of knowledge for explaining productivity...

Using World Bank ICS 2000–2002 data from Brazilian manufacturing firms, this paper identifies innovation strategies of firms – in particular internal development (“technology make”) and external acquisition (“technology buy)” – and their effect on successful process and product...

National framework conditions directly affect the productivity of firms, but also moderate returns on their technological efforts. Although this has long been recognised, there is a dearth of quantitative analyses that openly consider this hypothesis. Using a data set of 15 425 manufacturing...

Reviews employment creation in manufacturing firms of different size in both the formal and informal economies.

This paper studies the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of eleven Sub-Saharan African countries. The focus of the paper is on identifying those entrepreneurs' attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of...

Using a unique firm level data set on learning and product innovation in Tanzanian manufacturing and commercial farming, this paper sheds light on the various sources of firm learning, investment and collaboration and their relative importance for product innovation. The results indicate that...