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High-growth firms have been widely studied in advanced countries, but little is known about such stellar performers in Africa. Using establishment-level data from Ethiopia, this paper finds that the incidence of high-growth firms stands at an average of 7 percent, a figure comparable to that of advanced countries. High-growth episodes are short-lived, and the likelihood of survival or a subsequent episode is not any higher for high-growth firms. It is difficult for firms to sustain high growth, and the likelihood of a repeated episode is low. There is only a 6.5 percent chance that a manufacturing plant in Ethiopia will repeat a high-growth event in the subsequent three-year period. This likelihood is not greater than that of plants that did not experience high growth in the previous period. The paper explores the drivers of high growth and finds a tight link between exemplary performance and initial plant productivity, which is robust to many controls, including plant location. Plants located in Ethiopia's capital city or agglomerations have a higher probability of high growth. And high growth in plant employment is found to be self-reinforcing, that is, past high-growth experience is positively and significantly associated with subsequent growth in firm productivity.

Agglomeration Economics --- Firm Productivity --- High-Growth Firms --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics --- Small and Medium Enterprises --- Small and Medium Size Enterprises

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This paper analyzes the impact of changes in energy prices on the competitiveness of manufacturing firms in Chile. Using the Chilean Annual National Industrial Survey data, the paper illustrates that, first, increases in energy prices generally do not hurt firm competitiveness. Second, the impact of energy prices depends on the fuel type-while electricity price increases are negatively correlated with firm outcomes, fossil fuel price increases have a positive association with investment and firm productivity, a result that is consistent with the strong version of the Porter hypothesis. Third, these effects are heterogeneous and vary by firm attributes such as size, ownership and location. Fourth, investigating non-linear patterns in firm outcomes based on the level of energy prices, the findings show that the positive correlation between fossil fuel price increases and capital upgrading is particularly pronounced when energy prices are at relatively low levels.

International trade. --- Competition. --- Prices.

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Countries design programs for supporting firms, with varying levels of success. Firm growth is constrained by several factors, such as low firm capabilities (e.g. management), availability of finance, and access to markets. Based on the available experimental evidence on firm support programs in developing countries, this paper makes three broad observations. First, there are huge knowledge gaps in understanding the success of instruments that alleviate firm constraints. Various instruments, such as early-stage equity finance, incubators, and accelerators, remain untested due to the lack of good design, results framework, or monitoring and evaluation systems and so on. Second, since these interventions are expensive, policy makers expect such programs to be designed more effectively to pursue their objectives. However, evidence provides little guidance on the criterion for firm selection because the existing evaluations of instruments reveal little information on the heterogeneous impact by firm characteristics, such as the age, size, sector, and location of firms. Third, most interventions seek to address only one of the broad constraints faced by firms. To this end, the paper concludes with a novel proposal for a firm support program that attempts to sequentially address multiple constraints to firm growth. This program will be implemented in Malawi through the "Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship Scaling" project.

Access To Finance --- Business Development Services --- Business Incubator --- Business Support --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Entrepreneurship --- Firm Capability --- Firm Performance --- Knowledge Gap --- Market Access --- Organizational Management --- Private Sector Development --- Private Sector Economics --- Randomized Control Trials --- Skills Development and Labor Force Training --- Social Protections and Labor

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The spread of COVID-19 has disrupted firm operations on a global scale. Using a comprehensive data set that observes over 3,000 firms in 16 countries, including several developing countries, shortly before and after the pandemic, we relate firms' structured management practices to post- COIVD-19 outcomes, and report four main findings. First, structured management practices are associated with more limited downside impacts of the crisis on firm sales and survival in manufacturing but not in services. Better managed manufacturing firms, on average, experience a smaller reduction in sales. Second, in both manufacturing and services, structured management practice scores are correlated with a firm's ability to adjust or convert product mix and shift to online work arrangements. Third, management scores are not correlated with firm's ability to adjust on employment margins. Fourth, the resilience of better managed firms is related primarily to incentive practices and is uncorrelated with operations or targeting practices. Monitoring practice scores show a modest correlation with a firm's ability to switch to remote work arrangements.

Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies --- Coronavirus --- Corporate Governance --- Corporate Social Responsibility --- COVID-19 --- Disease Control and Prevention --- Enterprise Development and Reform --- Entrepreneurship --- Health, Nutrition and Population --- Innovation --- Labor Practice --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Management Practices --- Pandemic Impact --- Pandemic Response --- Private Sector Development --- Small and Medium Size Enterprises --- Social Responsibility

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Recent literature suggests that the positive impact of population density on wages, the canonical measure of agglomeration effects, is multiples higher in developing countries than in advanced economies. This poses an urban productivity puzzle because on-the-ground observations do not suggest that cities in developing countries function especially well or are conducive to enhanced productivity. This paper uses manufacturing censuses from four countries at differing levels of income that allow separating plant output quantity from prices. It shows that higher wage elasticities with respect to density are due to higher marginal costs, and agglomeration elasticities of efficiency, physical total factor productivity, are in fact far lower in developing countries. Further, congestion costs decrease with country income. Both are consistent with often low rates of structural transformation that make cities in developing countries so-called "sterile agglomerations, " which are populous but not efficient.

Wage-price policy.