Increasing formality and productivity of Bolivian firms (original) (raw)

Firm-level productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Research in Economics, 2020

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Firm Productivity and Employment in Paraguay 2010-2014

2018

Some rights reserved This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank with external contributions. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Nothing herein shall constitute or be considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifically reserved.

What Makes a Difference in Achieving Higher Labor Productivity?: The Case of Low-Income Countries in Latin America

This paper uses firm level surveys from Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to estimate the determinants of labor productivity. This study started out with the hypothesis that the adverse external business conditions that firms in poor Latin American countries face, may be an important explication of the generally low levels of productivity. However, the empirical results, based on the survey of more than 1300 businesses, do not confirm this hypothesis. Compared to all the variables that are under the firms control, such as capital intensity, energy use, and worker skills, the external business environment (macroeconomic instability and labor regulations) has very little impact on productivity.

The World Bank Latin American and the Caribbean Region

2010

This paper provides a systematic, empirical assessment of the impact of infrastructure quality on the total factor productivity (TFP) of African manufacturing firms. This measure is understood to include quality in the provision of customs clearance, energy, water, sanitation, transportation, telecommunications, and information and communications technology (ICT). Microeconometric techniques to investment climate surveys (ICSs) of 26 African countries are carried out in different years during the period 2002–6, making country-specific evaluations of the impact of investment climate (IC) quality on aggregate TFP, average TFP, and allocative efficiency. For each country the impact is evaluated based on 10 different productivity measures.

The World Bank Latin America and the Caribbean Region Office of the Regional Chief Economist

2011

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Labor Productivity in Peru: 1997-2007

Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra: The Business and Economics Research Journal, 2012

The purpose of this paper was to decompose the changes in labor productivity of the Peruvian economy into the between-and within-sector effects using 39 sectors in terms of production structure for the period 1997-2007. This sectoral level of analysis was contrasted with a similar, although extended, decomposition at firm level using a sample of 7096 formal manufacturing enterprises for the period 2002-2007. At the sectoral level, the evidence shows that the between-sector or reallocation effects dominate most of the changes in labor productivity in the economy. However, at the firm level, the within-sector effects dominate the changes in labor productivity for the sample of formal firms. The role played by the informal sector in the determination of Peruvian labor productivity may explain the differences. On one hand, the informal sector tends to reduce the within-sector effects because of its significant employment share in manufacturing and its low level of labor productivity. On the other hand, the informal sector tends to increase the between-sector effects, given its buffer feature of generating employment in both crisis and boom periods.

Productivity in developing countries : trends and policies

2005

How you live on this earth depends on where you live. This is why we have to witness the daily agonies of innumerable workers trying to get into countries where productivity is much higher than in their own. It should not be like this. It should be the reverse: I believe that productivity should, instead, be brought to these places that lag so dramatically behind. How we go about achieving this is obviously central to the agenda of international solidarity. This book is an attempt to provide an answer. The answer, of course, is technology, but we have now learned to be leery of facile attempts to construct a single explanation for the considerable variations in time and place of this fundamental force. Behind technology there are both proximate and distant determinants. These must be combined, and the combination of these that really matters, as this book tells us, depends on the current level of technology in a given country. But not all is endogenous to any one country. We are invited in this book to contemplate the spectacular shift of the world technological frontier and to realize that the conditions in each country are deeply influenced by the levels of technology around the world. This is good news for the emerging countries: the shifting frontier helps them to forge ahead. But it is bad news for the countries that are lagging behind, because the very displacement of the world technological frontier drags them downwards. An international development agency, however, is not there to contemplate but to help. This book proposes a multivariate framework to guide our actions within the development context of the receiving country. This framework is designed to supply decision-makers with some guidelines on desirable policies. Translating these guidelines into quantified policy instruments is, of course, another matter. If it can be done at all, it will have to be done in situ. But even given a specific time and place, we will seldom have both a convincing enough model of the local economy and accurate enough estimates of its parameters to design measures that we can trust will lead to the desirable outcome that the market cannot offer. This does not mean, though, that we are ploughing the sea. Guidelines go a fair distance further than the sound but modest advice of Hippocrates, "At least try not to harm thy patient". They also go further than simply playing it by ear, which some economists have proposed. iii Productivity in Developing Countries While this book cannot go quite as far as offering specific designs for action, I trust that it will be received as a useful exercise in the craft of social policy action. It discusses alternative ways to improve existing systems and laudably insists on the high level of governance required to combine economic efficiency, social objectives, transparency, and meaningful evaluation of success. At the end of the day, what matters is how we extract outcomes from the reality of political economy. In this vital respect, all the experience that has been accumulated and all the bits of knowledge that are added are more than welcome.

The World Bank Development Economics Operations and Strategy Unit

2013

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean

2005

The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply and judgment on the part of The World Bank of the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. The material in this publication is copyrighted. Copying and/or transmitting portions or all of this work without permission may be a violation of applicable law. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank encourages dissemination of its work and will normally grant permission promptly to reproduce portions of the work.