Export Orientation and Productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa

By T. Mengistae, Catherine A. Pattillo. Social Science Research Network, 2002

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Analysis of firm-level panel data from three Sub-Saharan African economies shows that export manufacturers have an average total factor productivity premium of 17 percent. In addition to the effect on productivity levels, exporters enjoy productivity growth that is 10 percent faster than do nonexporters. The data do not allow testing of whether these premiums are because more efficient producers go into exporting or because of a process of learning-by-exporting. In thinking about the mechanisms behind selectivity and learning, however, our finding of higher premiums for direct exporters, and for those who export to areas outside of Africa, could be interpreted as being consistent with learning-by-exporting effects.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1cc279ba603ec66849124027d813cc5f28dcf070

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Citations in the corpus

Early international entrepreneurship in China: Extent and determinants (2010, background): “…firms export, in Australia only about 4 per cent of all registered firms export, whilst in Africa the percentage of manufacturing firms that export ranges from a low of 3.7 per cent in Ethiopia to 25 per cent in Kenya (see, e.g., Mengistae and Pattillo 2004; Riding, Ensign and Belanger 2007).”
Aid, Real Exchange Rate Misalignment, and Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (2012, background): “This problem has been documented in the case of Africa by Elbadawi (1998) and Mengistae and Pattillo (2002).”
Globalization and Growth in the Low Income African Countries with the Extreme Bounds Analysis (2011, methodology): “We shall review here three contributions on African countries by Bigsten et al. (2004), Mengistae and Pattillo (2004) and Van Biesebroeck (2005).”
Business Environment and Comparative Advantage in Africa: Evidence from the Investment Climate Data (2005, unknown): “…a number of studies have used firm surveys to analyze productivity determinants in Africa (Biggs et al. 1995; Collier et al. 2000; Fafchamps 2004; Mengistae and Pattillo 2002; see also the extensive RPED studies, 1995-present), it is now possible to combine expanded coverage in Africa with…”
Learning to Export: Evidence from Moroccan Manufacturing (2002, methodology): “This relationship has been shown to hold in many countries using a wide variety of estimation techniques see for instance (e.g. HallwardDriemeier, Iarossi and Sokolo¤ 2002, Mengistae and Pattillo 2004, Alvarez 2004, Silvente 2005, Wagner 2002) for recent evidence.”
What Have We Learned from a Decade of Manufacturing Enterprise Surveys in Africa? (2005, unknown): “Measuring uncertainty in the same way as Pattillo (1998), Darku finds a negative relation between uncertainty and investment and documents that this effect is stronger among firms with more irreversible investment.”
Determinants of total factor productivity : a literature review (2007, background): “Mengistae and Pattillo (2004) start by investigating the TFP premium gained from exporting.”